Lock and Key(105)

“He gave you up, too,” I said. “Right?”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “I guess so.”

Across the green, there was a sudden burst of laughter, and we both looked in its direction. As it ended, she said, “Look, for what it’s worth, I think I could have tried harder. To stick by him, or force the issue. I kind of wish I had.”

“You do?”

“I think he would have done it for me,” she said. “And that’s been the hardest part of all of this, really. That maybe I failed him, or myself, somehow. You know?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

“So,” a dark-haired girl with a ponytail said to Heather, sliding into the empty seat beside her. “I just spent, like, a half hour working on Mr. Thackray, and he’s finally agreed to let us plug our fund-raiser again this afternoon during announcements. I’m thinking we should write some new copy, though, to really make an impact, like . . .”

I started to move down the table, our conversation clearly over. “Take care, Ruby,” Heather called after me.

“You, too,” I told her. As she turned back to the girl, who was still talking, I reached into my pocket, pulling out the few dollars’ change from my lunch and stuffing it into the SAVE OUR BEACHES! jar. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things. But it made me feel somewhat better, nonetheless.

Also slightly encouraging was the fact that while I hadn’t been of help to Nate, I didn’t have to look far to find someone who had benefited from my actions. Not now that Gervais was front and center, at my picnic table, every weekday from 12:05 to 1:15.

“Again,” he said to me, pointing at the book with his pencil, “remember the power rule. It’s the key to everything you’re trying to do here.”

I sighed, trying to clear my head. The truth was, Gervais was a good tutor. Already, I understood tons more than I had before he’d begun working with me, stuff even my early-morning help sessions couldn’t make sense of. But there were still distractions. Initially, it had been me worrying about how he’d interact with Olivia, whether he’d act so goopy or lovesick she’d immediately suspect something, and rightfully blame me. As it turned out, though, this wasn’t an issue at all. If anything, I was a third wheel now.

“The power rule,” Olivia recited, flipping her phone open. “The derivative of any given variable (x) to the exponent (n) is equal to product of the exponent and the variable to the (n-1) power.”

I just looked at her. “Exactly right,” Gervais said, beaming. “See? Olivia gets it.”

Of course she did. Olivia was apparently a whiz at calculus, something she had neglected to mention the entire time we’d been sharing our lunch hour. Now that Gervais had joined us, though, they were in math heaven. That is, when they weren’t talking about one of the other myriad, inexplicable things they had in common, including but not limited to a love of movies, the pros and cons of various college majors, and, of course, picking on me.

“What exactly is going on with you two?” I’d asked her recently after one of Gervais’s visits, which I had spent alternately struggling with the power rule and sitting by, open-mouthed, as they riffed on the minute details of a recent sci-fi blockbuster, down to the extra scenes after the credits.

“What do you mean?” she asked. We were crossing the green. “He’s a nice kid.”

“Look, I have to be honest,” I told her. “He likes you.”

“I know.”

She said this so simply, so matter-of-factly, that I almost stopped walking. “You know?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s kind of obvious, right?” she said. “He was always hanging around the theater when I was working. Not exactly slick.”

“He wants to be friends with you,” I told her. “He asked me to help him do it.”

“Did you?”

“No,” I said. “But I did tell him he could help me with my calculus at lunch. And that you might, you know, be there.”

I kind of spit this last part out, as I was already bracing myself for her reaction. To my surprise, though, she seemed hardly bothered. “Like I said,” she said with a shrug, “he’s a nice kid. And it’s got to be tough for him here, you know?”

Ah, I thought, remembering back to what she’d said to me about having things in common. Who knew Gervais would count, too? “Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’re right.”

“Plus,” she continued, “he knows nothing is going to happen between us.”

“Are you sure he knows that?”

Now she stopped walking, narrowing her eyes at me. “What?” she said. “Do you think I’m not capable of being clear? ”

I shook my head. “No. You are.”

“That’s right.” She started walking again. “We both know the limits of this relationship. It’s understood. And as long as we’re both comfortable with that, nobody gets hurt. It’s basic.”

Basic, I thought. Just like the power rule.

Calculus aside, I had surprised myself by not only keeping up my end of the deal I’d made with Jamie but actually feeling slightly confident as I sent off my applications back at the end of January. Because of ongoing worries about my GPA, I’d done all I could to strengthen the rest of my material, from my essays to my recommendations. In the end, I’d applied to three schools: the U, Cora’s alma mater and one town over; a smaller, more artsy college in the mountains called Slater-Kearns; and one long shot, Defriese University, in D.C. According to Mrs. Pureza, my guidance counselor, all three were known to take a second look at “unique” students like myself. Which meant I might actually have a chance, a thought that at times scared the hell out of me. I’d been looking ahead to the future for so long, practically my entire life. Now that it was close, though, I found myself hesitant, not so sure I was ready.