Jules’s lips tighten into a thin line. I wind my fingers through Delilah’s and raise my brows at Jules. “Want me to walk you to class, babe?” I ask Delilah.
As we head into school, I can feel Jules’s eyes burning a hole in my back. I wait till we’re all the way inside the doors, far enough away from them not to be heard. Then I turn to Delilah. “Who the hell is he?”
“Your best friend,” she says.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I reply.
She pats my shoulder. “It’s going to be a fun day.” Then Delilah pulls a piece of paper from her backpack. “I’ve written out all your classes,” she says. “And there’s a map, marked up, so you know where to go. My phone number’s on there too; text me if you get lost. Oh, and just so you know, today we have activity block in between third and fourth period. You start with chess and then go to drama club. By the way, you’re starring inRomeo and Juliet.”
“Wait,what?”
“I’ll save you a spot in the cafeteria at lunch,” she says.
I don’t want to live in this world, so close to Jules but unable to be with her. “We should break up.” The words burst out of me, so forceful I didn’t realize how hard I’d been working to hold them inside. “That way Jules and I could be together.”
Delilah narrows her eyes, and her voice drops. “Do you really think I want to be with you?”
I remember the way she looked at Oliver when I was still in the book and able to watch them together. Slowly I shake my head.
“You made your mother move here for me,” Delilah says. “And people are going to ask questions if you ditch me and the next day you’re dating my best friend. This isn’t forever. But it’s for now.”
I nod grimly. Then I slip my arm around her waist as if I actually like her, and we move down the hall in solidarity, if not in love.
Chess club is cancelled so we can be in homeroom for our guidance counselors to give us our SAT scores. There goes my college career; my standardized test was taken by a guy whose knowledge consists of how to tame a dragon. Once we are dismissed, I stand in front of my locker. I take a deep sigh and prepare to open the envelope.
Before I can even peek at the score, however, another strangercomes running up to me. “Dude,” he says. “I got a 2280. I can totally work with that. I think if I have decent teacher recs, Harvard’s still an option.”
I frantically glance at him, looking for a clue to his name. Then I see it: on his backpack is a label readingRETURN TO RAJ PATEL.
“Raj,” I murmur.
“Yeah? Come on. Tell me your score already.”
“I haven’t even looked . . . but I was really out of it that day. It was almost like I wasn’t here. . . .”
Raj grabs the envelope from my hand and pulls out the paper inside. “Edgar,” he breathes. “You are a god among men.”
“What?” I grab the printout and turn it toward me:2400.
“You got a perfect score, man.”
My jaw drops. Oliver’s totally done me a solid.
Raj throws his arms around me. “Harvard 2020, dude! We could beroommates!”
He runs down the hall, sniffing out other students to compare scores with. I shake my head, still smiling a little. I wonder how on earth Oliver managed to pull that one off.
“Hey, Edgar,” a voice says—a voice I recognize, unfortunately. “I’m really glad I caught you.”
I turn to find Chris opening the locker beside mine. Ofcoursewe’re locker buddies. Who else would I want to see every morning but the guy who’s trying to make out with the girl I like?
“I want to talk to you about Jules.”
Can this getanybetter?
“What about her?” I ask tightly.
“She’s been really weird today. I mean, I thought everything went so well on Friday night—but now she kind of seems like she’s not interested.”
