“People call this place the Mo-Lo,” I said, gesturing around. “Which sounds like a hashtag or an epithet.”
“Actually, the Mollos were a predecessor to the Incan people of South America…” He trailed off and tapped on the cover of his binder. “Oh. That’s the juice you were talking about?”
“Yep.”
He reached up, rubbing the back of his neck right above the collar of his shirt. In the last week, he’d rotated through a series of nearly identical shirts. Plain, solid-color T-shirts cut close to his narrow torso, with no decoration to betray any clues as to his interests. Today’s shirt was heather gray and looked as flannel-soft as his voice. “You didn’t study ancient Bolivia in sophomore year?”
“Uh, no.”
“You have no context for the rise of the Incan empire?”
“Zero context. And I took AP world history.”
“Huh.” He flipped open his binder and yanked out a mechanical pencil. The lead clicked down as he chewed on the inside of his cheek. “There’s a chance that my entire education has been useless and esoteric. I haven’t taken classes on any of the history periods we’re supposed to cover in the Melee.”
“There’s a chance that I’ve spent more time reading Octavia Butler books than studying this week,” I said, flopping open my binder and slapping aside pages until I reached the history section. I slid it across the table. “So you can help me with the esoteric and I’ll help you with the obvious.”
He smiled, pushing his binder to me. “That sounds good.”
18
“Didn’t she say that she didn’t come here to make friends?” Galen asked, resting his chin on his hand and gazing over my shoulder.
“Apparently, she meant she didn’t come here to make friends with us,” Leigh said.
“Fine with me,” Kate said, not looking up from the slice of pizza she was deconstructing. The tips of her fingers were coated in a fine slime of marinara. “One of them can trade me roommates for her. Her deviated septum has already stolen one week of sleep from me. And she won’t shut up about the expensive lotion she lost.”
Following the route of Galen’s stare, I twisted around on the bench. Perla was seated across the dining hall with Bryn Mawr’s team, planted firmly between a girl wearing a pale pink hijab and a girl with double lip piercings. All three of them were guzzling generic soda and laughing like they were in some cool, alt-girl commercial for Big K Cola.
“If it wasn’t obvious we were spying on her before, it is now.” Galen snorted. “Cool it, Ever. You’re not invisible, you know.”
I threw him a scowl. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re an Amazon,” Hunter said, snapping a carrot stick with his molars. “You could carry Meg and Leigh in your pockets.”
“That’s sizeist,” Leigh said, wagging a finger at Hunter. “Even if it does sound like fun. I could get so much done if I wasn’t responsible for walking myself places. Think of all the research I could do!”
“Joke’s on you. I don’t have pockets,” I said with a faux-haughty sniff. “And I’m not that tall. I’m five ten. Maybe six foot if you include my hair.”
“That’s an ineffective spying height,” Jams said.
I rolled my eyes. “Balls. There goes my career with the CIA.”
“Because your degree in science fiction would be so useful as a secret agent,” Galen snickered.
“Who are you going to turn to when our alien overlords take over the planet?” I asked. “Regular English majors? Good luck. They are way unprepared for the nuclear holocaust.”
“You talk about nuclear holocausts so much,” Kate said.
I looked around theatrically. “Whoa. Am I the new Perla? Did I start spouting Ayn Randian nonsense?”
“No,” Jams said firmly. “We josh you because we like you.”
“‘Josh’ isn’t a Briticism, is it?” Kate asked.
“Why would it be?” Jams asked, blinking innocently. “I’m from Oregon, Kate. Haven’t you heard?”
“Did you know that you only need a three-point-oh GPA in college to qualify to be a CIA special agent?” Brandon mused.
We all turned to him. His face pinched into an embarrassed scrunch. “That’s not a normal thing to know, is it?”
The hour we had spent alone together in the sci-fi section had been mostly quiet, the two of us reading each other’s notes. It was interesting to peek inside of his strange nerd-boy brain, to watch him decode passages of our study material while his hands fidgeted. His typewritten pages were, as expected, full of coded references to scraps of a very strange education—bits about the chemical makeup of emotional responses and allusions to texts I’d never heard of. But he had seemed equally ashamed to have to ask me to explain a comment about The Red Badge of Courage and a line of Hamilton lyrics I’d written in the margins of my history section.
We’d arrived at the dining hall separately, but he hadn’t hesitated to take the seat next to me. Which felt like something.
Under the table, I swung my leg over into his and tapped the sides of our shoes together. “Esoteric to the max.”
He gave me a split-second secret smile before turning back to his pizza.
On the other side of me, I could feel the intensity of Leigh’s curiosity aimed at the side of my head. I really wished she were less observant.
“Did anyone else notice that they’re completely out of water bottles today?” I asked, reaching for the small box of apple juice I’d had to settle for.
Jams took a deep pull from his soda. “Maybe our alien overlords want us chockablock with diabetes when they take us over.”
“‘Chockablock’ is hella British,” Kate said.
“‘Hella’ is hella Californian,” Jams retorted.
“‘Hella chockablock’ is hell of redundant,” Leigh giggled.
We were all laughing when Meg appeared and threw herself down on the bench next to Galen.
“Hello, happy people,” she said, propping her elbows on the table.
Kate stiffened. “Hello, traitor.”
Meg’s face softened to a down fluff. She gave a curious cartoon kitten tip of her head. “Kate, I already told you that there was no way I could have warned you guys about the Cheeseman trials. We would all be disqualified if I cheated for you. That would mean no scholarship for any of you and no paycheck for me and Hari. It’s not worth it. But it’s okay!” She gave a shudder of excitement. “Since Miss Ever already placed in the Cheeseman, you guys are in the running to be the team that takes home five scholarships! With that in mind, I wanted to let you know that this afternoon we’re going to do our first mock Melee. It’s only amongst our team, just to get some practice in. You know, take the edge off a little bit.” Her eyes scanned over each of us, as though taking attendance. “Oh. No Perla? Well, someone make sure to let her know, okay? I need to track down Hari and prep.”
A look passed around the table, a nonverbal contract signed and sealed in the span of two breaths. Kate’s blue eyes flashed, a detonation of glee.
“Don’t worry, Meg. We’ll make sure she knows.”
*
Meep.
Meep.