“Hi! Adrian, right?”
He looks startled, then grins. “Yeah. Hey, Brighton. I didn’t know you knew me—I guess from that animal-shelter thing earlier in the year?”
“Of course!” I agree. “Anyway, could you do me a quick favor? Please?”
“For you? Yeah. Sure! What’s up?” He pops the tab on a can of Red Bull and takes a sip.
“Do you know Silvia Lombardo?”
“Tall, bouncy girl with brown hair? She’s in my chem class.” His locker is still open, and it’s a mess of energy drinks, papers, Sharpies, and a trio of Cross Pointe High hooded sweatshirts.
“Great! I forgot to tell her what time Key Club is meeting Sunday, and I’m already late for a meeting with Mr. Donnelly. Would it be a huge inconvenience if I ask you to run back to the computer lab and tell her it’s at eight a.m.?”
“Is that the library thing? I’m going to that.”
“Fabulous!” His name is so not on the list in my bag, but I’ll take all the recruits I can get—plus, Silvia will be thrilled. “And did I hear you just got your license?”
“Yeah. Yesterday.” He blinks and stands a little taller, leans toward me. “I can finally use the parking space my parents reserved for me. Crazy, right? Them paying for a space I only get to use a dozen times before summer break—not that I’m complaining.”
I’m supposed to giggle or roll my eyes at his parents’ excess, but really I want to yank the Red Bull from his hand and chug it. Hope that there’s enough caffeine in the can to get me from now until whenever I can collapse on my bed.
I giggle.
“You know—” He shifts his weight and puts a hand on my arm. “I’m old for a sophomore. My parents kept me back in kindergarten, so I’m practically a junior. If you want to see my car—”
If Silvia walked by right now, she’d be crushed. I’m not flirting. I don’t have a quarter of the energy required to flirt. I have less than zero interest in flirting with Adrian, but he thinks I am. Instead of helping Silvie, I’m making things worse. I pull my arm away from his hand.
“You know what would be awesome?” I don’t pause for his answer. “If you could carpool on Sunday. Since you can drive and most sophomores can’t—and there’s not much parking there. Maybe you could drive … Silvia?”
“Silvia?” He steps back, message received. “Yeah, I could totally do that. I’ll go find her for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, turning down the hall. “You’re the best, Adrian! See you Sunday.”
Mr. Donnelly’s shuffling through stacks of student work, moving piles back and forth on his desk and looking through his bag. He’s so absorbed in this process, he doesn’t acknowledge my knock or notice when I cross the classroom to stand on the other side of his desk. I shift my weight a few times, check the clock on the wall above the projection screen, and finally fake a ridiculous-sounding cough.
He looks up and adjusts his glasses. “Oh, Brighton! Sorry, I didn’t hear you. I can’t seem to find the list of volunteers for Sunday.”
“I have it. Remember? You gave it to me yesterday.”
“Did I? Well, I’ve got a few more names for you to add. Where did I put that note?”
My heart picks up a beat, and for a moment it’s easy to ignore that the clock is ticking away my downtime while Mr. Donnelly rejects a variety of illegible notes on scraps of paper. Could Jonah have changed his mind? If so, I can just apologize in person at the event.
“Here it is: Mallory Freeman and Jake Murphy. How many volunteers does that put you at?”
I swallow and bite the inside of my lip. Not Jonah.
I need to sit. Now. Like disappointment has a weight to it. A weight heavy enough to make my knees refuse to hold me up. I lower myself onto a table and steal an extra moment by pulling the sign-up sheet out of my bag and adding their names. Adrian’s too.
It’s not just Jonah I’m upset about. It’s my dad. Everything seems to be leading back to Dad right now.
I take a deep breath and count the names on the sheet. “Twenty-two. That’s plenty, even if a few of them are no-shows.”
Mr. Donnelly nods and pulls a coffee-stained catalog out of a drawer. It figures he knows exactly where that is, and he even has a sticky note marking the page. He flips it open, and I’m faced with a glossy photograph of the plaque I picked out back in October: green marble mounted on dark cherry wood. The words engraved in gold. A row of people holding hands across the bottom that look like the chains of paper dolls I used to cut out and decorate in elementary school.
It’s perfect—an exact duplicate of the plaque already hanging in the lobby outside the main office, the one inscribed with my father’s name—but that doesn’t matter anymore. Ninety-nine point whatever percent isn’t good enough.
“Brighton, the deadline for club purchases is next Thursday.”
I nod and tighten my fingers. The date is circled on my calendar at home.
I look at the wording I’d deliberated over this fall—it’s printed on the sticky note, just waiting for an order that won’t be placed: