You keep filling out your quiz, but you’re pretty sure you’re doing it wrong, so you start erasing when a shadow falls over you.
Mx. Lee’s soft belly rests on your desk as they lean over. “Come talk to me when you finish,” they say, and your shoulders tense up.
You grip your pencil tighter, clicking it a couple of times even though you don’t need more lead, so then you have to click and hold and push the lead back inside. You nod and swallow and try to finish.
When you do—you’re worried you only managed a C—you take it up to Mx. Lee’s desk.
“I’m done,” you manage to say, though your voice sounds weird in your ears, and your throat feels tight.
Mx. Lee takes the quiz and says, “Go pack up your stuff. When the bell rings, we’re going to the office.”
The office?
You’ve never been sent to the office, much lesstakenthere. What did you do? What do they think you did? Is Cooper mad at you? All you did was ask him out, which, granted, was foolish, but he didn’t seem mad, and straight people ask each other out all the time, so why is it that you’re the only one getting in trouble?
You think back to this morning, but you didn’t do anything in ELA or algebra. Oh God, what if it’s not you? What if it’s Jina? What if something happened to her? What if she got in trouble, or got hurt, or one of your parents did?
Images of car crashes, fires, tornadoes, every kind of disaster swirl through your mind and settle in your chest until it feels like you’re carrying around one of those hundred-pound kettle bells at the gym that you can still barely lift and can only really do a goblet squat with.
The long beep of the bell sounds, and you stare at your hands, waiting for everyone to leave. Mx. Lee comes and stands next to you.
“You all right?” they ask.
You shrug, because your voice is gone.
They say, “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. Come on.”
You wish youwerein trouble, because at least you wouldn’t have to worry about everyone else. But you manage to thread your stiff arms through the straps of your backpack and follow your teacher through the halls, eyes focused on their canary-yellow Converses.
You’ve never been sent to the office before, but youhavebeen there, to drop off notes or whatever. It’s all obscured windows and quiet talking and shuffling papers and clicking keyboards as you go back, past the main desk and the side hall where the guidance counselors’ offices are, until you see the door with the wooden placard that readsHenry Matthews, PhD, Principal.
Mx. Lee knocks. Dr. Matthews tells them to come in. So they swing the door open and let you go first.
Dr. Matthews looks up at you and smiles, though his eyes look kind of sad. Maybe it’s just his glasses. He nods at Mx. Lee, who backs out, then he gestures for you to take a seat across from his desk…
Right next to Dayton, who’s staring intently at the pen-filled Meadowbrook mug on the corner of the desk.
Is this about the project? Did you do something wrong? Did he complain about you procrastinating? Ms. Suchecki didn’t say anything to you about it.
Did you plagiarize something? You swear you didn’t, that everything you put on the slides was in your own words, but what if you accidentally copy-pasted something you didn’t mean to? Does that count as copyright infringement? Is that a felony?
“Dayton, can you wait outside?”
Dayton nods and gets up, meeting your eyes for a moment, looking inscrutable, not that you’ve made much effort to scrute him this year, but you’ve never seen him looking like this.
When the door clicks shut behind him, Dr. Matthews clears his throat. “Sorry to interrupt your day. I wanted to check in on you.”
“Me?” you ask.
He nods. “How are you doing?”
“Fine?”
He nods again. “Anyone bothering you?”
You shake your head. No more than usual. The juniors and seniors act like you don’t exist. The sophomores treat you like a little kid, even though they were freshmen just last year. Your classmates… well, some are fine, and some are the same jerks you’ve spent the last six years with. Some are new and quickly figured out you were at the bottom of the social ladder, being Iranian and Bahá’í anddifferent.
Dr. Matthews leans back. “All right. Well.” He sighs. “A couple of students defaced your locker today. I didn’t want you caught off guard. We’re going to clean it off, of course, but if you need anything from it, we’ll get it. All right?”
