Page 44 of Ancient History

“Uh…feudalism?”

Well, that was correct on a technicality. I knew he was lying, but I had to be careful about how I caught him in this lie. “Can you email it to me tonight?”

“I have practice.”

“When you get home from practice.”

“It’s pretty late. And that was my only copy.”

“You’re telling me you typed up your paper and didn’t save a copy?”

“Yeah.”

I heaved out an over-it breath through my nostrils. This kid was going to make me go in circles, and I didn’t have the time.

“Tommy. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t save a copy of your paper.”

“My computer crashed, and I lost all my files.”

“Mrs. Healy in the computer lab has worked wonders with computers and extracting files. If you bring in your computer, she can probably extract it from your hard drive.”

Mrs. Healy was the most tech-savvy person I knew, but I had no idea if this was possible. But I wanted to see if I could call his bluff.

“Uh, that’s okay. I already threw my computer out and got a new one.”

Damn rich kids. I quickly grew tired of this conversation. It had all the logic of an improv sketch.

“The assignment was due on Friday. There was no paper from you. I’ll have to mark that down as a zero.”

“Ugh, whatever.” He didn’t even have the energy to continue the fight. His face twisted into that straight broover itglare that made me want to scream.

“You’re already at a D-plus average for the marking period. If you get one more zero, you’re going to be failing.”

He shrugged with as much interest in his GPA as he had in learning history. “I’m gonna be late for class.”

“Tommy, as I’ve said all year, if you need extra help, we can discuss ways to help you. But you need to meet me halfway.”

“Yeah, cool.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, and he was gone before I could follow-up.

* * *

I swungby Chase’s classroom on Friday to verify the snacks and beverage menu before Julian and I went to the store after school.

The day hadn’t started yet, and he was already busy scribbling away some chemical equations on the chalkboard. I had learned all of this once upon a time, but my knowledge of high school chemistry had fallen out of my brain, pushed out by my encyclopedic knowledge of finalists onRupaul’s Drag Race.

Chase squatted down to write to the very margins of his blackboard.

“Hey, Chase. Got a second?”

He was in the zone with his equations. His eyes were wild and big behind his glasses. White powder got onto his shirt.

“Chase.” I tapped his shoulder forcefully.

He needed a second to snap out of his trance. He looked around amazed that myself and other students were already in class.

“You were really going at it,” I said. “With the…” I waved my hand at the board. “Science. All the science.”

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