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He looks away from me. The tips of his ears turn pink, though, and his lips press into an angry line.
Nobody is looking at me, for that matter. They’re avoiding eye contact like I’m some kind of feral dog that needs to be put down. And that’s when I realize precisely how many people are witnessing this. How many of my fellow students are tapping out distress signals on the phones they’re cradling surreptitiously on their laps.
I can almost feel the Facebook posts springing up around me.
ZOMG. Some nobody just bitched out Blake Reynolds.
LOL did u hear she was on food stamps?
I look down at my stained sweater. She was dressed like a homeless person. I shit you not.
It’s going to be all over the internet in a matter of minutes.
“Are you done, Miss Chen?” Fred asks sarcastically.
I’m almost hyperventilating in panic, but then I realize how ridiculous I’m being. The one good thing about being a Tina Chen at Berkeley is that I’m indistinguishable from any of the other dozens of Tina Chens around. I can be as inappropriate as I want. I’m not googleable. I bow my head, letting my hair fall around my face like a curtain.
Someone else’s hand is in the air. “I think that’s really unfair to Blake,” someone up front pipes up. “We all know how hard he works, and how hard his dad works. They’ve definitely earned everything they have.”
Fine. They don’t want to acknowledge me as a person. Nothing’s really changed. I don’t have the time or the energy to care. But apparently, the class has turned into a referendum on Blake, and now everyone has to have their say.
“I really like the tap-to-call feature on my Tempest,” another girl puts in. “It’s genius. Blake deserves everything he has.”
It goes on like that for a few minutes. I take copious notes throughout the entire debacle. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit shit fuck fuck fuck, I write in my notebook in my neatest cursive. Everyone—Fred included—falls all over themselves to say how great Blake is. And then the tone shifts.
“I think some people need to stop blaming others for where they are. If some people stopped wasting energy on playing the victim, and started doing something instead, they’d get a lot farther in life.”
I hunch in on myself, preparing for even worse.
“Hey,” Blake says sharply.
He’s just two feet away from me. I’m not going to look at him.
But his tone is icy. “This has gone on long enough. Come on, guys. Enough of this crap. She’s right. We all know I won the nepotism lottery. I’m not an expert, and if I said something stupid, I’m glad she was willing to point it out.”
Silence falls in response. At the front of the class, Fred clears his throat, maybe now remembering that he has a job besides savaging students. “Right. Let’s…uh, let’s move on.”
And I? I do not want to feel grateful to Blake. I hate that nobody even recognized me as a person until Blake spoke up. And when I tilt my head to the side… I hate that he looks at me, that he gives me a silent nod, like he’s granted me his permission to criticize him.
I didn’t need his permission.
After class lets out, I take my time leaving so I don’t have to fake nonchalance on my way out.
The girl in front of me stands and then turns to me. “You know,” she murmurs in a low furtive voice, as if wanting to make sure nobody else hears her, “I thought you had a good point. I’m glad you said it. I didn’t want to.”
“Thanks.”
But I don’t want to talk, and so I wait until she goes. I consider whether my pen belongs in the front pocket or the side pocket of my backpack. I make sure my notebook is securely placed next to my textbooks. I check the zipper. Twice.
By the time I leave, the classroom is empty.
The hallway outside isn’t, though. There’s one person from class still there, and he’s the last person—the very last person in the world—that I want to talk to at the moment. He’s leaning against the wall, looking even more like a businessman than a student. He looks at me now. His eyes are the ridiculous blue of ocean waters on some tropical beach. They make me think of a spring break that I will never be able to afford.
“Hey,” he says.
I’m not sure how to respond. My hands are still shaking. I don’t think I can keep it together through a longer spat with him. I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.
I give him the barest of nods and keep walking.
“Hey,” he repeats. “Tina.”
That does stop me. Fred didn’t know what to call me. How does Blake Reynolds know my name?
Slowly, I turn to him. I’ve never talked to him before today. Maybe he emailed someone while we were in class? One of his…people. Someone like Blake has to have people, right? He parked in an official visitor’s spot with impunity. Getting a class roster would hardly pose a problem.
But wait. Even if he got my name off the official class roster, he wouldn’t know I go by Tina. He’d only know my legal name—Xingjuan Chen.
I swallow.
And then he does something I’m not expecting. He gives me a sheepish smile. It’s so different from the cocky grin that he normally wears that I take a step back.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
He shrugs. “You’re right. It’s not my place to say it doesn’t matter what people say about you. And I should have stopped that before it turned into a pile-on.” He indicates the room we just came from with a tilt of his head. “I was just taken aback.”
He looks at me like he expects me to shrug it all off, like I’m supposed to pat him on the shoulder and say that it’s okay.
But it’s not. And the fact that he thinks it can be just makes me feel worse. Nothing about my life is okay right now, and he can’t change that.
“Can I…” He takes a deep breath, and then, that cocky smile is back on his face, like he’s sure of himself again. “Can I get you coffee or something as an apology?”
He holds his hand out to me, like I’m supposed to shake it. When he does, his coat—impeccably tailored gray wool—pulls back from his sleeve. For a second, with his hand outstretched, I see dark ink against his wrist, the edge of a tattoo that seems completely at odds with everything I know about him.
For just that second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. His life has been an open book to the world ever since his father first put him in a television commercial at the tender age of twenty months.
Everyone knows everything about Blake Reynolds, boy prodigy, certain successor to Cyclone Systems. Everything…except I’ve never heard of that tattoo.
I take another step away from him, putting my hands behind my back.
“Let me explain something,” I say. “You get to park in a spot reserved for the Chancellor’s Office.”
He grimaces. “Yeah. I usually don’t. But when I started school, he…um.” He trails off, as if realizing that now is not the time to remind me that the entire university administration is no doubt slavering over the potential endowment boost his attendance represents.
“By contrast,” I say, “I have an hour between this class and my next one. If I can’t knock off one of my assignments in that time, I will be up until two tonight.”
His smile fades.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re probably a legitimately decent person. But I don’t have time for your apology.”
“Two-second version, then. I’m sorry I was clueless. I’ll try to do better.”
He looks at me, his eyes serious, and that damned something, that coiling awareness in my stomach starts up again. It almost makes me mad that he won’t let me walk off steeping in my anger. No; he has to take that away from me, too.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” I say, and I start to leave.
“Tina.”
I turn back reluctantly.
“You were right about almost everything you said,” he says. “But there was one thing you
were really wrong about.”
“Oh?”
He gives me another one of his smiles, and this one seems to curl around me, catching me up in a wave of warmth. “You said that I didn’t notice people like you.” His voice lowers. His eyes are relentlessly blue, and they cut into me. “That’s completely false. You’ve never been invisible to me. I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Against my better judgment, that little spark of something ignites in my stomach. A flame dances, ready to catch fire.
