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My head is spinning, but that’s okay, that’s just a physical reaction. My mind is okay. I am okay. If I just tell my body to calm down, tell the clouds filling my lungs to evaporate, tell my extremities to remember I am in charge of them, everything will go back to normal.

I can’t believe I failed.

“Violet?” Theo says, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Or maybe he was there all along. I don’t know. I’m having trouble focusing. “I saw you rush out. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Liar. “Go away.”

“Talk to me.” He sits next to me, concern etched all over his face.

I close my eyes tight before opening them up again. “I don’t want to.”

“Come on, Violet. You bottle things up and you’ll explode. Just talk to me.”

My eyes are burning with heaviness. I press my palms into the sockets, rubbing and rubbing. Even when it hurts, I keep pressing, trying to erase the feeling, the racing thoughts behind it all.

“Hey, hey.” Theo grips my hands, pulling them away. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I don’t feel good,” I say.

“It’s okay,” Theo says softly. “You’re okay.”

I hold up a hand. The dizziness, combined with the anxiety slamming around my stomach, makes everything worse. I shrug him off, kneel, and throw up. There’s only liquid and nerves in me, which makes the bile hurt as it climbs.

Distantly, I feel the pressure of the circles Theo rubs into my back and cold air at my neck as he lifts my hair from my face into a ponytail, holding it with his hands. Eventually, the blur lining my vision clears and I feel the pressure in my chest ease.

“Just breathe,” Theo says when I finish being sick. “You’re okay.”

I take a moment to do that, then stand, move away from my sick, feeling embarrassment on top of everything else that’s running through me. Theo stays quiet as I walk, finding a pillar under the bleachers to lean on for support.

“What’s wrong?” Theo asks.

A solid lump lodges in my throat. “I got stuck on the final problem. I didn’t finish it.”

He stills and confusion floods his face like he didn’t quite hear me. Then his brows pull together. “That’s what has you sick?”

More humiliation burns through me. “You don’t get it.”

“I don’t.” He nods. “Because it’s not a big deal. It’s one problem. You can’t get them all.”

“Maybe it’s not a big deal for someone like you, but it matters to me.”

He flinches. “Someone like me?”

Every emotion and thought that stilled itself during the quiz rapidly floods through me at once. Like my brain and body are making up the time they lost during their confusion and I can barely keep up with my own thoughts.

But it’s anger—something heavy and discomforting and hot—that runs through my blood first. “Someone who has it all.”

Theo looks confused again but shakes his head, like he can’t even begin to process what I meant. “Lopez, what does that have to do with what you’re feeling now?”

Everything. Or maybe nothing. Maybe these thoughts would stay fleeting if he wasn’t here, right now, while I’m out of control, while I’m repeating the final question in the back of my head.

But there’s no going back anymore.

I sneer. “School, getting questions wrong, none of that matters to you.”

He steps back. “When have I ever said that?”

“You don’t have to say it!” I gesture toward him, my pulse racing off. “You’re good-looking, you’re smart without trying, everyone likes you, you come from money. You get to mess up and it’s just a bad day. I mess up and it snowballs, risking everything my family and I have worked for.”