Mr. G’s arrival lacked the lightness of his usual presence, and the good humor that often lifted even the worst days. We were discussing the Enlightenment—and that was enough of a struggle to stay focused on—when Mr. G frowned.
“Frankie,” he said gently, “can you stay for a moment after class?”
Jake froze. I froze harder.
“Um,” I managed, “sure?”
Mr. G frowned, but then gestured to the chart on the wall that I hadn’t even noticed as he returned us to the subject at hand.
When the bell rang, Jake stayed seated, arms crossed.
“Jake,” Mr. G said but Jake just shook his head once before shooting me a look.
“You want me to go?” He didn’t want to leave me, nothing could have been clearer. Maybe I was being selfish as hell because I shook my head.
“Not really.”
“Cool,” he said with a firm nod, then looked at Mr. G again. “She wants me here.”
With a faint sigh, Mr. G pinched the bridge of his nose. “Frankie?”
“It’s fine,” I told him. Honestly, with the way my day had been going, what more could go wrong? “Just tell me what’s up.”
“You’ve been struggling the past few weeks. Not quite up to your usual standard in any area.”
That wasn’t even the gut punch it should have been. He wasn’t wrong. Not in the slightest. I hadn’t been focused. I’d called out of work a lot. I wasn’t even working on college applications. To be fair, he was being generous in his description.
Jake’s jaw flexed.
“It’s not a judgment. You’re a strong student—one of the strongest,” Mr. G continued, a soft kind of empathy in his eyes. “But your scores haven’t reflected that, which we already discussed, but my concern is less about your grades than your focus. Your mind isn’t on this work. I’m wondering if maybe switching out of AP for now might give you the space you need.”
Something inside me cracked.
Switch out?
Quit?
Because I was falling apart publicly enough that even my teachers saw it?
Heat pricked behind my eyes.
“I—” My voice broke on the first word.
Jake’s chair slammed out of his desk so hard, it fell over as he stood.
“No,” he snapped. “She doesn’t need to switch out.”
“Jake,” I whispered, mortified.
“She’s fine,” he insisted. “She’s going through shit. That doesn’t mean she’s failing.”
Mr. G held up a hand, trying to stay patient. “Jake, this is a conversation between Frankie and me?—”
“No,” Jake repeated, stepping in front of my desk like a human shield. “She’s trying. She’s working. Just because she had one bad day doesn’t mean she needs you to kick her out.”
Kicked out.
The word punched me in the sternum.
