After a moment of his floundering, I leaned against his desk, amazed. No wonder Isaac Nakahara had never had a girlfriend, then, if this was how he talked to girls.
“Then tell me what you mean,” I said, and I meant it to sound amused, a little sarcastic, but it didn’t come out that way. His room was silent except for the murmur of the heating and a whisper of music down the hall, and in the stillness my words were halting and confused.
He leaned back against the wall. “All right. I wanted to call you, okay?” he said, with an air of finality. Like that explained everything.
I waited a long moment for an elaboration, but for once, Isaac didn’t keep talking. He just held my eyes, wearing a serious, unfamiliar expression.
The door opened. I jolted, twisting around.
Jon Cox stalked in, his mouth curled in a snarl.
“They keyed my fucking car,” he said, his voice trembling. “Those shitheads keyed my car!”
Isaac and I were both on our feet in seconds. “Where are they?” Isaac said.
“Isaac,” I warned.
“I saw a couple of them near Arlington,” Jon Cox said.
“Guys—”
Isaac grabbed his coat. The stuttering boy had disappeared. The sharp knife of revenge was back. “Let’s go.”
“Guys!” I snapped.
Two heads turned my way.
“This needs to go to the administration, okay? That’s destruction of property. That’s not rivalry—with your car, that’s a felony.”
Jon Cox looked downright offended. “Oh, like we can’t sort this out ourselves?” he said.
“Yeah, exactly like that,” I shot back. “If they get suspended, or in legal trouble, colleges are going to see it. That’s actual consequences. We can’t do actual consequences without . . . I don’t know.”
“Without what?” Jon Cox demanded.
“Without stooping to their level.”
“They’re not going to see it that way,” Jon Cox said. “Connor Caskey is going to go around like, yeah, we won, the Sharps are a bunch of pussies.”
A sheen of red lowered over my vision. “Oh, is that your priority? Making sure some asshole doesn’t think you’re effeminate?”
Jon Cox mouthed for a second, looking baffled.
Isaac leapt in. “Okay,” he said, giving me a cautionary look. “You know what, maybe it is time to just talk to someone. Graves, maybe. Tell you what, let me—”
“No, don’t,” Jon Cox blurted. He shook his head, pushing a hand through his hair. “He’ll tell my parents. I swore I wouldn’t get the car hurt.” Looking defeated, he backed toward the door. “Forget it. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Wait,” I said, but he was already gone.
The lunch bell rang, and the Greek Monologue class sprang up from our table.
“Tell your friends to come to the showcase next week,” Reese called over the hubbub. “Hang up those posters.” The posters in question showed us gathered in the Black Box in costume, under harsh lighting, looking suitably tragic and dramatic. We’d been having class in the Black Box, mostly, for a month or so, preparing for the final performance. Reese’s critiques were merciless, but the showcase replaced a final exam for this class, so nobody complained.
I was planning on taking down every single poster I found. My face hanging up around campus? Not safe.
“To the bathrooms!” exclaimed Ash Crawford, grabbing a sheaf of posters.
“What?” said Pilar Velasquez, giving him a weird look.
“The best place to hang up posters is the back of stall doors,” Ash explained, heading for the door. “People can’t escape, you know? If you put . . .”
They made up the back end of the escaping stream of students, and when their laughter was cut off by the closing door, I turned to look at Reese, who stood at the oval table, appraising me. It was only the first day back from break, and I already felt threadbare. This dean’s meeting would be the first of this afternoon’s emotionally exhausting sessions. Goodbye to Admissions. Goodbye to Financial Aid. Goodbye to theater.
“Let’s go to my office,” she said.
Long rays of afternoon light fragmented through the old glass in Reese’s office window. The rhythmic whip of the fan took over. Her long nails were pressed together, arching a cage up between her palms. I gazed, resigned, at her silver manicure.
“Have you considered work-study?” Reese asked.
“Yeah, I talked to Human Resources. They said they’ve already finished their hiring for spring, so I’d have to wait until fall. I don’t have time to wait, is the thing.”
Reese shook her head, toying with a charm on one of her bracelets. “This has come up at every single Board meeting for the past few years,” she said. “I can’t fathom how the academy claims to meet 100% of demonstrated need, if outside costs like travel and supplies aren’t within the student’s grasp.” Her lips thinned. “We’re slow to change, unfortunately.”
“Yeah.”
Reese folded her arms on her desk and leaned forward. The tightness of her dark bun drew her forehead back, lifting the arches of her brows. Beneath, her softly lined eyes were serious. “Jordan, I’ve started your parents with the transfer application, but I tried to discourage them from the idea. You’re an excellent student. I know the circumstances seem severe, but there are steps you and your family can take to tackle them, if you’re committed to graduating from Kensington. We can map this situation out for you; we can take this little by little.”
The quiet intensity in her voice took me aback. I didn’t know why, but it made me want to disengage, or disappear. I stared at my thighs.
“Let’s assume you get a work-study job next year,” Reese continued, clicking a pen into action. “That leaves us with two breaks and next semester to account for. Three blocks of time; we can look at them one by one.” 1, 2, 3 went the rollerball tip onto blank paper, hollow-sounding on the desktop. “Let’s start with next semester first, all right? There may be work opportunities available in town. I can ask on your behalf, if you’re not comfortable.” A pause. “Jordan?”
I looked up reluctantly. My teeth felt glued together, my voice pushed deep inside a pouch I couldn’t open. It’s useless, said a repeating voice in the back of my mind. Why bother? Something would always fall through. It was easy to say this was just a set of Unfortunate Circumstances, but looking back, hadn’t we always just been stringing our way from Unfortunate Circumstance to Unfortunate Circumstance? If it wasn’t the fallout from a hospital stay, it was getting cycled out of a job. If it wasn’t a job, it was the hiking rent. If it wasn’t rent, it was some freak expenditure that threatened to unbalance everything: a rattling air conditioner that spat out hot air and rancid water, weeping for replacement; or an abscessed tooth that knotted up my mother’s face every time she bit down, which cost some stupid amount of money to extract, because it’s a rare part-time job that comes with dental.