Page 17 of Left on Read

I look up at them as I stop to take a breath, expecting to see wide eyes and slightly terrified looks. They’re … not terrified. Esha, I understand. I spout off like this at her all the time, but I don’t think Hayes has ever been on the receiving end of one of my famous streams of consciousness.

I figure this would be the moment he uses to make fun of me forever. I figure he’d stop me, give me theHey, weirdo, please shut upresponse I get from basically everyone else. At least the look that’s the nonverbal equivalent.

He doesn’t, though.

“Keep going,” he says. “It sounds like there’s a pot-of-gold plan at the end of this word rainbow.”

I laugh.

No one’s ever said my words were a rainbow before.

“I don’t know if there is. I mean, she’s a tenured department head. She’d have to commit some heinous act of academic violence to get fired, and even then, that doesn’t always happen …” My voice trails off as I keep thinking, keep bouncing off the walls within my own head.

“I never said anything about getting her fired.Yousaid that.”

I did say that. So much for her being my idol. You don’t try to get your idols fired.

“Are you really saying she can’t get fired for not doing her job?” Esha asks.

“It’s a long shot. I snuck into a faculty senate meeting last year—”

“You snuck into a faculty senate meeting? Why? How?” Hayes asks, leaning in.

“I wanted to see what they were like! And they’re really boring. I don’tknowhow I got in, really. I guess I just give off student-teacher vibes.”

“Nova, you’re seventeen.” Hayes rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but you know that one history professor who’s like twenty-four? I sat next to her the whole time. I just blended in.”

They look suitably impressed. It’s satisfying. I should sneak into more things.

“They were talking about disciplinary action for the geology teacher,” I say, thinking back to the meeting. “You know the one? His entire class failed that semester, and obviously that raised concerns. Well, he talked his way out of it, and people are still taking that Godforsaken geology class.”

Now Esha’s eyes are widened too. “I remember that!” she exclaims. “We had a bunch of people in the Beta Club tutoring program asking for help, but no one was qualified to tutor because he hadn’t had a student make an A or a B inyears.Years!”

I nod. “So … even if we all fail … that just kind of becomesourproblem.”

“Okay, well, then wewon’tfail.” Hayes shrugs his shoulders like he made an easy decision. Like the idea of us succeeding in this class is easy, when I’m not even sure it’s possible. He’s right: Wecan’ttrust her to grade. She arrives late, leaves early, screens random movies, and barely deigns to notice us. When she wrote feedback on a freewrite we did—theonlyreal work we’ve done—she criticized me for “leaning too much on the reading.” What does that evenmean?

So I scoff. I don’t share his optimism. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t know yet, but we will. You’ll figure it out.”

He bumps his shoulder against mine, so quickly I don’t have time to analyze the fact that he’s touching me. I don’t even know how we got this close. When he turns to leave, I stick my tongue out at the back of his head.

“Really, Nova?” Esha says, crossing her arms and looking down her nose at me. “Student leaders don’t stick their tongues out at people in the hallway.”

She heads in the direction of Piper’s table, and I stick my tongue out at her too.

Then, I follow.

Are we ever gonna talk about why she dresses like that?

Who? Lowry?

Obviously. Who else in here is dressed like someone’s weird aunt?

Maybe she IS someone’s weird aunt.