Page 7 of Left on Read

I think I would’ve rather been flattened by the bulldozer.

“Your mom,” Luke practically yells. He’s so loud. I didn’t know people still madeyour momjokes. I thought that was just a thing that happened in early 2000s TV. I turn around and look at him. He apparently doesn’t feel like apologizing for running me over. He has extremely shiny, long brown hair that covers his eyes when it’s not tucked behind his ears. He likes to flip it around all the time. It’s so incredibly annoying. I’ve known him since kindergarten, and I swear he hasn’t matured at all.

Hayes rolls his eyes, and his hand moves from my shoulder. Oh, yeah. That was his hand on my shoulder. That’s odd.

Hayes picks up my anthology from the floor, pressing the bent cover down and dusting debris off the pages. He hands it back to me gently, like he knows this reallyismy emotional-support book. That’s interesting. I thought that was a joke. At my expense. I always assume everything is.

“Yeah, right,” he murmurs before I can even thank him. “She barely even raised me.”

My eyebrows raise, because that was unexpected. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Hayes talk about his family like that. He doesn’t talk about them much at all, really, except for his older brother who’s in med school at Duke.

“Is the fighting starting already?” Luke asks, settling in tooclose to me and resting his chin in his hands, his elbows planted on the lab tabletop beside Hayes.

“They’re not fighting, really,” Esha says, crossing her arms. “Just bickering.”

“Well, that sucks.” Luke sighs. “I was sure they were going to have one of their blowouts today. I want a refund.”

Hayes gives him a side-eye look, but Luke is just saying what everyone’s thinking. They’re all watching us now, even the sophomores who’ve been Beta Club members for, like, three seconds. They’re all wide-eyed in anticipation, and despite the crowd, it’s dangerously quiet in the room. Someone should sell popcorn or something.

This is our year to fight.

The year the war ends and a victor emerges. We’ve been fighting since the moment we walked through the doors as freshman. School is our arena. We’re two seniors at the top of our class, battling for accolades. Valedictorian, National Honor Society, Beta Club president.

The race for student government came to the ringing crescendo of my car alarm last year, butthisbattle means so much more, because it’s the last time our classmates get to choose between us.

For a second, I look around at everyone in the room. Meet each set of eyes, even as much as it physically pains me. I can feel the pressure on my shoulders, the expectation of the fight they’re all waiting for. As my eyes track around the room, conversationsquiet. Some people smile, others send only blank stares, probably because they’re confused by the intense eye contact.

“Alright,” Hayes says, standing up straighter next to me, addressing the crowd. “Nothing to see here, people. Just a conversation between friends.”

At that, those simple words spoken in his quiet, even-keeled voice, the whole room shifts. Conversation resumes at its previous full volume. All that eye contact goes away. Wait,friends? Are we friends? We’re not friends.

I almost want to thank him until I realize what he’s just done.

He did what he always does. He led everyone in the room without even trying, probably securing enough votes to beat me without a second thought. Effortless, uncomplicated, no sweat. I look at him, and no one else, because it’s at this exact moment that I realize he’s everything I’m not.

Hands clap near the doors, and I flinch.

Mrs. Jacobs is here. She’s extremely loud, but she’s here. She’s been my homeroom teacher for all of my years here, and my English teacher for a couple. She looks out of place among the beakers and Bunsen burners in the only classroom big enough to hold us all, the lab. I’m so grateful to see a teacher, someone I know and love and trust, someone who isn’t constantly judging me, that my eyes fill with tears. Typical.

Shut up,I almost whisper under my breath. That’s what I do when I have too many feelings.

Hayes looks my way, and I realize I may haveactuallytold myself to shut up.

I don’t care. It’s either that or cry, and he already thinks I’m an unhinged emotional basket case, so I will not cry in front of him again. Not today, at least.

“Sorry I’m late, kids.” Mrs. Jacobs sighs hard enough to blow stray, frizzed curls off of her face. “Long story, but there was a scooter incident I had to deal with.”

I love that about her, that she’s always calling us “kids.” Like we still are. In a world where we’re trained in professionalism and sit next to forty-year-olds in class and think about nothing but books and math and chemistry, or whatever, it’s nice to still be a kid somewhere.

Also, I don’t know what a scooter incident is.

“Anyway”—she leans on her desk, a giant lab counter twice the size of any other in the room, and she rests all her weight on her forearms—”Welcome back to Beta Club.”

All around me, people cheer. I wince, because the noise is kind of too much for my body to deal with right now. Mrs. Jacobs’s eyes look around the room, eventually falling on me. She nods. I nod back.

We keep our homeroom teachers all four years in this place, and I’m so glad she’s mine. I’ll never forget the first overwhelmed-crying-in-the-bathroom moment I had at this school. I was a freshman, and it couldn’t have been more than a few weeks into the semester. I’d stepped out into the courtyard off the cafeteria to call my mom, because I was full-on panicking about something,but she didn’t answer, so I made a beeline to the girls’ room. On the way, I ran into Mrs. Jacobs. She was blocking my path to the bathroom. The path to emotional safety.

“Are you okay?” she’d asked.