The non–lunch table members of the class—Ava, Michael, Randolph, and Nicole—were already in their seats. It was Curtis who was holding things up, sharpening his pencil with the most lackadaisical twists of the handle. I gritted my teeth as he pulled the pencil out and blew shavings off the tip, then, apparently dissatisfied with the point, reinserted it.
Finally, he flopped in his chair and Ms. Gregoire began. “Many of you have had big opinions about the books we’ve studied this year. That’s the difficult thing about constructing a curriculum: Should I choose books that say a little something to everyone? Or books that are monumental for a single student?”
She clasped her hands behind her back and began to pace around the center of the circle formed by our desks. For as vibrant as her clothing and personality were, the room was drab. It didn’t matter, since it was a rare moment when our eyes strayed from her during class. She was a good teacher, a captivating one. English would never be my favorite class, but she made it tolerable—despite the fact that Merri had a ridiculous theory she was some sort of “story sorceress” who made book plots manifest in reality.
“Some of you in here have already had the experience of a book changing your life.” She paused to wink at Merri. “But you should all have the chance to grow as people through the lessons you glean from literature.”
I appreciated her enthusiasm for the material she taught, but demanding we find fictional books personally relevant was a step too far. Before I could arch my brows, she’d stopped in front of my desk. “Some of you need the opportunity to choose your own path. Your own story.”
Her eyes were soft with sympathy when they met mine. I was the one who had to look away first. Choice was a luxury for people whose parents were not the doctors Gordon and Fergus.
“That brings us to our new project.” She spun around, her dress flaring in a way that Merri would gush about later. “Drumroll, please, Mr. Cavendish.” Curtis was only too happy to oblige, hammering his long fingers against the edge of the desk and adding bonus noises that were supposed to be cymbals, until she held up a hand. He finished with one last “Boom-tish.”
“Your free-choice independent-reading assignment!” She flicked her wrists outward in a ta-dah motion. “There are a few simple rules. One: this class is Brit lit, so your book needs to be tied at least tangentially to that theme. Two: poetry and plays are fine. Three: your project, presented in whatever form that calls to you—as well as response journals—is due the week before spring break. Four: you must get your book approved before you begin. Five: everyone must read a unique book; no duplicates.” She picked up a stack of handouts from her desk. “I have a list of titles to get you started, but before I distribute these, any questions?”
Lance was first. “Can it be something you’ve read before?”
“No, but I’m going on the honor system.”
Randolph called out, “Does it have to be fiction?”
“A novel, play, or poetry.”
Ava’s black hair was arranged in perfect curls that she shook over her shoulders as she announced, “I have a question.”
“Let’s hear it.” Ms. Gregoire was infinitely patient, but I rolled my eyes at Ava’s constant need for fanfare.
Curtis caught me. He grinned and made a blah-blah-blah hand under his desk. I turned away as Ava whined, “So we pick a book, no duplicates or partners, etc., and then we do any sort of project? How will you grade them?”
“The same rubric we’ve been using, but I’ll factor in the effort your project represents. A shoebox diorama is not going to earn the same grade as re-creating a key scene as a contemporary movie.”
“But if we want to do a standard paper, will you accept that too?” Merri’s question was for my benefit, because she would likely be writing a sequel to whichever novel she chose.
Ms. Gregoire smiled at me. “Of course.”
It was a straightforward assignment: choose a book, write a paper, turn it in. I should have been relieved, but it felt like fingertips were walking up my spine; the sensation was so strong I leaned back against my seat and looked left at the only person who would play that sort of asinine prank. But Curtis was in his seat, doodling in his notebook.
“I want you to make this assignment personal.” Ms. Gregoire paused for so long that I looked around the room. Lance was staring out the window—not at the old stone mansions that made up the campus buildings but at the athletic fields. Merri was making a list of book choices; Nicole was sketching an intricate design on the back of her hand; Toby had his laptop open, and I’d bet he was stealthily messaging Rory. Sera and Hannah had their pinkies linked between their desks. The others were in various states of attentiveness, but no one else appeared to feel our teacher’s words humming like electricity across their skin. I rubbed my hands together, but the sensation didn’t fade.
Ms. Gregoire stopped directly across the circle from me, tapping the toe of her shoe in a rhythm that seemed to match the pulsing in my temples. “I want your project to show how you’ve connected with your chosen work. How you’ve identified and found yourself in the story, and how you’ve changed because of it.”
The hair on my arms rose in goose bumps below my white button-down and navy sweater. My muscles contracted, my heart pounded, and I started to sweat. My hands went cold. Adrenaline. My body was reacting to an emergency that didn’t exist.
“But no pressure to pick the perfect book, am I right?” asked Curtis.
My inner crisis popped like a balloon. I sat back in my seat and took slow, even breaths. The joke wasn’t funny, but Toby laughed. I leaned around Merri to raise my eyebrows at him. Curtis was not to be encouraged.
But he was accidentally correct. It mattered what book I chose. Especially if Ms. Gregoire thought I was “skating.” I couldn’t afford less than an A, but her “let’s make this personal” expectations felt like a cryptic minefield.
“Some of you may find this . . . uncomfortable.” Her smile was bright as she aimed it at each of my classmates. Everyone but me. The thing was, Ms. Gregoire was very deliberate about her eye contact. She made it a point to go sequentially and include everyone. It was something I’d noticed on our first day of class, and I hadn’t seen her skimp since. It was how Merri had gotten caught using a messenger app on her laptop. It was why Toby was reckless for still daring to do so. But when her eyes jumped from Hannah on my left to Merri on my right without even a millisecond of connection with me, something tightened in my stomach.
“I’m sorry this assignment may cause some of you pain. It may change the way you see yourself or the world—certainly your place within it. But that growth mind-set—pushing through the experience and getting to the other side—will be worth it, I promise.” It was only then that her eyes came back to mine. She maintained contact a beat longer than necessary, so I couldn’t escape seeing the sympathy in her gaze.
On the first week of school when she’d used this sort of language—Literature is powerful. Anything can happen when you open yourself up to it.—I’d expected it to be met with a chorus of snorts and scoffs. It hadn’t been. Instead Merri had been convinced that “book magic” was happening—that plotlines from stories were appearing in her life.
I’d told her she was overidentifying.
Then Rory Campbell, who was not prone to wild flings of imagination, had come to the same conclusion about the books Ms. Gregoire had assigned her in freshman English.
I’d heard the rumors from others on campus. Even Trenton Rhodes, Hero High alumnus and the oldest Campbell sister’s new husband, had made cryptic comments about Ms. Gregoire steering his path to Lilly. And if asked to describe Trent, I’d have said “rational” or “logical.”
I pulled my shoulders back and lifted my chin. I was not going to get caught up in the Ms. Gregoire–mythos frenzy. Books were static. They were words on paper, written and unchanged. They were of a time, from an author. They had no power beyond that which the reader granted. I didn’t give them
permission to bestow anything but good grades.
“Respectfully, Ms. G, you’re making this assignment sound about as appealing as the Convocation where Nurse Peter shared pictures of athlete’s foot and ringworm.”
It was Curtis. Of course it was Curtis. I didn’t need to look to know his legs would be stretched out past the edge of his desk. His feet would be crossed at the ankles, creating an obstacle Ms. Gregoire would step over as she paced the inner ring. Each time, she’d smile at him.
Once, during cross-country practice, I’d grumbled to Merri about his manspreading, and she’d laughed so hard she’d had to stop running. “Whose space is he spreading into? He’s a foot taller than me, and I barely fit under desks.” She’d wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “It’s okay not to like someone—you don’t need to justify it.”
Which was easy for her to say; Merri liked everyone.
Hannah nudged me. I took a book list before passing the rest to Merri.
“It’s not an exhaustive list—feel free to propose your own,” Ms. Gregoire said before retreating to sit atop her desk. “I’m here for consultation. You know I’ve got opinions!”
My eyes skimmed, skimmed, skimmed—stopped on the S surnames. From what I knew of this book, it had science, it had horror, it had zero romance, and it was written by the daughter of one of the first feminists. Written on a dare, because the men in her life teased her that she couldn’t.
My hand shot in the air.
“Oh. Already?” Ms. Gregoire’s forehead wrinkled as she approached my desk. “I had some suggestions I was going to make for you.”
“No need.” I tapped a finger on the list. “I’ll do Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.”
Her smile turned concave. “I strongly advise you to reconsider.”
“Is it too easy?” My stomach sank. Some of you are skating . . .
“No. Nothing to do with academic rigor.” She paused, then crouched before softly adding, “I understand the appeal, but I don’t think it’s an emotionally healthy choice for you.”
My cheeks flamed red. I already had one set of adults dictating ninety-five percent of my decisions. Eliza, you must get at least eight hours of sleep a night. Consume sixty ounces of water each day. No caffeine. No processed sugars. Do these workouts, chart your menses, graph your weight. Join a club. Eliza, make sure to charge your iLive LifeTracker; there was a gap in yesterday’s data. Eliza, report every detail of your existence for us to scrutinize. Sacrifice your privacy and autonomy on the altar of science.
Ms. Gregoire had told us we could choose our own book. I’d chosen mine. I’d even chosen one off her list. I ground my teeth. “I’m happy with this choice.”
“I don’t think you’ll be happy at all.” Ms. Gregoire trailed a finger down the list. “What about . . .”
I wanted no part of her selection or literary-matchmaking schemes. If I chose a book without romance, then I was eliminating that possibility—not that I believed it was actually possible. Magic wasn’t real. But I wasn’t going to feed into the hype or give Merri fodder to spin into a fantasy.
“Is Eliza done yet?” Ava whined. “Because I’m ready.”
“She’s all yours, Ava.” I slid the paper from under Ms. Gregoire’s hand and folded it in half. “I’ll consider what you said, but for now I’m content with Frankenstein.”
“Okay.” Ms. Gregoire gave me a small, concerned nod. “But my door is always open if you change your mind.”
4
I’d lost Merri during the exodus from Convocation—Hero High’s tradition of ending each day with an all-school assembly for announcements or lectures or performances. Today the student government presented a fund-raiser for the prom. It involved buying carnations, but when I saw the hearts and cupids projected on the screen, I tuned out the rest.
Merri reappeared beside my locker, wearing a wide grin and her bright red duffel coat. “I chose my book! Ms. Gregoire just gave me the thumbs-up.” Merri enthusiastically demonstrated this gesture, then turned pink and dropped her hands.
“Well, I’m glad one of us met her approval.” I shut my locker hard and turned to exit the building. “What did you pick?”
She bounced on her toes. “Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman.”
I tilted my head. I didn’t recognize the title, but I was intrigued by it.
“It’s by Mary Wollstonecraft—the mother of your Mary. I did some preliminary research during media class. I know you’re anti-dating—”
“I’m not allowed to date.” It was in bold print on the list of things my parents forbade, cross-referenced with studies about the connections between adolescent romantic relationships and lowered achievements and self-esteem. “Also, I’m not interested. Especially not in your teacher-matchmaker theories.”
“Like I said—you’re not feeling the romance-novel angle. And you’re probably miffed Ms. Gregoire pushed back against your pick—but now we’re like a literary family. Mother-daughter book club.”
I froze on the path outside the humanities building. Sometimes I felt like everything inside me was calcified—figuratively, of course—and that my emotions were fossilized from disuse, or of an entirely different chemical makeup than Merri’s effusions or Rory’s transparent hurts and barbs. But then Merri would do something so thoughtful it made me feel like the muscle fibers of my heart had melted and were going to leak out my eyes. If I let her, she’d hug me. If she hugged me, I’d cry.
“Merri, I want you to choose a novel you’d like to read.”
“I did.” She shrugged. “It’s done.”
But she hadn’t. She’d chosen me—over kissing scenes and her favorite teacher. I sniffled, trying to cover the sound by crunching my boot on a piece of ice.
She swung her satchel so it bumped against my legs. “Team Eliza,” she said softly. “Till the end.”
“Team Merri,” I whispered back. “Always.”
She whistled. “Now let’s hope we make this quiz bowl team. Well, that I make it. You’re a lock. Fielding told me it’s ridiculously competitive.”
“You’re ridiculously well-read and intelligent,” I reminded her.
“I’m, like, come-up-with-an-answer-at-your-own-pace smart. Or, come-up-with-a-creative-answer-then-convince-everyone-it’s-right smart.” Merri grimaced. “Not buzzer smart. But how fun will buzzers be?”
“You’ll be fine.” I hadn’t thought about buzzers. I hadn’t done much thinking about this, period. Merri had texted me five minutes after she agreed to join: Fielding knows the team captain. We can try out tomorrow after school. And I’d let it go. Let it be a worry for another moment—but that moment was now, and Merri was pushing open the doors to the science building so we could enter the classroom where the team practiced. It was one we knew well: the bio lab where we started each morning.
“What are the rules?” I asked Merri.
“Um, be smart and press the buzzer?” She snorted. “We can still run away and pretend we were kidding.”
“Actually, ‘be smart and press the buzzer’ is a pretty good summary.”
We turned toward the voice, and I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?”
“To be smart and press the buzzer,” Curtis repeated. He was eating an enormous cookie. There were crumbs on the collar of his gray peacoat, and I suppressed the urge to brush them off.
“Well, it’s good to have a dream,” I told him. “Maybe if you’re nice, they’ll let you press the buzzer anyway.”
Merri coughed into her elbow, but Curtis laughed outright. “I’ll cross my fingers you make it. You’d be amusing to have around.”
“No way.” I gaped. “You cannot be on this team.”
He shrugged, his smile not losing any of its intensity or obnoxiousness. Was it normal to have so many teeth? I was tempted to count them but didn’t want him to think I was staring. I wasn’t. “We were mid-Atlantic champs last year.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you the manager or something?”
Curtis threw back his head and laughed. It made me want to lock him out of the bio room or push him down a flight of stairs. Ugh, violence was the lowest form of counterattack. He brought out the worst in me. “Nope. But let’s see if you can manage to unseat me.” He crinkled his nose. “That sounded punnier in my head.”
I blinked at Curtis like we’d never met, and my voice wavered. “Sorry, but . . . Are you really on the team?” He was jokes and grins and calling out non sequiturs that our teachers met with frustrating good humor. He was making disgusting food combinations at the lunch table and daring Lance to eat them.
But worst of all, he was the second person Merri and I had met on our first day at Hero High, and within thirty seconds he’d blatantly ogled me and confirmed my parents’ grim predictions about coeducation, ruining my morning and my hopes for the school.
“Really, truly. I’ve got the team T-shirt and everything,” Curtis said. I realized I was grinding my teeth again. Next time my dentist asked why, I’d send him a picture of the boy who was currently hanging from the classroom doorframe, doing an impromptu pull-up before swinging inside. “Come on. Bartlett has a thing about punctuality.”
Bartlett turned out to be a pale, freckled boy about my height—five seven. He was standing by the lab tables with a folder and a plastic bin of buzzers. He scrutinized us as we walked in, narrowing his eyes as Merri chirped “Hi” and waved her blue sparkly nails.
She was petite with a perky nose and voice. Her dark hair made her large gray eyes pop. Her mouth was small, her chin pointy. Merri hated words like “cute” and “adorable”—but they weren’t inaccurate descriptors. I’d seen far too many people use her appearance and personality as an excuse to underestimate her. They’d do it once. Merri was no pushover.
When Bartlett turned to prejudge me, his dismissal was even more apparent. His eyebrows went up and he gave a silent snort, but he pulled on a smile he probably thought was charming. “Hey, gorgeous, I’m—”
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