Make It Count

by Megan Erickson

  And he would bet a million bucks things were about to get worse.

  THE WOODEN CHAIR was uncomfortable, the smoothie tasted like grass and Alec was prepared to punch the next person who glared at him for tapping his pen on his book.

  Kat was half an hour late for their study session. He told himself she was late. He didn’t want to believe she wasn’t coming. He hadn’t seen her since Saturday and he knew she had her midterm in an hour.

  He wanted to see her, but he also wanted to make sure she did well on her test. Was she nervous? Did she study well? His mind was consumed with Kat, and he wanted to scream.

  He took a gulp of his smoothie and cringed, wishing it was chocolate milk.

  He stared blankly at his mock trial notes and then checked his watch again. Only five minutes had passed? This was torture.

  Half an hour later, he was still alone. And an hour after that.

  The room was too quiet, dull and dark. It took the shadow of Kat’s absence for him to realize how much he’d grown addicted to her light.

  He stayed until her midterm time was over, hoping she’d stop in at the library afterward.

  But she never did.

  Chapter Nineteen

  KAT WALKED OUT of the statistics classroom, head held high despite her certainty she had bombed the midterm about five minutes earlier.

  Glass half full, she was not.

  But her studying during the past week had taken a nosedive. Every page of her notes, every highlighted section in her textbook reminded her of Alec. And then she wanted to cry. So she would cry. Then she’d have to clean her face. She’d do that and then sit on the toilet for half an hour staring at the walls. Then she’d return to her books, start studying and it would start all over again until she decided to sleep.

  Clearly, none of that was productive.

  Her stomach churned at the thought of Alec dismissing her in front of Max. And her head pounded when she thought about the fallout if Max found out what happened. She’d never want to come between two friends.

  It made her want to stomp her feet and pull her hair and wail, “It isn’t fair!”

  Shame on her for thinking she could get and keep a guy like Alec Stone.

  Kat trudged through campus, her windbreaker no match for the March breeze. When she reached her suite, she let herself inside and headed straight to her bed. She fell into it—jacket, shoes and all.

  “Uh-oh,” Tara’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “Test didn’t go well?”

  Kat shook her head, face planted into her pillow.

  “Aw, Kat.” The bed dipped and Kat rolled to her side to see her friend sitting on the edge of the mattress

  “I need to get out of here.” Kat brushed her hair out of her face.

  Tara frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going home. This was my last midterm. I was going to go home for spring break anyway, and now I’m going to go a day early. I can’t . . . I can’t deal with any of this right now.” Kat hopped off the bed and dragged out her suitcase, throwing random clothes into it.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Tara said. “Get away, gather yourself, then come back and kick some school butt.”

  Kat gave her a suffering look. “Please don’t go all motivational poster on me.”

  “What? I’m trying to be encouraging. Isn’t that what friends do?”

  Kat smiled. “Yeah, thanks.”

  It was another hour before she finally managed to make it out the door, dragging her heavy suitcase behind her and wondering why she packed for five million years when she planned to come back to school in a week.

  Oh well, a girl still needed to coordinate her casually chic sweatshirts with her yoga pants. Even though Kat hadn’t done a day of yoga in her life.

  It took another fifteen minutes to reach the underclassmen parking lot on the outskirts of campus.

  By the time she made it to her car, she was sweating under her coat and her shoulder ached from her suitcase. This was why she never drove anywhere, because her car was parked in flipping Siberia.

  Then she got in her cute little red convertible Volkswagen Beetle—wishing it was summer and she could put the top down—and pulled out of the parking lot and drove.

  As the miles stretched behind her, she purposefully didn’t think about midterms or learning disabilities or smart guys with glasses who could kiss really well. She blanked her mind into Kat-land, where everything was perfect.

  That lasted for a whole five minutes before her mind reverted right back to where it wanted to—thoughts of Alec.

  Stupid brain.

  She wanted him. She didn’t want him with the teenage-like hormones that she had wanted all her other boyfriends—Max included. She wanted Alec because he laughed at her jokes and made her feel witty and looked at her like she hung the flipping moon in the sky. Because she dared to think they could be partners in this crazy thing called life.

  It was an abrupt change from her norm of adolescent relationships. Sure, lust played a part in how she felt about him, but there was also a stronger emotion, another one that started with an L . . . and it hit her.

  It hit her at the same time as a flash of tan and white fur skittered across the road in front of her. She tightened her hands on the wheel, swerved while screaming, and the car fishtailed before stopping with a jolt on the side of the road.

  “Oh. my. goodness gracious,” she breathed. “I almost killed a rodent, and I’m in love with Alec Stone.”

  She wasn’t sure which was more depressing.

  After sitting on the side of the road for who knows how long, still gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, she took her foot off the brake and continued home. Now, her mind was actually blank, as if the realization had given it some sort of electrical shock. She didn’t plan to defibrillate it for a while. Poor, tired brain needed to rest.

  She finally made it home an hour later. Her house was three stories, made of contrasting brown and white stone, with a large, white wraparound porch and a wide staircase leading to a double front door.

  She pulled into the circular driveway and parked, then lugged her bag out of the trunk.

  “Mom! Dad! Hello!” She said as she stood in the foyer, determined not to take another step. They could come to her.

  Footsteps clicked down the stairs and then her mom appeared in the hallway ahead of her. She wore kitten heels and a light blue knit dress, which matched her eyes. The eyes Kat had inherited, along with her mother’s hair. “Katía? Why are you home at”—her mom checked the grandfather clock at the entrance—“eight at night on a Thursday?”

  “I needed a break, and so I came home a day early.”

  “A break?” her mother asked, but Kat didn’t have a chance to answer before her father’s voice boomed from the entrance to his office farther down the hall.

  “Minha flor,” he said softly, using the Portuguese term of endearment meaning “my flower,” his pet name for her for as long as she could remember. Kat wasn’t bilingual anymore, but knew a couple words of her parents’ mother language.

  He walked toward her, arms outstretched, his skin and dark hair a handsome combination as always.

  “Hey Daddy,” she said, falling into his arms and wishing for a moment that she was nine years old and her biggest problem was what hair bow matched her outfit.

  “We never get visits from you, and on a Thursday?” he said, leaning back to study her face.

  She shrugged, unwilling to start listing the many reasons she had returned home. “Like I told Mom, I needed a break.”

  “Hmm,” her father said, still studying her face and she knew she wouldn’t get out of an explanation before the end of the weekend. He released her, giving her a reprieve for now. “Are you hungry? We can heat you some dinner.”

  “What did you have?”

  “I made roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus,” her mother said.

  Kat’s mouth watered, reminding her she skip
ped dinner. “Oh, yes, please. Sounds delish.”

  She followed her parents into the kitchen, thinking only of filling her belly and sleeping in her queen-sized bed with a pillow-top mattress.

  The rest of her worries could wait.

  THE MORNING LIGHT creeping through her pink lace curtains woke up Kat, and she snuggled down further into her comforter. She’d slept like the dead last night, and now today, she had to drag her ass out of bed and do something.

  She wanted to wallow for a week, stomping her feet about boys and school and the injustice of her life. Okay, so she was a little dramatic. She’d never claimed not to be.

  Since Saturday, she’d typed dyslexia into Google several times, but never once had she hit ENTER. She’d avoided learning more, worried about being different, worried about Alec being right.

  She emerged from her cocoon of bed covers and grabbed her laptop off of her nightstand, where she’d placed it after hastily unpacking last night.

  This time, when she typed dyslexia, she actually hit ENTER.

  And her world was blown. up.

  These sites spoke her language. These blogs were people who were like her. Troubles with reading comprehension and writing. Words disjointed on the page in front of her. Some inability to focus. She read about famous people—including Albert Einstein—who were dyslexic. When she read “dyslexia is not a sign of poor intelligence or laziness,” she had to press her fist to her mouth to stop the tears.

  After a quick trip to the kitchen for some coffee and toast, she returned to her bed and took a short online test to identify dyslexia. Most of her answers showed a moderate to severe rating, which identified strongly with dyslexia.

  Her parents had already left for work, and she was glad. Because she didn’t know how she was going to tell them.

  There was only one person she wanted to speak to.

  She took a shower, slipped into her gray sweater dress with a black belt and black knee-high boots over leggings, and grabbed her keys. She was heading back to school.

  Chapter Twenty

  CROSS KEYS MIDDLE School, for grades six through eight, was a squat brick building that bustled with pimple-ridden, brace-faced preteens.

  Was there anything worse than middle school? Kat thought not, as she stood in the lobby, watching students whispering to one another as they hustled to class. It was such an awkward age, where most of the girls had hit puberty, their boobs stuffed in ill-fitting training bras. And the boys were an odd mix, some still stuck in prepubescent bodies and others with cracking voices, full of the lovely raging hormones that afflicted men worldwide.

  Kat smoothed her skirt and headed into the attendance office.

  “One moment,” the woman at the counter said without looking up as the bell over the door sounded.

  “No problem. Take your time.” Kat glanced around the office, full of inspirational posters, like that kitten hanging from a tree with the caption “Hang in there!” She always wondered about that poster. Obviously, they didn’t throw a cat up in a real tree. So did they hold a twig over a pillow in case the cat fell? What kind of person volunteered their cat for that? Poor thing. She hoped its owner gave it lots of treats afterward—

  “Kat Caruso?”

  Kat snapped her eyes back to the attendance desk and smiled. Mrs. Gandy, her neighbor, was still the attendance officer. Which was unfortunate if you wanted to call in sick to lay out in your backyard to get a base tan for the eighth-grade sock hop. Hypothetically.

  “Hello, Mrs. Gandy,” Kat said in greeting stepping up to the desk.

  “Well I’ll be. Look at you, all grown up. Are you in college now?” Mrs. Gandy wore a pale pink sweater set and her glasses sat on the tip of her nose, the frames attached to a beaded string around her neck. Her graying hair was pulled back in a tight bun.

  “I am, at Bowler.”

  “Major?”

  Kat tried not to cringe. “Oh, um, I’m undecided.”

  Mrs. Gandy’s smile dimmed. “Well, you have time to decide. What can I help you with today?”

  “Well . . . ah . . . I was hoping to see Mrs. Ross. Is that possible?”

  Mrs. Gandy pursed her lips and then relayed some instructions to the other attendance officer. After some typing, she told Kat Mrs. Ross happened to be free with a planning period. They supplied Kat with a visitor’s badge and sent her on her way to Mrs. Ross’s classroom.

  When Kat reached the closed, glass-paneled door, she peered inside. Mrs. Ross looked the same as Kat remembered her. She walked around the room straightening up, a tall, black woman with hair shorn close to the scalp. Kat could still hear her voice in her head, a slight Ghanian accent left over from when she moved as a child. She married an American man, hence the last name.

  Kat knocked on the door, and Mrs. Ross glanced up. She blinked, then her eyes widened in surprise, and she gestured Kat inside with a large smile. Kat returned the smile and stepped into the classroom.

  “Kat Caruso? Live and in the flesh.” Mrs. Ross pulled her in for a hug and Kat breathed deeply, loving the warm, familiar scent of cocoa butter.

  “Hello.” She pulled back and took the seat to which Mrs. Ross gestured. The teacher took the seat across the small desk from her.

  “So, please, tell me how you’ve been.” Mrs. Ross said.

  Kat took a couple of minutes to catch her up with her life since sixth grade.

  “And you like Bowler?” Mrs. Ross asked.

  “Yeah, I do. I mean, I like college. It’s just . . .” she blew out a breath and gave a sad laugh while looking at her hands twisting on the desk. “It’s really hard.”

  She looked up, expecting to see disappointment or pity, but Mrs. Ross looked thoughtful. “College is challenging,” she said generically.

  Kat bit her lip. “Yeah, well that’s part of why I came today. I wanted to ask you about something. I have this tutor and he . . . he mentioned I might have dyslexia. Does that make sense to you?”

  Mrs. Ross cocked her head and frowned slightly. “Weren’t you tested for that in middle school?”

  “Um, not that I remember.”

  Confusion passed over Mrs. Ross’s face. She opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away.

  “Mrs. Ross?”

  Her teacher sighed and then turned back to her. “When I had you as a student in sixth grade, I saw some signs of a learning disability. I suspected dyslexia, but I wasn’t sure. I mentioned to your parents that the district could test you or they could take you to a private psychologist.”

  Kat’s jaw was close to hitting the desk, it was so low. “I never knew about that.”

  Mrs. Ross shook her head, her voice heavy. “They declined.”

  Kat wasn’t sure she heard that right. “Excuse me?”

  Mrs. Ross sucked her lips between her teeth and spoke again. “They declined to get you tested. And they are your parents, they got the final say. Not me and not the school.”

  Kat squeezed her thighs so hard, she thought she’d leave bruises, so she shoved her hands under her butt and sat on them. Her parents were told and did nothing? She struggled all this time on her own? She wanted to ask Mrs. Ross why her parents declined to test her, but she thought that question was better directed at the source.

  She looked away and bit her lip. “So, this makes sense to you?”

  “Kat, you were an incredibly bright student. Very creative, full of imagination. But you had trouble with reading comprehension, spelling and writing that didn’t seem to match up.”

  “Is that why you took all that time with me? To show me how to organize and plan? Kat asked.

  Mrs. Ross nodded. “And that helped?”

  “Oh God, yes, I’m not sure where I’d be without all your help back then.”

  Mrs. Ross placed a the desk between them. “Honestly, I’m so impressed you made it into college with no help for your possible learning disability.”

  “Would you believe I got by on good looks? Feminine wiles?”

&
nbsp; Mrs. Ross laughed. “I do think your charm has most likely saved you more than you think.”

  Kat sobered. “What do I do now? I mean, now I have this . . . thing . . . this word disability hanging over my head and—”

  Mrs. Ross reached out and took Kat’s hands, rubbing them softly, cutting her off. “Kat, dear, this is a good thing. Most colleges have learning support centers. You go and you speak to them. If they determine you do have dyslexia, there are ways for them to help you with your classes. You can get altered assignments to suit your abilities and extra help or time. I think you’ll be relieved to know you have struggled for a reason.”

  Kat hadn’t thought of it that way. All the times she labored over assignments that other kids breezed through had only made her feel frustratingly lacking in intelligence.

  Mrs. Ross leaned back. “And don’t let anyone make you feel bad about this. There shouldn’t be a stigma about learning disabilities. They can’t be helped, just like any other type of congenital disability.”

  Tell that to my parents, Kat wanted to say. Instead, she shifted in her seat, releasing her hands from their confinement. “Can I hang out here for a little this afternoon?” Kat asked. She wanted to delay going home to tell her parents their child was just like neighbor Elijah and could have greatly benefited from “special classes and nonsense.”

  Mrs. Ross patted Kat’s arm. “Of course.”

  Kat spent a good portion of her morning learning about Native-American tribes and the multitude of uses for a bison carcass. She didn’t remember learning in sixth grade that the scrotum was used for baby rattles. Mrs. Ross muttered that fact was the result of letting the students pick their own research topics.

  The last class before lunch was language arts and Kat migrated to perch on the heater to watch the students write. Their assignment involved picking a Greek god or goddess, writing about his or her attributes and then citing the source from their textbook.

  One girl, a little freckled thing with red curly hair, scowled at her page as if she wanted to light it on fire. Mrs. Ross hovered near her and began speaking softly.