Quinn messes her hair around while staring at her textbook. I let her work silently for a while, and even get out my statistics assignment so that I’m not staring at her. But I glance up every so often to make sure she’s loosened up somewhat.
“OK,” Quinn says, finally. “Can you check this over? And clear the way for me to go run into traffic if I still screwed it all up?”
“There’s not exactly a lot of traffic out here,” I say, which makes her laugh. And, miraculously, her work is mostly right, and I feel a little smug that I figured out her problem so easily. Though, seriously, tutoring is not going to make my senior year any bigger or better than it currently is.
“Are you leaving now?” Quinn asks, as she gathers up her things. “Kat and I were going to take a walk as soon as it gets dark to check out all the houses that go really overboard putting up Christmas lights. I’m making hot cocoa.”
“That sounds like a couple thing,” I say. “But have fun.”
“It’s really not. Join us. I’m great at cocoa.”
I shake my head. “Thanks, though.”
She slings her backpack over her shoulder and pulls a baseball cap onto her head. Hats aren’t allowed at school but I guess after-school tutoring sessions have fewer rules. “Thanks for your help, James.”
“Well, I have to,” I say. “Tutoring lab.”
She nods, and her expression is as if she’s seeing something for the first time. I hope that she’s internalizing something about sports and calculus and believing in yourself, but the truth is that I rarely can guess what’s going on in someone else’s head.
Dad’s in the kitchen when I get home, with a pot or pan on every burner on the stovetop. “James! I’m glad you’re here. Can you start chopping the tomatoes?”
“Is someone coming over?”
“Who’d be coming over?” He chuckles. “No, I just thought it’d been too long since we had a good meal. Just because your mom’s taken off doesn’t mean we can’t eat how we’re supposed to, right?”
I’m honestly not sure, but I like seeing Dad in this state of cooking frenzy again. So I chop tomatoes and handle as much of the rest of the salad as he’ll allow. We debate how much fresh mint to use, even though I know that it’s not really up to me.
“So . . . how’re you doing, kiddo?” he asks once we’re at the table eating beef bourguignon with garlic chive potatoes. It’s nice to pretend for even a moment that it’s a few months ago, and Mom’s working late or out with one of her friends. But it comes right back, how maybe working late or out with a friend were all probably code words for Todd.
“Fine,” I say.
“You don’t have to be,” Dad says. “I’m sure not. If you want to talk to someone—”
“Like a therapist?” I ask.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“I definitely don’t need a therapist,” I say. “I just need this year to be over, and to be away at school.”
“There’s no shame in it,” he says. “I’m seeing one. It’s probably the only thing keeping me tethered to sanity right now.”
“Dad, don’t joke around like that.”
“I’m so proud of you,” he says, in a voice bursting with earnestness and, maybe, held-in tears.
“Dad.” I try to convey that this line of conversation is over, and not only because I might not be great at raw earnestness. Why be proud of someone who couldn’t even get the application in to her dream school in time? Why be proud of someone who isn’t even sure she has a dream school anymore?
“You always cook great dinners,” I finally say. “And there’s no new reason to be proud of me.”
He opens his mouth as if he’s about to argue, but then it’s as if he thinks better of it. So I concentrate on eating and then escape to my room. Kat’s posted a million photos of Christmas lights and overly decked-out houses to her Instagram, and even though I don’t follow Quinn, I check hers to find more of the same, plus a selfie of her, Kat, Raina, Gretchen, and a few of their other friends I don’t know as well. I guess it wasn’t a couple thing, but it doesn’t matter now, and it’s not like I’m looking forward to Christmas this year anyway. I can’t imagine looking forward to one again, now that I have no idea what my life’s going to be like and that there’s the huge possibility I’ve already veered too far off course to recover.
Ms. Malkasian has me paged into her office the next week. I wonder if my project request came off to her as more urgent than it actually is. Or should it be urgent? It’s hard to know objectively how urgent your own life is.
“I don’t think tutoring is for me,” I say, before I’ve even sat down. “It’s not broadening my world. It’s literally in my own school with the same people I have to see every day helping with the same homework I’m getting.”
“That’s absolutely fine,” she says. “I did put together some other ideas for you.”
She’s printed out a bunch of websites, which seems like a waste of paper, but I flip through them. Reading to kids, talking to the elderly, handing out fliers for various causes, collecting canned food, collecting used backpacks, collecting reclaimed water, and so on.
“Could I do all of it?” I ask.
Ms. Malkasian cocks her head at me and raises an eyebrow. “All of it?”
“Yeah, all of it.”
“OK,” Ms. Malkasian says. “Well, this will still certainly look good to any schools you plan on applying to.”
I sigh. “Why can’t I just want to do something good? Why does it have to be about college? Why is everything about college now?”
She lets out a heavy sigh but promises to help me coordinate with the organizations’ leaders. I think about how excited I was to be a senior, and it’s strange just how much everyone wants you to worry about next year instead. Yes, I personally would love this year to be over, but my bad year isn’t what most seniors are going through. I don’t understand why we’re so encouraged to stop living in the moment.
Gabriel’s in the hallway when I walk out of the guidance center, and I give him a little wave.
“Oh, hi,” says a tiny girl who somehow pops up in between us. I assume she’s a freshman because she barely looks old enough to be here. “Sorry to bother you.”
“There are stairwells at both ends of the hallway,” I tell her, because for some reason no freshman class has ever figured this out and they always clog the one at the north end of the building.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to ask that, but—well, I didn’t actually know.” She laughs in what I guess is a nervous manner, and then I know what’s actually coming. “Are you friends with Kat Rydell?”
I nod, as Gabriel watches me with a smirk somehow all the way across his face.
“She’s just . . . really cool. Her and that girl are so cute together.” The girl waves and walks away down the hallway toward the north stairwell, as Gabriel laughs.
“Hey,” he says. “Is that a thing?”
“You have no idea.”