Chapter Twenty-Four
OfficialEndeavourHigh: Seniors: @PrincipalHinshaw i’m in your walls
My keys aren’t on the hook. They’re always on the hook because if I don’t put them on the hook, I lose them. I’m already rattled today because Mom had to wake me up for school, and she hasn’t had to do that since I was, like, ten. And I was on the couch and couldn’t really remember why.
Pretty sure I had a migraine, judging by the lingering nausea and exhaustion and the weighted ice pack that had slid down my face at some point during the night. But my memory is so fuzzy. Side effect of the migraine meds. All I really remember is Mom giving me enough Benadryl to sedate a horse.
“What are you looking for?” Mom asks, sneaking up behind me as I crouch in the doorway where everyone leaves their shoes.
“My keys. They’re not on the hook.” My backpack was in a weird place too. Not where I always leave it on the hall tree.
“I hope you didn’t leave them at school.”
“I couldn’t have—” I start to mutter under my breath before I realize I’m talking to no one. She’s gone.
I couldn’t have left them at school because I couldn’t have driven home without them.
Oh. There’s one millisecond of peaceful blankness in my brain, and then it all comes rushing back in pieces. In still images and hasty jump cuts. I was at the fair. I didn’t have my meds, and I let it get so bad. Esha pulled me off the floor. Hayes drove me home.
But where the fuck are my keys?
I tear my backpack apart, looking and feeling around for my overfilled key fob. This is why I hate those meds. Why I don’t ever take them all at once. Why I should’ve turned around and walked out of the fair the second I felt that first stab of pain.
There they are. Right at the bottom of the bag, with a few loose coins and a couple of empty gum wrappers.
“Are you sure you’re okay to go to school today?” Mom asks, sneaking up on me again. She’s standing behind the kitchen counter, resting her elbows on the fake granite and leaning over it to look at me. I don’t know why I’m still on the floor.
“Yeah,” I respond, pushing still messy hair off of my forehead. “I slept for, like, almost twelve hours. I better be good to go. I have to be.”
Mom’s gaze tightens. I know what that look means. She doesn’t believe me, and she’s worried, and she wishes I’d take better care of myself. I mean, same. But there’s nothing I can do about any of that now.
There’s a knock on the door, and Mom rushes around the counter to answer it. She almost steps on me.
“Good morning!” She’s using her cheerful voice, the one that greets people with all of her Southern charm that I inherited not a bit of.
Hayes responds, and she laughs. They talk like old friends, and I really should be interjecting here, but I just stay hidden behind the door. After yesterday, I feel weirdly vulnerable around him. He was never supposed to see me like that. I was never supposed to almost puke all over him.
He was never supposed to have to rescue me.
“Come on in,” I hear Mom say. Damn her Southern hospitality. So incredibly rude of her to not allow me to sulk in the privacy of my own home. “Nova should be ready soon.”
Mom takes exactly one step back, and Hayes walks through the door. Now we’re all three standing in about six square feet of doorway space.
I look up at him, because for once, I actually want to make eye contact. I need to see how he’s looking at me now. Now that he’s seen underneath my poised veneer to the truly messy heart of who I am. Now that he knows the brain I’m so known for is prone to breaking in all sorts of ways.
He smiles. With his whole, sleepy face. My mom turns her back, and he winks. I’ve got to tell him to stop doing that. My heart can’t take it.
“Morning, Novella,” he says, like this is any other morning.
This has been such a weird day, and it’s not even 8:00 a.m. I pick up my backpack and stick my keys in the pocket of my jeans. I don’t need them yet, but I’m not ready to lose them again either.
As we get into the car, an awkward silence descends. I knew there’d be moments like this today, because yesterday was too much, and now he’s taking a mental step back. That’s how that goes.
“Thanks for picking me up. And for yesterday. Thanks for … everything, I guess.” My newfound desire for eye contact fades away as swiftly as it appeared, and I keep my eyes trained on the road ahead of us. The litter on the side of the road is always so fresh this time of year.
“Anytime.” He doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but he does smile.
“Don’t say that,” I warn him, in all seriousness. “That really could happen anytime.”
“I know.” He shrugs.
The rest of the drive passes by in relative silence. I’m not sure if it’s comfortable silence or not. I can almost never tell.
By the time we get to class, nearly everyone else is there. Besides Lowry, of course. The classroom is in a mild uproar, everyone speaking over one another in an unorganized enough way that I legitimately can’t tell who’s talking to whom.
“What’s going on?” I whisper to Hayes as we sit down at our table. He’s half turned around, discreetly trying to sort out the conversational mess happening behind us. It’s loud enough in here that I really want to press my hands over my ears and crawl under the table.
“I think they’re just … complaining. Everybody. All at once. Like, the dam’s burst.” Hayes runs his eyes over everyone in the room, watching intently in that way he does. Where he’s seeing more than you want him to. More than you thought he ever could.
Instead of responding, I try to do what he’s doing. Listening and observing. Everyone’s hands are moving around in front of their faces; that’s the first thing I notice. It adds to the heightened sense of stress in the room, but it’s also kind of funny.
And he’s right. They’re complaining—although that’s not really the right word, considering how poorly the class has been run.
They’re venting. Reality-checking. Confirming with one another how little they’ve learned, and how unprepared they feel to write this paper, which counts for so much of the grade.
I think I am someone who can fix this. I can damn sure try, at least. I lean in toward Hayes and speak slowly into the air between us. “If I sort of hijack this class right now, will you keep a lookout for Lowry?”
Maybe I didn’t mean to lean in this close. Close enough that I could count his jet-black eyelashes. He laughs, and I feel that rush of breath on my cheek. I wonder if he can count my eyelashes.
“You got it.” He stands up. People start to hush as they notice him. He commands attention. I’ve always thought that.
I tap my phone screen to look at the clock. Six minutes after the hour. I figure we’ve got another four to nine minutes before Lowry shows.
Hayes walks toward the open door and leans against the cinderblock walls, inserting himself in the narrow wall space between the whiteboard and the doorway. He nods back at me, strangely seriously. I feel like we’re coconspirators planning a heist.
“Okay,” I start, rising to my feet. Everyone’s looking at me, and I know that was kind of the point, but there’s still a fleeting moment where I feel a visceral need to hit the deck.
“Everyone is … having a rough time right now. It’s undeniable.
And I’ve answered your emails and your texts with questions, as much as I could.
But remember when I told you I had an idea for us?
A bigger idea? I think it will ensure we all pass. ”
I barely finish my sentence before the uproar starts again, everyone trying to complain-slash-vent-slash-respond at once.
“I know!” My voice somehow rises above their collective volume.
“I know this class has been miserable and weird, and we’ve barely read anything, and we’ve watched a million movies, and the project’s due next week, and there’s no way a student can pass this class if they don’t get a good grade on it! ”
I realize that in stating the awful, unvarnished facts they all know, I’m making the horrible vibe much worse, but … that’s how I roll.
“So here it is: What if we all work together? Like a study group, but we help one another with our midterm projects. She doesn’t do office hours, so we could do our own—workshop theses, trade drafts for peer editing, review notes collectively, all that.
” I’m starting to gain momentum, the tiny spark of this idea blooming into flame.
“I’ll make a shared calendar. We can figure out a few hours this week to work in one of the classrooms. No one left behind. ”
I’m not the biggest fan of eye contact, but it’s necessary in a public-speaking situation like this, so I make it. And I see that people are listening. They are looking at their project partners, making silent agreements with the looks on their faces.
“You mean you can help us,” someone says, laughing.
“Yes,” I say, nodding my head in a way that I hope conveys some professionalism and authority and makes me look older than eighteen. “I can help you.”
There’s a low whistle, and it takes me a second to realize it came from Hayes. A warning whistle. Lowry is coming. I drop into my seat as quickly as my uncoordinated limbs will allow.
“Specializing in tiresome sounds, are we, Mr. Collins? Perfecting the art of exasperating behavior?” Professor Lowry says to Hayes as she enters the room, sneering. She is exactly fourteen minutes late. “My class does not need a whistler, thank you.”
Oh. I hate her.
This is hatred.
She’s made this entire semester miserable. She’s been a disappointment in every way possible. She’s let me down more than any other role model in my life ever has. It’s funny, how that all feels like nothing compared to her going after him.
Holy shit. I am furious.
I stare daggers into the glasses perched on top of her hair, because of course she’s looking down at her iPad instead of at us.
Hayes sits back down next to me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. My fingers wrap around his wrist under the table, and I can feel the slow rhythm of his pulse. It’s the barest of touches, the most fleeting moment.
“Don’t be. I’m surprised she even remembered my name.” He winks, and I breathe out a sigh of intense relief. She didn’t actually hurt him, then.
But she tried, and that’s enough for me.
Lowry looks up. She smiles at me and Hayes, and it’s devastatingly fake in a way that probably would’ve destroyed me a few weeks ago. Now, I smile back with all my teeth and all the newfound indignation simmering in my soul.