The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1)(63)

There it was. I was an idiot.

“Now you get it,” he said.

Jamie was right. My shoulders sagged as if someone let all the air out of the smiley-face balloon that was my heart. Not so brilliant after all.

“It’s a good thing I recorded you.”

I whirled around. “No!” I said. Yes!

Jamie’s grin matched my earlier one, tooth for tooth. “I thought you were going to freak out that you failed afterward, so I recorded an MP3 of your performance for posterity. Thought you’d want to dissect it later.” He held up his iPhone as his smile grew impossibly wider. “Happy Purim.”

I squealed for the first time in my life, like a piglet, and threw my arms around Jamie’s neck. “You. Are. A. Genius.”

“All in a day’s work, sugar.”

We stood there hugging and grinning and then things got awkward. Jamie cleared his throat and I dropped my arms, shoving them in my pockets. There may even have been some shuffling of feet before Jamie spoke. “Um, I think your brother might be waving at you. That, or trying to guide a plane to safety.”

I turned. Daniel was indeed gesticulating wildly in my direction. “I guess I should—”

“Yeah. Um, do you want to hang out after school this week?”

“Sure,” I said. “Call me?” I walked backward in Daniel’s direction until Jamie nodded, then turned and waved over my shoulder. When I reached Daniel, he did not look pleased.

“You are in big trouble, young lady,” Daniel said as we headed to his car.

“What now?”

“I heard about your performance in Spanish.”

How was that even possible? Crap.

“Crap.”

“Uh, yeah. You have no idea what you just stepped in,” he said as we climbed in. “Morales is universally reviled for a reason,” Daniel went on. “Sophie regaled me with horror stories after she broke the news.”

I reminded myself to whine at Sophie for being a tattletale. My insides squirmed a little but my voice was collected when I spoke. “I’m not sure it could get much worse. The witch tortured me daily.”

“What did she do?”

“She made me stand in front of the class while she hurled questions at me in Spanish on stuff we haven’t even learned yet, and she would laugh when I answered incorrectly—” I stopped. Somehow, my arguments sounded less convincing out loud. Daniel looked at me sideways. “She laughed meanly,” I added.

“Uh-huh.”

“And she threw chalk at me.”

“That’s it?”

I grew irritated and shot him a look. “Says the student who has never been yelled at by a teacher.”

Daniel said nothing and stared blankly ahead as he drove.

“It was pretty brutal. Guess you had to be there.” I didn’t want to think about Morales anymore.

“I guess,” he said, and gave me a weird look. “What’s with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I mumbled.

“Liar liar, pants on fire.”

“That hasn’t been funny since you were five. Actually, it was never funny.”

“Look, don’t worry so much about the Morales thing. At least you don’t have to apply to seven competitive internships for this summer.”

“They’re all going to accept you,” I said quietly.

“Not true. I’ve been slacking on my independent study and Ms. Dopiko has still not written my recommendation—and I might have overestimated my AP load, and I don’t know how I’ll do on the exams. I might not get into my top schools.”

“Well, if that’s true, I don’t have a prayer,” I said.

“Well, maybe you should work on that now before it’s too late,” Daniel said, staring straight ahead.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be so hard if I were a genius like my older brother.”

“You’re as smart as I am. You just don’t work as hard.”

I opened my mouth to protest but my brother cut me off.

“It’s not just about the grades. What are you going to put on your college résumé? You don’t do drama. Or music. Or the newspaper. Or sports. Or—”

“I draw.”

“Well, do something with it. Enter some contests. Win some awards. And rack up other organizations, they need to see that you’re well—”

“God, Daniel. I know, okay? I know.”

We drove the rest of the way home in silence, but I felt guilty and broke it when we pulled into the driveway. “What’s Sophie doing this weekend?” I asked.

“Dunno,” Daniel said as he slammed his door. Fabulous. Now he was in a pissy mood too.

I walked into the house and went to the kitchen to rummage for food, while Daniel disappeared into his room, probably to limn the contours of some exquisite constellation of philosophical nonsense for his internship applications and gasp in the throes of his overachieving OCDness. I, meanwhile, mulled over a bleak future starring myself as a New York sidewalk sketch artist living off of ramen noodles and squatting in Alphabet City because I didn’t have any extracurricular activities. Then the phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Tell your husband to drop the case,” someone whispered on the other end of the line. So low I wasn’t even sure I’d heard correctly.