Page 66 of After the Snap

Chapter Sixteen

Calliope

The registration page has been open long enough for the screen on my laptop to dim twice, and when I wake it, the same blue button waits for me at the bottom of the page as if it has nowhere else to be.

My cursor is already hovering over it, which shouldn’t surprise me, considering I know this page well enough now that I could recreate it from memory. I filled in all the boxes sometime late last week when I convinced myself I was only checking which testing dates were still available. That would’ve been a much more convincing lie if I hadn’t also compared testing centers, pulled up the calendar on my phone, and figured out exactly how many weeks I’d have to study before each one.

I move the cursor away from the button and reach for the iced coffee sweating against the stack of flashcards beside me. “I’m so pathetic.”

“That’s a strong reaction to coffee.”

I don’t have to look up to know it’s Easton. “It’s not the coffee.”

“Good, because I was about to question everything I know about you.”

He drops into the chair across from me, stretching one leg under the table until the toe of his sneaker bumps my backpack. I nudge him away without looking, but when he immediately nudges it back, I lift my eyes over the top of my glasses.

Easton reaches into the bowl of pretzels someone left on the table this morning. “See? We’re learning each other’s boundaries.”

“You’ve learned that one four times this week.”

“Repetition is essential to mastery.”

“You’re about to master getting stabbed with a pen.”

He grins around a pretzel and pulls out his phone without asking what I'm doing or demanding my attention. Apparently, he has time to kill and has decided the chair across from me is where he wants to kill it, which shouldn’t feel as normal as it does.

This started happening after I brought my laptop in on Monday—probably even before that. The days since the first preseason game have fallen into a routine without me noticing. I show up in the morning, Dad usually needs me to find something he swears isn’t where Denise told him, and Denise inevitably needs me to fix something Dad has touched. Once they’re both busy, I find a quiet conference room and open whatever I’m working on, and before practice ends, somebody inevitably wanders in and decides I’m part of whatever they’re doing.

Sometimes it’s Easton. Tuck has developed an unnerving talent for appearing exactly when I open a bag of food, while Sullivan keeps borrowing my phone charger despite owning one I’ve seen him carry around recently. Yesterday, Archer sat three chairs down from me for nearly forty minutes without saying anything beyond, you mind before opening his laptop. When he left, he pushed a granola bar across the table because I’d been glaring at the same page of notes long enough for him to decide that low blood sugar was involved. Nobody asks whether they can stay anymore, and I stopped wondering when they were going to leave.

Easton scrolls on his phone while I take another sip of coffee, and I already know how long this silence will last. He’ll stay quiet until he sees something ridiculous enough to require an audience, and then whatever peace I have will be over. I’ve spent enough time with him to know his boredom patterns, just as he’s spent enough time around me to know the exact moment I’d contemplate murdering someone for interrupting me.

I turn back to my laptop, and the MCAT registration page is still there. I’ve been sitting here for Lord knows how long with a coffee I didn’t pay for because Tuck shoved it into my hand and told me I looked “academically hostile.” Yet the second my cursor drifts toward the continue button again, my stomach tightens, and my fingers stop moving. It’s one click. There isn’t even a test waiting on the other side of it, but apparently my body doesn’t care about the distinction.

My index finger settles against the trackpad because being capable of registering has never been the issue. I’ve sat through interviews and spent years building a résumé around a future I could describe clearly because I knew exactly what I wanted. Medical school and becoming a doctor still fit when I imagine my future, which is exactly what makes closing this page so much harder.

If I didn’t want medicine anymore, there’d be nothing to decide. I could close the browser, let myself feel whatever grief came with that choice, and eventually figure out what I wanted instead. But every time I picture clicking that button and taking the MCAT again, the first thing I see isn’t a white coat or another medical school application. It’s a better score, high enough that the last one stops mattering.

I’m not imagining another attempt so much as correcting the score already sitting in my application history, as if a new number could erase the first one and everything I felt when I opened it. I took that test after months of preparation and sat alone while years of certainty narrowed down to a number that wasn’t enough. Studying harder might change what happens next time, but it can’t change the fact that the first time happened, no matter how badly some part of me still wants a score that could make it disappear.

The cursor trembles slightly when I move it back toward the continue to registration button, and Easton’s voice pulls my attention away. “Okay. I wasn’t going to ask, but I feel like I’ve shown incredible restraint already.”

“You’ve been sitting there for six minutes.” I fight the smile threatening the corner of my mouth and fail, which immediately puts a look of smug satisfaction on his face.

“Why have you moved your mouse toward the same button three times and then backed away like it insulted your mother?”

My fingers go still as Easton glances at my screen, not long enough to read everything but apparently long enough to catch the four enormous letters at the top. “MCAT? Are you planning to take the test?”

My first instinct is to tilt the laptop away from him, but my hand never moves, unsettling me enough that I look back at the screen instead. “Potentially.”

He waits for something more, and when I don’t give it to him, he reaches for another pretzel. “That’s a weirdly threatening way to say yes.”

“It’s not a yes.”

“Okay.” His calm acceptance of my answer should be a relief, but irritation pricks at me instead.

“That’s it? You don’t have anything else to say?”