Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science)

by Brianna R. Shrum

  Also by Brianna R. Shrum

  Never Never

  How to Make Out

  The Art of French Kissing

  Copyright © 2019 Brianna R. Shrum

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

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  This product conforms to CPSIA 2008

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Cover photo credit iStock

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-4940-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4373-1

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For every one of you who has ever believed you are playing a supporting role in your own life. You are the main character.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hypothesis (n.): A prediction or claim based on observed evidence, which warrants future testing

  Example: If high school is a microcosm of the world, then I am doomed to fail at every venture I give a single crap about until the day I die.

  Supporting Evidence: E V E R Y T H I N G.

  The first thing Ezra Holtz says to me this morning is, “How did you even get into this class?”

  Of course he does. Everyone else in this classroom is pairing up, no complaints. The perfect little AP students. But not Ezra.

  Not when he’s been condemned to me.

  I roll my eyes and look down at my nails, chipping gray polish on one hand, peeling black on the other. I’m instantly pissed, but not like it’s a surprise, coming from him. Ezra and I have gone to the same synagogue since we were kids, and he’s never exactly been relaxed and humble. Still, 7:45 a.m. is too early for this.

  Honestly, it’s too early for Ezra.

  I keep my eyes on my fingers when I say, “Same way you did, Holtz.”

  I see his jaw tighten out of the corner of my eye, see his long fingers tap against his forearms. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Alright,” I say. “I blackmailed my way in. I begged. I paid a counselor fifty bucks to please, please allow me the honor of attending AP psychology this semester, god, I’ll do anything.”

  He blows out a breath through his nose, which he only does when he’s really, really frustrated. I don’t even try not to smile.

  “Honestly, man, sit down,” I say, kicking the chair next to me.

  Ezra glances up toward the front of the classroom, like maybe if he catches Mr. Yeun’s eye, he will relieve Ezra from this nightmare. Then, when he isn’t even granted a half-second of eye contact, he sits. Really, he sinks. Into a perfect straight-backed ninety degree with his lap. He sighs and finally deigns to look me in the eye. “Look, Amalia, this grade is important to me. Crucially, critically—”

  “Redundantly importantly. I get it.”

  He blinks.

  “I, uh—”

  I wait.

  He says, “I don’t dislike you or something. It’s just that I need this.”

  He needs this. Like I don’t?

  “Maybe . . .” He glances around, because what he is about to say is definitely going to be irritating enough that he doesn’t want anyone else to hear. “Maybe it would be best if you let me take point on the project.”

  I smile as sweetly as I can manage. It’s a smile I’ve honed over the years, just for him. I say, “Not a chance.”

  He glances up at the ceiling tiles and smooths his hand down his dark green button-down. A button-down. In the twelfth grade.

  This is a public school.

  It would have the potential to be charming if the head and body attached to it weren’t constantly adjusting their glasses so that they could properly look down at everyone in visual range.

  Ezra says, “Fine. But if you aren’t pulling your weight, I’m not letting my chances at valedictorian falter because of it.”

  “I don’t even know what that means. Is that a threat?”

  His lips thin. And he says, “Yes.”

  My mouth turns up. “Get better at that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If someone has to ask if it’s a threat, well, it’s not very threatening, is it?”

  “Amalia.”

  “Holtz.”

  “I’m just saying that if you’re going to work with me, you work.”

  I do nothing to disguise the irritation that flashes across my face.

  I don’t think I’ve ever had to speak with him on my own for this long. Usually after five minutes of being forced together in temple, one of us has made some excuse to go to the bathroom or find a roaming-the-halls sibling or ask a pressing question of the rabbi. We’ve both spent an inordinate amount of time asking ridiculous questions of the poor guy to avoid each other without either of our parents suspecting we’re being assholes about it. My mom must think I am the most religiously curious kid in the world. That I actually wanted to know if it would be possible for a vampire to keep kosher. I do wind up thinking about these things an awful lot, but it’s for the excuses file, more than anything. So what I’m saying is, generally, one of us has found the means to escape conversation by this point. I’ve never quite tested it for this long. My reserves are running thin.

  I say, “My turn, then.”

  “For what?”

  “To tell you that if you’re going to work with me, you can work with me. Maybe I care about this class, too. Yeah, I know, scrape your jaw off the floor.”

  Ezra swallows and glances down at the desk, at the other pairs of kids who are talking, actively, planning everything out. He can’t stand being behind.

  We’re paired on a project that will span an entire quarter—a psychology study we formulate and test and then finally we write an essay and give a presentation about the conclusions we found. It’s a huge part of the overall class grade, so I get
why he’s sweating.

  But I’m sweating, too.

  I push my blonde-brown tangle of curly hair behind my shoulders and say, “I need this grade just as much as you do.”

  He raises a dark brown eyebrow. “Do you?”

  “Yes. I’m not gonna entrust you with my grade any more than you’ll trust me with yours.”

  He snorts and, I swear, I am this close to climbing over my desk and squeezing his arrogant throat.

  “I swear to god, Holtz,” is what I say instead, but if he so much as ticks a lip, I’m going to do it.

  He says, “Okay. No, of course. I just thought maybe you’d rather—anyway. I’m sorry. Let’s do this together.” He has to say, “Obviously,” through his teeth.

  I dig my notebook out of the black hole that is my backpack and something twitches in that sharp jaw of his when he glances at it.

  But I open it, manage to find an unmarred page, and we get started.

  After the last bell, I duck into the closest bathroom and shrug out of my plaid overshirt and ripped skinnies and into shorts and a T-shirt. Items of clothing that don’t smell like smoke from lunch.

  Then, I head to the counselor’s office. Ezra and I basically have nothing to go off of. All his ideas are the most boring, paint-by-numbers shit. Surveying kids about their testing habits. Having a group of adults take a self-analysis, then compare those with their political preferences in order to predict political affiliation by personality type. Stuff that’s literally making me drowsy just thinking about it.

  He shut down basically all my ideas, on account of them not being quantifiable enough or being too invasive. Testing people’s personal bubbles and breaking it down by demographic, measuring emotion based on viewing different kinds of art, listening to music.

  Every other human I saw leaving the class had a list by the end.

  We? Have an 8x11’s worth of illegible ink. Everything’s been crossed out.

  I let out an aggrieved sigh and push open Mr. Ilyas’s door.

  “Amalia!”

  I smile and set down my backpack.

  “You’re early.”

  “I’m on time,” I say, glancing behind me at the clock which reads 2:59.

  “Like I said,” he says with a little smile, “early.”

  I think I have developed . . . something of a reputation. Which was not necessarily intentional, but it’s not like it was entirely unintentional either.

  It’s not as though you can cut class that many times, hang out at smoker’s corner (with weed or otherwise) that many lunch periods, and flee from that many parties the second before the cops show up and not know what people are going to think of you.

  “So,” he says.

  “So.”

  “I’m looking over your grades and your planned classes, and honestly, Amalia, if we’re going to bump this up, it’s . . . well, you’re going to have to drastically change some things.”

  I swallow hard. “I—yeah. Yeah I know. But I can do this, I swear I can.”

  “It’s my job to help you succeed. I don’t want to give you all these transfers to advanced classes and find that I’ve thrown you into the deep end of the pool and you can’t swim.”

  “I can swim, Mr. Ilyas. I can swim. I mean . . . I can do the work.”

  He levels a look at me.

  Neither of us says what we both know: that my failure as a student is entirely on me.

  I screwed around for three years, threw my entire life into art, all of my dreams into art school, and when it came down to it, I wasn’t good enough. Every school I applied to shot me down. I didn’t even have freaking backups, I was so certain.

  “What are your academic plans following high school?” he says.

  My mouth is dry and my palms start to sweat. Nothing is more terrifying than that question. I am afraid that I screwed up my entire high school career. Wanting to be an artist. Knowing I could. Showing up late to math and lit and ditching out during physics and just skating through these difficult classes like they didn’t matter, because who cared?

  I tried in my art classes. I worked my ass off in every last one of them.

  Here’s the thing.

  I am smart. I know I’m smart. Smart enough I was put into all this gifted shit as a little kid, and it stayed that way through middle school, and it’s not like these classes in high school have been hard.

  But how these other AP kids and future valedictorians find it in their souls to put in two hours of homework a night when it’s not like it matters—it’s not like they’re gonna fail the test even if they don’t study—is beyond me.

  I knock every test out of the park.

  Even in the classes I barely show up to.

  I just—why was I supposed to care? About the other boring crap—homework and class participation and puzzling out the meaning of all the metaphors in “The Lottery”? I was going to art school.

  I blink down at Mr. Ilyas’s laminate desk.

  I am not going to art school.

  Here’s the irony of it: if I’d participated in class—shown up, even—if I’d just literally ever done my homework . . . If I’d, as a result, had good enough grades to go along with those less-than-prodigy-level art pieces I applied with, they might have been enough to bump me up. Grant me provisional admittance or something.

  Ilyas and my parents and my siblings—well, just Kaylee, really—have even reminded me of this. I know. But I can’t turn back time.

  And the situation is this: I can’t go to art school. I’m in the running for Most Artistic this year and I can’t go.

  So I have to do something else.

  “Mr. Ilyas,” I say, “please, please just believe in me. Swap out English and chemistry for AP. Look at my test grades again; I can hack it. If I can’t, you can roll me back into something else at midterms. But I can’t do what I—” I choke. “What I wanted to do, and so I have to have the opportunity to be something else.”

  Mr. Ilyas looks down at my test scores, all laid out in front of him.

  He rubs his forehead, cleans his glasses.

  He says, “I’m going to do this for you. But you will show me that you can handle it. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” I say on a desperate breath. “Thank you.”

  I’m grateful for the opportunity to work my ass off my entire senior year, so I can fix my grades and get into a good program that is not art, somewhere that is not here.

  I almost laugh when I leave.

  There’s this ball of anxiety in my chest, comingled with hope and appreciation and . . . I don’t even know for what.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Observation: An organism is designed for its particular habitat. To survive and contribute to its ecosystem. If you move a fish from water to land, that fish will die. Take a sled dog out of the tundra and drop him into Ecuador, he may survive, but he’s not going to look pretty when he gets there. In other words: Change is the enemy.

  Ezra texts me the second I get home. Probably just got out of math league or academic decathlon or debate or . . . who knows what Smart Thing That Overachievers Do.

  Ezra: What about something in video games?

  I cock my head.

  Amalia: You have my attention.

  Ezra: We could have people chart the hours they play.

  Three little dots that show he’s typing a second message.

  I write back before he can finish.

  Amalia: Charting hours. How on earth have you managed to make VIDEO GAMES boring

  He stops typing.

  Starts again.

  Stops.

  Amalia: Let’s recreate the Stanford Prison Experiment.

  Ezra: Haha.

  Ezra: You are hilarious.

  I can hear the deadpan through the screen.

  Ezra: I’m not trying to be boring. I’m trying to nail a surefire thing.

  I sigh. It is aggrieved. It is long, long suffering.

  Amalia: Listen, I’m exhausted. Are you gonna
be at shul tomorrow night?

  Ezra: I can be.

  Amalia: Let’s just meet up after.

  No response.

  After five minutes, I send:

  Amalia: A single day without preparation isn’t gonna kill you.

  Five more minutes later:

  Ezra: Fine.

  I smirk. Getting under his skin has always been at least a little satisfying.

  My big brother hops up behind me on the couch and says, “Boyfriend?” He waggles his wildly unkempt eyebrows.

  “Ugh. No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Also no.”

  “Anyfriend?” He hops over the back of it and plants his butt on the cushion beside me. I have to move my feet so he doesn’t crush them.

  “Ezra Holtz.”

  “Ezra Holtz? Why the hell.”

  “He’s not that bad.”

  He laughs out a disbelieving, “Okay,” just as my little sister says, “I like Ezra.”

  “Of course you do, nerd,” says Ben.

  She wrinkles her nose. “One of us around here has to be.”

  “Well,” says Ben, “Amalia’s at least half-nerd.”

  I purse my lips and catch Kaylee’s eye. She shoots me back a grin. There is a particular kind of constant conspiracy that only sisters really get. She’s three years younger than I am and a total Hermione Granger—different than me in basically every way. Smooth hair where mine is wild (and I like it that way). Light brown eyeliner if any, where mine is smoky and black. She lives and dies by the CW and history documentaries, and if I’m watching TV at all, it’s music biopics and the kind of violent, weird nature stuff that they only air at 2 a.m. We’re different. But she gets it.

  I glance back down at my phone when Ben and Kaylee start in on each other about who’s supposed to do the dishes next and how Ben feels like ever since he graduated high school but stayed at home, he’s been saddled with extra chores and why should he be punished for being fiscally responsible.

  Ezra’s fine blinks up at me.

  I can hear him sighing, see that little glasses adjustment that says he’s disappointed, but not enough to verbalize it.