13 Years Ago
Freshman Year, Second Semester
“Bad writing day?”West leans over my shoulder.
I snap my laptop closed. No need for him to see the 54 percent I got on my last math quiz. I twist to see his hands braced on the back of the bench. A spring breeze ruffles his straight hair, and you’d never know from the seventy-degree sunshine that it snowed less than two weeks ago. “What are you doing here?”
He nods toward the English building. “Dr.B’s class just ended.” He drops his notebook next to me, sits on the back of the bench, and swings his legs over. The nails on his right hand are forest green; his left hand is bare. “You look pretty miserable considering spring break just started.”
I tip my head back to look at him but find myself squinting into the sun instead. “Not for me. I still have one midterm to go.”
“No camping trip for you?”
“Yeah, what’s the deal with that?” Amber mentioned it in passing, but I didn’t ask for details because, apparently, I’m the only loser with a midterm the Friday before spring break.
“Amber, Kyle, and the crew are driving up to Mount Lemmon in”—he checks the time—“about an hour. They have three blankets, a twelve-pack, and a dream. I give them a twenty percent chance of starting a forest fire.”
“Is that all?”
“I wore my Smokey Bear T-shirt this morning as a reminder. Hopefully the message permeated the thick layer of spring break debauchery.”
“You’re a real environmentalist, Mae West.”
He smirks, leaning ever so slightly closer. “I do what I can.”
“Does that mean you’re not going with them?”
He makes a face. “I don’t need to hear Kyle and Amber humping each other more than I already do. Unless you’re driving up?”
“As riveting as that experience sounds, I can’t think about anything except studying right now. If I fail—”
“The matrix you’re living in dematerializes, I’ve heard. Hey—should you write a story about that?”
“Sci-fi? Not really my thing. Butyoushould write a story about that.”
He rolls his eyes. “Right.”
“Wait, what does that mean?”
He takes my computer and opens it back to my online math portal. “What that means, Mars, is that you’ve found yourself a math tutor.”
“What’d you getforC?” West drums his pen against his knee while he waits for my answer.
“I’m still working on it.” I squint at the triangle on the page. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bench, my back is starting tohurt from hunching for the last two hours, and my brain feels like it’s melting out my ears.
“Do you remember how to solve for cosine?”
“Csquared equalsAsquared plusBsquared minus twoABtimes the cosine ofC,” I repeat numbly. Memorizing the formula has never been my problem. Making the numbers make sensewithinthe formula is the issue. I drop my head into my hands.
“Do you want me to show you again?” West leans toward me, and as his hair falls forward, I inhale a lungful of his woodsy shampoo scent. It’s possible the nearness of him is making it hard to concentrate, but I can’t bring myself to care. Campus is dead, the sun on my shoulders feels like the first beach day of the year, and I’d rather be doing anything other than trying to make sense of trig.
“I want ice cream,” I announce. West looks up at me, a spot of blue on his lower lip. I stare at it a beat too long. “Do you want ice cream?” I force my eyes to meet his.
“I could eat ice cream,” he says. I start to smile, but he holds up an ink-stained palm. His left hand is always covered in ink from dragging it across the page as he writes. “Under one condition.”
I groan. “Fine. I’ll finish this problem first.”
“Not that. I want to read the scene you had to run off and write the other night.”
