21
RUBY
I read her text about ten thousand times, think of about a hundred different ways to answer, but in the end, I do nothing. Not even a quick low-key “thanks.” I just leave her hanging. Like an asshole.
On Monday, we have the entire class time to work on our presentation. My stomach is in knots waiting to see what she says. But she says nothing. Morgan acts like there isn’t anything between us. Like I’m just another classmate or coworker or something. She doesn’t get mad. Or crack a joke about it. Or acknowledge it at all. She’s just . . . completely fine, and I hate it.
I know that I don’t have the right to hate it, that I deserve worse than this for both rushing off and not returning her text, but I’d take annoyance or anger to this indifference any day.
On Tuesday, she flat-out ignores me, looking right through me in the halls, and I can’t take it. I get lost on my way to my car after school and accidentally end up at the track watching her practice. Everly is there snapping pics of the guys and grabs another candid shot of what she calls my “moony-for-Tyler face.”
Good. Let her think that.
Unfortunately, this confuses the hell out of Tyler, who seems to think I really was there to watch him practice. That night, I reply to his booty-call text with a picture of lotion and some tissues.
Oh, and Morgan? She didn’t look at the stands once the entire time.
By Wednesday night, after another long day of being ignored, I lose it a little. I text her an article I dug up about some runner who did an ultramarathon. I don’t even know what an ultramarathon is, but I figure she’ll like it.
She doesn’t respond, because karma.
Meanwhile, Everly is up my butt asking me why I’m such a sad sack, and even Billy called me to check in since I hadn’t been around the shop all week. I admit to neither of them that besides homework, working for Charlene, and pageant prep, I’ve just been home licking my wounds.
In class on Thursday, I ask Morgan if she got my text. She says yes and that it was interesting, but she sounds weird when she says it. Like, not unfriendly, but politely unfeeling. Like I’d said, Nice day out, eh? instead of googling fifty different running articles to try to impress her. She’s not even asking how or why I found it.
It’s difficult to focus on a speech about the Endangered Species Act when I feel like a time bomb about to explode.
That night, I try the text angle again: Ready for our presentation tomorrow?
This time she writes back, just a simple one-word answer, but I’ll take it: Yes.
The next morning, I’m through-the-roof antsy. Like I just drank a dozen black coffees and topped them off with a Monster. I don’t know why. Scratch that, I know exactly why. Because Morgan responded.
But it was only one word, and I can’t work out the tone. A reassuring yes? Or an annoyed yes? The period at the end doesn’t instill confidence.
I may not know what she’s thinking, but I know what I want her to be thinking, which is that she definitely should not stay away from me, even if it’s for the best. I flip between wishing I had told her that to her face . . . and wishing I had let her run home in the rain that day.
But her hands, Jesus, her hands on my back. And the way her breath hit my ear featherlight. And now we have to talk about protecting endangered species while I’m frustrated and confused and tied up in knots.
“Are you okay?” she whispers to me as Lydia and Allie walk up to present the Animal Welfare Act.
I shrug like it’s no big deal, even though it is. Because I realized last night that she might never speak to me again after this group project ends. Who goes to a pageant by choice and also doesn’t want a dumb group project to end? The new me. Apparently. But only for nefarious reasons, so it still tracks.
I’m so lost in my head that I don’t register it at first, Morgan’s hand drifting lightly over mine and squeezing, like she did when I was scared of the cop. My eyes snap to hers, searching. Because indifferent classmates don’t hold hands. Not even under the table. A small smile crosses her lips, and she whispers, “Relax, we’ve got this.”
I squeeze back, nodding even though I know she’s talking about the presentation and not . . . us. The warmth from her hand spreads up my wrist, swirling through my veins until it pools deep inside me, in the place where all my “girl crushes” stick the landing, that little corner of me that gets a little swoony and maybe a little something else too.
I sit very still. I can’t decide if our hands should move or stay, but I don’t want to be the one to make that decision.
Morgan squeezes once more and then pulls away, organizing the note cards into two separate piles in front of her. One for me to read and one for her. Like two girls can just hold hands and then go on with their lives or something.
And that’s when the shame creeps in. That awful I should not want this, my mom is going to kill me, what the hell am I doing, people will get ideas shame for how much I like—
“Ruby? Morgan? You’re up,” Mrs. Morrison says, and holy shit, I just obsessed through Lydia and Allie’s entire presentation.
Morgan looks at me sort of expectantly, so I scoop up the note cards and march up to the front. Mrs. Morrison has already loaded our presentation onto the screen and holds out the little clicker thing to change the slides. I take it with slightly shaking hands as Morgan comes to stand beside me.
But she stands a little too close, like I can smell her shampoo too close, and all rational thought leaves my head when I inhale a little more deeply. I step to the side just a little bit. Just enough to remember we’re supposed to be talking about endangered animals and not writing love songs to fruity shampoo and lavender body wash. But then she follows me, smiling like I was making room and not trying to escape the scent of . . . What is that, even? Peaches? Can people’s hair really smell like peaches?
“Ruby?” she whispers out the side of her mouth, smiling at the class. Right. I have the first card.
I try to flip the title card and read the next one, but I drop them all instead. They spill out in front of me, and I kick some in my rush to scoop them up. A few people in class snicker. My cheeks flame.
This is why I don’t do presentations.
This is why I don’t do group projects.
This is why I have a barely passing average.
I’m a joke here. A mildly amusing piece of trash that makes everybody else feel better about their lives.
It’s different on the pageant stage. I’m good at that. A switch flips, and I become someone else. Confident. Smart. Witty, even. But this is insecurity and indignity and everything I suck at, all at once.
Mrs. Morrison shushes the class as Morgan drops beside me and helps me organize the cards. She hooks her pinkie around mine just for a second, so quick I almost think I’ve imagined it, and whispers, “You can do this, Ruby.”
And I don’t think I can, but I also don’t want to disappoint her.
I take a deep breath and stand up a little taller, a little straighter, pretending I’m on a stage. I smile and focus on a spot on the back wall after glancing at my note cards. And I perform.
I don’t see her again until after the final bell, when I’m rushing to my car to get to a class I’m covering for Charlene and she’s walking to track, her spikes dangling loosely over her shoulder. Lydia and Allie are walking ahead, but Morgan slows her pace, dropping back to match mine as soon as she sees me.
“You were amazing today,” she says, tilting her head toward me as we walk.
And there’s that word again. Amazing. “You did the hard parts,” I say, because it’s true. She assembled the PowerPoint and kept me from losing my shit.
“Nuh-uh, you don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Downplay how hard you worked on this and how much you killed it up there. I was a wreck, and you nailed it.”
“You were nervous?” I ask, arching my eyebrows. “I couldn’t tell at all.”
“Well, good, then maybe we’ll actually pull off a decent grade. You turned in your essay, right?”
“Yeah.” I leave out the fact that I had to stay after class twice this week to get help from Mrs. Morrison on it.
She stops walking and gestures over her shoulder toward the track. “Well, I have to . . .”
“Yeah, I have to too. I have to cover a class for my pageant coach, and then after, I have another session of my own.”
“Sounds intense.”
I flip my hair back with an exaggerated sigh. “It takes a lot of work to be this amazing, you know.”
“Nope,” she says, and when I look at her, her eyes look so serious. “I doubt that very much.”
“Matthews!” the coach calls, blowing her whistle. “Get your ass over here.”
Whatever spell we were under is broken. Again. Every time.
“I better . . .” she says.
“Right.”
“Hey, are you going to be around this weekend?” Her question catches me off guard.
“W-Why . . . ? The project’s over,” I stutter out, and her face falls. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t. I was just surprised that she still—
“Yeah, true,” Morgan says, walking backward toward the track. “I was just thinking of studying or something.” She’s acting all nonchalant, but I can tell she’s embarrassed.
“There’s a lacrosse party tonight,” I blurt out.
“Oh yeah?”
“You should come,” I say, which earns me a head tilt. “I mean, it’s open to the general public, so you don’t actually need my invitation. But it beats studying. I mean, if you get bored.”
“Yeah, if I get bored,” Morgan says, and bites her lip, which just—
“Matthews!” Coach shouts again.
“You better go.”
She smiles so big her eyes crinkle. “Yeah, I better.”