That’s our country. Sports. Money. Fame.
“What do you want, Chance?” I ask, impatience in my voice. I don’t bother playing nice or blunting my attitude. We’re not friends. We never have been. I dislike him intensely. He’s everything I’m not. He’s everything I don’t like. Chance never worked hard in school a day in his life, and yet he’s destined to go to college, destined to graduate as they give him dummy courses with low standards.
It’s like that with all athletes. He’s nothing like me.
“Nothing that you’d give me,” he says. “Yet.” He smirks at me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Why are you so sensitive all the time?” Still his lips are pried apart, almost nastily. He thinks he’s such hot shit. I can’t understand why he behaves this way. He’s so repulsive.
“I’m not sensitive. I just don’t like you.”
“Why? Because you want me?”
He doesn’t move. His hands don’t move. He doesn’t fidget. He’s just so damn comfortable all the time. I find my eyes going to his lips… and I hate that I like the shape of his lips. They are full, kissable, set within a strong and defined jaw.
They’re soft, and when his tongue wets them, I find myself momentarily mesmerized.
I just can’t see why the most attractive boy in school is also the most assholish. It bothers me. Is there some kind of script we all adhere to? Why does it happen so often that it’s become a cliché?
What cliché am I? The nerdy girl who did well in school? The geek girl who never had a boyfriend, who was hall monitor and a teacher’s pet?
Well, I wasn’t a damn teacher’s pet. I wasn’t anybody’s pet.
“I don’t want you,” I tell him. “Leave me alone please.”
“Sure you don’t,” he says, sitting down next to me on the bench. He spreads his arm out on the backrest behind me, and pokes my shoulder with a finger. “So, why are you waiting for the bus, then?”
“My dad is away. He left the car at the long-stay parking at the airport, and we only have one car.”
“He didn’t come to your graduation?”
“No.”
“My mother didn’t, either.”
“Really?” I ask, looking at him. For the first time, I feel there might be a thread of similarity between us, but he ruins the moment.
“But it’s not like I give two shits. I couldn’t care less.”
I balk. “You don’t care that your own mother didn’t attend your graduation? Figures. You must be dumb.”
“Oh, I’m certainly not as smart as you.”
“Hey, I worked hard for this. We’re in a weighted-GPA school. Do you know what that means?”
He shrugs. “Jack shit, truthfully.”
“It means that you are awarded more for harder courses, and less for easier courses.”
“So?”
“So?” I echo, exasperated. “It means that I’m not just any little-miss-smart or whatever. I worked for this. I took the toughest courses and I aced them. I did extra credit.”
“So? So what?” He looks at me and grins. “What’s it going to get you?”
“Well, it got me into LSE. That’s the London School of Economics, in case you weren’t aware. It’s one of the best universities in the world.” I peer at him. “You probably weren’t.”
He grins, like he’s enjoying this, and it just pisses me off.
“You’re a bit of a snob, aren’t you?” he says.
“I’m not a snob. I’m just telling it how it is.”
“What’s that super-prestigious degree going to get you, then? Run through your plan with me.”
“Why should I?”
“Well, the bus isn’t here yet, and you’re enjoying talking to me.”
I make a face.
“So, what’s it going to get you?” he pushes.
“I’ll graduate with honors in political science.”
“And then what?”
“I’ll do my master’s.”
“And then?”
“I’ll teach.”
He scoffs. “You’ll teach? That’s it? That’s your sole ambition? That’s the final step in your plan?”
“Hey,” I say. “The world needs more teachers. Good ones. Smart ones.”
“You’ve got this little plan all worked out. You think that it’s all going to depend on how well you do in your classes, what grades you get. Let me ask you, we go to a good private school, right?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding.
“What do you think of Dunham?”
“He’s my history teacher. He’s—”
“A fucking idiot.”
“No he’s not.”
“Yes, he is.”
“He’s got a doctorate, he’s written books on the first and second dynasties of Chin—”
“And this is where he is! Why do you suppose that is, if he’s so accomplished?”
“No shame in teaching in a good school.”
“Why don’t you ask him if he wanted to teach a bunch of stuck-up teenagers all day?”
“You’re in this school too, you know.”
“Not by choice.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Do you even know the point you’re trying to make, Chance? We happen to go to a very good school. You’re kind of undercutting yourself here.”
“He doesn’t know anything about anything useful. Is that what you want to be? In some stupid little corner, some narrow field of study, that nobody else gives a shit about? You want to go into academics? You want to live and die by what you publish? Have your work peer-reviewed by a bunch of cliquey circle-jerkers? You know they all just suck off their friends, don’t you? You know it’s all one big boy’s club.”
“Can you not be so vulgar? And, anyway, political science is not a narrow field, and my options will be open. I could go into academia, or I could go into, shock horror, politics!”
“Politics?” he blurts, laughing. “God, you’re precious.”
“And I can float between the two. I can always go back into academics anytime I want. What kind of prospects do you have?”
“You’ll be encouraged to specialize over and over again. They will push you into a narrow corner, where you can be the master of all you can see – nothing. You will be a big fish in a tiny, brackish pond.”
“Like you would know anything about academics, Chance. You barely graduated from what I hear.”
He laughs. “Surprised me, too. I hardly went to class.”
“I thought you got caught for cutting last year.”
“I did,” he says. “But this year most of my teachers were women, so of course I made attendance minimums.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so gross and up yourself.”
“Hey, I ain’t lying. Apparently I’ve attended the minimum number of classes required this year. That’s how I could graduate, but I know for a fact that I didn’t.”
“That’s so much bullshit.” I frown and I’m sure my expression darkens. It isn’t fair.
“Don’t be so upset, Cass. Why does it matter to you what happens to me?”
“Don’t call me Cass.”
“Don’t tell me you never saw a girl hitch her skirt up just a little, pull those puppy-dog eyes to get out of trouble? Don’t tell me you once never saw Nicole Stansfeld or Alice Ortiz get away with not doing their homework? Or get caught smoking in the changing rooms only to be let off the hook because it was a male teacher that happened to walk by and smell the smoke? Those two got away with far more than I ever did.”
“That’s wrong, too.”
“So what if you don’t get accepted into a master’s program?”