Page 10 of Eye of the Beholder
It’s Jack, asking me about my plans after football and telling me that Virginia agreed to go out with him. Better him than me. I text him back, and I’m just pressing send as I realize Mina’s talking to me.
“Hmm?” I say. “Oh, sorry. I was texting Jack.”
“How’s Jack?” she says, and she sounds sort of funny. She keeps her eyes on the street as we pull away from her house—something I appreciate—but I can still see her face turning slightly red.
“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” I say, grinning.
“No,” she says, sounding defensive now. She turns down one street, then another, and then we’re to the main road. “I don’t care at all.”
“You as much as admitted you still like him,” I say. I let my smile fade, because her face is really red now, and I don’t want to be a jerk.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll get over it.”
I shrug. “All right.”
“So,” she says quickly, her voice squeaky. It’s something I’ve noticed happens when she’s uncomfortable. “How are college applications going?”
I groan. This question makes me want to bang my head against a wall. I get why everyone keeps bringing it up. I do. It’s my future. But thinking about college just makes me think about the ACT, and that just makes me stressed.
“Not great,” I say, and my mom’s suggestion from the other morning rushes back to me. My pride doesn’t want me to do this, but…well, if I want any chance at getting into a good school, it needs to happen. Before I can chicken out like I did last night at the florist’s, I say, “Actually…”
I do have to fight the urge to fidget with my phone. Asking for help makes me nervous.
“What?” Mina says, actually looking over at me. “What’s wrong?”
She sounds nervous, too. She’s probably imagining all sorts of terrible things I could be preparing to say. I guess I should put her out of her misery.
I take a deep breath. “I need a tutor,” I say. “To help me up my ACT score.”
Mina is silent for a second, and then she says, “Oh. Is that it?” Her eyes are back on the road again, and she sounds relieved.
“Kind of,” I say.
“You sounded like someone had died.” She adjusts her hands on the steering wheel and looks over at me again as we wait for the stoplight to turn green.
“I wasn’t done,” I say, forcing myself to keep talking.
“So someone did die, then?”
I smile. “My dignity, maybe.” I take another deep breath. “My mom told me that you did really well on the ACT.”
She’s quiet for longer than a second this time. I can see the wheels turning in her mind, extrapolating where this conversation might be going. When she speaks again, her voice is somehow cautious and squeaky at the same time. “I did do well” is all she says.
All right. Just ask her. It’s not a big deal.
Except…it feels like a big deal.
“Well,” I say, and my forced casualness sounds bizarre when I compare it to my inner state, “if you have some free time, maybe you could…you know. Help me.”
There. Done. Sure, I’ve moved well into my fidgeting habit as I turn my phone over repeatedly in my hands, but that’s fine. At least I asked.
“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “I’ve got a lot of commitments already—”
“Like what?” I say, a lurch of anxiety seizing my chest.
“Like school. I study a lot.” She sounds slightly defensive.
“Okay, and what else?”
