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At least Mr. Phillips saved his resentful stare for Axel that time.
The thing was, I was absolutely furious with Axel after that scene, even though there seemed to be no way the exam paper hide-and-seek could have been his fault. And instead of leaving me distracted and compromised like I would have expected, it lit a fire of mathematics in me unlike anything the world had ever seen before. I was finding mathematical concepts embedded in my brain I had no memory of ever studying, my pen flying over the workings sections to generate truly beautiful proofs. I didn’t think I would have performed that way normally even with fully-realised cheat sheets on hand.
When the time came to submit our papers, I had been done for ten minutes and was still breathing hard, a little like I’d been engaged in some vigorous sexual activity. I doubted having actual sex would be nearly as satisfying. That was what Axel got for trying to disrupt my schooling… but then Axel wouldn’t want to disrupt my schooling, would he? Probably he’d see that as some mortal offense against the honourable institution of education. Once you realised there was a lot about a person that was not good for you, it was hard to get out of the mindset of seeing them as the enemy in all ways.
After we were allowed out I was so busy trying to avoid coming into contact with Axel, I walked right into Ashleigh Tanner. I apologised easily enough, but there was an awkwardness in the following silence. Ashleigh was one of the few people at Burgundy I hadn’t made any connection with at all; hooked up with the popular team of Lucas-Steven-Mic-Axel plus hangers-on, it had always seemed like we were unlikely to be able to make a genuine connection.
She was regarding me curiously at that moment, and I had just realised there was a lot to be curious about with her, too. She was no hanger-on: whatever was going on with her, she was running her own game.
“Aileen…” When she spoke, I realised she actually had something previously prepared to say to me. “How did that exam go, then?”
“Well I came up with an answer to every question and I’m not crying, so I guess it just remains to see whether my confidence is justified.”
She shot me a weak smile. “Yes. Well… I think I performed all right too, but you never know. Now… Axel was telling me you had some interest in law.”
At least the hand behind the scenes in this encounter wasn’t going to stay curtained. “I guess so. I’m not… I wasn’t planning on going to university or anything, though.”
She put her eyebrows up. “You should. What’s the point in having an interest in something if you won’t give yourself a chance to explore it?”
“Well, it’s just…” A whiff of a fragrance that was far too familiar to me now made my head spin. Axel was moving around in the background, pretty shamelessly trying to listen in on what we were saying.
But Ashleigh just shot him a nod and returned her attention to me. “Yes?” Axel might have motivated her to speak with me, but she was doing it for her own reasons.
Why was I even thinking about justifying my decisions to her? Well, she of all people probably needed to hear this one. “It’s just too hard when my family doesn’t have the money for that sort of thing. I really need to get into full-time employment as soon as possible after school, start building up savings. Maybe later I can go and do study, when I’m feeling more stable.”
Ashleigh grimaced. “It’s hard to do things that way, I hear. I mean you’re not talking about just a gap year here. You could get caught up working some low-paying job for years before you feel stable enough to get back to university, and while there is a healthy mature-age cohort, it really is a game for young people. You’ll miss out on the same-age culture and it might be hard for you to make other friends. That’s assuming you can find a moment to go at all. You might decide to get married, have kids. That pushes it out even further. At a certain point it’s not going to be worth it.”
I must have been making some face at her, because she shook herself like a dog after rain and said, “That’s just how it is for women. We’ve got a different trajectory.”
“It’s just…”
“We could have been partners, maybe,” Ashleigh said. “That’s all. If we were studying together, we’d have the option of working together.”
“Well thanks for the offer, I guess it’s just not going to work out for me though.”
“You do realise they don’t get you to pay for uni up front right?”
She was intense on this like it really mattered to her, for goodness sake. “I know that. It’s not as simple as that though.”
“Well maybe it’s not,” Ashleigh said, “but look, Aileen, sometimes you’ve just got to do what’s necessary and stop waiting for the right circumstances. If you actually want to succeed in life, that is. Sorry to be so harsh about it, but so many women are like this these days, and it really gets to me. We’ve all got to do whatever it takes to pull one another up, we can’t be delicate about it.” She checked her phone. “Sorry to rant and run, but I’ve got to get out of here. It’s
been nice talking to you.”
I was so dazed watching her walk away I completely forgot about avoiding Axel. I realised he was next to me when I started choking on his scent.
“You’ve got to either spit or swallow, Aileen,” said Axel.
“What was that all about?” I demanded. “I mean did you pay her to suggest we could work together or something?”
“Do you really think I have that sort of leverage over Ashleigh?” I was blushing at his smirk. I knew he was right, but I didn’t understand why he was looking at me like that. “I just talked to her a bit about your situation, your potential… she ran with it on her own. I don’t know why Ash does what she does.”
“Well, it’s a pretty crazy idea. I don’t think I’d fit into her world any more than I fit into yours.” I was steaming a little over how she’d spoken to me, and barely holding onto a rant of my own. Who gave her the right to come down from on high and lecture me about my life? Nobody would ever dare to do that to her, and it had nothing to do with how she behaved. She had no idea just how much she didn’t get it.
“Seems to have worked out for Callie, and she started out with a lot less than you have.”
I was pretty sure he was trying to provoke me with these mentions of other women, and the thing was it was working perfectly. “Do you really think I care what works for Callie? I would never have supported her relationship if I knew her blind toeing of the popular line was going to be held up to my face for all time as an example of how I should behave.”
“Aileen?”
