CHAPTER 12
Daisy came over on Thursday after school, and the three of us sat at the dining room table working on our calculus practice exam. Exams were early next week, and calc was really the only subject I was nervous about.
And Jamie was even worse than I was. Way worse.
“You have to carry the exponent when you take the derivative,” Daisy told him, tapping her pencil against her lips. “You keep dropping it, but it has to come down and multiply the rest of the term.” Their shoulders were brushing with how closely she leaned in.
Jamie didn’t seem to notice. “Why?”
“Whywhat?”
“Why does it have to carry through?”
Daisy flicked him on the side of the head, just above his ear. It made a hollow sound. “Man, you’re going to fail this exam. Focus.”
I raised my hand. “Ms. Daisy, I have a question about number seven.”
“Do neither of you pay attention when Mr. Taylor talks?”
“You’re a better teacher,” Jamie told her softly, hunching over his paper to get to work on fixing his exponents. He scraped his eraser over the page. “I think you’re the world’s only artist thatalsois good at math.”
Daisy snorted, now lightly shoving at the side of his head as she stood from her chair. “Now to help the other twin,” she muttered to herself as she rounded the edge of the table. “I should start charging a tutoring fee.”
“Hey, Jamie helps you in English sometimes, and I have your back in poli-sci.”
“Ah, yes. A perfect circle.” Daisy wrapped her arms around my torso and leaned in, resting her chin on my shoulder. “What is troubling you with seven, dear student?”
Sometimes I thought about how different things would be a year from now. Heck, even in three months, things would be drastically different. Jamie would be off to New York for Columbia, I’d be up to my eyeballs in classes and credit hours at Mullhound, and Daisy would be juggling a job around babysitting her siblings. The fun, carefree air that the three of us shared would dissolve, replaced by something more adultish.
At least I’d still have Daisy nearby, though. The thought of Jamie being hours away, though, hurt my heart. It could’ve been worse, though. He could’ve chosenUCLA or Stanford, which were other places Mom had him apply to.
I wondered if Jamie and Daisy ever got around to talking about NYU. They seemed pretty easy-going with each other, but I couldn’t imagine them having such a serious conversation without me.
Daisy and I ended up finishing our practice exam before Jamie, who was still two questions behind. Daisy took her seat back at his side, facing me across the table. “Did Carter end up meeting you last night?” she asked, beginning to doodle on a blank piece of notebook paper.
I nodded. “For a little bit. We played chess.” Before he decided to take a flirty little phone call, leaving the window wide open for Beck to crawl through it.
Jamie, though he was supposed to be finishing his study questions, watched Daisy’s pencil as it traced shapes. His thoughts mimicked mine. “Before Beck came.”
Daisy shoved at his head again, pushing it back down. “You, focus on your practice exam.” And then she looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “Beck? As in Beckham Jennings? As in, you played chess with your arch enemy?”
“We’re not arch enemies.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I don’t hate him,” I replied. Jamie’s pencil stopped scratching out numbers. He was not-so-discreetly listening in, risking another scolding from the drill sergeant at his side. “Back to Carter. He’s busy, but he said that his parents got an invite to Ms. Jennings’s birthday party on Saturday. So… I should see him then.”
Daisy nodded slowly. “So, like… is this a romantic thing now?” Her eyes quickly lifted from her sketchbook. “Because I’m so for it, if it is, but I thought Mr. ASMR was just a friend.”
I didn’t immediately answer. Love and romance were not things we often talked about—mostly because nothing was a secret in our trio, and talking about crushes and feelings in front of Jamie was embarrassing. “I don’t know,” I said at last, a cop-out answer if I ever had one. “We’re… getting to know each other.”
Daisy nodded again, hearing the subtext. She continued doodling, pursing her lips. “I forgot to tell you. I overheard Collin talking about it with Raelynn at Senior Night, and I was going to say something, but then Beck, and then Carter—” She stopped. Let out a breath. Continued sketching. “Dalton is coming home for the summer.”
Since I sat across from him, I watched as Jamie froze. He even went as far as to set his pencil down, straightening. At the same time, we both demanded, “What?”
The Giovannis were one of the families at Alderton-Du Ponte that’d joined when their son, Dalton, entered high school. Dalton had gone off to college last August, leaving his heartbroken ex-girlfriend behind.
His ex-girlfriend, whom he’d dumped cruelly, as if the last two years they’d been dating had been nothing more than a weak, two-week fling.
