Make It Count

by Megan Erickson

  She opened her mouth, but he was done. “I gotta go.” He brushed past her and shoved the door open, slamming it back on its hinges.

  Fuck. And now he needed another run.

  Chapter Three

  KAT SAT AT a table in the library, her statistics syllabus in front of her, along with her student planner. With a blue marker, she highlighted each test and quiz date on her syllabus, then marked down the corresponding date in her planner as a test day in blue pen. A pink highlighter showed her paper due dates, matching the pink pen marks in her planner.

  She’d never understood her friends and roommates who made jokes about pulling all-nighters to cram for a test or crank out a fifteen-page paper in one day. She needed this organization and planning, she thought, as she noted on her planner the dates she’d need to start her papers—breaking it down into when she’d complete her research, outline and type up her first draft.

  Same went for studying—when she’d go over her notes and make flash cards.

  Her parents had moved from São Paulo, Brazil, when she was three and her brother, Marcelo, seven. School had always been rough for her, but in sixth grade, it had come close to unbearable. She’d no longer been able to hide how poorly she could read when forced to read out loud or how numbers were never as they appeared to everyone else. Kat-land bloomed, the magical place in her head where she retreated when everything around her didn’t make sense. She’d been on the verge of giving up, to wallow in the D-list for the rest of her life.

  But her guardian angel came in the form of her teacher, Mrs. Ross, the first teacher to see she wasn’t a lazy student.

  Mrs. Ross had been the one to show her how to her break down her assignments into steps, how to plan ahead and become rigidly organized.

  In high school, she managed to squeak by, encouraging smitten boys to help with—er . . . more like do—her homework.

  But college was harder. There weren’t any smitten boys who were happy with a smile and some attention. In college, she was one pretty girl among many.

  As far as the SATs, she’d never worked harder in her life. Outlines, flash cards, note cards covered her bedroom floor. She lived and breathed SAT-prep for two years. And still the test stumped her, the words on the page shifting in front of her. Her score was barely high enough for Bowler’s minimum requirement. She’d hoped once she got to campus, she could start over. But sometimes she felt like that low SAT score was stamped on her forehead and everyone was whispering behind her back, telling their friends how she didn’t belong.

  When she was feeling low, she resented the extra work she had to do compared to other students. But no one wanted to join her pity party, so she kept her thoughts to herself and plastered on the smile.

  She sighed and checked the clock on the wall above the FICTION shelf D–F and snorted to herself. Lovely reminder of her current grade situation.

  Her advisor had agreed to assign her another tutor, although he all but threatened she get along with this one or she’d be on her own.

  She focused back on her syllabus, drawing her name at the top in colorful bubble letters, when someone dropped a bag on the table in front of her. “Hey, Kat.”

  She looked up, into Alec’s eyes. You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “Hey,” she said with forced politeness.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re really making this a thing. Studying and all.”

  She rolled her eyes and hoped he didn’t know this was a designated tutor-student table. “Yep, just studying.”

  He sank into a chair and propped his folded hands on the table. “Oh yeah? What’s the password today?”

  “Redrum.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Okay, Jack Nicholson, good for you. But I need this table.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “No, I need this table.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m meeting someone, and this was our prearranged spot.”

  He paused for a moment and then his eyes widened. She watched in horror as his face lit up with recognition. “Are you waiting for a tutor?”

  Oh no. Oh no no no. She would not be tutored by smug Alec SuperBrain Stone. The last thing he needed was more ammunition to make fun of her.

  Kat moved haltingly, gathering her papers in such a rush a pen went skittering across the table. She’d sacrifice her carefully color-matched pens to the library gods if it meant getting out of there as quick as possible. Alec picked it up from where it had landed on a chair. He handed it to her as she rose from her seat. She didn’t look at him. “I’ll . . . uh . . . let you have the table—”

  “Kat—”

  “Oh my! I didn’t realize the time. My . . . meeting . . . person . . . didn’t show up I guess, so—”

  “Kat—”

  “Have fun with your . . . table . . . or whatever—”

  “Kat!” he shouted, earning him some pointed stares.

  She finally looked at him, cursing her brain ten thousand ways for needing a flipping tutor. For not easily being able to do what it seemed everyone else on campus could.

  He pointed to her seat. “So, statistics, right?”

  She rolled her jaw and kneaded her fingers into the strap of her bag. He was her last shot at passing this stupid class she needed as her math general education requirement. She couldn’t fail out of school, or she would be her parents’ assistant at their financial-planning company for the rest of her life, answering mundane stock questions and ordering the correct variety of flavored K-cups for the office break room.

  “Sit down, Kat.”

  Her body jerked at his words, wanting to run out of the library as fast as she could, but she gave in to gravity and collapsed ungracefully into her chair.

  Alec took a deep breath. “It’s no big deal. You need a tutor. I’m a tutor. And a good one. I actually like statistics.”

  Of course he did.

  “Kat, if you’re really uncomfortable, I’m sure you can find another—”

  “No!” she said a little loudly and then glanced around the library sheepishly.

  “No,” she said, quieter. “This is fine.” She opened her bag and pulled out her notebook and textbook. “So, let’s get this over with.”

  He blinked at her dog-eared statistics book “What happened to it? It looks like it’s been through a war.”

  She eyed the book as if it were a live rattlesnake. “I bought it used. But I tell you what, after this semester, I’m going all Office Space on it. It has no idea what war is.”

  He chuckled, but she glared at him.

  “Okay, so, it’s probably better to start at the beginning to get the concepts down. You wanna show me your notes?”

  She never showed her notes. Her planner might have been color coded, but her attempts at taking notes off a board or from a lecture were a whole other ball game. Because they were an extension of her brain. All jumbled, with words and symbols scribbled into the margins, half-finished thoughts floating off the page. She flipped open her notebook, shoved it at him and then leaned back in her chair, arms over her chest. A glance at the window showed a heavy downpour, and she seriously pondered whether she’d rather be in here with him or out there getting a cold shower.

  Part of her resentment stemmed from her secret desire to be in his chair—the tutor chair. Teach other students who struggled like she did. But that was impossible. How could she help anyone else when she couldn’t help herself?

  Alec cleared his throat. “Uh . . . so, what do you expect here? I’m just going to read your notes at you? I don’t think that’s very effective. You could at least look at me.”

  Kat whipped her head around to look at him. She knew she was being a turd on a stick, but didn’t he realize how much this sucked for her? “You’re the tutor, so . . . tutor.”

  He clenched and unclenched his fists, and his nostrils flared. She definitely didn’t notice how hot he looked all pissed off. “Look, princess, I’m not really sure what you expect here—”

  Did he ju
st— “Did you call me ‘princess’?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Uh, yeah, I did, because right now you’re acting a little entitled.”

  “Entitled?” she hissed.

  “Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

  “Are you going to call me ‘princess’ again?”

  “Okay, how about ‘brat’?”

  “Ugh!” She threw herself back in her chair and looked away from him.

  “ ‘Princess Brat,’ ” he muttered.

  She clenched her jaw, but didn’t say anything.

  “Look, this isn’t going to work if you aren’t an active participant—”

  “Sounds good.” She began gathering her notebook and book again. She’d rather fail. Enough was enough. “I’ll ask for another tutor. No biggie.”

  He smacked his hand down on top of her notebook, and she froze. “No way are you getting out of this.”

  She glared at him, wishing she had superpowers of her own so she could incinerate him on the spot. Or better yet, steal his brain so she didn’t need a tutor. She concentrated really, really hard on stealing his brain, but unfortunately, she wasn’t an intelligence-stealing mutant.

  He sighed. “Look, let’s end this for today. Next session, on Thursday, make a list ahead of time of all the concepts you’re having trouble with and we’ll go over those. Okay?”

  A future of hearing the acronym NASDAQ every day, multiple times a day, with her parents breathing down her neck were the only reasons her mouth opened and she said reluctantly, “Okay. And can we keep this . . . you know . . . between us?”

  The name Max lay unspoken between them.

  Alec nodded. “No problem.”

  Kat wanted to vomit.

  Well, she didn’t want to vomit. Because vomiting was gross, and it was bad for her teeth, but she felt like she was going to vomit.

  Of all the tutors, why did she have to be assigned to Alec? Scrunchie-wearing Ashley looked mighty great right about now.

  Kat walked up the flight of stairs to her suite in McCoy Hall. As a sophomore, she had the option to move out of the dorms and into the on-campus apartments. She shared a bedroom with her friend Tara, and they shared a common room separating them from the other bedroom in the apartment, where their friends Casey and Shanna lived.

  She opened the front door of her suite and stomped her booted feet to get the feeling back into her frozen toes.

  “Hey,” Shanna said from a beanbag chair on the floor, where she was playing some fantasy video game with swords and guys in dented armor and women in cleavage-baring dresses. Kat sometimes wondered if the controller was permanently attached to her hand. It was Kat’s idea for all the roommates to pitch in to buy the beanbag for Shanna for her birthday so she would stop squinting at the TV from the couch.

  “Hey,” Kat mumbled. Shanna gave her a look underneath her dark fringed bangs and nodded in greeting. Kat trudged into her bedroom and threw her book bag onto her bed, then flounced onto the mattress on her back. The toilet flushed and Tara bounced out of the bathroom. “Hey, Kitty-Kat.”

  “Hey, Tare-Bear.” She stared up at the waffled ceiling, thinking it looked a lot like an inverted egg carton. The bed dipped and Tara’s scent, minty from the gum she always chewed, tickled her nose.

  “How was the new tutor?”

  Kat opened her eyes at Tara, her friend since freshman year, when they lived on the same dorm floor and had horrid, shower-averse roommates.

  “Guess who it is.”

  Tara scrunched up her nose in thought, accentuating the freckles splattered across the bridge of her nose, and toyed with a strand of her pixie-cut blonde hair over her ear. “Um . . . Theresa Spalding?”

  Theresa was in their speech class freshman year and did a totally creepy presentation on Jack the Ripper. Kat still had nightmares about it. “No.”

  Tara shifted her lips from side to side. “Okay, how about . . . Bryan Coulter?”

  Kat had gone on one date with Bryan Coulter. Turned out his job was to dress as a giant mouse at the local kids’ arcade. They’d made out in his car for a little, but when she later found a game ticket down her pants from the many that littered his car, she declined a second date.

  “Damn, I haven’t thought about him . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, no. But thanks for the reminder.”

  “How about . . .”

  Kat bolted upright. “Seriously, Tara? When I told you to guess who it was, I was being rhetorical!”

  Tara looked affronted. “You don’t have to get all huffy.”

  Kat blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m stressed. My tutor is Alec.”

  Tara stared at her blankly.

  “Alec?” Kat said. “You know . . . Max—”

  “Oh!” Tara’s eyes were wide. “That Alec.”

  “Yeah, that Alec. Nerdy Alec.”

  Tara waggled a finger. “You know, nerd is the new black. I read that in Cosmo.”

  Kat fell onto her back again and stared back at the egg-carton ceiling. “Deliver me. Please. Just put me out of my misery.”

  Tara laughed and smacked Kat on the thigh. “You’re so dramatic, you know that?”

  “Yep.” Kat rolled her head to face Tara and grinned. “It’s my schtick.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” Tara shrugged. “I mean, I know you’re kinda private about your studying and all of that. Is it because you don’t want Max to know?”

  Kat laced her fingers on her stomach and twiddled her thumbs. “I guess that’s part of it. I don’t know. There’s something about Alec that gets me all defensive. I don’t want him to think I’m . . . stupid.”

  Tara’s face fell. “Kat, you’re not—”

  “I know! I know. I just . . . I don’t know.”

  “Do you . . . are you attracted to him?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, I think he’s hot, but he’s not your type.”

  Kat sat upright again and braced herself with her hands behind her. “What’s my type?”

  “Are we seriously having this discussion?”

  “Clearly, we are.”

  Tara ran her tongue over her upper teeth. “Your type is Max. Muscled jocks who have no intentions of a long-term relationship.”

  “What? That’s not true. There was . . .” she trailed off as she tried to remember one guy who wasn’t a shallow jock. Names and faces drifted through her mind. “Wait, what about . . . ?” She frowned when she couldn’t find an example to contradict Tara’s statement. “Shoot,” she muttered.

  Tara stood up and walked to her desk. “Your relationship with Max is getting close to its expiration date anyway.”

  “Expiration date?”

  Tara turned around and laughed. “What’s it been, like two or three months? That’s about the shelf life of a Kat Caruso boyfriend.”

  Kat shook her head and opened her mouth to deny that, too. But she snapped it shut when she couldn’t think of one boyfriend she’d had for longer than three months.

  “Shoot,” she said again.

  Tara picked up her book bag and shrugged on her heavy ski jacket. “Why is that?”

  Kat hated lying to people. But sometimes it couldn’t be avoided and this was one of those times. This was something she didn’t want to admit out loud, so she turned away from Tara. “I don’t know.”

  Tara heaved a sigh. “Well, I gotta get to class. We’ll talk later?”

  “Yep,” said Kat, not really paying attention. “Oh wait!” she called after her friend. Tara stopped in the doorway and looked over her shoulder expectantly.

  Kat hopped off of the bed and grabbed a notepad from her desk. She ripped off the top paper and handed it to Tara.

  She looked up and raised her head questioningly. “Alisa Dombrovski?”

  “You said Amy wanted to take dance, right?”

  Tara, the oldest of five, had told Kat her youngest sister wouldn’
t stop talking about ballet after seeing The Nutcracker last year. But her parents couldn’t afford it and Tara had been saving money from her retail job for lessons.

  “Alisa is the sister of the ballet instructor I took lessons from when I was a kid. I called Irina the other day and told her your sister really shows talent but . . . um . . . funds are tight. So she called her sister, whose studio is about a half hour from your parents’ house, and Alisa agreed to take on your sister. No cost.”

  Tara blinked at the paper and then at Kat. She opened her mouth, but Kat cut her off.

  “I know it’s a half hour and that’s a strain on your parents, but I’m sure one of your brothers can drive her. Also, don’t give me crap about how you won’t take charity. Alisa said if you demand to pay something, she needs her studio painted and maybe Greg can do that, too, if he’s already driving her.”

  Tara’s throat worked and she finally found her voice. “You seriously got my sister free ballet lessons.”

  Kat waved a hand. “I didn’t do anything. I just called Irina.”

  “Kat, I . . .” Tara flicked the paper in her hand, then folded it carefully and tucked in into her pocket. “I’m not too proud to take charity. Not for my sister. Thank you so much. She’s going to scream when I call her and tell her.”

  “A good scream?” Kat squinted.

  Tara laughed. “Yeah, a good one.” She glanced at her clock. “I gotta go, but we’ll talk more, yeah?”

  Kat waved as Tara walked out, but her friend poked her head back inside. “Think what I said about Max?”

  Kat nodded and Tara smiled, then left.

  Kat flopped back down on her bed. Max was the perfect guy for her—loud in a way that he didn’t hear much other than his own voice in his ears. He didn’t look closely at her other than her physical attributes and that’s how she liked it.

  There wasn’t a commitment with Max and guys like him. She knew when they made fun of her for her scatterbrain or got tired of her and left, she could let it roll off of her back.

  She was careful to stick to guys like that. Guys who would never have her heart or mean much to her. She didn’t like being alone, which was the reason she even kept them around.