Chapter Three
OfficialEndeavourHigh: Beta Club: Please be nice to the freshmen today.—Mrs. J.
“Jane Austen, Esha, can you even believe—” I whisper, as much bite in my tone as I can convey at a low volume. This room is stuffed with people, and it’s nearly impossible to have a private conversation.
Esha rolls her eyes. Her first-day-of-school look is more daring than usual: the flowy ivory dress goes past her knees, as required, but the straps might be thin enough to get her dress-coded. “You love Jane Austen.”
“Yes, but—” Someone bumps my shoulder as they walk by, and they mumble an apology.
I don’t respond. They couldn’t hear me in this frenetic room, anyway.
It’s our first Beta Club meeting of the year, and I swear half of the school is here.
I get it, we’re all high-achieving students or whatever, but I would really appreciate less of a meat grinder.
“Yes, I love Jane Austen,” I start again, pressing my palms together to keep them still, because thinking about this makes me feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.
“But she’s British. American Lit and British Lit are different. There was a whole war about it.”
“The revolution was about a bit more than that, but okay.”
I wave my anthology. “This is what we’re supposed to do. Read through this book, and—” I’m interrupted when someone bumps into me again. From somewhere deep in my chest, a growl emerges that truly sounds feral.
Because Hayes bumped into me.
Of course he did.
Hayes’s eyes widen, and it would be comical if he weren’t so close to me. Why is everyone so close to me? My skin starts to crawl because my body naturally revolts when people are in my space.
“It’s okay, Novella.” He smiles, or smirks, or something. I’m not great with faces. (All I know is that his is objectively handsome, something I hate admitting, even to myself.) “I’m not gonna hurt your emotional-support book.”
“Funny.” I squint at him.
“Are you okay?” He squints back at me, like I’m some specimen he’s looking at through his beloved microscope. But I’m not a worm or a plant cell or a piece of a squid. He just sort of makes me feel microscopic, sometimes. Small, brainless, and completely dissected.
“I’m fine. Why?” I don’t even know the reason he’s asking.
“Your face is all puffy.”
“Oh.” My eyes drop to my feet, which are fidgeting. Some part of me is always fidgeting. “Well, your face is all … square.” His face is kind of square, but not in a bad way. In a beautiful way. Comeback of the century right there.
“Good one.” He rolls his eyes. “But I was asking because you very clearly ran out of class to go cry in the bathroom this morning.”
I straighten my posture, certain he’s mocking what he sees as fragility. So I cry a lot. Who gives a shit? “Yeah,” I say defiantly. “I do that.”
“She does do that,” Esha says, speaking for the first time in this strange conversation. She, unlike me, is entirely unbumped. She has this innate power to carve out space for herself anywhere, even in a crowded room.
“Oh. So that’s just like … part of your life?” Hayes starts. “I thought it was my fault.”
“Just give me a minute,” I tell him, tapping my pointer finger against my chin. “I’ll come up with something else to blame you for.”
“I’m sure you will. Climate change, maybe.” He rolls his eyes again.
“Works for me. I heard you don’t recycle.”
I’m not finished yet, and I’m about to blame him for something else, like taking the last bag of Doritos out of the vending machine in the canteen, but then someone slams into my back.
The book flies from my hands, and all sense of balance leaves me.
I’m going down. It’s possible I’ve just been hit by a bulldozer, and this is the moment before all my bones are flattened.
A hand wraps around my shoulder, and instead of hitting the ground in a bone-crunching heap, I am pulled upright and … held.
“For God’s sake, Luke, who raised you?” Hayes huffs, and that’s when I realize he’s got me, because I hear his words through his breath on my ear.
I think I would’ve rather been flattened by the bulldozer.
“Your mom,” Luke practically yells. He’s so loud.
I didn’t know people still made your mom jokes.
I thought that was just a thing that happened in early 2000s TV.
I turn around and look at him. He apparently doesn’t feel like apologizing for running me over.
He has extremely shiny, long brown hair that covers his eyes when it’s not tucked behind his ears.
He likes to flip it around all the time.
It’s so incredibly annoying. I’ve known him since kindergarten, and I swear he hasn’t matured at all.
Hayes rolls his eyes, and his hand moves from my shoulder. Oh, yeah. That was his hand on my shoulder. That’s odd.
Hayes picks up my anthology from the floor, pressing the bent cover down and dusting debris off the pages. He hands it back to me gently, like he knows this really is my emotional-support book. That’s interesting. I thought that was a joke. At my expense. I always assume everything is.
“Yeah, right,” he murmurs before I can even thank him. “She barely even raised me.”
My eyebrows raise, because that was unexpected. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Hayes talk about his family like that. He doesn’t talk about them much at all, really, except for his older brother who’s in med school at Duke.
“Is the fighting starting already?” Luke asks, settling in too close to me and resting his chin in his hands, his elbows planted on the lab tabletop beside Hayes.
“They’re not fighting, really,” Esha says, crossing her arms. “Just bickering.”
“Well, that sucks.” Luke sighs. “I was sure they were going to have one of their blowouts today. I want a refund.”
Hayes gives him a side-eye look, but Luke is just saying what everyone’s thinking.
They’re all watching us now, even the sophomores who’ve been Beta Club members for, like, three seconds.
They’re all wide-eyed in anticipation, and despite the crowd, it’s dangerously quiet in the room.
Someone should sell popcorn or something.
This is our year to fight.
The year the war ends and a victor emerges. We’ve been fighting since the moment we walked through the doors as freshman. School is our arena. We’re two seniors at the top of our class, battling for accolades. Valedictorian, National Honor Society, Beta Club president.
The race for student government came to the ringing crescendo of my car alarm last year, but this battle means so much more, because it’s the last time our classmates get to choose between us.
For a second, I look around at everyone in the room.
Meet each set of eyes, even as much as it physically pains me.
I can feel the pressure on my shoulders, the expectation of the fight they’re all waiting for.
As my eyes track around the room, conversations quiet.
Some people smile, others send only blank stares, probably because they’re confused by the intense eye contact.
“Alright,” Hayes says, standing up straighter next to me, addressing the crowd. “Nothing to see here, people. Just a conversation between friends.”
At that, those simple words spoken in his quiet, even-keeled voice, the whole room shifts. Conversation resumes at its previous full volume. All that eye contact goes away. Wait, friends? Are we friends? We’re not friends.
I almost want to thank him until I realize what he’s just done.
He did what he always does. He led everyone in the room without even trying, probably securing enough votes to beat me without a second thought. Effortless, uncomplicated, no sweat. I look at him, and no one else, because it’s at this exact moment that I realize he’s everything I’m not.
Hands clap near the doors, and I flinch.
Mrs. Jacobs is here. She’s extremely loud, but she’s here.
She’s been my homeroom teacher for all of my years here, and my English teacher for a couple.
She looks out of place among the beakers and Bunsen burners in the only classroom big enough to hold us all, the lab.
I’m so grateful to see a teacher, someone I know and love and trust, someone who isn’t constantly judging me, that my eyes fill with tears. Typical.
Shut up, I almost whisper under my breath. That’s what I do when I have too many feelings.
Hayes looks my way, and I realize I may have actually told myself to shut up.
I don’t care. It’s either that or cry, and he already thinks I’m an unhinged emotional basket case, so I will not cry in front of him again. Not today, at least.
“Sorry I’m late, kids.” Mrs. Jacobs sighs hard enough to blow stray, frizzed curls off of her face. “Long story, but there was a scooter incident I had to deal with.”
I love that about her, that she’s always calling us “kids.” Like we still are. In a world where we’re trained in professionalism and sit next to forty-year-olds in class and think about nothing but books and math and chemistry, or whatever, it’s nice to still be a kid somewhere.
Also, I don’t know what a scooter incident is.
“Anyway”—she leans on her desk, a giant lab counter twice the size of any other in the room, and she rests all her weight on her forearms—”Welcome back to Beta Club.”
All around me, people cheer. I wince, because the noise is kind of too much for my body to deal with right now. Mrs. Jacobs’s eyes look around the room, eventually falling on me. She nods. I nod back.
We keep our homeroom teachers all four years in this place, and I’m so glad she’s mine.
I’ll never forget the first overwhelmed-crying-in-the-bathroom moment I had at this school.
I was a freshman, and it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks into the semester.
I’d stepped out into the courtyard off the cafeteria to call my mom, because I was full-on panicking about something, but she didn’t answer, so I made a beeline to the girls’ room.
On the way, I ran into Mrs. Jacobs. She was blocking my path to the bathroom. The path to emotional safety.
“Are you okay?” she’d asked.
“No,” I managed to say, choking back a sob.
“Will you be?” she asked again.
“Yes,” I whispered.
She moved out of my way.
Now, three years later, she doesn’t have to ask. All she does is nod. All I do is nod back. If I need anything, if I need to talk, all I have to do is come into her room.
“… and we’ll be going to the North Carolina State Beta Club convention this year,” she’s saying. “Well, next year. Technically. But this school year. So, start thinking about what events you’d like to compete in and things like that.”
That sounds like so far away, next year and graduation and moving on from this place, but it’s closer than I’d like to admit. Much closer than I’m ready for.
“Of course, we’ll also need a new president before then.
” Her eyes find mine, and then drift over to Hayes, who’s still standing too close to me.
She keeps talking, about vice president and treasurer and the other officers who also matter, I guess, but I can’t think about anything other than that president role.
What it could mean for me. My future. It’s one more shiny accolade for college applications, not to mention the world of scholarship opportunities it opens up.
“But.” Mrs. Jacobs’s voice is sharp, making the word a full sentence of its own. “I don’t want anyone thinking or worrying about that now. Elections won’t be until the end of this semester, so no campaigning yet, okay? This election goes by holiday-decoration rules: nothing before Thanksgiving.”
She stares down Hayes and me as she says that.
She ends the meeting and dismisses everyone, smiling at each person as they file out of the room.
I heard the words she didn’t say. Did you hear me? No worrying.
But worrying is what I do.