“Everyone okay?” Mr. García asks. Matt shrugs and heads past my desk to the back of the room, ignoring everyone who looks at him.
Mr. García sighs, looking weary. Somehow, I’ve never seen him give Matt a late slip, although he’s been on time all of twice this year. “All right,” García says, picking up a piece of chalk. “So, saying good-bye to The Good Earth unit. Next up: we’re supposed to cover some European books as part of international literature. But for the most part, this list is so standard, I’m sure you’ve already read some of them. So I’ve decided to change this unit.”
García passes out a stack of sheets, which we hand back, seat to seat. “I’ve split the eighteen of you into pairs,” he says, “and each pair gets a book. Up until Christmas, we’ll have presentations on these nine works. Until the first presentation, we’ll be reading excerpts in class, so you’ll have a homework break for a bit.”
Appreciative murmurs rise around the room. García leans against his desk, waiting for the rustling to stop. As he folds his arms, it occurs to me that if it weren’t for the jacket and tie, he could pass for a senior. There are actual seniors who look older than he does. I can’t help wondering . . .
No, I scold myself. The idea of García creeping on a student is ridiculous. He doesn’t seem to care about anything besides English. Most teachers at least mention something about their lives outside class, but not García. With him, it’s the text, the text, the text.
Still. Glancing around the room, I see seventeen blank faces, and I bet all of them have wondered the same thing over the last few days.
The guy in front of me lets the paper stack flop onto my desk, and I take a sheet, scanning it. García has paired me with Matt Jackson. I stifle a sigh, remembering Juniper’s diagnosis of their so-called “joint” biology project. Our book? Inferno by Dante Alighieri. At least we didn’t get stuck with Les Misérables—I could spend three hours a day reading that thing and still not be done by July. Despite my love for reading, it takes me ages to digest each sentence. Mom read to me until I was old enough to want to keep it a secret, for my dignity’s sake.
Matt and I have the first presentation date, due to go next Thursday. There goes the next week of my life, sacrificed to the flames of hell.
“All right,” García says. “We’re going to take ten minutes to meet in pairs and figure out which type of presentation you want to do. The options are at the bottom—you can pick a skit, a game, or a PowerPoint. Though if you’re going to do a PowerPoint, you can’t just read the Wiki article off some slides and call it a day.”
People laugh as we stand and shift around, rearranging ourselves into our pairs. I head to the back and slide into the desk in front of Matt. He’s slouched so far down in his seat, his chest brushes the edge of his desk.
“Hey,” I say.
Up close, Matt has a weird face. Almost feral, with narrow eyes and a sharp, asymmetrical mouth tilted in a perpetual smirk. He glances at me before going back to the sheet.
I turn my desk to face him. “So, what do you think you want to do?”
He shrugs.
“. . . right,” I say, clicking my pen. “I’d rather die than do a skit about Inferno, so there’s that.”
“You know it?” he asks.
“What?”
“Like, have you read it?” Matt has a quiet, husky voice. He rushes through words as if he’s not allowed to be talking.
“Just excerpts, but I know the plot,” I say. “Basically, Virgil gives Dante this guided tour of the nine circles of hell, and Dante wanders around judging people and fainting a ton. Which is kind of like, it seems sorta dangerous to drop unconscious in hell of all places, but I guess my experience there is limited, so.”
The corner of Matt’s mouth twitches. For a moment I think I might coax a chuckle out of him, but he stays quiet.
I wait for him to offer some sort of opinion. Nothing happens. “Okay,” I say. “What if we did, like, a game, where people have to sort themselves into the nine rings?”
Not the tiniest change in expression. Is the dude going to talk at all, or am I going to have to monologue until this project gets done?
I raise my eyebrows and ask, “What do you think, Matt?”
He bobs his narrow shoulders in the laziest shrug I’ve ever seen. “I mean, suggesting that everyone in our class is going to hell is a good start, I guess.”
Taken aback, I laugh. He looks almost embarrassed.
“Cool,” I say. “So let’s have a presentation poster, and a station for every circle, and we can have sheets outlining which sins are in which place.”
He lets out a mumbling noise that sounds somewhat affirmative.
“I’ll message you later so we can figure out details,” I say. “Are we friends on Facebook?”
He shakes his head.
I take out my phone under the desk, open the Facebook app, and friend him. “Fixed.” I squint closer at his profile picture. “Who’s the kid in your picture?”
“My little brother,” he says, straightening up a bit. “Russell. He’s three.”
“Cute.”