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When I slid into my desk in Mendleton’s class, my chem test was almost the last thing on my mind. My lips were on fire from that kiss in the hallway, and I couldn’t go back to keeping that stuff under wraps all day long, I just couldn’t.
Not now, not when The Beast had gone all fucking legit hero on me, busting into my old life, stealing me away for good. But the truth was, even if today hadn’t happened, time was up. I needed him all day, every day. I needed to be able to hold his hand in the hallway, kiss him in front of the lockers, write his name on my notebook if I fucking felt like it.
I’d thought all that armor and barbed wire he’d stripped away had been a bad thing, leaving me so fucking vulnerable, but now that I knew how good underneath could feel, exposing myself and my life completely and knowing there was nothing he’d walk away from, no one and nothing he wouldn’t destroy for me, I felt peaceful in a way I never had before.
Was that fucked up as hell seeing as how a couple hours ago I’d been on the ground fighting off drug dealers legit thinking I might die? Oh, hell yeah. Was it more fucked up that this trauma was so low on the list it really only registered because it was fresh and new, and my tolerance was low? Sure. But I was who I was.
It wasn't being held down on the ground being force-fed ceiling sludge that was playing on a loop in my mind. It was Caleb booting that fucker clear across the room. Pulling me up, brushing me off, saying stay away from what’s mine or I’ll make you sorry.
Yeah, I was that kind of twisted. And I was fucking in love, motherfucker.
Wasn’t exactly sure how to tell him that, I wasn’t sure if the words would even come out of my mouth, if maybe I’d need to practice them in front of a mirror first, but that’s where my head was. The game, the whispers in the hall, the fact that I’d probably never see my mom or the house I grew up in ever again, the Chem test that had been priority number one for two weeks, it was all whatever, a fucking afterthought.
So sue me, I guess.
* * *
When Mendleton passed out the tests,I sat there on edge with the rest of the class waiting for the minute mark, for him to say go so we could flip them over, because he did love inducing anxiety. But I was calm. I was ready. I knew these answers, a thousand different ways, and more than that, IknewI could do this.
In another life, when Caleb wasn’t waiting for me in Coach T’s office that day, I'd have quit, given up, blown off this test and probably school all together, sent my life spiraling too far out of control to ever catch it. The universe had tried one last time to convince me I was nothing, that I deserved nothing, but I wasn’t buying it. That wasn't where I lived anymore.
I worked down the page slow, answering the easy ones first, the ones you picked up before you even took Chemistry. Then the ones that were seared into my brain from writing lines all day long. The ones I'd spelled out in magnets on the refrigerator. The ones I’d flipped over five hundred times matching cards. The ones Caleb had text bombed me with during the day, and the ones that had leveled me up in Periodical Pirates, and the ones he’d drilled into me in bed, not slamming his hips all the way until I remembered that tungsten was W.
For awhile it wasn't even hard. But my second pass still had a lot of blank spaces, ones I couldn't remember no matter how many mnemonic devices he tried to teach me. I wrote them out in my own handwriting, shaking a few loose that way, and then frowning at the rest, wondering why they never stuck.
And then I just guessed, throwing up Hail Marys at all the ones that were still blank, because trying was better than nothing.
I was the last one to turn it in, checking and double checking and squeezing everything out of my brain I possibly could, making sure I didn’t get docked for illegible handwriting or any stupid mistake I could possibly avoid. And then I finally walked it up to his desk and added it to the pile, four sheets of paper that would send my future in one direction or another.
I wasmostlysure I’d passed.
* * *
When the bell rang, the room cleared out— Friday, last class, nothing people wanted out of quicker. But I hung around, jock on the AP ledge, probably a joke in the teacher’s lounge. I’d never been in this situation, but I’d had plenty of chances to walk down the hall, see guys hunched over in the front row of the trig room, a whole crowd waiting for midterm grades in January to see who starting center was. Didn’t really seem fair there wasn’t a less stressful way to do this, but what was school without stress, I guess.
“I'm guessing you'd like me to grade this now,” Mendleton said dryly as I hung back, staying in my chair.
“Kind of need you to, yeah.”
“Sit back and get comfortable then. You might be in a rush, but I don’t grade tests with a stopwatch to my head.”
I nodded and leaned back in my chair, suddenly going from zen as fuck to antsy as hell, tapping my pen on the desk and my feet on the floor, completely sure everything I'd written was wrong.
He glared at me over his glasses as he went slowly through the stack, even though we both knew mine was on the bottom.
“Sorry.” I took a breath and put my pen down, then picked it back up, and leaned over, zipping open my backpack and pulling out my big green notebook, flipping it open to a blank page and doing the one trick I knew would calm me down.
* * *
“Alright, I'm finished, you wanna come up here and talk about it?”
I jumped in the quiet classroom when Mendleton’s voice startled me. I'd lost track of time, of everything, the way I always did writing lines, and stared down at my paper, not sure I'd actually written those words, not sure I wanted them shut up inside my notebook with all my chem stuff. I tore the page out, folding it up and shoving it in my back pocket, and headed up to his desk to talk about my future, I guess. NBD.
I came up beside him where he was sitting at his desk, and just stood there, waiting for him to say something or give me my test, and the longer I waited, the more freaked out I got that somehow, after passing a dozen practice tests, after studying every possible way, it really had fallen out of my head. Or gotten knocked out. That I had fucked this up.
And then I realized the test sitting on the top of the pile in front of him was mine.
I’d been counting on a C. Had that so solidly planted in my head for some reason, the lowest grade I could get and still stay alive, that a paper with an 88 at the top just didn’t fucking register at all, until I realized, yeah, that was my name up in the corner.
