And as I’m writing the date at the top of my notebook, the bell rings, bringing with it a flush of last-minuteclassmates. I glance up as the last person files in: Jake. Again.
He grabs a seat next to Kelly—who is here, too, because of course—and a pleased little look crosses her face as she arranges the pens and notebook on her desk.
I don’t care. I swear.
“Afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Lee says, underlining his name with a careful swipe of marker. “I do hope that though this class is directly after lunch, you will make an effort to be on time.” He pauses, making eye contact with Jake for what seems like forever. I bite back a smile. Jake is soooo screwed tonight at practice, at least if he survives whatever weights workout Napolitano has already devised. “I expect all my students, but most especially my honors students, to take mathematics seriously.”
He stops his speech with an appraising glare—as if to see if we’re up to the task. After one last sweep across our faces, Coach Lee is apparently pleased enough to continue. He turns back to the board and yells out a name. “Topperman.”
“Yes, Coach?”
“You take mathematics seriously, do you not?”
“As serious as I take my strawberry pop.”
Considering he and Lily Jane just shared three cans over lunch, I’d say he’s actually very serious about math.
“What’s the difference between algebra and calculus?”
Topps seriously freaking strokes his beard like a philosopher. Still, I’m literally holding my breath for the guy because that is most definitely not an easy first-day-of-school question, but Lily Jane is smiling at him like he’s a freaking rock star. When he answers, I see why. “They’re partners in crime. Calculus finds new equations, algebra solves them.”
Coach Lee writes Topps’s definition on the board and when he turns around, it’s with a smile like I’ve never seen. “Our district mathletics champ, ladies and gentlemen.” Topps takes a little bow from his desk, cheeks bright pink. “We’ve got forty-six minutes remaining today, so let’s see what new equations we can find.”
The rest of the day is a blur of faces and assignments and new, poorly planned classroom locations, and my mind is toast by the last bell. I head straight from my last class to the athletics wing, the team’s prepractice trip to the weight room so heavy on my mind that I don’t notice the mass of boys huddled near the line of coaches’ offices.
That is, until one of them peels off the pack, takes off down the orange-and-white checkered tile, and wraps me in a bear hug so strong that we plow into a nearby set of lockers. A metallic noise pings through my skull as it bounces off the empty steel box. The rest of me is stationary, pressed between a locker and this person. Who I now see is Ryan. A screeching, shaking Ryan.
“VARRRRRSSSSSITTTTY,” he whisper-screams into the crook of my neck, where his face has landed.
I realize the mass of boys is gathered around a bulletin board above the drinking fountain and that nearly every one of them is wearing adidas from head to toe.
Jesse was right.“Duuuuuudddde. Your sister is kind of an asshole.”
I’ve been so wrapped up in my own student-athlete drama at Northland High that I completely—and I meancompletely—forgot about the team announcements today.
Football is a sport that needs bodies and cuts no one, the pecking order decided in a much more fluid A team and B team scenario of varsity and JV, plus the catchall C team. Soccer, not so much—there are far more bodies than spots. Tryouts matter, and if you’re cut, you’re not playing. Considering Ry’s placekicking doldrums last week, I should’ve been on pins and needles all day, and instead I’m half-clueless and pinned to a locker.
I am a total asshole.
“Varsity?!” I whisper-scream in response. “I thought the coach hated you.”
Ryan pulls back, cheeks flushed. “Turns out Coach Parsons is of the Danielle Rodinsky-Simpson ‘the more I hate you, the more I love you’ school of coaching.”
I mock-punch him in the gut. “Harsh, man, harsh.”
“You’re right, not fair to Coach Parsons.”
I shake my head and run a hand through his hair. “I’m so proud of you, Ry.”
He raises a brow. “Any chance you might want toexpress that pride in a double-dip waffle cone from Happy Cow postpractice?”
“It’s a deal.”
“Good, because I’m going to need all the calories I’m gonna get. Tonight’s going to be killer.”
I give him a knowing nod—I, too, was a freshman on varsity once. And, even worse, the coach was my sister in her first year. “Tough being a frosh on a squad of upperclassmen. Gotta work twice as hard to prove yourself.”
Ry finally releases me, tucking his thumbs into the straps of his backpack in one cool motion as those cheerleaders he chased after this morning exit the girls’ locker room in a fit of giggles and a swirl of plumeria body spray. He chin-checks them and then returns to me, right back to being dialed in to our conversation.
