“Just for a second?”
“Super late!” I said, gesturing to my wrist to indicate a watch that wasn’t there.
And I powered to the English room, making it to the door just as Alex, my tutoree with the Gatsby essay, broke off from a nearby group of freshmen and jogged up. Excellent. A distraction from my sheer and utter cowardice.
“Hey. Got questions?”
“Not today. Look!” She flipped back the cover page of her essay. A big red 87% was marked at the top of the first page.
I deadpanned. “That’s not an A.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Yeah. That’s great. Congratulations.”
“High fives for metaphorical shirts.”
I slapped her hand, and then she headed off down the hall to catch up with her friends.
I watched her go, and even knowing that I wasn’t really responsible for her grade, that I hadn’t done anything wholly remarkable, I still felt oddly gratified, like I myself had achieved something. Was this how teachers felt? Was this why they taught people? I had never given much thought to what it was like to be a teacher. If I had to summarize it before, I would’ve guessed that it probably sucked. Maybe your students don’t necessarily want to be there, or listen to you, or do your homework. But I guess you can teach someone something in spite of that. It must make it harder, but maybe that makes it feel better, somehow, when you actually succeed.
I was about to head into the classroom when someone called my name. Jordan appeared, cutting his way through the end-of-day crowd with Ezra in tow.
“Champ,” Jordan said. “Been looking for you.”
“What’s up?”
“I, uh, wanted to see if you had the notes for German today.”
“I take Spanish.”
“Ah.” Jordan bobbed his head and then said, “Well, that’s all. See you later.” And he walked away, leaving Ezra and me standing there.
I glanced at Ezra. He was glaring at Jordan’s retreating back.
“Uh,” he said after a moment. “So.”
“I sort of need to get to tutoring,” I said, but the English room was clearly empty.
“I just wanted to … So, about Homecoming—”
“Yeah, no, what a night. Cherished senior-class memories. Will scrapbook accordingly.”
“Listen, Dev…”
Nothing good ever started with listen. It was never “Listen, you just won twenty-five thousand dollars.” “Listen, I have a huge crush on you.” I think the general theory was that you had to tell the other person to listen because you were about to tell them something they didn’t want to hear. And I definitely didn’t want to hear the end of Ezra’s listen, because it was probably something along the lines of “I hope we can still be friends.”
Did I still want to be friends? What I really wanted was to kiss Ezra’s face off. And punch him in the arm. And then kiss his face off some more. That wasn’t quite an ideal friendship, was it? That one-sidedness. I didn’t want that. But I didn’t want to lose him, either. Maybe I could key in on that arm-punching inclination and eventually the kissing thing would subside. Maybe. But not today.
I cleared my throat. “You better hurry or you’ll be late for practice,” I said. “Got to set that good example, right? Team morale … and … whatnot.” I tried to smile and then retreated into the English room.
The next day, I found myself in the lunch line, scanning the cafeteria to see if Cas was around. We had managed to avoid each other all week; whether this was intentional or not, I wasn’t quite sure. And while I looked, I couldn’t tell if I was hoping to see him or hoping not to see him.
When the search turned up fruitless, I let out a sigh. The girl in front of me glanced back and gave me a quizzical look.
“New York deli again,” I said, pointing to the cafeteria menu by way of an explanation. “They’re hitting the pastrami really hard this month.”