Page 9 of Lessons in Faking
A few seconds ticked by. “Around two.”
I blinked at her, hesitating at the awkward tension. “Oh, okay.” My eyes narrowed as she went to leave. “Thanks.”
She faltered in her steps and turned around to look me over once, clutching her mug, shaped like the head of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, tightly between her hands. “For?”
“Getting me home.”
“Sure.” Wren nodded, went to leave again. She stopped right before disappearing into her room, as if she’djustreconsidered her stance on talking to me. “I could hardly leave you by yourself with the company you would’ve kept.” The attitude in her voice was undeniable now, and at least I knew I wasn’t imagining it anymore. “Who knows, though, you seemed to be enjoying yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t mean to snap; I was genuinely curious. And confused. But my hangover seemed to be shortening my temper even further, and now I had an attitude too.
Wren snorted drily, though she was clearly not as amused as she wanted to portray. “Nothing,” she managed. Before shutting her door, she added, “Forget I said anything.”
Great.
Today was not the day for arguments. I had things to do and papers to write, and I wasn’t in the mood to fight or even speak to anyone with an attitude. I wanted a calm day. One in which I’d spend most of my time in the library, reading, writing, and studying. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone at all.
So after taking painkillers, a hot shower, and an espresso shot (in that order), I strolled to the library, ready to conquer my demons between books and burned-out college students.
*
And it was going great. By four o’clock, I’d finished that god-awful essay and was through the reading materials for the past two weeks. If you ignored the coffee I’d spilled across the wooden table, the chair I’d rammed into the knee of a student passing behind me, and the loud snore I accidentally let out during a particularly boring chapter, I was thriving.Really.
Productivity over humility. Wasn’t that what they said?
“Athalia.”
My head jolted at my whispered name, messy curls inches from my face when I looked up. Heather leaned across the table toward me, a wide grin on her heart-shaped lips.
Her, Henry, and Reuben lived in the mirror apartment across the street from us. Once I’d moved up on the waitlist and managed a last-minute spot at Hall Beck U, it had been too late to rent off campus, so I’d ended up in the dorms. The second Henry had heard about someone moving out across the street from him, he’d reserved the apartment, and Wren and I moved in at the beginning of sophomore year.
My brother and I didn’t speak often—we weren’t even particularly close. But when we did, it was always becausehe’d managed to fix something in my life that I wasn’t able to. A problem-solver, through and through.
Hey, you, I mouthed at Heather. After the librarian issued me a warning for that snore earlier, I assumed with two noise violations, I’d be out of here. My brother’s roommate cared half as much, though. Fishing a stack of notes out of her bag and lining them up with the book she’d taken off the shelves, Heather cheerily chatted away.
Although I’d relocated to one of the long, dark wooden tables—shielded from Ms.Jones’s direct line of sight, courtesy of the high bookshelves on either side—I threw a nervous glance, wanting to make sure the librarian wasn’t lingering around a corner, just waiting to kick me out. Fortunately, all I saw were the bent necks and bad postures of students hung over their pages, lots of books (of course), and the changing colors of leaves through the massive window front on the other side of the aisle. No gray, pinned-up hair, thin brows, and tiny glasses on a sharp nose in sight.
“I’m not going to lie,” Heather quipped, English accent muddied after the three years she’d spent at HBU. “You look god-awful.” A sympathetic smile followed her words, and I couldn’t help but huff. Her eyes ran across the statistics notes neatly lined up in front of me. The sympathy on her face turned into pity when she looked back at me.
“At least you’ll be rid of him now.” She nodded to my notes with a knowing look. “But yeah, I guess that means having to do it yourself again. Pick your poison kind of thing, isn’t it?” Her eyes had already drifted to the book in front of her, scanning the table of contents.
That’s why she didn’t notice my confusion until I said, “What?”
“What?”
“I’m going to assume you’re about to explain what you’re talking about?” I asked hesitantly. Heather’s eyes flicked across my face, her brow furrowed before she waved me away with acome on now...look.
“You know,” she insisted, amusement still lingering in her voice. She nodded to my statistics notes again. “You’ll have to work on passing Statistics yourself now.” She laughed.
I did not, because I still wasn’t catching on.
“You must have known that once you were rid of McCarthy, you’d have to learn all that by yourself.” She gestured to my papers once more. “Which is why you’re here... studying statistics... by yourself.” Her eyes met mine again. “Right?”
A few seconds of silence ticked by.
“Please don’t tell me—” she began.
“Rid of McCarthy?” I said at the same time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
