“You would do that for us?” It didn’t seem real.
“I’m a graduate of your fine institution,” he explained. “It’s the least I can do for homecoming. Fight, Pelicans, fight!”
I drove home feeling lighter than I had since Friday. I rolled down the windows and enjoyed the hot wind scented with flowers. When I stopped at the intersection next to Aidan’s house, I didn’t even look to see whether he was home.
I should have stayed away from my own house a few more hours.
My parents had returned. My dad was probably upstairs on his porch, but my mother actually came out of her office to confront me.
I braced myself for another fight, but I was so, so weary.
She opened her arms.
I stiffened, resistant. Then, partly to prevent myself from crying in front of her, I walked into her embrace.
She hugged me tightly for a moment. Loosening her hold, she rubbed my back. She told me to sit down at the kitchen bar and served me two of Barrett’s leftover cookies, even though they would probably spoil my dinner.
I should have known the other shoe would drop. Covering one of my hands with hers on the counter, she told me, “You can struggle, Kaye, and work, and go after your dreams. And one wrong move can ruin you forever.”
I didn’t retort as I had last night. I didn’t have the heart. In her precisely made-up eyes, I saw real concern for me, bordering on panic. And I understood where she was coming from. She had braved terrible odds to get to college. By the time she graduated, everyone she’d loved back home was dead.
But she didn’t need to worry about me. Not to this extent, anyway. My own world was nothing like hers had been. My future was not so fragile.
Was it?
“I wanted to apologize for flying off the handle a couple of times yesterday,” she said.
Yep, Dad had definitely talked her down.
She said, “When I was growing up—”
And with that, she lost me. “I don’t want to hear about it,” I said quickly. “You grew up in a slum, surrounded by criminals and addicts. I’m sorry for what you went through, but my life is not like that.”
She glowered at me for interrupting.
“Sorry,” I grumbled.
“What I was going to say,” she told me indignantly, “is that when I was growing up, people all around me made terrible mistakes. And those mistakes were often deadly. For that reason, it’s hard for me to let people I love make mistakes. But you’re right. You’re not in the environment I was in. The mistakes you make won’t kill you. I know that. I’ll try to do better.”
I shrugged, munching a cookie. For her, this was a pretty good apology, but she’d managed simultaneously to accuse me of failing at life.
“When I talked to Seth last night,” she said, “he indicated that Aidan is really regretting asking you for a break.”
“He did not ask,” I said.
“Well. And I’m sure your feelings about this are still very raw. But Seth seemed to think the whole problem started because you made an error with the yearbook elections.”
“Mr. O’Neill thinks so because that’s what Aidan told him,” I pointed out.
She nodded. “Aidan also told him you and Sawyer had been connected in some way in one of the polls. You and Sawyer have been spending more time together because of this cheerleading business, and now in student council. Aidan grew jealous and let his feelings get the better of him. He’s going to ask you to take him back.”
“I’m going to say no.”
“And if you do,” my mother said, “Seth and I won’t interfere.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
She glowered at me again. This time I didn’t say I was sorry.
Finally she went on. “But I want you to think about the three years you and Aidan dated. You told me time and time again you were going to marry him. Of course, that’s a silly thing for a fourteen-year-old to say, but you were together so long that I began to think you’d found true love after all. You planned to go to Columbia together. Don’t throw this away over one silly fight about a boy you’re not going to date anyway.”
We exchanged a long, unblinking look. She was making sure I’d gotten her message. I was thinking I wanted to try out Sawyer more than ever.
“When I was in high school,” she said, “there was a boy I liked. He was so fine.”
“Fine?” I asked skeptically.
“It was the eighties,” she said. “Anyway, he was bad news. I knew he would take me down the wrong path, so I made a conscious decision to stay away from him.”
My heart stopped. “And now you regret it,” I said softly.
She side-eyed me. “No, he’s in prison. If I’d done what he wanted, I would have ended up a single mother without a college degree, much less an MBA, working for minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet.”
Oh, good Lord.
“What happened to letting me make my own mistakes?” I asked.
She shrugged. “You’re right. I told you, it’s hard for me to let go. I do want you to enjoy high school. But this year will fly by, and then your life will really start.”
And with that she reached into the container for her own cookie.
* * *
I spent the rest of the night working on my pitch to Principal Chen for saving the dance. The student council had already put down deposits on the DJ and the caterer. If we canceled the dance altogether, we’d lose those student dues dollars with nothing to show for it. The best solution, both for fiscal responsibility and school morale, was simply to move the venue to the property of a local business owner and Pelican alumnus.
This speech made perfect sense. If Aidan somehow convinced Ms. Yates that I should be fired as student council vice president, Ms. Chen would never allow it, because I was obviously such a great school leader.
But as I rehearsed my speech in my head, I began to have misgivings about telling Ms. Chen we were moving the dance to a gay bar. If she didn’t like this idea, she might not give me another chance.
And even if she did approve the move, the likelihood was high that someone’s parents would complain. Our town was generally pretty accepting, but back in ninth grade, Angelica’s mom had told Ms. Yates she shouldn’t be teaching her impressionable child about evolution.
If we held homecoming at the gay burlesque club, there would be a stink.
The stink would lead to a petition.
Someone would post the petition online, where it would go viral.
Our school and our town would get a national reputation as closed-minded and backward.
It would be all my fault.
And my mother would look at me and say, I told you so.
Honestly, why didn’t I leave well enough alone?
I lay on my bed, curled into a ball, staring out my window at the neighbor’s yard, late into the night. When my mind was exhausted from weighing those options and mulling over the problem, it moved on to the conundrum of Sawyer. Maybe my mother was right. I was still furious with Aidan, but did I really want to throw our whole lives together away? We could take a break for a little longer and see if time healed our wounds.
But if I went out with Sawyer, or even acted like I wanted to, I could easily ruin everything with Aidan. I didn’t buy Tia’s argument that dating Sawyer would make Aidan jealous and bring him closer. Aidan’s ego wouldn’t survive that insult.
Besides, what proof did I have that Sawyer wanted to go out with me? He’d been sweet to me last night. He said he’d gotten flustered when he saw me. He’d acted like he wanted me to visit him today. But he hadn’t asked me on a date. There were a lot of things I didn’t understand about Sawyer, but this I knew: He went after what he wanted.
I got so little sleep that, in the morning, I put on clothes and makeup and stumbled downstairs in a haze. But I’d decided two things. I would tell the student council that Aidan had been right. I’d looked for a venue where we could hold the dance, and the only alternative I’d found
wouldn’t be acceptable to everyone. We should cancel after all.
And I would tell Sawyer it would be better that we didn’t get together.
If he even asked.
“I hope your paper on Crime and Punishment turned out well,” my mother said as I was walking out the door to my car.
My response was to gasp, which gave away to her that I’d completely forgotten about the paper.
“I thought that’s what you were doing up in your room last night!” she shouted, anger flashing in her eyes. “You spent this entire weekend on everything except your paper?”
Dad had left early in the morning to drive to Miami for research on his new book. There was nobody left to say in a calming voice, “Sylvia,” and stop my mother from freaking out.
“If you can’t complete your basic assignments,” she said, “we should definitely rethink this cheerleading mess.”
I cried so hard on the drive to school that I thought several times about pulling off the road. Finally I parked, killed the engine, and searched the glove compartment for a tissue to clean up my mascara before I went inside.
I was blowing my nose in a fast-food napkin when I spotted Harper and Brody sitting on a bench near the school entrance, shaded by palms from the bright morning sun. He was talking close to her ear. Her hair was long and glossy, flowing over her shoulders, her dark eyes shining into the sunlight. A smile was frozen on her face because of something he’d said, but now she’d gotten distracted by a bird, a cloud, or the way the palm fronds waved in the breeze.
Farther away, walking across the parking lot toward school, Tia laughed loudly with Will. I could hear her even with my windows rolled up. She didn’t look much different than she had in third grade: tall, disheveled, with her auburn hair pulled away from her face anyhow, laughing.
My favorite things about my friends, Tia loud and laughing and Harper daydreaming, were things my mother would have scolded me for doing. Inside voice. Pay attention. Ivy League manners.
I didn’t even have a favorite thing about myself. I loved to dance. I loved to cheer. My mother made me feel like those activities were nonsense. All that was left of me was organizational skills and the ability to follow directions. My only two talents had had a fatal shoot-out in my brain overnight. Now I was an empty shell.
The bell rang to call everyone inside. My classmates who’d been moseying across the parking lot quickened their step. Tia and Will jumped the curb and high-fived Harper and Brody, who stood and stretched. They all disappeared beneath the parallel lines of palm trees leading into the school.
I had to go inside too, to face Mr. Frank with no paper and accept my first-ever zero. I knew this. But as I took one last breath of sticky air inside my car, I entertained a fantasy of turning the engine on again and driving in the opposite direction to play hooky at the beach. How much more trouble could I possibly get into this morning? Might as well enjoy myself, for once.
Two minutes later I was inside the crowded school hallway like a good girl, of course. I pulled my books for my first two periods out of my locker. Aidan leaned casually against the locker next to mine, just as he had countless times before, like we’d never broken up. When he saw my face, though, he straightened and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I forgot to write my paper for Mr. Frank,” I said, hoarse from crying.
“Ha!” Aidan crowed. “That’s one step closer to valedictorian for me.”
I just looked at him with my mouth open. Aidan was competitive. He was callous. But until now I’d never known him to be cruel.
I slammed my locker as hard as I could and stomped down the hall.
“Hey!” I heard him calling after me. “I was kidding!”
I kept walking. The bell rang again, and the people remaining in the hallways slipped into classrooms. I was still moving. My history class was in the other direction, but I simply couldn’t see myself sitting in a desk right now, facing the front, my stomach cramping with the knowledge that I’d just blown everything I’d worked for because of one crazy weekend.
Ahead of me, Sawyer stepped into the hallway and closed a door behind him. When he saw me, he froze with his hand on the doorknob, his face flushing bright pink.
I looked up at the nameplate on the door and saw why he felt caught. MS. MALONE, SCHOOL COUNSELOR.
But Sawyer was always quick to recover. The next second he didn’t look self-conscious anymore. His hands were on my shoulders. “Wow, what’s the matter?”
I flung myself into his arms.
9
AS SOON AS HIS ARMS encircled me, I was trying to pull away again. Nobody but us was in the hall right now. I could hear Ms. Chen’s morning announcements echoing through an open door. But a teacher was likely to peek out at us any second, see us embracing, and send us straight to the principal’s office. Plus, surveillance cameras frowned from the corners of the ceiling, keeping everyone safe from school shooters and public displays of affection.
Sawyer didn’t let go of me. He held my head to his chest, saying, “Shhh. Tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll fix it.”
I laughed and then coughed at the idea of Sawyer, with all his real problems, being able to solve any of my ridiculous ones. After a gargantuan sniffle, I said shakily, “I forgot to write my paper for Mr. Frank.”
He held me at arm’s length and looked into my eyes. “That’s a major grade.” Before I could cry again, he ordered me, “Stop. You mean you forgot to make your paper perfect, or you forgot to write it at all? How many words do you have?”
“None.” I was about to lose it.
“Stop,” he said again. “But you have your thesis statement and your notes and your outline, right? We did that in class.”
I nodded.
“That’s your blueprint. All you need to do is fill in the blanks. You have hours to get that done. We don’t go to Mr. Frank’s class until second-to-last period. You can write it on your computer and e-mail it to him while he’s taking roll.”
“But Sawyer,” I wailed, “I have class until then. I’m doing class during class.”
“You’ve got study hall,” he pointed out, “and lunch.”
“I was going to talk to Ms. Chen about the homecoming dance during lunch,” I said.
He shook me gently. “Kaye. Listen to me. You’ve got to let go of that shit and prioritize. Save your grade today. Do homecoming tomorrow.” He released my arms and rubbed where he’d squeezed me. “There’s lots of downtime during class, too. Even when teachers are talking, you can be working on your paper.”
“What if one of them calls on me and I get in trouble?”
“To save your GPA, it’s worth it,” he declared. “And if things really get hairy, take your computer to the bathroom.”
“This isn’t going to work,” I whispered.
He gave me an exasperated look. “Do you know how much homework I’ve done at the very last second in the bathroom? You can do this, Kaye. You just have to believe it. Isn’t your dad a famous writer?”
“He’s not famous,” I mumbled.
“But he works on deadline,” Sawyer pointed out. “Just because you didn’t obsess over this paper doesn’t mean it won’t be any good. Even if it does turn out to be shit, you’ll get a fifty just for turning it in, which is way better for your average than a zero.”
“Right.” With a grade of fifty rather than a zero, I’d get a B for this grading period and lose hope of making valedictorian. But there was always salutatorian. That might be good enough for admission to Columbia, with my alumni parents backing me.
But nothing would save me in the eyes of my mother.
“Whatever you’re thinking right now,” Sawyer said, “snap out of it. Let me tell you what needs to go through your head for the next five hours, until you turn this paper in.” He tapped one finger. “Dostoyevsky.”
“Dostoyevsky,” I repeated.
He tapped another finger. “Raskolnikov.”
“Raskolnikov,” I said.
/> “Alyona Ivanovna, Porfiry Petrovich, Sonia Marmeladov. Got that? Now, what’s going through your head? Hint: The answer should be Dostoyevsky.”
“I’m tardy for history,” I sobbed, “and I don’t have an excuse.”
Sawyer gave me his crazy face with one eyebrow up, clearly at the end of his patience. “I’ll write you in on the one Ms. Malone gave me.”
“That’s forgery!”
Shaking his head, he grabbed my hand and knocked on Ms. Malone’s door. When we heard “Come in,” he pulled me inside.
“Back so soon?” Ms. Malone asked from behind her desk. She saw me and said, “Oh, hi there.”
“Ms. Malone,” Sawyer said, “this is Kaye Gordon.”
Ms. Malone came around her desk to shake my hand. “We were just talking about you.” Too late she realized this was not the right thing to say. Her eyes darted to Sawyer, who was blushing intensely all over again.
His flushed cheeks were the only clue Sawyer was mortified, and he continued smoothly, “Kaye would like to make an appointment to talk with you about stress management techniques.”
“Yes, I see you’re having a problem there,” Ms. Malone agreed, scanning my tearstained and probably mascara-streaked face. “How about today?”
“Not today,” Sawyer said quickly, “or anytime before homecoming, because that will just stress her out more. How about the Monday after homecoming?”
Ms. Malone stepped behind her desk again and flipped through her calendar. She looked up at me. “Is this period okay?”
I nodded dumbly.
She wrote my appointment time down on a card.
“And can she also have an excuse that says she was here talking to you?” Sawyer asked. “She’s late for history.”
Ms. Malone gave Sawyer the briefest look that let him know she saw right through his ploy.
But she paged through her book of preprinted excuses and filled one out for me. Handing it across her desk, she said, “All right, dear. You come see me sooner if you need to.” She turned to Sawyer. “And you, here, tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sawyer put his arm around my shoulders and steered me out the door.