The Hard Count(63)

“Thanks for the video lesson, Reagan. That sure was…swell of you,” he says, speaking slowly and pointed.

“You’re welcome,” I say, glancing to meet his gaze for a breath, his eyes hazed with disappointment. I widen mine with a plea—I just need time. He nods slowly.

“Yeah, I sure am,” he says, bending down to grab his backpack, slinging it over his shoulder and moving toward his coaches—my father—and reaching out to shake their hands.

My dad holds the door open, his eyes on nothing in particular, but most definitely not on me. I gather my things and log off the computer, only looking him in the eyes a second at a time while I pass through the door.

“I’d love pizza,” I say, knowing in my gut that sitting in a booth with my dad and the guy trying to steal his job is the last place on earth I want to be. I want to be with Nico, but I f*cked that up, too.

“We should pick up Noah,” I say, if only to take the heat and attention off me.

“Good idea. I’ll call him,” my dad says, quick to agree.

We both need the ally.





15





“Fairy tales…”

Mr. Huffman writes the word on the board, the chalk breaking with the force with which he scribbles the final letters. He tosses the half still in his fingers onto the metal lip below the board, clapping his hands together and turning to face our class.

The irony of today’s class discussion is not lost on me. I doubt it’s lost on Nico, either. We read a selection of the original Grimm tales in preparation for today, and Mr. Huffman challenged us to consider how they evolved into the now-famous versions with happier endings. The Grimm tales, as they were intended, are bleak and without promise. They are reflections of the time—stories of hunger, desperation…war.

Nico and I may very well be a Grimm fairy tale.

After another night without sleep, and a Sunday of exchanging snide comments with my brother while we both moped around the house, I finally sucked it up and sent Nico a text.

I’m sorry.

I typed paragraphs upon paragraphs, more words in a text form than I think I have typed to Izzy ever, and then I deleted them. I spent an hour crafting the perfect thing to say—building the perfect excuse. I spent an hour typing out lies.

My dad is strict.

I’m afraid he won’t want me dating one of his players.

I was worried he saw me kissing you, and I got embarrassed.

Some of those things were slightly true, but mostly…not.

I deleted them all, and when it came down to it, I was just sorry. Sorry that I was afraid of showing my dad how much I like a boy from West End—a boy whose neighborhood my parents don’t want me to go to; a boy whose last name is different from ours. And then I felt ashamed, because when I showed up at Nico’s house, unannounced, his mom welcomed me inside. She kissed my cheek and hugged me. She didn’t see a girl who was different from her son, and if she did, she didn’t care enough to show it.

I came to school early, hoping Nico would be sitting in his favorite spot in the library, but he wasn’t. I looked for him at lunch, but he was nowhere to be found. I’d seen him pass by through the halls, dozens of moving bodies between us and his thoughts and eyes always somewhere else. I knew he was here. I knew I’d see him. But now that I’m sitting here in this seat, staring at the boy a few rows over and a few chairs ahead, his hands gripping his desk at the top while his long legs fold underneath, I fear I’ve fallen back in time—to a place where Nico Medina hates me.

“You all did your reading, I assume?”

Mr. Huffman’s question brings our eyes to the front. He tilts his head, feeling us out, then nods.

“Good,” he says, moving to his desk at the front, folding his arms over his chest and leaning his weight back. “So what did you think? How do Grimm’s tales compare?”

“They don’t,” Nico says, taking the lead right out of the gate.

I sink back in my chair, not wanting to catch his periphery. His jaw is working, and his eyes flit up to our teacher briefly before coming back to his hands, his knuckles bent with his hard grip around the front of his desk.

“Beyond the obvious, Nico…what do you mean?” Mr. Huffman asks.

Nico breathes in deeply through his nose, pushing his mouth into a hard line.

“Grimm’s stories aren’t really fairy tales. They’re more like…folk tales. They’re allegories, reflections of how terrible things were for the common and poor at the time. You can draw more comparisons to the front page of the Daily Press than you can to the typical fairy tales. I mean, like today, the news has this story about two bodies found sixty miles away from the nearest highway, buried in shallow graves by drug lords who weren’t paid what they were owed. That…” Nico pauses to laugh out once, a punctuated sound that matches the way his head lifts and his shoulders raise. “Stories like that are Grimm stories. Fairy tales, though—those are like the way people want to think the world works.”

“It’s true,” Mr. Huffman adds. “If you look at the evolution of the stories, each edition becomes more mystical, religious undertones are added and good always wins in the end.”

“Good never wins in a Grimm tale,” Nico says. “They just…they just are what they are. Life happens, and people make choices, and then life goes on.”