Belle's POV
I called Jasmine back this morning. Seven minutes, before school, while I was eating breakfast standing at the kitchen counter. She picked up on the second ring, which means she was already awake and waiting, which tells me everything about how much she's enjoying this. She said she heard that Calloway was announcing semester partners today. She said she heard my name might be near a particular other name, alphabetically speaking. She said it lightly, casually, like she was reading weather reports. I told her alphabetical pairings were random and she said of course they were and we hung up and I finished my breakfast and told myself the call was fine and that I'd handled it, and I almost believed me.
So now I'm sitting in AP Chemistry with Jasmine's voice still at the back of my skull and Calloway standing at the front of the room with a printed list and the specific energy of someone about to do something that cannot be undone.
The room is already buzzing. People are doing the thing where they telegraph their preferences without saying them out loud, leaning toward the person they want to be paired with, sending looks across the room. I don't do that. I sit straight and keep my eyes on the board and make my face do absolutely nothing. That's the only strategy I have right now and I am committing to it completely.
Calloway starts reading.
I write the date in my notebook. I underline it. I write the word Partners and underline that too and then I stop writing because my hand is not as steady as I need it to be and I don't want that on the page as evidence.
Adams and Brennan. Brennan makes a small fist. Calloway keeps going.
I am watching the back of Ethan Cole's head. Not on purpose. He's three seats to my left and slightly ahead and I am watching the back of his head the way you watch a door that might open. He hasn't moved. He's been writing since the class started. Real notes, the main-point-then-question kind, filling the page like the page might run out. He does not appear to have any feelings about what is currently happening. He does not appear to have feelings at all, which I know isn't true because I've seen him with his sister in the library but that is not something I'm supposed to know and I'm not going to let myself think about it right now.
Calloway reads four more pairings.
I hear the C names coming. My chest does something involuntary and I press my back against the chair and breathe out slow through my nose.
"Cole and Hartwell."
The room does it. The specific, collective quiet. Not silent. Just pointed. A pause where normal noise should be. Twelve people checking to see what happens next and trying to look like they aren't.
I keep my eyes on the board.
Ethan Cole does not look up from his notebook.
I'm not going to look at him. I'm not going to look at anyone. I am going to keep my face in neutral and let Calloway finish the list and wait for this particular moment to pass into the next one. That's the whole plan.
Calloway finishes the list. The room unseizes. Conversation rebuilds itself around me and I exhale and uncap my pen and write two lines of notes that I will not remember later.
The rest of the class is thermodynamic equations and I let them fill my head because they are clean and solvable and do not have any feelings. I copy the formulas. I answer when Calloway calls on me. I do not look three seats to the left once.
When the bell rings I pack up slowly. I'm always first out of the room but today I can't make myself move at the normal speed. People file past. The room empties in the way rooms do, unevenly, in small clusters, voices trailing into the hallway. I'm still putting my notebook into my bag when I realize the room has gone quiet in a different way from before. The crowd-quiet. The room-empty quiet.
I look up.
Ethan Cole is still at his desk. He has closed his notebook. He is turned around, not fully, just enough, and he is looking at me with the same direct expression from the hallway two days ago. No performance in it. No awkwardness. Just someone who has decided something and is following through.
My hands stop moving.
He speaks first.
"I work Mondays, Thursdays, and weekends." His voice is even. Unhurried. "Tuesdays and Fridays work for me. Public library on Meridian. Let me know if that's a problem."
I look at him.
He looks back.
There is nothing uncertain in the way he says it. No question mark at the end despite the question. No offer of flexibility that isn't actually flexible. He's given me a schedule the way you give someone a fact, because in his version of this conversation the logistics are the only part that need to be spoken and everything else is already understood.
I should say something about location. Or timing. Or whether the Meridian branch has the journals we'll need. Those are the appropriate responses. Those are the words that fit this situation.
"That works," I say.
He nods once. He picks up his bag. He stands. He's taller than I registered in the hallway, or maybe it's just the angle of the room now that it's empty, and I stay seated because standing feels like a decision I'm not ready to make yet. He moves toward the door without hurrying and without looking back and then he's gone and I'm sitting in an empty classroom with my bag half-packed and my notebook open to a page of thermodynamic equations that I suddenly cannot read at all.
I sit there for probably twenty seconds.
Then I finish packing then I walk out.
In the hallway my phone vibrates and I look down.
Jasmine. Not a text this time but a photo, a screenshot of a message thread between her and someone whose name I don't recognize, and in the thread there are four words that make my vision go slightly narrow at the edges.
Your dad called mine.