Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute(7)

Bradley rolls his eyes. The sun is low and the windows in this room are massive, so he looks like the human embodiment of whiskey and woods and an ancient sepia Instagram filter. It’s honestly atrocious. “Why would I?” he asks. “Just to spend another three years being the only Black kid in the room?”

I scowl. “Hello, I’m literally sitting right here.”

“Hello, it’s a turn of phrase. There are six of us in the entire year. What, do you like that or something?”

“I’d like it better if there were five.” The worst thing about being a minority is occasionally needing to back Bradley up in public. Like that time last year when someone from a rival school said something vile to him during a football tournament and I had to throw a bottle of Coke at the guy (as a matter of principle). “Nothing changes if we don’t make it change.”

“It’s not my job to change their minds,” he says, which is all right for him. He has a soon-to-be-successful scientist for an older sister, and his little brother, who’s signed to the Forest Academy, will probably end up playing for England at the World Cup or some such rubbish, and both of their parents are useful human beings with a sense of duty and loyalty. Brad can afford to go to a second-or third-rate university and have a second-or third-rate career because he has a perfect family and zero single-parent pressure and no shitty absent father to shame into oblivion.

My older sister swears up and down she’s going to be the next Georgia O’Keeffe, but who knows how long that’ll take? Until then, I’m the only one who can prove our worth. I’m the only one who can pay Mum back for years of blood and sweat. (Bangura women don’t do tears.)

But all I say is “Hmm,” and then I focus on my textbook.

“Hmm?” he repeats. “What’s hmm?”

As if I’m about to explain. I needle him instead. “You don’t think you could get in?”

He scoffs at the ceiling. “Of course I could get in—”

“Well, it’s not exactly of course, is it?”

“If you can get in, I can get in,” he says stonily. “We got the same grades last year.”

“Almost,” I correct lightly. Like I said, our mums are best friends, so I know exactly what marks Bradley got last year.

And I know mine were better.

Clearly, he knows it, too, if his stormy expression is anything to go by. Good. He can take his shiny new friends and his star position on the football team; I’ll take my average exam score of 98.5. He left me behind in the hellhole that is secondary school, but when it comes to real life—when it comes to the future, when it comes to success—I’m leaving him in the dust.

“Celine,” Sonam says, nudging my shoulder. It’s a surprise, when I turn, to find her and Peter packing their stuff away. “We’re done. You coming?”

I glance at Mr. Taylor, who is studying a book almost as thick as my arm, the word DISTRACTED written on his forehead. “Yeah.” I’ll do the reading at home and discuss it with myself.

But Mr. Taylor marks his page with a bony finger and pipes up unexpectedly. “Hang on, Celine. Bradley.” His gaze pins us to the wall like bugs. “Since the two of you didn’t manage to discuss one word of your passage, so far as I could hear—”

Oh. My. God. Did Mr. Taylor hear that? I run back the entire conversation, decide it was, at best, utterly juvenile, and attempt to crawl into the earth.

“—you may stay on after class and write down your thoughts for me,” Mr. Taylor continues.

Oh, for God’s sake. I clench my jaw, and Bradley’s nostrils flare so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t whip a tornado into being. Mr. Taylor doesn’t care.

“Go down to the Little Library, please,” he says serenely. “Lower Student Council has booked this room for the next hour.”

“But, sir,” Donno whines from across the table, “we have practice! We need Brad. He’s our best striker!”

Mr. Taylor peers over his glasses, unimpressed. “Then I suppose he’d better work quickly.”





BRAD


We walk through the building in mutinous silence.

I want to say this entire thing is Celine’s fault, but let’s be honest: I just spent the last two hours behaving like a ten-year-old and, surprise, surprise, it instantly came back to bite me.

I’m still pissed at Celine, though.

God, she’s so full of it. Maybe I’m not my older sister Emily studying biomechanics, maybe I’m not my younger brother Mason on a path to play professional football, but I’m just as smart as Celine. And clearly just as childish, because I can’t resist murmuring, “Hope you weren’t expecting Taylor to write your Cambridge recommendation.”

She hugs her textbook tight against her Metallica T-shirt, her expression half boredom and half effortless arrogance. “Mr. Darling is a Cambridge alum, actually, so he’s writing mine.”

Of fucking course he is.

“Who’s writing your recommendation?” she asks innocently, as if she knows I haven’t gotten that far yet, knows I didn’t email any teachers over the summer to help with my application.

And, yeah, she does. I can tell by her face, by the barely there smirk waiting to spread.