“Don’t be such a dick,” she muttered as she stepped out from behind him to head toward the gym.
She didn’t look at me when she passed. Not directly. Instead, the corner of her mouth turned up, curling the Wild Cats logo on her cheek. The throng of people narrowed around us and pressed into the wide gym doors. She discreetly slipped a note into my hand and I shuddered at the unexpected contact. A wave of her complex emotions rippled through me. A nauseating prickle I attributed to stage fright. Then the cool wash of gratitude that followed.
I crumpled the note and pulled my hands inside my sleeves while Jeremy watched the hem of her cheerleading skirt disappear into the gym. “Is it just me, or is it shorter than usual?”
“Jeremy!” I tugged on his camera strap. “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer.”
“I plan to take a few dozen,” he said. “You know, for the school paper. Think she’d give me an interview?”
I snorted. “Sure, if you can get past her boyfriend. For your next reckless act of rebellion, you can ask TJ’s girlfriend out on a date. Then we can see how long it takes him to beat you to death with his leg brace.”
“You wouldn’t let that happen.”
He said it quickly. Easily. Like he didn’t have to think about it. Jeremy was a pacifist—the opposite of his dad— where I tended to react for both of us. When we were fourteen, I’d stood in his kitchen, holding his phone, waiting for social services to answer. Jeremy’s hand was on mine, his wrist ringed in bruises, tasting remorseful and uncertain, like maybe he’d deserved it. Drowning out my own feelings and making me uncertain too. I hung up the phone, and Jeremy let go, and I still hated myself for it.
“Are you coming?” he asked, shaking me from the memory. Music and shouts blared behind him, a sea of blue-andwhite jerseys and pom-poms.
“No, it’s not my thing. Anh’s working the store for her brother after school. I wish we could hang out. Just the two of us,” I said hopefully. Maybe if it we hung out like we used to, then he’d open up and tell me what was wrong.
“I can’t. I’m covering the game at North Hampton.” He held up his camera case and waved an apologetic good-bye. People crested around him in blue-and-white waves, and his blond head bobbed over them like the sun. I squeezed my hand where I’d held his a moment ago, and hoped he’d be okay without me for a while. I waved back, walking backward as the gym swallowed him up.
Emily’s note crinkled against my palm. I ducked into the nearest girls’ bathroom and opened it. Everything about it bubbled, from her loopy letters to the obnoxious circles under multiple exclamation points.
79% on my algebra test. I passed!!!
I sighed, crumpled her note, and tossed it in the trash. It was almost a thank-you. A passing grade meant she could keep her place on the squad, her seat in the social pyramid. Unfortunately, her passing score would do nothing for mine, even though I had been the one to tutor her after school.
Every week.
For three months.
Community service. Five days a week. One hour a day. A mandatory requirement of all scholarship candidates. Students with cars and bus money got to volunteer in labs, or hospitals, or at the Smithsonian. Oleksa’s dad hooked him up cracking math codes for some government agency. Meanwhile, we who were vehicularly challenged had to tutor students after school.
Of course, it would all have been worth it if they’d paid me. If I didn’t have to slip money from my mother’s tip jar for my newspaper and depend on Jeremy’s Twinkie donations for my junk food fix