Chapter 4
On the day of the last exam, Alex walked me over the way he always did.
He stood at the school gate in a white T-shirt with his hair blown around by the wind.
He reached out and fixed my bangs, his touch light, his fingertips cool across my forehead.
He said, "Sophie, once this one's done, it's over."
I replied, "Yeah."
"Have you ever thought about what we would do if we didn't get into the same school?"
I looked into his eyes. There was a seriousness in them I had never seen. It wasn't an idle question. He was actually worried.
"That won't happen," I said. "Our scores are close. We'll end up at the same place."
He said, "What if we don't?"
"Then I'll apply to yours."
He stopped short. "You've wanted Stirling your whole life."
I smiled, "I have. But Stirling wouldn't mean much without you there."
Something in his expression shifted. It was small. His mouth moved, his eyes flickered, as if I had hit something, and then he pushed it back down.
He looked down, straightened my backpack strap, and said, "Come on, you'll be late."
I turned and walked away. The sun behind me was fierce, and the back of my neck burned.
I didn't look back, because anything else I said would have left him too guilty to keep the act going.
Stirling had been my dream since I was small, and Alex knew it.
He knew exactly what I had given up for it.
And on the pens, he still stood with Madison.
It wasn't that I wasn't good enough. It was that Madison's parents had told her she had to be the top scorer in the city.
It wasn't that I didn't matter. On his scale, Madison came out a little heavier.
Only a little. But in love, a little was all of it.
When I came out after the last exam, Madison was waiting at the gate.
She wore a floral dress, her hair in a ponytail, and held two smoothies. She ran over the second she saw me.
She said, "Sophie. It's finally over."
She handed me my favorite, a strawberry with light sugar, no ice, and an extra scoop of fruit at the bottom.
Madison always remembered what I liked and never got it wrong.
I took the cup, pushed the straw in, and drank.
It was sweet and cold, and the fruit at the bottom was soft.
Madison said, "Alex says he's taking us to dinner tonight to celebrate getting out."
She linked her arm through mine and rested her chin on my shoulder. "Just the three of us. Nobody else."
"Sure," I said.
She smiled, her eyes curving. I had seen that smile more times than I could count, and every time it had looked sincere. That time, it looked like an answer.
Every answer I had refused to believe and refused to admit was written in those curved eyes, in the lift at the corner of her mouth, in the easy, guiltless way she hooked her arm through mine.
She had it all lined up.
She was ready for the scores to come out, ready for the news that Sophie Grant had failed to run through the whole complex, ready for me to fall out of the sky so she could step into my place as Alex's girlfriend.
She even had the line ready. "Sophie is repeating the year and doesn't want to see anybody. Alex is the one who got me through it."
What a clean little script. Too bad I wasn't going to let her run it.
*****
Three days after the exam, Layla put together a class dinner.
It was called a dinner, but it was really everyone finding a reason to sit around, drink, and talk big.
We ended up at a barbecue place near school, at two tables, one for the drinkers and one for everyone else.
Alex and Madison sat at the drinking table.
I sat at the other one with Layla next to me, and she poured me a glass of iced tea.
"Sophie, did you work out your score?" Layla asked.
I said, "I did."
"How much?"
"Over 1400."
Layla's eyes went wide, and she nearly dropped her fork. "Are you crazy?"
I couldn't help laughing. When I stopped, I drank some iced tea and looked across at the other table.
Madison was lifting a beer to her mouth when Alex reached over, caught her wrist, and set the glass back on the table.
He said, "Last time you got drunk and went off, I'm the one who carried you home."
His voice was low, but from where I sat, I could hear all of it.
Madison went red and pushed the glass away.
She whispered, "I was having fun."
I set my glass down. "When did the two of you start going out drinking?"
The air went quiet. Madison's smile froze, and Alex's hand stopped in midair.
Both of them changed at the same second, like somebody had hit pause. Madison looked down and stirred the sauce in her bowl, and Alex drank without looking at me.
"It was the night the school lost power." Madison spoke slowly. "School was closed, and a few of us who hadn't gone home went out for drinks. Alex got dragged along."
When she finished, she shot me a fast look and dropped her eyes again.
There was testing in that look, and nerves, and the guilt of somebody wondering whether she had said too much.
The night the school lost power.