Call It What You Want

by Brigid Kemmerer

  I already heard.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rob

  Time for calculus. Let the learning begin.

  I’m actually pretty good at math. I’m good at most of my classes. When Dad was a bigwig—or, really, pretending to be a bigwig, if you want to split hairs—he insisted on it. You can’t brag about your son being at the top of his class if he isn’t actually there. I’m not number one or anything, but I’m in the top twenty-five. I used to be in the top fifty, but that was when I had a social life and money for lacrosse. Now I’ve got nothing to do, so it’s late-night fantasy novels and homework.

  There was a time when I would have mocked a kid like me.

  What’s Nelson doing at this party? Isn’t he supposed to be at home waiting on his acceptance letter from Hogwarts?

  The joke would have been on me. Harry Potter isn’t too bad a read.

  Sometimes I wish I’d gone to a private school. Not because I’m a snob—though I probably was, if I want to get technical. But no: when Dad got caught and our assets were frozen, I would have had to quit a private school. I would have been able to switch to a public school where no one knew me.

  But also no. It’s been public school all the way. Dad wanted people to know we were a part of the community. Not too good for public school, no sir.

  Everyone can be a millionaire! You just have to invest wisely with good ol’ Rob Lachlan Sr.

  Seriously. He had commercials. There are fraud parodies all over YouTube.

  It’s probably a miracle we got to keep our house. That was titled in my mom’s name alone, so it wasn’t seized when everything else was. I don’t know if Dad planned ahead or what, but we weren’t out on the street.

  Mom had to go back to work, though. They fought about that. Before he pulled the trigger.

  I remember the arguments. She screamed that we had a $5,000 painting on the wall, but we didn’t have money for groceries. The bank accounts were frozen. Their credit cards were frozen. He kept assuring her it would all blow over.

  It’s okay, Carolyn. It’s fine. It’s a misunderstanding. Please, honey. You’ll see.

  Oh yeah. We saw. In a spray of red all over the den wall.

  So. Calculus.

  Our teacher’s name is Mrs. Quick. She’s fine. Nothing special. Khakis and T-shirts, olive skin, straight brown hair, rectangular glasses. She might be thirty, she might be forty, I have no idea. She doesn’t take any crap, but she doesn’t give any, either. Some teachers have colorful classrooms with lots of flair and decoration, but hers is sparse, with mostly blank walls, except for a few bulletin boards sporting equations in black and white. Even her desk is neat and orderly, with papers kept in a locked drawer. The only hint of quirk or attitude lies in the clock over the white board: the numbers have been replaced with equations, like the square root of four in place of the two.

  I like her class because everyone shuts up and works. I don’t need to interact.

  And then I realize she’s saying, “… like you to find a partner for a group project that we’ll be working on over the next two weeks. Some work will be done outside the classroom, so you’ll need to be able to meet outside of school.”

  I quickly scan the room. Students are scrambling to change seats and partner up. Outside of my corner, there’s a lot of giggling and fist bumping.

  Maybe there’s an odd number of kids in here, and I’ll be able to do this independently.

  No. Wait. Maybe Mrs. Quick would make me form a trio. That’s worse.

  I look out over the class again. Everyone seems to be settling into partners.

  My breathing quickens. Like in the library, I’ve been sitting here too long spinning my wheels. I need to talk to Mrs. Quick. Maybe she’ll take pity on me.

  Maegan Day is already talking to her. I barely know Maegan, but she’s the only other student not scrambling to pair up. She got into trouble for cheating on the SAT last year, but I don’t know the details. I was buried too deeply in my own family’s mess.

  I know her dad, though. He was the first cop to question us when Mom called nine-one-one.

  Mrs. Quick looks up. “Does everyone have a partner? Maegan needs a partner.”

  The room quiets. No one says anything. Including me.

  I hear someone mutter, “Cheater’s gonna cheat.”

  “I can do the project independently,” Maegan says quickly. She sounds like this is what she’s hoping for. We have that in common.

  Mrs. Quick turns back to her. “I’d like this to be done in teams. Find a group and join them, please. Three will be fine.”

  That means she’ll assign me to a group, too.

  I clear my throat. “I need a partner.”

  I might as well be saying, I need a colonoscopy.

  “Thank you, Rob,” says Mrs. Quick. “Maegan, go ahead.”

  Maegan hesitates, then turns. She returns to her desk and sits down.

  There is an empty desk beside me—because I sit in the farthest back corner of the room. My preferred spot unless a teacher assigns seats. Maegan could have grabbed her things and moved back here.

  But there’s an empty desk beside her, too, because the front row is rarely a favorite.

  I don’t want to move.

  She doesn’t want to move.

  Mrs. Quick doesn’t suffer fools. “Rob, please move beside Maegan so you can start the assignment together.”

  I shove my book into my backpack and shuffle to the front row.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Maegan

  We’ve been sitting here for twenty minutes, listening to Mrs. Quick spell out the details of our assignment, and Rob Lachlan hasn’t even looked at me. It’s bad enough that teachers give me the side-eye. I don’t need it from him, too.

  Cheater’s gonna cheat. I don’t know who said it, but I wonder if it was him. He sure doesn’t look happy to be my partner. His hair is kind of longish on top, and unkempt, hanging into his eyes like his mother needs to remind him to get a haircut. He won’t make eye contact, and we’ve never been friends, so I have no idea what color his eyes are. A few freckles dust his pale cheeks, like the remnants of a summer tan that just won’t let go. He’s wearing a black, long-sleeved Under Armour shirt that clings to his frame.

  His life might suck, and he might have been ejected from his social circles, but he’s still a back-of-the-class jock.

  And I’m still me.

  Mrs. Quick is outlining our project, which actually sounds interesting—choosing objects to drop from different heights and trying to calculate their bounce and trajectory—but I keep covertly studying the boy next to me.

  He’s taking sparse notes. Keeping his eyes on his paper. Looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  When the bell rings, he jams his things into his backpack. Still no acknowledgment that I’m his partner.

  When I got caught cheating, people made this kind of broad assumption that I was going to turn into a total slacker. I didn’t, but I wonder if that’s the problem here.

  “Hey,” I say to him.

  He jerks at the zipper. His head lifts a fraction of an inch. “Hey, what?”

  “I really care about my grades. You can’t slack off on this.”

  His hands go still. His voice turns lethally quiet, and I expect a dig, but instead, he says, “I have an A in this class. Figure out what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

  I follow him out. “Why didn’t you answer Mrs. Quick when she asked about a partner?”

  “What?”

  I can barely hear him over the cacophony of students in the hallway, but I can’t let this go. I need to head the other direction, toward Honors English, but I dog him through the pack of students. “When she asked if anyone still needed a partner, you didn’t say anything.”

  “So what?”

  I want to hear him say it. I want him to admit it. “You knew she was asking for me. If you don’t want to be my partner, just say so.”

  “I don’t want to
be your partner.”

  I stop short in the hallway. He says it so … evenly. Without emotion. Without looking at me. Without even stopping. It’s worse than a dismissive glance. This is a statement of fact.

  I don’t want to be your partner.

  I feel like he’s slugged me in the chest. I can’t move. The worst part is that I asked for it. Literally.

  While I’m standing there trying to recover, he slips between students and vanishes like a ghost.

  At lunch, Rachel and I split a salad in the cafeteria. She and I don’t have any morning classes together, so it’s my first chance to whine about Rob Lachlan.

  “Skip the project,” she says to me. “Refuse to do it.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I stab at the lettuce. “I need this grade. We don’t all have a college fund waiting for us.”

  She jabs at a cherry tomato. “How is that my fault?”

  “Nothing is your fault.” I sigh, irritated, though I can’t really parse out why. Maybe it’s Drew’s comments this morning; maybe it’s Rob’s. I probably shouldn’t be taking it out on her, though.

  “What are we talking about?” Drew swings a leg over the bench on Rachel’s side of the table and drops down beside her. His tray is loaded with two burgers, a bowl of broccoli, a cup of yogurt, and two bags of chips.

  She scoots closer to him until she can rest her head on his shoulder. Drew drops a kiss on the top of her head, then peels the lid off a yogurt and licks the bottom of it.

  They’re adorable. And disgusting.

  Now that she’s snuggled up against him, Rachel’s sobered. “Maegan’s been assigned to work with the class felon.”

  Drew shovels yogurt into his mouth and follows her gaze. “Rob Lachlan?”

  “Yeah.” She’s staring into the far corner of the cafeteria, where Rob is sitting alone at a round table. He’s eating a sandwich from a brown paper bag, a thick paperback cracked open on the table in front of him. He didn’t strike me as a reader, but he didn’t strike me as a guy who’d be carrying an A in AP Calculus, either. I actually always thought he was the kind of kid whose grades were boosted thanks to his parents’ donations to the school—or maybe his prowess on the lacrosse field.

  “His dad stole seven million dollars,” I say. “Not him.”

  “That we know of,” says Rachel.

  She sounds callous, but about six tables over from Rob sits Owen Goettler, a kid whose single mom never had very much money at all, then lost what little she had left to Rob’s father. He’s got smooth, cream-colored skin that’s blemish-free, which might be enviable if not for the lank brown hair that hangs to his collar. Owen is eating a plain cheese sandwich—what they give to the kids who can’t afford lunch. His entire house could probably fit in Rob’s living room.

  Rob doesn’t have a plate of delicacies in front of him, but he has more than a slice of cheese between two pieces of bread. I feel like they should be forced to switch. Not just food. All of it.

  “Just because they couldn’t prove it doesn’t mean he wasn’t in on it,” agrees Drew.

  Her voice drops. “His dad tried to kill himself.”

  Drew grunts. “To stay out of prison.”

  “Didn’t your dad interrogate him about the suicide? Or his mom?” Rachel screws up her face. “Or … something?”

  I go still. I’d forgotten that. Dad doesn’t bring a lot of work to the family dinner table, but he does unload on Mom. They’re not quiet. Sometimes I eavesdrop.

  He did question Rob about the suicide.

  That poor kid, he said that night. He didn’t deserve to find that.

  My family is a wasp’s nest of tension right now, but finding out your sister is pregnant isn’t anywhere close to finding your father after he tried to shoot himself.

  I pull a notebook from my backpack and tear a sheet free. Then I write down my name and number and fold it up.

  “What are you doing?” says Rachel.

  “I’m giving him my number so we can work out a time to do the project.” I sigh. “It doesn’t matter what he did or what his dad did. I feel like half the teachers in this school are waiting for me to screw up again. It’ll be fine. It’s math.”

  Rob doesn’t look up when I approach. His eyes stay locked on his book, though there’s no way he can’t see me standing in front of the table.

  I’m tempted to fling the piece of paper at him.

  I don’t. I slide it next to his book. “Here’s my number,” I say. “Text me when you want to meet. We can go to your house if you want—”

  “I don’t.” He starts crumpling up his trash and shoving it in the brown paper bag. “We can go to yours.”

  My house features a surly sister who pukes 24-7. No, thank you. “I don’t want to go to my house, either.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” He finally looks at me, his eyes full of censure, as if I’m the one being difficult. He stuffs the paper with my number on it into his backpack. “We can go to Wegmans and drop stuff from the second floor. I don’t care.”

  He’s so hostile. I hesitate, replaying our entire interaction as if I’m somehow missing something. “Look—I know—I know I got into some trouble last spring, but I’m not a cheater. I really do want a good grade. If you have an issue with me, ask Mrs. Quick if you can trade.” I pause. “Or I will.”

  He stands and slings his backpack over his shoulder. His voice is low and rough. “I don’t have an issue with you. If you want to trade partners, go ahead.”

  I’m either losing my mind or this is the slickest gaslighting ever. “After class, you literally said you don’t want to be my partner.”

  He hesitates. His eyes flick upward. He’s replaying his words. Then he shakes his head. “I didn’t mean you.”

  “You—what—”

  “I didn’t mean you. I meant I don’t want to be partners with anyone.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that.

  Rob must decide I’m done talking. He steps away from the table and tosses his trash into the wastebasket. “So, if you want a new partner, go for it.”

  I open my mouth. Close it.

  And once again, he disappears before I have a clue what I want to say.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rob

  A year ago, I’d buy whatever I wanted for lunch. I didn’t even have to carry cash: I had an automatically reloading account, so I could buy anything the cafeteria offered without even thinking about it.

  Today, I’m debating whether I want to waste a dollar twenty-five on a bottle of water, or if I should risk the germ-infested water fountain for the rest of the day. There’s a five-dollar bill in my wallet, but those don’t grow on trees anymore, and I hate taking money from Mom. I hate spending money where anyone can see me. Whether I earn it myself or get it from my mother, I always wonder if people are thinking I’m spending stolen cash.

  I mean, I was. Once. For so long. I didn’t know it, but I was doing it.

  But today, I forgot to pack a drink with my lunch, and I’m thirsty.

  I grab a bottle from the case by the registers and shuffle into the line. I pull my phone out of my backpack and play a brainless game so I don’t need to make eye contact with anyone. We move in tiny increments, shifting forward with each beep of the register.

  “Oh, hey, Rob. Want me to get that for you?”

  I know the voice. I snap my head up.

  Somehow I’ve ended up behind Connor. So much for trying to keep my head down.

  You’d think his offer was genuine. Warm, even.

  It’s not. He’s being an asshole.

  “No,” I say flatly. I have no problem meeting his eyes. His father is the one who turned mine in. Hard to have good memories of your best friend’s dad when you know he’s part of the reason your own dad needs to be fed through a tube.

  Connor pulls a twenty out of his wallet. His expression is even, and his voice gives away nothing. “You sure? I’ve got plenty.”

  He wants to goad me into a fight. It’s
tempting, especially because adrenaline is pumping through me. I could put my hands against his chest and give him a good shove. Send him to the ground. Grapple it out. Draw some blood. It would be nice to put all this anger somewhere. Especially since Connor has been begging for it.

  But there’s another part of me that doesn’t want to hurt him. There’s a part of me that wants his words to be real.

  No. It’s worse than that. There’s a part of me that misses him.

  I hate that part of me.

  When we were fourteen, we had these dirt bikes, and we’d go tearing through the back woods of Herald Harbor. The area gets a lot of rain, and it was always muddy. Once we misjudged a stream crossing, and Connor’s wheels got stuck in the mud. He went flying. Sprained his ankle and broke his arm. Compound fracture. The bone came right through the skin. It was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

  Well. Until last February.

  But then, it was. He threw up all over himself. Couldn’t stop crying and puking.

  My cell phone wouldn’t find a signal. I remember Connor digging his fingers into my forearm until his nails broke the skin. He was pale and shaking. “Please don’t leave me here, Rob. Please don’t leave me.”

  I didn’t leave him. I dragged him half a mile until we got a signal.

  I thought about that moment a lot after I found my father. After the cops and paramedics were gone, and my house smelled like blood and vomit. How I called Connor, knowing his family hated my family but having no one else to talk to.

  He didn’t answer the phone.

  I left a sobbing message on his voice mail.

  He never called me back.

  Now he’s standing in front of me, giving me a hard time about a stupid bottle of water, while his tray is packed with food.

  Maybe I don’t miss him at all.

  I make my eyes hard. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure.” He smirks and turns away, shoving his wallet into his back pocket.

  He must not have tucked the cash in all the way, because a ten-dollar bill catches on the edge of his pocket and flutters to the ground, landing right in front of the toe of my sneaker.