I can tell within a glance if someone hates me. Sometimes it only takes one word. Other times, it’s those subtle nonverbal cues—a shift of the eyes or arms folded over a chest in an attempt to hide all of that hate inside that’s dying to bore through their chest and grip mine until I choke or die.
Nico Medina is subtle about it. It’s in the way he doesn’t look at me, and how he breathes when I speak—the sound of air filling his chest so heavy I think it may just turn into fire and come back at me in flames.
It began our freshman year, when we partnered for peer grading on our first persuasive essay assignment. I spent hours on his, offering critique points in the margins, circling arguments he made that I felt were strong and jotting down my thoughts and ideas on ways he could make his points even stronger. I was impressed with him. Maybe a little enamored, too. I was fourteen and precocious, the twin sister of a jock football player and the daughter of our school’s football coach and a socialite mother who spent every week planning the coming weekend’s cocktail party at our house. I was dying to find someone willing to talk about politics with me, to debate classic literature themes, or maybe sit next to me in the school’s editing bay working on video for the school’s monthly announcement show, that nobody watched, but I put every ounce of my being into. I just wanted another nerd. And I thought I’d found one.
We exchanged papers, and my crush was crushed into a thousand tiny, sharp, jagged bits.
Nico gave me a B. He wrote WEAK on the top—and circled it.
In red.
I approached him after class, paper in my hand and finger pointing to his one-word review, and asked him “What is this supposed to be?”
His response: “It’s a word. Weak. It describes your paper. You’re bad at this…” he paused when he leaned forward to look at my essay, now wrinkled in my angry, rigid hands. His lips quirked just before he looked up at me again, “Reagan Prescott.”
Every syllable sounded as if he had spit it on the ground. That was our first encounter. That was also our longest encounter, unless I count the times we debate in school. Somehow, our humanities class always turns into a session of point-counterpoint, and Nico is always quick to take up the opposite view of mine.
Because he hates me.
Right now—hate. I can hear him sucking in his breath through his nose, his shoulders rising like a shield against my voice. I’m talking. I’m…arguing. He hates that. The fire in his veins is waiting to burn me to the ground.
We’ve been debating over altruism—the idea of a truly selfless act. I believe they exist. Nico…not so much.
“I just feel like that perspective is too broad. It’s a black-or-white kind of statement eliminating the gray. In this case, that gray area is an entire array of emotions that you’ve basically just boiled down into one category—”
“Yes, selfishness. You get it now. You’re actually arguing my point exactly—that all acts are done out of self-interest. We are, by nature, ego-driven beings. We simply can’t help it,” Nico says, cutting me off and breaking the rules of decorum. Mr. Huffman insists we follow some basic rules of respect when discussions heat up in his classroom. He likes his students engaged, and even when we veer into taboo topics—politics, religion, the weird place where they intersect—he never stops us. I’m fairly certain that’s why he assigns reading subjects like Ayn Rand and topics that are so two-sided that a debate is inevitable.
“Go on,” Mr. Huffman says, giving Nico a short glance in warning.
He meant for me to continue, but Nico, of course, talks over my words, reiterating his point. Most of the class is behind him now, half because he’s a good arguer, and half because, despite his arrogance, he’s mesmerizing to look at. Taller than most of the guys in our school, he has this one lock of dark hair that hangs over his right eye, and he smiles when he blows it out of his face. There’s a dimple when he grins—the same dimple he gets when he speaks. That small dent in his bronze skin is deeper when he’s sure he’s right. His expressions are the kind that are bolstered by confidence, and as easy as it would be for me to chalk that up to his broad shoulders that seem to fill out every T-shirt he owns, I know it really comes from his beautiful mind—quick wit, nearly photographic memory, and a way with words that leaves me tongue-tied and slightly spellbound.
His perfection pisses me off.