“We always go together, Dev.”
“Yeah, well, that’s before we had … prospects.”
“Prospects? What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know.” I tore open a package of salad dressing and applied it vigorously to my salad. If this were Jane’s time, Cas would be Mr. Kincaid, and he would understand what I meant. “People we like. We’ve both got people we like.”
“So you do like Ezra.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t even know if this was true. But I wasn’t about to tell Cas that.
“Great.” There was a pause. “Well … maybe I will ask Lindsay.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Okay.” He looked at me for a second, as if daring me to change my mind, and then he picked up his tray and left.
24
The new assignment in freshman English was to compare a work of literature to its movie adaptation. It was the awesome kind of freshman comp assignment that I dearly missed. Freshman-year essays were the best. Senior year and all you’re left with is critical analysis and footnotes and works-cited pages. Heaven forbid you actually have fun with it.
A PT of the highest degree—I recognized her from gym class—came in for my “office hours” that next week. She was the one who had so eagerly claimed Ezra as her partner before Foster got the chance.
“Mrs. Chambers said you would read these,” she said, holding a sheaf of pages in front of my face.
“Sure. What, uh, what’d you compare?”
“Emma and Clueless.”
I blinked and looked up at her. “For real?”
“It said movie adaptation,” she said shortly. “It didn’t say which movie adaptation.”
I looked at the title page, which told me (1) that this girl’s name was Amanda Jeffers and (2) that Amanda Jeffers wasn’t messing around. The title could’ve been written by Rachel Woodson herself—Emma vs. Cher: Austen’s Heroine Transformed in Twentieth-Century America.
If I had a seat belt, I would’ve needed to buckle it. Amanda Jeffers took me on one wild literary ride. Her paper was well thought out, structured, clear, insightful. It was also seven and a half pages long, whereas the assignment called for only four.
I looked up at her after I finished. “Wow. You must really like to write.”
Amanda shrugged.
“This is really good.”
“What can I change?”
“I mean…” I had no idea. I couldn’t even criticize her formatting. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but this paper was beyond me.
“I want an A,” she said, as if I hadn’t heard her. “So what can I change?”
“I would give you an A,” I said. “I wouldn’t change anything.”
“You can always change something. You can always do better.”
I looked down at the pages. “I guess … maybe you could condense the part about Emma’s reflections a little.”
She nodded curtly. “And?”
“And … you could integrate your transitions a little better?” This was something English teachers had always told me.
“Great.” She took her paper back, her lips pursed as she scratched some notes across the top. “Thanks.”
Then she picked up her backpack and left.