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Well, that was thelastthing I expected him to say. And to have said it so calmly. “Wh—” I shook my head a little, trying to clear the confusion. “Why does that matter?”
“Because I don’t want people thinking I’m a loser who got dumped,” he answered quickly, easily, like it’d been something he’d thought about before.
So I would be the loser who got dumped? Lovely.
“I could’ve gone on like this, I think,” he went on, sounding perfectly rational. Almost like he was talking about the weather, explaining why the sky was blue. Here we were, ending our relationship, and he sounded nothing but calm, cool, and collected. “How we were, I mean.”
That day all those weeks ago resurfaced in my mind, him voicing his thoughts for the first time with his feet in my lap and the videogame roaring between us. “I just think we’re too different.”
Alex smiled a little, as if remembering too. “I’m sorry it ended this way, though.”
He could’ve at least pretended to be sad. With a few weeks until our one-year anniversary, he was walking away with ease. And, despite how my feelings had shifted, it stung.
“Maisie?” Mom’s voice filtered into the house like a snap, breaking through the tension. I could hear her shuffle inside, and my dad’s soft murmuring joined her. “Maisie, what have I said about leaving all the lights on?”
Alex turned around to the archway as Mom stepped underneath it, her purse in the crook of her elbow. Dad stepped into view behind her, surveying the scene. “Ah, I thought that was your car out there, Alex.”
“Alex!” Mom greeted happily, lasering her sights on him as she lumbered closer. She’d already kicked off one of her shoes, limping along with the other kitten heel still on. “Oh, it’s been too long. Your hair is getting so curly!”
He tore a hand through his curls with a little embarrassed expression, obviously uncomfortable with all the attention on him. Or maybe he was uncomfortable, given the fact that my parents walked in on our break-up.
“What are you doing here?” Dad asked him, holding Mom’s arm as she kicked off her shoe. “It’s getting a little late.”
I could’ve said something, could’ve told them what happened, but I suddenly was overwhelmingly tired.
“I stopped by to see if Maisie had something for spirit day tomorrow,” he explained, casting a cautious glance at me. “It’s athletes vs mathletes day, and I wanted to borrow something. My friends and I all going as mathletes.”
Mom gave a little gasp. “Oh, so you need things like suspenders, collared shirts, and things like that? Oh, we have a few things, don’t we, Ty? We can make you totally geeky, Alex.”
I looked between them all, feeling as though I was screaming at the top of my lungs. “I was on the mathletes team for two years, and never once did I wear suspenders.”
She ignored me. “Come on, Alex, I’ll show you where Ty keeps his ties.”
“I’m going to bed,” I grumbled, brushing past them. There was no way I was taking part in their stupid scavenger hunt for “geeky clothes,” and quite honestly, I didn’t have enough energy to fake my way through more conversation. It felt weird to be walking away from such a monumental thing—to leave my now ex-boyfriend in the presence of my parents—but I didn’t stick around.
Mrs. Diego was sipping a mug of coffee when I walked into her empty classroom Thursday morning, her hair tied back into a loose bun. When she spotted me, she removed the glasses from her nose. “Maisie, good morning. What brings you by so early?”
“I wanted to check in before Connor’s final tutoring session today.” That, and I wanted to avoid the hallways as much as possible. I’d been trying to brace myself for the slew of “geeks” and “dorks” I’d be seeing today. There’d be way more mathletes than athletes—what fun was it to dress up as a brainless dumbleweed? “Do you have his exam already written up?”
“I do. You know me, always on the ball.” She chuckled a little as she said that, and removing a piece of paper out from a folder on her desk. “Like I said earlier, it’s two questions per chapter for the first two units. Per Principal Oliphant’s request.”
I scanned the sheet of paper, eyes trailing along the equations, brain absorbing it in an instant. From simplifying equations to finding equivalents, it seemed like a pretty easy test. Connor had to get fourteen questions right to pass. Fourteen. He could do that.
“If he fails,” I said slowly, turning over the paper, “he’ll get sent back a grade?”
Mrs. Diego leaned back in her chair. “It’s a complicated situation. He’ll be a senior, but he won’t graduate with his class due to not enough credits. He can’t take two math courses at once, so he’ll have to retake Algebra II this year and take Calculus over the summer.” She massaged the front of her forehead. “He’d also be removed from the football team for the season, since technically an athlete’s grades have to be in good standing for them to play. If he failed Algebra II, his grades wouldn’t technically be in good standing. And with Principal Oliphant hoping they’d go to championships, it’d be…it’d be a mess if he failed.”
A mess for Connor, presented to him on a silver platter. Because if he failed and had to go back a grade, there’d be no keeping that a secret. “How did this happen, anyway? You said it was a clerical error?”
Mrs. Diego gave a little sigh, shoulders seeming to weigh down further. “It was my fault. I’d misplaced his exam at first and didn’t find it until after school let out for the summer. I inputted the grade, but since it didn’t go through the system, it wasn’t flagged that he the failed core class until school resumed.”
I shifted on my feet. It wouldn’t have been a mess if he failed—it alreadywasa mess, for more than Connor. What Mrs. Diego didn’t say, I picked up on. Sure, she may have imputed the grade late, but it wasn’t her fault that no one caught his final percentage. And here she was, carrying the brunt of the worry.
“You know, Connor told me—” I cut myself off, weighing the words in my mouth. “He told me that the reason he failed in the first place was because he had family problems going on. Is there, like, a break he could get for that?”
Mrs. Diego arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you say Principal Oliphant is being more than generous?”
“Of course, yes,” I said, closing my eyes. She was being more than generous. I’d taken the Algebra II exam—it’d been six pages with questions on both sides. The test Connor was going to take was only one sheet of paper, front and back. More than generous. “I—I want to see him succeed, I guess. And I don’t want you to be in trouble.”
