by Tiffany Sala
I was coming to terms—at the worst possible moment—with the fact that whatever it had started as, what was going on between Axel and myself now had a physical component to it beyond base punishment. He’d already gotten everything he originally wanted from me, and we had started a new game. The formal invitation was not a part of the game, it was the object, and he’d done it because he wanted me.
And maybe this was the closest I was ever going to get to a passionate appeal for my heart, the kind I’d dreamed about even though I was supposed to be the type of girl who was smarter than that. Even a few months ago, back when Callie and Tamara’s biggest problems had been each other, I’d still held that picture in my head of how the guy who was going to take me to the big social event that closed out my childhood would step from the crowds at the right moment and sweep me onward to the ball. It didn’t matter that no man who had ever stumbled by my life had come even close to fitting the bill. I’d just believed, helplessly.
I started and glared when Axel touched my shoulder. I thought he’d apologised to Mr. Phillips on our behalf; I certainly wasn’t going to. “Is everything all right?”
Is everything all right? He dismantled my dreams without even thinking about it and then I was expected to account for the fallout.
“Oh, fine. I guess real princesses are in short supply these days, that’s all.”
He made a hm noise back at me, and turned his attention forward as Mr. Phillips took a craft knife to the packaged box of official exam papers. I’d stopped feeling tense about those, at least. Every single time so far, a paper with my number on it had emerged from the box. There didn’t seem to be any reason to expect that to change now.
Axel muttered a thank you as he received his, and Mr. Phillips moved around the room matching temporary labels to students. When he’d returned to the front of the room, I was still sitting there without a paper.
I glanced over at Axel, but he was studying the unvarying instructions on his exam paper. If he’d been expecting something to happen he was playing it pretty cool after that swaggering entrance. Unless the entrance was the distraction to make me think…
“Axel!” I whispered. “What the hell have you done this time?”
He turned to me with surprise that, unfortunately, seemed pretty genuine to me. “Aileen,” Mr. Phillips called from the back of the room, “you need to be under exam conditions now.”
“That might be a lot easier if I had an exam paper, Mr. Phillips.” I tapped my desk, bearing enough stationery to get me through half a dozen exams and a notable excess of space otherwise.
Mr. Phillips whirled on me and gave me that glare you got from someone who was responsible for fixing your problem but wanted to blame you for it in exchange. “Aileen…”
Someone else in the room spoke up: my paper had gotten stuck under theirs.
“You really need to be more careful with these things, Mr. Phillips,” Axel spoke up. “You don’t want to get a reputation for messing up.”
At least Mr. Phillips saved his resentful stare for Axel that time.
The thing was, I was absolutely furious with Axel after that scene, even though there seemed to be no way the exam paper hide-and-seek could have been his fault. And instead of leaving me distracted and compromised like I would have expected, it lit a fire of mathematics in me unlike anything the world had ever seen before. I was finding mathematical concepts embedded in my brain I had no memory of ever studying, my pen flying over the workings sections to generate truly beautiful proofs. I didn’t think I would have performed that way normally even with fully-realised cheat sheets on hand.
When the time came to submit our papers, I had been done for ten minutes and was still breathing hard, a little like I’d been engaged in some vigorous sexual activity. I doubted having actual sex would be nearly as satisfying. That was what Axel got for trying to disrupt my schooling… but then Axel wouldn’t want to disrupt my schooling, would he? Probably he’d see that as some mortal offense against the honourable institution of education. Once you realised there was a lot about a person that was not good for you, it was hard to get out of the mindset of seeing them as the enemy in all ways.
After we were allowed out I was so busy trying to avoid coming into contact with Axel, I walked right into Ashleigh Tanner. I apologised easily enough, but there was an awkwardness in the following silence. Ashleigh was one of the few people at Burgundy I hadn’t made any connection with at all; hooked up with the popular team of Lucas-Steven-Mic-Axel plus hangers-on, it had always seemed like we were unlikely to be able to make a genuine connection.
She was regarding me curiously at that moment, and I had just realised there was a lot to be curious about with her, too. She was no hanger-on: whatever was going on with her, she was running her own game.
“Aileen…” When she spoke, I realised she actually had something previously prepared to say to me. “How did that exam go, then?”
“Well I came up with an answer to every question and I’m not crying, so I guess it just remains to see whether my confidence is justified.”
She shot me a weak smile. “Yes. Well… I think I performed all right too, but you never know. Now… Axel was telling me you had some interest in law.”
At least the hand behind the scenes in this encounter wasn’t going to stay curtained. “I guess so. I’m not… I wasn’t planning on going to university or anything, though.”
She put her eyebrows up. “You should. What’s the point in having an interest in something if you won’t give yourself a chance to explore it?”
“Well, it’s just…” A whiff of a fragrance that was far too familiar to me now made my head spin. Axel was moving around in the background, pretty shamelessly trying to listen in on what we were saying.
But Ashleigh just shot him a nod and returned her attention to me. “Yes?” Axel might have motivated her to speak with me, but she was doing it for her own reasons.
Why was I even thinking about justifying my decisions to her? Well, she of all people probably needed to hear this one. “It’s just too hard when my family doesn’t have the money for that sort of thing. I really need to get into full-time employment as soon as possible after school, start building up savings. Maybe later I can go and do study, when I’m feeling more stable.”
Ashleigh grimaced. “It’s hard to do things that way, I hear. I mean you’re not talking about just a gap year here. You could get caught up working some low-paying job for years before you feel stable enough to get back to university, and while there is a healthy mature-age cohort, it really is a game for young people. You’ll miss out on the same-age culture and it might be hard for you to make other friends. That’s assuming you can find a moment to go at all. You might decide to get married, have kids. That pushes it out even further. At a certain point it’s not going to be worth it.”
I must have been making some face at her, because she shook herself like a dog after rain and said, “That’s just how it is for women. We’ve got a different trajectory.”
“It’s just…”
“We could have been partners, maybe,” Ashleigh said. “That’s all. If we were studying together, we’d have the option of working together.”
“Well thanks for the offer, I guess it’s just not going to work out for me though.”
“You do realise they don’t get you to pay for uni up front right?”
She was intense on this like it really mattered to her, for goodness sake. “I know that. It’s not as simple as that though.”
“Well maybe it’s not,” Ashleigh said, “but look, Aileen, sometimes you’ve just got to do what’s necessary and stop waiting for the right circumstances. If you actually want to succeed in life, that is. Sorry to be so harsh about it, but so many women are like this these days, and it really gets to me. We’ve all got to do whatever it takes to pull one another up, we can’t be delicate about it.” She checked her phone. “Sorry to rant and run, but I’ve got to get out of here. It’s
been nice talking to you.”
I was so dazed watching her walk away I completely forgot about avoiding Axel. I realised he was next to me when I started choking on his scent.
“You’ve got to either spit or swallow, Aileen,” said Axel.
“What was that all about?” I demanded. “I mean did you pay her to suggest we could work together or something?”
“Do you really think I have that sort of leverage over Ashleigh?” I was blushing at his smirk. I knew he was right, but I didn’t understand why he was looking at me like that. “I just talked to her a bit about your situation, your potential… she ran with it on her own. I don’t know why Ash does what she does.”
“Well, it’s a pretty crazy idea. I don’t think I’d fit into her world any more than I fit into yours.” I was steaming a little over how she’d spoken to me, and barely holding onto a rant of my own. Who gave her the right to come down from on high and lecture me about my life? Nobody would ever dare to do that to her, and it had nothing to do with how she behaved. She had no idea just how much she didn’t get it.
“Seems to have worked out for Callie, and she started out with a lot less than you have.”
I was pretty sure he was trying to provoke me with these mentions of other women, and the thing was it was working perfectly. “Do you really think I care what works for Callie? I would never have supported her relationship if I knew her blind toeing of the popular line was going to be held up to my face for all time as an example of how I should behave.”
“Aileen?”
That was Callie’s voice behind me, and I had been almost shouting. Axel had definitely outplayed me this time.
He melted away grinning as I turned to Callie, my mouth working with no available explanations.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Callie said. “It’s no good for us to go turning on one another because we don’t quite see eye-to-eye. Was that your last exam? I just got out of mine, I think Tamara’s wrapping hers up too—they started late or something. Do you want to go have a celebratory drink somewhere? No men invited, I promise.”
“My dad’s coming to pick me up,” I told her.
“Oh, well we could go out later. I’m off work for the day so any time is good for me.”
I stared at Callie, and for a second I saw the present situation the way other people might see it, the ones who were always trying to put people together into groups with sharp edges to cut one another on. It was probably a no-brainer: the three of us getting tangled up with these three men from the same social group, right before our high school formal event too. We were probably supposed to find a new way of relating with one another at the event, all glittered up, and then go on to… what? We were clearly not compatible, and while Callie had Lucas in her life, I didn’t think she would have any great incentive to work on her relationship with the third wheel of her friendship group anyway.
I didn’t even have to see her any more, I realised. I could walk away now and disappear into my new life and never have to worry about any of this any more. Stop going into all the school group chats. Go out to clubs or take up more hobbies, meet new people that way. Anything would be better than to repeat the same pattern of drama my other friends seemed to be caught up in. I always thought I’d been different, forging my own way… but perhaps I was just as caught up in the high school trope machine as any of the rest of them, my archetype the delusional belief that I didn’t have an archetype.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll… I’ll let you know if I’m free some time, okay?”
I walked off before she could get herself together enough to argue, breaking into a jog as I saw Dad’s car arriving. He was only a few minutes late, basically on time for him. He’d been weirdly functional lately and I hadn’t had the courage to ask about it.
“How good do you feel about the end of your high school life, Aileen?” he asked as I pulled the car door shut behind me.
“It’s not entirely over until the formal and graduation day have been and done,” I pointed out. “That’s when I can basically move on, start a new life and never have to think about this one again.” I saw Callie standing by her car as Dad pulled away. It was impossible to miss her even if you were trying, alongside that garish custom convertible. Lucas had the thing painted the most awful colour he could think of just to make sure she remembered how much he owned her, I’d bet. Well, that wasn’t for me. Good for Callie and all, because with Lucas by her side she’d be able to achieve all her dreams with a tenth of the effort she’d need otherwise, but there was no way I’d ever become comfortable with some guy buying me expensive things he had chosen for me.
My mouth started going a bit ahead of my thoughts. “Actually, I’m not sure I’ll go to the formal at all.”
“Because of Axel?”
“Mostly, yeah.” Dad just grunted. “I guess now I don’t have so many places other than home to be for the moment, you’ll let me know if Axel is coming by.”
“He’d have to let me know about it first, he was real hot for a while, came by almost every day one week, but this past week… nothing.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “Still paying me, though. Now I ask you, what sort of world is this where a kid of eighteen can make enough money to balance a whole family’s books?”
If there was some hurt there, any clue that Dad was working over the thought that a ‘kid of eighteen’ not having the time for him was not exactly an endorsement of his character, it had been easy enough to miss.
“Anyway. If the formal isn’t on the cards, what’s next for the great Aileen Anderson?”
I’d already told him plenty of times before: I needed to get myself a job. But if I brought that up again, he was just going to react how he had the last time and tell me he was so sorry.
I spoke a different thought into being. “Dad, do you think I could actually go to university?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “Would you get an offer?”
“I guess I’ll find out soon enough. I did submit an application, but I wasn’t planning on accepting. Just something we were told we might want to do. Covering any base.”
“What did you put down for?” Dad asked. I was so flustered by actual interest I struggled to answer at first.
“Law. I hear it’s pretty hard, but I just…” I shrugged. “I really liked the idea of becoming a lawyer some day, when I was deciding what I’d apply for. Getting to talk for a living. I’ve always felt like I wasn’t too bad at that.”
“I think it’d be great, Ailie. I’d tell everyone I met about my daughter the big-shot lawyer for sure.” He elbowed me when we stopped at a traffic light. “You look like you were expecting me to bite your head off… I thought you were supposed to be some super-persuasive talker, to be a lawyer?”
“I just figured you were going to make a fuss, be obnoxious about it or something. Like you’re always bitching about Marcia and Elizabeth being so successful. And Elizabeth… well, you know.”
“I suppose I am.” He ducked his head, which made for an awkward acceleration as the light changed. “I guess, what I think is, my girl can do whatever she wants. Absolutely. And maybe she should do something that really challenges her. Did you know Matt Ehrlich is going to go on and study pharmacy?”
“I hadn’t heard that.” I wasn’t sure how Dad had heard it, either. “I always assumed he was going to go into computers: programming, hardware, whatever.” After recent experiences, maybe Matt was just ready for a break from computers.
“His mother says he thought for a long time about the best course of action, and combining an enthusiasm for the scientific and medical side of wellness with a less stressful discipline than pure medicine seemed to fit the bill.” Matt’s mother: that made some sense at least. She could be impossibly mopey but most parents fired up when asked about their kids. “I don’t know, Aileen. Really made me think whether I’ve encouraged you enough to follow whatever your dreams might be. It’s not the same world as the one I grew up in. Every
one’s got degrees now.”
“I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to have a degree,” I admitted.
“You’ve got what it takes to do whatever you need,” Dad assured me, but there was a bit of sadness creeping into his voice now.
Chapter Seventeen
I shot Sandy a look she didn’t seem to notice, busy as she was taking up all the space on our couch. It seemed enough time had passed since Marcia’s departure that she didn’t feel obliged to pretend she wasn’t all over the place any more. It made me cringe more than I expected, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it either.
When Marcia came marching in herding Toby and Tim ahead of her, she hardly seemed to notice Sandy. “Aileen, I’m counting on you to make sure their toys don’t get scattered all over the house not to return in time for my return,” she said as the boys scattered. “When I pick them up from here on Monday I’m going to be ready to take them straight to the airport, no screwing around. How were your exams? What’s it like, finally escaping the grind of a high school education?”
It hurt my head sometimes, trying to keep up with Marcia. Even Sandy was wincing in her awkward corner. It also hurt my heart, because no woman was ever going to bustle around managing my life the way Marcia did for my brothers.
“It’s still sinking in,” I said. “Hey, do you have a moment to talk about the situation with visiting next year?”
Her view was clearly that she didn’t, but she gave me a funny look up and down and then acknowledged Sandy’s presence for the first time by leading me away from her. “What would you like to say?”
There was one possibility I’d never considered at the start of this, a place I felt I wouldn’t go to get what I wanted. But then I’d been up the whole night before thinking, why? Was it such a bad idea?
“It’s not going to be right away,” I said, “but it’s likely we’ll have the money to make at least quarterly visits. I’m just wondering whether there’s going to be space for us at your place, or if I should be factoring accommodation and the like into the deal.”
