Page 9 of Left on Read

“Tell July what’s wrong.” Esha’s behind me now, spreading out blankets that’ve been crumpled by play and picking up stray toys.

I take a deep breath. July hums a rumbling purr.

“You know how you were just minding your own business, and then that mean boy tried to jump on you?” I ask her. “Tuba thinks hecanbecause he’s bigger than you. And that makes everything easier for him. He can jump on you and steal your toy, and you’re just supposed to take it.”

“O-kay,” Esha says, sitting back down on the floor in front of me. “I think she’s maybe too young for this metaphor.”

I hug July to my chest one last time and then let her go, placing her gently back down on the floor.

“Why does he bother you so much?” Esha asks.

I take a second, trying to put it into words. My natural instinctis to just lie back on the concrete and let the kitten army overtake me, because that’s easier than talking about this.

“Everything’s easier for him. I work twice as hard just to come in second—and then he rubs it in my face, when he’s notactivelysabotaging me. No matter where I go, he’s going to get there faster, because he had a head start.”

Esha nods. My parents didn’t go to college, but Hayes’s parents are doctors. He could afford tuition to anywhere, while I’m competing for every accolade I can leverage into scholarship money. It was always assumed that he’d go to college. For me, it’s a path I forged entirely on my own.

He’s always going to be miles ahead.

“Listen.” Esha sighs. “I know that you want to beat him, and I get why, because what he did to you absolutely sucked. But I think it might be time to stop seeing him as an obstacle.”

I feel my brows wrinkle up. My knees pull to my chest. It’s a protective stance, I know. “What do you mean?”

“Look at her.” She points at July, now curled up on a huge bed in the corner by herself. Her poof-ball toy is tucked between her front paws. “She’s fine. Doing her own thing. She doesn’t give a shit that some boy tried to mess with her. He’s not annoying her because she’s not letting him.”

I look over at Tuba. He’s asleep too, in his soup bowl cuddle puddle. He almost looks innocent like that.

Of all the things Hayes Collins has ever done to me, this just might be the worst:

He’s started trying to make me laugh.

It started in the middle of the Jane Austen movie week. (I say “movie week” because every class session has been a screening, not a seminar. I’m trying to understand it, but it’s really, really weird.) I was, admittedly,engrossedin the film, my chin resting on my hands like a little girl watching a princess movie, so I didn’t even see him slip the note to me. I didn’t even see him write it. It was so dark in the room, I don’t know how he did. Once Lowry turned the lights back on and the spots in my vision cleared, he was already gone. Thankfully, he didn’t see me laugh at his jab at Lizzie’s hair. (It’s not why I prefer the 2005 version over the 1995, but I don’t disagree. Those curls are … crispy.)

Then, he did it again. I was less swept up in the pageantry of the movie this time, because my teeth were starting to grind atthe thought of how much precious class time we were wasting on films. So, I saw him scribbling. He wasn’t as smooth on the delivery that time. I caught his wrist before he slipped the note between the tissue-thin pages of my anthology. (Which I was still dutifully bringing to class every week, despite Austen very much NOT being in it.)

He’d drawn the outline of five little stars and filled in one and a half. I noticed he always wrote in blue ink.

That movie was so bad I think it actually reflects poorly on you as a person. You LIKE THIS? Nova. Be for real.

I could’ve responded verbally, I guess. The movie was over, and so was the class period. Instead, I clicked my favorite red pen, which I always have on me, and responded the best way I know how: in writing.

I filled in one more star and the rest of the half. I didn’t write my own sentence, I just wrote over his. I added not in front of so bad, and then a period after. I scratched out poorly and replaced it with well, then marked through you as a person and added in Colin Firth.

That movie was not so bad. I think it actually reflects well on Colin Firth.

He laughed then.

I think it was the first time he’d ever laughed in my presence without it being at my expense.

And he just kept going. Not with the laughing, but with thenotes. Which brings us to now. Today. We’re supposed to be in a group discussion about this week’s reading, which was our first foray intoactualAmerican Literature, and our firstactualuse of the anthology.

We’d read excerpts from the Federalist Papers—essays on government written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Or, some of us did. The two college girls in our four-person discussion group are clearly bullshitting. I don’t even remember if the one who is currently talking started on topic, or if this has just been off the rails from the beginning.

$10 says we’re the only ones who read.

A yellow sticky note, blue ink. Stuck to the side of the table right in front of my open book. Presumably so no one else sees.

I laugh. Damn him.