Page 2 of Left on Read

It’s my first shot at arealcollege literature class, one focused on some of my favorite writers—Poe, Hawthorne, Thoreau—and others I’ve been dying to read, like Cooper and Alcott. My purpose in lifeis to be an English professor. I’ve known I wanted to teach literature since … forever. That’s why I’m here, at Endeavor, busting my butt to get the best education and the best grades possible, and this is the next step. It’s a major, major deal to me. I’ve passed all the high school college English prereqs. I just need the administrative scheduling to have worked out, and I’ll be on my way to everything I’ve ever wanted.

This is my passion. I want to excel in this class. Ineedto excel in this class. It’s the beginning of the rest of my life.

In the office, I’m prepared to rattle off the standard “Nova Carter” punctuated with a smile, but I don’t even have to say my name at the table where we pick up our schedules. The two teachers sitting behind it barely stop talking, they just sift through a few folders until they find mine. Perks of being a senior at a tiny school, I guess.

“Open it, open it!” Esha says, as she leads us to a quiet corner of the Nest (so called because we’re the Endeavour High Eagles. It’s our cafeteria, rec room, and gym all in one, and it’s one of the only places on this campus that’s entirely ours. Upperclassmen can roam free, but freshman and sophomores have to spend all their free time in here so they don’t get kidnapped or run across the highway to McDonald’s. I don’t like being in the Nest; it feels too much like freshman year. It takes away freedom I worked too hard to earn.

“I … um …” I’m nervously, unproductively shuffling around the papers in the manila folder, not even trying to find my schedule.

“Let me do it,” Esha finally says, swatting at me until I release my death-grip on the folder.

She finds my schedule … and her face falls.

Oh, no. She has super-expressive eyes.

I didn’t get into the course.

I can see it in her gaze. She’s trying to decide how to tell me. The rest of her face stays frozen, completely neutral. You’d have to know her to see it, but Idoknow her, so Idosee it. My mind races: what was I given instead of the class I wanted? The class Ineeded? Something awful, probably. Like a history class that’s entirely about soft rock. Maybe an extra math credit. Some casual physics, just for fun.

“You got it,” she says quietly.

I barely hear her over the multitude of conversations happening around us. Her face is the same, still, eyes downcast and everything.

“What?”I lean into her space and rip the paper from her hands. Oops. Probably shouldn’t have done that. The corner tore off, but that’s not important. “Let me see!”

There it is.

ENG 231-101: American Literature.

MWF 8:00 a.m.

I barely resist the urge to jump up and down in the middle of everything. That would be extremely out of character, but not uncalled for.

“But wait,” I ask, calming down. “Something’s actually wrong. You weren’t just messing with me.” I’m not great with emotions—others’ or my own—but Esha’s, I understand.

“Yeah. You got it, but I didn’t.” Her eyes roll up, past her bangs, and she throws her head back like she wants to scream. She didn’t even really want the class, but she wanted to take it with me. “It gets worse. Your classes are all in the morning. Mine are all in the afternoon. We don’t have asingle onetogether.”

“So we’ll never see each other,” I whisper.

She nods.

Okay. This is fine. It’s totally okay that I’m starting my senior yearalone.It’s totally okay that I got the class I wanted but had to sacrificemy other halffor it. It means next to nothing if I’m doing it all alone. Nothing I need is worth that.

Maybe I can change my schedule. I know I begged for this class, bothering our college liaison in her office for weeks so she wouldn’t forget that I desperately wanted it, but maybe she’d let me switch. Maybe she’d let me shift something around, so I have some time with Esha.

“No,” Esha says. Her eyes aren’t downturned anymore—they’re extremely determined and a little pissed off. “I can see what you’re thinking, and no, absolutely not.”

Esha is a person who always gets her way. I don’t really know what that’s like. I do know I won’t win in an argument.

She pulls on my arm again, guiding me toward the tiny closet where they keep the books. There’s a short line, and she plants us at the end and turns to face me. “I know this sucks. No, I know it does. But we have to spread our wings eventually, right?” She points to the floor we’re standing on, where the horrible eaglelogo is painted on the hardwood. She chuckles, but my heart falls somewhere near my feet. She’s not wrong. This was bound to happen. Esha pursuing her own interests, me pursuing mine. I wasn’t going to follow her into her advanced anatomy lab or anything. But I’d hoped we’d at least have this together … and maybe, like, gym.

“Hi, Mrs. Hefner!” I hear Esha say, in her overly cheery talking-to-adults voice. She’s very diplomatic with them.

“Hi girls! Ready for your books?”

We finally step into the tiny closet. Even though it feels like I’m dying, there’s that delicious old-book smell—the smell of dozens and dozens of well-loved Dover Classics and beaten-up textbooks—and that’ssomething.Esha hands over her schedule, and Mrs. Hefner, the school’s completely overworked secretary, roams around to find her books among the stacks.

“Very ambitious schedule, with both chemistry and advanced calc,” she mutters as she hands Esha book after heavy book. “Are you interested in medicine, dear? This schedule screams pre-med.”