Page 104 of And They Were Roommates

Luis peeks through his hand. “How bad?”

I hand the paper back, a smile creeping up my face.

He deflects, chopping the air with a hand. “I can’t look!”

“You can!”

“Not!”

“But you got a 97!”

Luis takes the paper and stares in shock.

I can’t help but keep grinning at the reaction I’ve seen plenty of times, even before I started STRIP, back in Queens. The one that constantly makes me think I could do this for the rest of my life. “Looks like your hard work paid off.”

Luis slings an arm over my shoulder, pulling me in so snugly that I nearly choke. “Ourwork paid off. The whole student population has been saved because of you.”

A sudden heaviness travels up my legs and builds pressure behind my eyes, weighing me down with more exhaustion.

What did Luis say?

Right. “I wouldn’t say that,” I respond uncertainly, fighting it off with a few blinks. “People don’t come to my tutoring anymore.”

“They’ll come back. Who could resist you? Oh, guess who has a date to the mixer?”

Well, not me. “You?”

“Yep. Michael askedme. You know, I used to hate this mixer since my friends would ditch me for their dates every year, but now it’s my era to ditch. My orange bow tie is gonna kill this year’s pumpkin-Halloween-whatever theme. Anyway, can you believe it?”

I really can’t, considering the campus we’re standing on. Even more so, how happy I am for Luis’s love life. Once again, how tired am I? “You deserve it.”

Someone at our side clears their throat.

Jasper, playing with his repaired silver bracelet instead of making eye contact. In his cross-body bag, the knit scarf I gave him peeks out of the top, like it’s actually become part of his daily list of things to pack. Once I leave Valentine, I suppose that’ll be all he has left of me. “I apologize for the interruption. STRIP is holding a meeting now, but I can—”

The rest is lost to me. The heaviness from before takes over my body, and the world narrows into white.

Pressure hits the small of my back, sparking me alive again.

I blink up at Jasper’s face, hovering above my own. His hand still presses against me, holding me upright. “Charlie? Charlie.”

“What?”

“You were passing out.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? That’s all you have to say?” Jasper’s a mesh of highstaccato notes, and his blue eyes race around my face. “You slept last night after I went to bed, didn’t you?”

“I’mfine,” I say more aggressively than I should. I straighten myself to no longer need his support. Luis is gone. Was I passed out for more than a few seconds? “Why are you late? Did you get in trouble?”

Jasper clenches his jaw. He sets his cross-body bag on the table, turning his back to me and whipping out his journal so hard that he could be slapping cockroaches with it.

Okay.

As I unzip my own backpack, I recall everything that happened right before I fainted. No more STRIP for me. No more Mr. Stern. No more Dix. No more Valentine. No more trying to fix this awkwardness between me and Delilah—I’ll be so far from her that I might even lose her as my best friend for good. Next term, a new STRIP face will be needed. I should’ve warned them, should’ve already packed, should’veneverthought otherwise.

“I didn’t rank,” I mutter.

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