Rikki

by Abigail Strom

  “That’s what happened Saturday night,” I told him as I straightened up. “In case you really did forget.”

  I turned and walked away fast. Behind me, I heard Sam scrambling to his feet.

  “Rikki, wait! Wait a second! Rikki—”

  But I couldn’t wait. The reality of what I’d just done was sweeping over me in a sickening rush, and there was no way I could look him in the eyes right now.

  I made it to the hallway and spotted Sharon and Melinda heading for their lockers. “Hey!” I said, hurrying to catch up with them. “Wait up, you guys.”

  I don’t know if Sam saw me with them and decided not to follow, or if he changed his mind when he was still in the math room. Whichever it was, I got away from him.

  As it turned out, I got away for good. Apart from school-related necessities, I didn’t exchange another word with Sam Payne for the next four years.

  Chapter Two

  With graduation just a few weeks away, we were taking the last exams of our high school careers. Sam and I rarely spoke to each other directly but we were going head-to-head again. When the scores were added up, one of us would be valedictorian and one of us would be salutatorian.

  I was determined to come out on top this time. The class valedictorian would get a full ride to Hart University, which was right here in Massachusetts and was the only college I’d ever wanted to attend. I could afford to go without a scholarship but my family wasn’t rich, and I knew this would really help.

  Besides, I wanted the prestige of being first in my class. I’d been serious about school my whole life and this would be the culmination of years of hard work.

  Then my friend Barb pulled me aside one day.

  “So you know Sam’s dad?”

  I bristled. “Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

  Barb rolled her eyes. “God, what is it with the cold war between you two? It’s been, like, four years. You need to call it quits. Not only is he one of the cutest guys in our class, but his dad just passed away.”

  I stared at her, horrified.

  Barb nodded. “Sam never even told anyone he was sick,” she said. “I guess it was cancer or something like that.”

  I felt awful. “Oh, my God. I had no idea.”

  “No one did. Like I said, he never said a word. But the funeral notice was in the paper, so…” Barb shrugged. “He couldn’t keep that a secret. Everybody’s talking about it now. Someone whose mom works with his mom said that the family spent all their money on hospice care and other stuff insurance wouldn’t cover. Somebody else said Sam might skip college next year and work for a while. And I heard that—”

  The bell rang, and we had to go to class.

  Sam was in school that day. He’d been in school yesterday, too. I didn’t think he’d missed a day in… well, ever.

  Every so often one of his friends… and a lot of other kids, too… would go up to him and say they were sorry about his father. Sam would nod and say thanks, and then go back to whatever he was doing.

  I found the notice online. “Albert Payne passed away after a long battle with cancer…”

  A long battle? How long? Had Sam been dealing with this for months—maybe years?

  I felt sick. Here I’d been nursing this old, petty grudge while Sam had been dealing with real problems. To lose a parent…

  I didn’t have a dad, but I had two moms. The thought of losing one of them made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

  After a while I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to talk to Sam.

  I waited until school was over, because I knew I’d be able to find him alone. We had our calculus final tomorrow, and the day before an exam Sam always spent an hour or two in the library before he went home. Sure enough, after the last bell rang, he was there in his usual place—sitting at the table in the science alcove. His math book was open in front of him and he was scribbling something in his notebook.

  Except for the librarian, who was working at her computer at the other end of the room, we were the only two people in the place. I approached softly, and Sam didn’t hear me coming until I spoke to him.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He looked up, and for a minute he just stared at me. For lack of any better ideas I stared back.

  Barb had been telling the truth when she’d said that Sam was one of the cutest guys in our class. Back in eighth grade he was kind of gangly, but now he was all filled out. He played soccer and basketball—he wasn’t a star on either team, just a good solid player—which was why the muscles in his arms and chest and legs looked the way they did. He sat in front of me in math class and I’d noticed how broad and strong his shoulders were… and the way his biceps flexed when he wrote in his notebook or raised his hand or picked up his backpack.

  I, on the other hand, hadn’t changed much at all. I was still skinny, although I’d finally managed to produce boobs a couple of years ago. My hair was still long and brown and straight. I’d thought about chopping it off a few times, just to change things up, but I liked being able to put it in a ponytail so I kept it the way it was. I’d been prone to zits through sophomore year but my skin was mostly clear these days.

  Sam’s acne had been worse than mine but it had cleared up, too. Now his face was smooth and sort of touchable. He had green eyes and brown hair—also touchable—and though he didn’t smile often, when he did you could tell he meant it.

  He wasn’t smiling now.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to tell you… I just wanted to say…”

  “No.”

  I stopped, startled. “What?”

  One of his hands was on the table in front of him. As I watched, the fingers curled up into a fist.

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry about my dad.”

  “But… why?”

  “Because you hate me. I don’t mind you hating me, but I do mind you pretending you don’t because… because this happened.” His jaw tightened and the muscles in his neck corded up. “I’m the same person I was yesterday. You didn’t like me then, and nothing’s changed except…” He shook his head. “Just don’t, okay? Just don’t.”

  Apart from a few school projects we’d had to work on together, this was the first conversation we’d had since the night of Sharon’s party.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said—and as the words came out of my mouth I realized they were true.

  I mean, yes, I’d definitely hated him through most of freshman year, but after that it was more of a habit than anything else. We competed against each other for grades and we didn’t talk to each other, and that was just how it was.

  But the anger had faded away somewhere along the line—for me, at least.

  “I don’t hate you,” I said again. “And I am sorry about your dad.”

  My nose stung as tears came into my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but it was too late.

  “Don’t cry,” Sam said savagely, shoving his chair back and standing up. “You never cry. Damn it, Rikki, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” I lied, brushing the back of my hand across my eyes. “I’m just sorry about—”

  “Shut up,” he said furiously. “Just shut up.”

  I wasn’t doing any good. In fact, I was making him feel worse.

  “Fine,” I said, and I could hear my voice tremble. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  I turned to go. But before I could take a step, Sam grabbed my hand and jerked me around to face him.

  I was five four and he was six feet, but it wasn’t the height difference that made him seem so much bigger. It was the fact that I was skinny while Sam was broad-shouldered and muscular. He must have outweighed me by a hundred pounds.

  He sort of loomed over me now, glaring down at me like he hated me. He still had my hand in his.

  I didn’t feel scared or threatened. But as I looked up into Sam’s green eyes, so angry and so full of pain behind the anger, my heart started to pound.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure what I was expressing sorrow for—his dad, or the fact that I’d bothered him when he wanted to be alone, or the last four years.

  Maybe all of it.

  “I wish you’d go away,” he said, his voice low.

  “I am. I was. I mean… that’s what I was doing when you…” I tugged on the hand he still held, but he didn’t let go.

  “Rikki,” he said, his voice even lower. His hand on mine tightened, and then my heart wasn’t just pounding. It was thundering so hard I was afraid it might burst out of my chest.

  I couldn’t breathe. The human body couldn’t sustain this. I’d have a heart attack or die or something if my pulse didn’t slow down.

  “Sam,” I said, but my voice came out as a croak. I tried again. “Sam…”

  I couldn’t say anything else. All I could do was stare up at him, my heart gone haywire and my breath caught in my throat.

  But then he dropped my hand like it burned him and turned his back on me. He went back to the table, grabbed his stuff, and walked away.

  My knees felt like jelly as I started to follow him.

  “Sam!” I called out. “Sam, wait!”

  But he didn’t wait. He didn’t even look at me. He strode through the library, pushed through the glass doors, and was gone.

  * * *

  I stared down at the calculus exam without really seeing it. Sam, sitting in front of me with his shoulders hunched over as he solved equations, hadn’t said a word to me all day, even though I’d tried to make eye contact with him a few times.

  I knew he wanted to go to Hart University. He wanted to study engineering, and I’d heard him talking about Hart’s mechanical engineering program and how it was one of the best in the country.

  But Barb wasn’t the only one talking about the Payne family’s money problems. A lot of kids were saying that Sam would have to skip college for now, unless he got help.

  He was a good athlete but not good enough for an athletic scholarship. He was smart, but you don’t get full academic scholarships just for being smart… not as a graduate of our high school, anyway. We weren’t a fancy private school—just an average public school. Doing well here wouldn’t earn you a free ride at a four-year college.

  Unless, of course, you were valedictorian.

  Ten minutes had gone by since the exam started and I hadn’t answered a single question. For the first time in my life, I was considering something unthinkable.

  I was considering doing less than my best.

  I knew from the school secretary, who kept track of GPAs, that Sam and I were only a few hundredths of a point apart. I was ahead, but only by a hair. This last exam would decide it.

  I was decent at math but it was my weakest subject. Sam, on the other hand, ate derivatives and integrals for breakfast. If I got a B plus on the final, or even an A minus, he would almost certainly edge me out for class valedictorian.

  I picked up my pencil and wrote my name at the top of the sheet. What would be the best way to do it? Deliberately get a few questions wrong, or skip some?

  But as I heard the question echo in my head, I realized something.

  I couldn’t do it.

  It wasn’t the kind of lie I could tell. Not that I was incapable of lying—I was sure I could lie with the best of them if the occasion called for it.

  But not like this. I couldn’t pretend not to know something I really did know.

  As I bent my head over the paper and got to work, I reflected that Sam had a decent shot of beating me anyway. He was better at math than I was and he had a ten minute head start. But I would do my best, and if he won it would be fair and square.

  And for the first time since I’d known him, I hoped he did win.

  * * *

  As I walked home after school that day, I realized that while I wasn’t willing to tank an exam, there was something else I could do to help Sam.

  I talked to my moms about it over dinner. They were completely against it at first, but after I explained Sam’s situation and made offers about student loans and working multiple jobs or even deferring a year to save money, they gave in.

  “But no loans,” Charlotte said firmly. She was still paying off the loans for her undergrad and graduate education, and she had strong feelings about student debt.

  “And you don’t have to defer,” Beth added. “We can afford to send you to Hart without that, although it would be good if you had a job to help out with expenses. Not your first semester, though. Settle in and focus on your classes this fall, and you can get a job in the spring.”

  The next morning I went straight to the principal’s office. “Did Mr. Brandt finish grading the exams?”

  Our principal, Leah Goldstein, smiled at me. “As a matter of fact he did. I was going to call you into the office during homeroom, but since you’re here—”

  I held my breath.

  “—let me be the first to congratulate you, Rikki. You’re our valedictorian.”

  My breath came out in a long, slow sigh.

  It was what I’d been working for since ninth grade. I’d sacrificed sleep, free time, and a normal social life to accomplish this goal, and I deserved to be happy about it.

  I let myself feel happy for thirty seconds. Then I leaned forward in my chair.

  “About the scholarship.”

  “To Hart? Certainly. We just have to inform the scholarship committee—”

  I shook my head vigorously. “No. That’s just it. I want to decline it. Then it’s offered to the student with the next highest GPA, right? Is that… would that be Sam? Sam Payne.”

  I shouldn’t have mentioned Sam’s name. Our principal wasn’t an idiot, and as she leaned back in her chair and looked at me, her eyes blinking owlishly behind her glasses, I could feel myself flushing.

  “Rikki,” she said after a moment. “I think I understand what you’re doing, and while I—”

  I flushed deeper. “I’m not doing anything. I mean… I just… I talked things over with my moms last night, and we agreed. You can call them if you want to check.”

  Ms. Goldstein drummed her fingers on her desk. “There’s still a week before college decision day. I suggest you take that time to think before doing something irrevocable.”

  “I don’t want to wait. If”—I stopped myself from saying Sam’s name again—“someone else is offered the scholarship, they’ll need time to make decisions, too. It’s not fair to tell them at the last minute.”

  The principal sighed. “You’re formally declining the Hart scholarship?”

  I nodded.

  “Very well. You’ll need to sign some paperwork to that effect.”

  “I know. I mean, I figured I would. And then you’ll talk to the student who’ll get the offer?”

  “After conferring with the scholarship committee and generating new paperwork, yes.”

  “Today? Do you think it’ll be today?”

  She smiled a little. “Yes, Rikki. It’ll probably be today.”

  My hands relaxed, which is when I realized I’d been clenching them into fists.

  “Okay. Good. Thank you.”

  “I hope you don’t regret this,” Ms. Goldstein said, shaking her head.

  “I won’t.”

  * * *

  I was sure I wouldn’t. I’d talked through the worst case scenarios with my moms—like if Sam declined the scholarship too, and my effort to help didn’t do him any good at all—and the three of us had decided we could live with that possibility.

  Then, near the end of math class, Sam was called to the principal’s office.

  I was glad that he didn’t come back before the last bell, and that I made it out of the building without seeing him. I hoped he might call or text me—we had each others’ numbers since working on a group project earlier that year, although we’d never used them. The idea of Sam Payne actually thanking me for something made me so uncomfortable I thought I could deal with it better over the phone th
an in person.

  But he didn’t call, and he didn’t text.

  I braced myself the next morning in homeroom, but it was business as usual. Sam came in, made no eye contact with me, and didn’t acknowledge my existence once all day.

  I tried to puzzle it out on my way to Sharon’s after school, but I didn’t come up with any answers. Had they offered him the scholarship? Had he accepted or declined? Did he know I’d turned it down? What did he think about it all?

  I hadn’t told any of my friends about the situation yet, and I kept it that way at Sharon’s. I decided to walk home instead of accepting a ride from Sharon’s mom, wanting a little time to myself to think about things. I’d just resigned myself to the idea that I would never hear one word about the scholarship from Sam when I caught sight of the extra car in my driveway.

  After a moment I recognized it. It belonged to Sam’s mom.

  My heart started to beat faster. Sam must have borrowed the car and come over to see me.

  Charlotte and Beth’s cars were there too, so they were both home. Sam wasn’t anywhere in sight so my moms must have let him in.

  We have a rambling old Victorian house and it took me a few minutes to find them. The living room and dining room were empty, but when I went into the kitchen I heard voices floating in the window from the backyard.

  I found my moms on the patio, along with a tall, dark-haired woman—Theresa Payne, Sam’s mother. The three of them were drinking iced tea and chattering away like old friends.

  Sam’s mom jumped to her feet when she saw me.

  “Rikki,” she said, and then she crossed the patio to where I was and wrapped me up in a huge hug.

  When she let me go she took a step back and smiled at me, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “When Ms. Goldstein told me you’d turned down the scholarship…” She shook her head. “I didn’t want to believe it could be true. I came here to talk with Charlotte and Beth, to see…” She took a deep breath. “But I shouldn’t have thanked you yet. Not until… I wanted to find out if you’re sure. Before Sam accepts.”