Pushover. That’s my problem. It’s not even that I can’t make waves, but I won’t. So here I go rolling downhill instead of standing my ground. Wait, there’s some metaphor going here: nature, motion, levels. Brains are amazing!
Why not stand up for myself? What could happen? Friends would get in trouble—I won’t like myself. I wouldn’t BE myself.
I described a dream I had about diving into the ocean at Hanalei and getting tumbled in a rough wave. I hit the sandy floor hard and ended up gasping for air.
What To Do? 1. Decide whether it’s worth changing or not. Change is hard. 2. Evaluate how I choose my friends and why. 3. Work harder to make up for missteps. 4. Raise my head, my hand…. Wow, metaphors are everywhere!
“You’ll need a partner to work with. I want you to choose your own.” Marjorie’s voice startles me.
I look up and the room has filled, with Kyle reclaiming the seat next to me. Our eyes meet, his blue blue blue like that ocean. His presence hits me like the wave in my dream. He’s crazy hot—with sharp features set off by those intensely blue eyes and an expressive mouth that seems to default to sulking or scowling. His hair could be dark blond, but it’s so short it’s hard to tell. And his expression is hard to read—it’s like wariness and confusion and tension and uncertainty and interest and anger all mixed up.
“You,” he says, pointing at me. I blink and nod slowly. I can handle this. There’s a pause and then he adds, “I need to work with a writer.” Whether he’s explaining this to himself, to me, or to Marjorie I don’t know, but I just nod again as conversations ebb and flow around me.
“I want you to swap notebooks with your partner and annotate the pages—underline things you think are important, add notes or questions. You want to focus on reflecting back to your partner what patterns you see in what may be otherwise disconnected writing. Think of yourselves as doctors diagnosing a patient. What can you make of the symptoms in front of you?”
“Again with the fucking patterns!” Kyle grumbles, handing me a piece of paper covered in an oversized scrawl. I suppress a smile and hand over my notebook.
I hate writing.
I hate writing because.
I don’t like writing things down. It’s frustrating. Goddammit, what am I supposed to say? How long is this supposed to be? Is this enough yet?
The assignment: 5-7 pp on an ethical controversy in the news. With 3 sources.
To Do: choose a stupid controversy (google controversies), find 3 sources (google sources), write 5 fucking pages (13 pt font, 1.5” margins!), hand it in, graduate and get the hell out of dodge (and into the army).
I can’t help but feel for him as I make some notes. We swap and I see he’s written in all caps in the margins on mine: DREAMS ABOUT WATER REFLECT YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD SEX. If he thinks to make me blush, he can hold his breath. One good thing about my dark coloring and perma-tan is that I don’t redden.
“Says who? Freud?” I’m sarcastic.
He shrugs and grins, leaning back in his chair to study me. He stretches his arms out so he takes up the whole space. Kyle’s not huge like football players, who always look a little grotesque to me—like cartoon figures. He’s just…solid.
“You’re from Hawai’i?”
“Yes. Please spell it correctly even in your head. There’s an apostrophe between the i’s.”
“That’s hot.”
“Tropical.”
He glances over me. “You always wear fifty layers of clothing?”
“I’m cold! Were you born and bred in the freezer section?”
“Yep. Southern Illinois. Could be worse. Could be twenty below. Could be gale winds. Could be ice storms….”
I give an exaggerated shiver and raise a palm to stop him. For some reason, his attention is giving me confidence. He eyes me steadily for another over-long moment.
“You dance.” This is a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” I frown, looking back at what I’ve written. “How did you know?”
He waves a hand over my words. “All that motion? And the hair.” He waves a hand around my face now and I remember that today I’ve scraped my long hair into a tight bun for class later. He’s looking at my neck and it feels naked.
“Oh.” I shift uncomfortably. “I dance hip hop and ballet. I also take yoga classes and teach basics on Saturdays at the rec center. I’m thinking about training to become a certified yoga teacher.”
Kyle frowns. “What about dancing?”
I shake my head. “I can’t dance professionally.”
“Why not?”
I avoid his eyes. “I don’t really like performing,” I admit reluctantly. That’s not the half of it but it’s all I need to tell him.
“Why not?” He’s like a bulldog. I make a face at him but he ignores it, waiting.
I sigh. “I have pretty bad stage fright. I love dancing, but it’s hard to perform.” I need a redirect. “You’re obsessed with numbers,” I blurt out.
Now he frowns, looking at his page.
“5,7,3,3,5,13,1.5” I read. “Why so worried about quantity?”
“Easy for you to say when you can just write.” He sounds glum. “I’m going to fail freshman comp--again--if I can’t hand in those five fucking pages. And I need it to graduate.”
That sucks, and I think it may have been hard for him to admit. “You curse a lot.” I point to more words on his page.
“You offended?” His eyebrows rise. I realize I enjoy watching him fidget and shift. He’s big but graceful in his constant motion. Something occurs to me.
“Do you have dyslexia or ADD or something? Maybe Tourette’s?” I tilt my head, assessing him.
He laughs and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Now I’m offended!”
“Hmm. So it’s not that you can’t write, but that you don’t want to,” I muse, thinking.
“Like you,” he says, eyeing me. “You said it’s not that you can’t make waves, but you won’t. How’s that working out for you?”
I sigh, slumping into my chair. “Not so well. What about you? Don’t you want to graduate?”
He barks out another laugh. “Well, duh! Of course I want to be done with school already. Just a few more months—“
I’m watching him closely. “Then what? The army, right?” That last parenthetical comment he wrote just hung there.
He shrugs again. I have to say I’ve got a soft spot for people who communicate through their bodies—though somehow that thought feels wrong.
“If you don’t pass comp, though, you’ll fail and you won’t graduate.”
“I won’t fail,” he says confidently. The big grin is back and I’m glad that flash of uncertainty I glimpsed is gone.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re going to help me.”
NOW ON AMAZON’S KINDLE UNLIMITED
Also by Charlotte Penn Clark
The Partnership (Extra Credit, Book 1)
The Do-Over (Extra Credit, Book 2)
Corinne (The Carmichaels, Book 1)
Daisy (The Carmichaels, Book 2)
Valerie (The Carmichaels, Book 3)
Marie (The Carmichaels, Book 4)
Samantha (The Carmichaels, Book 5)
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The Lesson Plan (Extra Credit #3) Page 15