Page 25 of And They Were Roommates

Delilah claimed the mixer is the only time Valentine students are allowed to have fun. I never believed her, though, since the wordmixeronly evokes a sense of cringe within me. What would she advise me to do if she knew I was being asked to break the rules? Would she encourage me to screw the Valentine system with a tossed middle finger in typical Delilah fashion or to keep my head down like Mom?

All I want to do is hunt down my phone locked in the depths of campus and message her updates like I did throughout school last year, even though she couldn’t read any until her own phone was released at the start of winter break. Now that I’m enduring this phone-less life, I get why she nonstop messaged me all day and night—which I admittedly slept through—until she returned to campus. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to stay up.

“Is the mixer that huge of a deal?” I ask Jasper, since he’s all I have instead.

“It’s everything. A tradition as ancient as STRIP itself. A celebration of every Valentine couple, new and old. We’ll serve hundreds of lovesick souls.”

I still don’t understand. STRIP can’t be worth all the risk that comes with it just for the sake of tradition, and it causes my biggest anxiety spike of the night.

It must be obvious because Jasper closes the distance between us to clap my shoulder. I instinctively lower my face. “I need one week to prepare a lesson plan,” he says. “You’ll start as our face in the library then. We’ll hold your lessons after. Agreed?”

Will I have the time? Create a strict study regimen, wake up early, and stay up all night to please a poet who only respects himself? Besides, spending more time with Jasper outside our trapped room would only give him more chances to look at me closer.

But it would givemea chance to keep an eye onhim. Stop him from investigating into who I am on his own. Give me a small bit of control.

And the room. Ineedthis room to myself.

“Fine, Jasper.”

“Tutor Jasper.” He grins.

I clench my jaw. “Tutor Jasper.”

Chapter 9THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

Ms. Nallos blows her whistle from the bench she’s leisurely sitting on during PE class. “Great laps! Head to the showers!”

I lean over myself on the track, gripping my thighs as sweat drips down my forehead. An impromptu twelve-minute run on the hottest, most sweltering day of the year so far, according to the locker room thermostat. A real-life curse after my weekend of sleepless nights glued to textbooks to make sure I rank tomorrow. One world history group project. Two forty-question-long calculus assignments. Two free-response papers. It all has to be perfect.

But we had to reach at least ten measly laps today. I got six.

Will my PE grade drop?

Laughter booms down the track. Xavier, lucky spoon between his fingers, high-fiving two others. Since they kept whizzing past me, I recognize the back of their stubby buzz-cut heads. They must’ve gotten quadruple my laps.

I barely summon enough strength to walk to the locker room. A sea of drugstore colognes attacks me, and fluorescent lights cast a grim glow, because the concept of a boys’ locker room wasn’t terrifying enough. I approach the lockers to search the bottom row forVON HEVRINGPRINZ, stepping over two used towels, a mound of plaid clothes, a bruised banana, and a few sparkly trading cardsthat look like Robby’s from the library. One is overturned, showing off artwork of an illustrated spotted horse.

Boys’ locker rooms are stranger than I thought.

Splashes echo from around the corner. Showers, probably, and ones I’ve never used. Last week’s PE classes left me tired, but not too sweaty. Today, though, I’ll spend the next seven class hours drenched if I don’t rinse off. Grabbing the towel that I’ve left untouched all week, then my uniform, I follow the splashes.

Then I freeze, my uniform slipping out of my hands.

Naked bodies. Facing shower heads. No privacy curtains divide them. Mirrors stretch along the walls, doubling them. They laugh with each other as if they’re at a baseball game.

Not showers. One communal shower.

Another one of Xavier’s buzz-cut friends reaches for a shampoo bottle, glancing my way. Presence detected. No towel covers him. Not even a washcloth. “You good?”

I try to form a sentence. A word. All I manage is a honk. I sprint past the lockers and into an empty bathroom stall. As I bundle my uniform and towel against the scars on my chest, my insides clump into knots. There’s no time to shower in my room. Calc starts in eight minutes.

The stall door rattles.

“You done yet?” a voice calls.

“Just a second!” I say so unnaturally oddly, I sense the guy back off entirely.

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