Page 4 of On His Schedule
Stanley spins. “Wait — really?”
“Show of hands. Let’s just do it. I want him to shut up.” Blue lifts a hand without looking up from his cereal. “Who wants to keep the rule?”
“Aye,” Stanley says, raising the banana like a gavel, “you have to sayaye.”
“Aye,” Blue says.
“Aye,” Stanley says, raising his other hand.
“That’s two hands, you only get one—”
“Aye times two.”
“Stop.”
Rowan sighs, the way he does when he has decided that a thing is too dumb to fight. “I abstain. This is a stupid rule. You can’t will yourself to not fall in love. That’s not how the brain works, Stanley, it’s literally an involuntary—”
“Percy.”
“I abstain,” Percy says, picking his book back up. “On the grounds that the question is unserious.”
“Reeve,” Stanley says, turning to me. “Captain. Your vote.”
I look at him. He’s still shirtless and is brandishing a banana. There is a smudge of something on his jaw that I think is Sharpie. The boy is going to play in the NHL someday, and I cannot fully believe that the world is going to allow it. I’m gripping onto a tutoring form like it’s going to end my career before it’s even started. Keeping the Hawthorne House rules is easy. Not falling in love has always been the number one rule.
“Aye,” I say.
“Aye,” Stanley bellows, throwing up both hands. “The rule stays! Hawthorne House Bylaw, season twenty-four-twenty-five —no falling in love.Effective immediately. Thank you for coming to—”
“Put a shirt on,” Rowan says.
“—my TED talk.”
He puts a shirt on quickly, smiling with triumph. The shirt’s inside out. Nobody tells him.
I take the stairs two at a time and shut my bedroom door behind me, and the noise of the house cuts down to about half — Stanley’s voice rising again about something, Blue’s groan — and I sit down on the edge of my bed and just look at the wall for a second.
The wall holds my schedule. I am, increasingly, a deeply scheduled person. There’s a paper calendar on it. There’s a workout block schedule next to that. There are two photos thumbtacked above the desk — one of my dad in his office at Lakeshore High, sitting at his principal’s desk in a tie and pretending to look stern, and one of Gianna at her high school graduation, in her gown, pulling on the tassel of her cap and laughing because I had just said something to her that I cannot remember anymore. I’m in a Camden hoodie in the photo. She was eighteen. It was three years ago.
Well, it’s time for another thing to write down on the wall. I take out my phone and the flyer. I dial the number. It rings twice.
“Camden Tutoring Center, this is Karen.”
“Hi, Karen. This is Benson Reeve. I—”
“Wolves?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Coach sent you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Mm-hmm.” I can hear her clicking. “What’s the class?”
“STAT 215.”
“Preferred times?”
