After midmorning break, I headed to English class and took a seat beside Harper Bennett toward the back. In calculus, she hadn’t said a word to me, not that I blamed her. I’d been a total bitch the other day, and she had every right to ignore me. But I was aching for a real friend to talk to. Someone I could share my thoughts and feelings with and not worry they’d be whispered all over the halls the next day. Someone to talk to about my parents and Jack…
And Xander…
With major effort, I shoved Xander Ford out of my thoughts. We’d gotten things sorted out from a billion years ago, and he was my tutor. End of story.
Except you’re keeping a mental countdown until you see him today, but…sure.
While Ms. Alvarez rifled through papers on her desk, I studied Harper. She wore a corduroy jumper skirt over a black long-sleeved top, brown Doc Martens, and earrings in the shape of little yellow airplanes.
“Can I help you?” she asked without looking at me.
“I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“You know what for,” I said.
She arched a brow, expectant and calm. Not letting me off the hook. I kind of loved that.
“I’m sorry for talking shit yesterday,” I said. “And for not speaking up when my friends talked shit.”
Harper nodded. “Apology accepted.”
“Do you want to hang out sometime?”
She gave me a double-take. “Are you being serious?”
“One hundred percent. Maybe we could go to a movie or grab a coffee milk. I mean…if you want. No big deal.”
“Why?”
The question stung like a bee. I faced forward. “Never mind. Forget it.”
“No, I mean, why doyouwant to hang out withme?” She raised a brow. “You don’t have enough friends?”
My friends suck,I nearly said. “You seem…cool.”
“I’m very cool,” Harper said. “I’m so cool, in fact, that I go all the way off the charts and come back around to uncool.” She looked almost shy for a second. “But…yeah.”
“Great,” I said, and felt a lightness in my chest for all of ten seconds until Ms. Alvarez addressed the class.
“We have some changes to our curriculum,” she said stiffly. “We will no longer be studying Sylvia Plath. There have been…some complaints.”
Oh, my fucking God, he didn’t…
My face went hot, and I wanted to sink into the floor.
“Complaints from who?” someone asked.
“The details aren’t important,” Ms. Alvarez said, her gaze grazing me for one second. “Except to say that I’m disappointed, and I encourage everyone to read Plath’s work on their own time. We’ll be shiftingfocus to Elizabeth Bishop. You’ll find the link to the new syllabus on your iPads.”
Harper leaned over to whisper, “I wonder which asshole parent got their panties in a twist over Sylvia.”
“I wonder,” I murmured, though I knew exactly which asshole parent was responsible. And when class was over, it didn’t shock me in the slightest that Ms. Alvarez asked me to stay behind.
“Emery, I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said after the last student had filed out. She sat on the edge of her desk while I hugged my notebook in front of me.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Alvarez,” I said. “I know it was my dad, but I swear, I—”
