Chapter 11 #2
She cracks the book and pushes it toward me, lowering her head. “Please teach me your ways, oh Queen of the Mathematical Realm.”
I squint, meeting her eyes. “Are you going to take this seriously? Or are you going to goof off the whole time?”
She sighs, straightening her posture. “I wish you could just use a mind meld. That would be way easier than trying to teach it to me.”
“Did you just reference Star Trek?”
She shrugs. “It’s your fault for making me watch it so many times.”
“But you never paid attention when I watched that stuff. You always played games on your phone.”
“And yet, here we are with me referencing it.” She smiles. “I guess you could say I’m good at multitasking.”
A laugh slips out of me. “Since when? Don’t you remember that time you almost walked into a wall because you were listening to a podcast?”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault. The wall moved.” She laughs.
“Oh really?”
“Obviously. I have the coordination and poise of a royal heiress. In fact, I bet if I did one of those ancestry searches, I’d be related to some king of Scotland or something.”
“Why Scotland?”
“No reason,” she says, twirling her red hair on her finger as her eyes dart around the room. “Just a feeling.”
It’s weird to talk to her like this. It makes me want to smile, and the fog that follows me around and suffocates me doesn’t seem as thick.
“We should probably start,” I say. “What do you need help with the most?”
“Mmm. Not much. Only the math-related problems.”
“They’re all math-related questions.”
“Exactly,” she says, giving me a strained smile.
I take a deep breath. “Okay, then.”
“I know,” she says, pulling a loose piece of paper from her bag. “Why don’t we start with this?”
I take the paper. It’s the assignment from today, and the scribbles she has underneath the first few questions are all wrong.
I set it down and scratch my head. “I think we need to backtrack a little bit. I’ll help you with these, but I don’t think it’ll make sense until we go back to the beginning of the section and start from square one. ”
She tries to hide her smile. “Square one? Did you mean for that to be a pun?”
I chuckle. “No, it just slipped out.”
“You’re right. The probability of you doing that on purpose is pretty low.”
I laugh. “We need to focus,” I say, flipping the pages back in the math book until I get to the beginning of the section.
“Yessir,” she says, buckling down and hovering over her math book. “Which page?”
“83,” I say.
She finds the page and grimaces.
“Quadratic functions aren’t as bad as they look. I promise.” I open my notebook to a fresh page and sketch a graph with a problem next to it. Before I know it, I’m rambling about what formula to use and how to solve it with factoring.
At first, Sadie doesn’t get it, and I try not to get frustrated. After a few problems, it starts to click for her. Within a half hour, she starts getting the answers right without any help.
“Is this right?” she asks, shoving the paper closer to me as she chews her bottom lip.
I look it over. “Yeah. See, it isn’t that hard. Do you want to go to the next section now?”
“I would . . .” She slams her math book shut. “But my brain is mush now.”
I laugh. “Sounds about right.”
“Besides, I still have to work on my plans for the winter formal. I’m way behind.”
“You aren’t on the dance committee, are you?” I know she likes dancing and dressing up, but I figured she would skip it this year. She’s already behind in school.
She nods. “Yup. You’re looking at practically the entire committee. There are only three of us. At first, I wasn’t going to do it again, but it’ll count toward my volunteer hours.” Her eyes gain a cunning glow to them. “You know—”
“No. Absolutely not.”
She frowns. “Oh, come on. You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
I cross my arms and raise an eyebrow. “I know you.”
“Then, what was I going to say?”
“I’m not joining the dance committee.”
She sighs, shoulders drooping. “But it would be so much fun.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like that kind of stuff.”
“Liar.”
My mouth drops open. “What?”
“You heard me.” She leans in, cupping her hand around the side of her mouth as if exposing a dark truth. “Remember that time I caught you watching that show—I can’t remember the title—but she picked out her wedding dress, and you legit cried!”
My eyes dart around the room, and I bring my finger to my lips. “Shh. You swore you’d never tell anyone.”
She pats the table. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t picture yourself getting all dressed up. You’d love the dance.”
“Shut it,” I whisper.
She smiles again.
“What?”
“All you need is a date.” Her eyes bulge, and she covers her mouth to suppress a squeal of excitement. “You sat with Caleb yesterday. What’s with that? Do you like him?”
My skin begins to crawl, and my face is hot. I’m tempted to tell her everything, from our agreement to the required dates, but I freeze. I don’t know if I’m ready to open my vault and share all my feelings with her again.
“No. It’s not like that,” I say. “He’s just been driving me to school.”
She gasps. “Does he like you?”
I glare at her.
“That means he does.” She bounces her eyebrows.
“No, it doesn’t. He just—I was—”
“I know I’m right. You might’ve forgotten, but I know you too.” She stands and starts to gather everything up into her backpack. The whole time she steals glances at me. With a pout, she says, “Becca’s growing up.”
“I didn’t say I like him like that.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, clearly not believing my answer.
“Just go do your committee stuff.” I wave her off.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going.” She grabs my brother’s jacket off the other chair and slips into it.
My heart drops.
There’s a patch with embroidered flowers covering the seam near the bottom corner. They’re white and pink, standing out against the dark green fabric.
I jump up, walking around the table. I lift the corner of the jacket. “Why did you do this? This is Ethan’s jacket. Not yours.” My words come out brash.
Just like that, all the progress we made today crumbles to dust.
She flinches, jerking the jacket out of my hands. She grips the patch tightly as if she’s guarding it from anything I might do. “There was a rip from the accident, and I fixed it.”
My lungs twist in on themselves, making it impossible to breathe. “No, you ruined it. You shouldn’t even be wearing it in the first place.”
“Why not?” She narrows her eyes. “He was my boyfriend.” Her eyes start to fill with tears, and her bottom lip wobbles. “I loved him, and wearing it reminds me of him. So tell me why I can’t wear it. Give me one good reason.”
“Because . . .” Any words I might have said are stuck at the bottom of my throat.
“You don’t have a good reason, do you? You just want to be mad. You hate the world right now, but guess what? You aren’t the only one who hates the fact that he’s gone.” She wipes her wet cheeks and turns to leave.
“It hurts too much to be reminded of him,” I whisper.
She stops, pausing briefly before looking back over her shoulder. “That doesn’t mean he deserves to be forgotten.”
Her words linger long after she walks away, etching themselves into my brain. Guilt pulls at me. I want to argue. I want to scream that she’s wrong, but she’s not. Deep down, I know she’s right. That only makes me feel worse.
I stand at the edge of the sidewalk as Mom’s silver SUV weaves its way through the parking lot. Once it slows to a stop in front of the school, I pop the door open and stagger into the passenger seat.
She pats my knee. “How was your day?”
I squirm away from her touch. “It was fine.”
She starts driving again. “And tutoring?”
“Good.”
She steals a glance at me, lipstick parted in an ear-to-ear smile. “So, who are you tutoring?”
I shrug. “Just someone from school.”
“Do I know them?”
I groan. “What is this? An interrogation?”
Her smile fades. “It’s just small talk. I’ve always asked you about your day.”
Correction, she always asked us about our day, and when she did, I rarely responded.
I let Ethan do the talking. He’d fill her in on everything, from what he learned in math to the latest gossip.
I, on the other hand, gave small one-word replies.
She must’ve never noticed because Ethan talked enough for the both of us.
“I’m just tired,” I say, resting my head on the back of the chair.
“If you say so,” she says.
She pulls onto the main road, but we’re going the wrong direction.
“Where are you going?” I mumble.
“We’re going shopping.”
I jerk up. “What?”
How did I forget? Shopping is my definition of a nightmare. Shopping with Mom takes hours. Every time I think we’re done, she heads to another store and makes an entire day out of it. All I want to do is go home and sleep.
“Becca, your shoes are falling apart.”
“You know my size. Just pick some up.”
She gives me a side-eye. “You’d never wear them.”
“That’s because the ones I have are perfectly fine.” I kick my feet to solidify my point.
“They have holes in them.”
I’m not going to be able to convince her that these shoes are decent. The soles are stained an awful shade of brown, they’re fraying on the ends, and she’s right, one of them does have a hole on the side.
“Well, I can’t go,” I say, crossing my arms, preparing for battle.
“Why not?”
“Because I—uh—” I rack my brain thinking of every possible excuse, but I know my mom will counteract every single one. If I tell her I have homework, she’ll argue that it’s Friday. If I tell her I’m sick, she’ll dote on me all evening. But then . . . “I’m hanging out with Caleb today!”
I blurt it out so fast and with so little thought I even surprise myself.
She hums like she doesn’t believe me, her mouth pulling to the side. “I thought you and Caleb didn’t get along.”
I shrug. “Well, we have—” There’s no way I’m telling Mom any details. She’d have a heart attack if she knew her precious, antisocial baby was going on five dates in the near future. “We have a project we’re working on for school.”
“I’m sure he’d be okay with moving it to tomorrow.”
“No. It’s a really big project, and we already made plans. Can you just drop me off and then go shopping?”
Please, please still go shopping so I can stay home instead.
At the very least, she turns the car in the direction of our house. “Don’t be silly. I was only going to go shopping to find you shoes.”
That’s a lie.
She continues, “I’ll drop you off at his house, and then I’ll get some things done around the house.”
Great . . .
The rest of our drive is filled with questions about our imaginary project. So many that my brain is about to explode. I’m almost relieved when we pull up in front of the Parks’ house.
Mom shoos me out of the car, eagerly watching as I walk up the path.
I knock on the door, holding my breath.
Caleb swings it open and raises an eyebrow as he leans against the doorframe. “What are you doing here?”
I take a deep breath and force it out. “Why do you think? I’m here to get our first date over with.”
He crosses his arms and tilts his head, giving me a lopsided grin. “I knew you’d come around.”