The following Thursday morning before school, Mandy finally calls me back. She’s sobbing so hard I barely recognize her voice.
“He dumped me,” she says, taking in great hiccupping gulps of air.
“Seriously?”
“Yup. He found ‘real love.’”
“Shit, Mand. Who is it?”
“Some twenty-two-year-old wretch who works with him at the video store. But wait—it gets even better. Kristy Vance heard they’re engaged. He gave her a ring!”
“What an asshole.”
“It’s a sign that I am brainless. I really did think he’d wait for me.”
“A year and a half. That’s a long time for an asshole to wait.”
“And forget my birthday. He was going to take me out to the Terrace for steak and to a hotel room he booked. I bought a teddy with skulls on it.”
I can’t help but laugh. “And still, he left?”
“Shut up.” I can hear a tiny smile in her voice.
“I’m kidding. It’s just so you.”
“Now I get to lie in bed and bawl my eyes out while he takes her to my hotel room.”
“You’re miles too good for him. Don’t you know that? It sucks that this happened, but one day you’re going to look back on this and think, Thank God I escaped.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. You’ll see. Now that you’re single, every guy in Lundon will be banging on your door.”
“Dude, that just isn’t going to happen.”
“You know what? My dad got me this free long-distance thing for my cell.”
“So?”
“We’ll spend your birthday together. We’ll stay on the phone and watch a movie together. Just like we used to do when you were grounded.”
“Come for the weekend instead.”
“I don’t know. Midterms are coming up. We’ll do the movie things, though. It’ll be fun, I promise.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“Perfect. Forget Eddie. I would never have let you marry a guy who looks like an animated baby.”
“He doesn’t look like an animated baby.” Mandy blows her nose, then chokes out a laugh. “Okay, maybe he does a little. Geez, now I can never watch cartoons again.” She’s quiet for a moment and I can hear her drumming her fingers on her desk.
“Mandy? I’m sorry about what I said before. It’s not what I meant.”
“I know. No more battles. I need you in my life.”
“Me too. From this moment forward I’m the model best friend.”
“Honestly? I won’t be able to handle anything less.”
Our math quizzes come back to us at school that morning. The results aren’t quite as abysmal as the first time, but there’s enough slumping and sighing in the room to make it clear that people are beginning to panic about what this class will do to their averages, their Ivy League dreams, and their futures, in that order.
“The class average was disappointing,” says Mr. Curtis. “And I don’t mind telling you it would have been lower if not for three students. Mr. Hogan, Miss Burnack, and Miss Black, would you mind standing up?”
Carling is up before the words tumble from his mouth. I stand up next, then Griff, but who can tell if he’s standing, really?
“Mr. Hogan, your score was ninety-eight point-eight percent. A solid achievement. You may sit.” Griff sits but not before doing a pixie-sized touchdown dance with his arms in the air and his eyes closed.
“Sara, your test was clean and completely error-free. An accomplishment never achieved on any pop quiz in my class, not in fourteen years at the school. You’ve restored my faith in your generation. Congratulations, you may sit.”
I drop into my seat and bury my flushed face in my collar.
The displeasure in the room is palpable. Vexation bounces about the room, ricochets off ceiling, blackboard, and walls, pinging me in the flushed cheeks. Isabella looks particularly miffed, as this comes awfully close to confirmation that she’s been replaced as top in the class. Here’s the thing about gifted kids. They’re territorial about their smarts and don’t like to be beaten. I’ve overstepped newbie laws, that much is clear, by having the audacity to come in here and, for the second time, beat their gifted faces off.
“Miss Burnack,” says Mr. Curtis. “Your case is a bit more complicated.”
Carling’s eyes widen. She shoots a look of terror my way. She’s thinking he knows. That he saw our identical answers, considered her lousy mark from the first quiz, and is about to call her a cheater in front of the entire class. I’m not sure what they do to cheaters in this school, but at Finmory it would mean an automatic zero, a meeting with your parents, and suspension. And from what I now know about Big Bad Brice, a meeting like this would mean serious clawing apart. Even if Carling pulled off straight As for the rest of the term, she could never land an A in the class. Bye-bye, Harvard.
Carling knows exactly what is at stake. I can see from the way the edge of her skirt is shaking.
Mr. Curtis stares her down. “Due to the illegibility of your penmanship, I was unable to make out some of your answers. They may have been one hundred percent correct, but the world will never know. You wound up with a ninety-five out of sheer messiness.”
Sloane and Willa shriek, both jumping up to hug Carling as if she’s just been crowned Miss Massachusetts. I’m surprised no one is crying. Once she’s been sufficiently embraced, Carling slides down into her seat. She scrawls something on a piece of paper, and when Mr. Curtis turns around to write a long formula on the board, she passes it back to me.
Thx, u saved my sorry ass. Are u going to the party on Saturday?
I look up. Party?
Mr. Curtis clears his throat and I see he’s staring at me. “It’s not even nine thirty a.m., and already I’ve caught more people texting and passing notes than the whole of last term. In the halls, in the office, and now in class. I won’t embarrass you girls by confiscating the note and reading it out loud, but in the interest of furthering our collective mathematical educations, I’ll give Sara all the information I’ve gleaned so far about ‘the best party ever.’”
He knows?
He continues with a smirk. “It’s called Crush and it’s by invitation only. It’s held on a Saturday night around Halloween in some undisclosed warehouse in the Central Square area. If there’s one sane person anywhere who knows where it is, they’ve chosen not to tell. It doesn’t usually end until the sun comes up Sunday morning. Lindsay Lohan had to be carried out of a bathroom stall last year. It promises to be the social event of your young lives. And, what our social hummingbird, Carling Burnack, is no doubt about to ask you is”—he raises his voice to a girly squeak—“‘Like, are you going?’”
The entire class bursts out laughing. I look from Mr. Curtis to Carling and back again. Then I grin and say, “Like, totally.”
I get to Ms. Solange’s class too early. The class before ours ran late and the kids take their time filing out. Poppy doesn’t seem to mind; she’s sitting on the floor across from the door, filming the students’ feet as they leave. The double standard works on her behalf. She’s a girl, so no one really cares. She’s just being artsy and weird. If she were male, she’d probably be hauled down to the office and accused of inappropriate camera angles.
The class is doubly crowded with clusters of seniors lingering around desks juniors are trying to slip into, so I detour all the way around the back chairs to avoid the whole tangle. It isn’t until I’m almost upon it that I realize my desk is still occupied.
By Leo Reiser.
He gathers up his books and looks up, grinning right away. “Hey!”
Thank God for the pile of books I have mashed against my chest. Gives me something to hide behind. I shift my weight onto my back foot and rock side to side. “Leo. Hi.”
“Sorry, our class went a bit long.” He slips his books into an open backpack on the floor. “What class is this—American lit?”
I shake my head. “Nineteenth century.”
“Ah, right. I loved that class. Raskolnikov and his half-baked soul. Great book.”
“We’re not that far along yet.” I bump my books against my chin. “Rascal’s soul could pretty much go either way at this point.”
He looks surprised. “Wait, you call him Rascal?”
I nod.
“Me too. I mean, I did. Last year. When I was reading the book.” For a moment we stare at each other, smiley and dumb, then he breaks the spell of stupidity by standing up and stepping aside, motioning for me to sit. I slip past him and drop into my chair. It’s still warm and I try not to imagine I’m sitting on his lap.
“Will you be at the party Saturday night?”
Before I get the chance to answer, Poppy appears and pokes Leo in the back. “Uh, excuse me? I can’t exactly get to my seat.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” He backs up against another desk to allow her to pass, and as she does, she looks at me and rolls her eyes as if he’s a major annoyance.
Slumping down into her chair, she mumbles, “Get a classroom.”
Leo backs away with his head tilted to one side like a little boy who’s hiding a broken teacup behind his back. He raises two fingers in a wave. “Bye, Sara.”
He’s forgotten his question about Saturday, and it takes everything I have not to jump out of my seat and tell him I’ll be there. Instead, I say, “Bye, Leo.”
Ms. Solange claps her hands. “Clear your desks, ladies and gentlemen. All you need is a pen and one sheet of paper. We’re going to do an in-class essay on Raskolnikov’s dream about the old mare in part one of the novel. I want you to tell me what you believe is the dream’s significance to the story.”
Willa’s hand shoots up into the air. “It’s to illustrate Raskolnikov actually has a heart before the murder. To show his personality is split. Between this cold-hearted guy who is able to plan out a murder, and the kind of human who feels something for an innocent creature who is being brutalized by a society full of heathens. It shows him to be extraordinary amongst all these lesser people.”
I feel my pulse race. I didn’t see that at all. Just read the entire passage as a dream without any analysis whatsoever. And I thought I understood the book; how did I miss such a blatant metaphor? This unnerves me. I do well in lit classes. When my family isn’t falling apart, that is.
Willa adds, “Is that the kind of thing you want to see, Ms. Solange?”
Ms. Solange gulps down what’s left of her coffee. She’s getting used to us. There’s no sign of fingers in her hair and no more pacing when she loses her place. These days she just looks at me, and I tell her. It’s a good system. She nods in Willa’s direction. “Well, it was until you gave everyone your analysis. Now we’ll need a different topic.” She looks out the window at the rain slapping against the glass, then back at us. “Okay, how about this? How does Raskolnikov’s tiny room, a room described as a cupboard, influence his actions? You have thirty minutes to make your point. Go.”
Raskolnikov is influenced by his room? He should come on over to Brighton. Take a good look at mine. He’d probably take an ax to himself.