Chapter 97 Chapter 97

Chapter 97 Chapter 97


By morning the whole school has an opinion about my love life, which is impressive, because I do not currently have one.

I get to homeroom and three people I have never spoken to in my life nod at me like we are in a war together. A junior named Dara stops me in the hallway just to say, I am rooting for you, and I have no idea if she means the game on Saturday or the thing Weeknight Confessional invented.

Priya finds me at my locker holding her phone like evidence. There is a betting pool, she says. An actual betting pool. People are putting in five dollars on whether you and Callum end up together by winter formal.

I did not agree to be a group project, I say.

Too late, she says. You are the group project.

I spend first period trying not to think about it, which mostly means I think about it constantly. By the time I get to chemistry, I have decided the only sane response is to act like nothing happened. I sit down. I take out my notebook. I do not look at the seat two rows over where Callum Bristow is currently being handed compliments by two boys who look like they iron their hoodies.

Mr. Okafor, no relation, just a very confusing coincidence of surnames, starts the lesson on molarity, and for six whole minutes I almost forget I am famous for the wrong reasons.

Then a note lands on my desk. Not digital. Actual paper, folded into a triangle like something out of an eighties movie, which should have been my first warning that whoever wrote it thinks a lot of himself.

I open it. Enjoying the attention, scholarship girl.

I do not turn around. I write back, immensely, thank you for asking, and pass it back over my shoulder without looking at him, which I consider a personal achievement in dignity.

He does not send anything back. I tell myself that is a win.

At lunch Priya drags me to the back table where our team usually sits, and I am halfway through my tray when I notice Callum standing near the doorway with his own group, and instead of walking past like usual, he actually looks at our table. At me, specifically, for exactly one second longer than a normal glance requires.

He is doing that on purpose, Priya says without even looking up from her fries. He knows people are watching him watch you.

Or he is checking if I choked on something, I say. Wishful thinking on his part.

Priya gives me the look she gives me when she thinks I am lying to myself, which I hate, mostly because she is usually right.

After school, I take the late bus because Ma cannot pick me up on Tuesdays, and I end up walking the last stretch home past the Bristow rink, past the donor wall, past the security guard who knows my face by now and still checks my scholarship badge like it might have expired since yesterday.

My phone buzzes. Unknown number.

Nice comeback in chemistry.

My stomach does the drop and flip thing again, because there is only one person who could have seen that note, and it was not supposed to leave the room.

Who is this, I text back.

Three dots appear, disappear, appear again.

A fan, comes the reply.

I stare at it in the middle of the sidewalk long enough that a woman walking her dog gives me a concerned look. I do not know if this is Callum being weird, or someone else entirely, or possibly Weeknight Confessional deciding I need a personal follow up to the public humiliation. Ashford does not do subtlety. It does theater.

I do not respond. I put my phone away and walk the rest of the way home, past the bakery that smells like other people's good afternoons, past the bus stop where rich kids wait for cars that are nicer than our apartment.

Ma is home early for once, standing over a pot of afang soup that makes the whole hallway smell like the inside of her childhood, and for a second none of it matters, not the wall, not the badge, not the boy, not the account that apparently thinks my life is content.

How was hockey, she asks.

Fine, I say, because some things you do not explain to your mother while she is stirring soup. Some things you just carry until you know what to do with them.

Upstairs, alone, I open my notes app again. The kill list is still there, deleted lines and all. I add one entry.

Number one. Whoever is texting me from an unknown number.

Then, after a second, I add a smaller line underneath it, the kind I would never say out loud to Priya.

Number two, maybe, possibly. Callum Bristow, for making today interesting instead of unbearable.

I delete that one immediately. Some confessions are not ready for Tuesday.