Dropping the Ball

8. Freshman Year

Freshman Year

In which Micah does not make it better . . .

On Monday, no one talks to me. Yes.

Drake seems to have lost interest in his game over the weekend. With no one to impress, Micah leaves me alone too.

It already means the second week of school is starting better, and it only improves when the morning announcements advise that the school media center is now open. They say “media center,” other students say “library,” and I say “place to eat lunch without being bothered.”

Megan and Lulu make me eat lunch with them at least once a week, but we compromise by eating out on the grounds beneath a cedar tree. The other days, I have my own lunch retreat in the library to study and reset. Every now and then, other students will come in, but always solo, always finding their way to their own table/life preserver/Formica oasis.

It’s a perfect plan for two whole weeks—until a new scandal breaks about my dad, accusing him and the company of stealing wages. Big news outlets follow the story, but it’s a scroll-way-down type thing. Not in Austin. Here it’s a front-page headline and top of the evening news. There is no scandal tastier than a homegrown scandal, so they make sure to air it on Monday and flog it for the rest of the week. Austin is a very anti-capitalist city for a town that runs on capital. Hypocrites.

The coverage is more slanted than the angles we’ve been solving for in geometry all week. Dad came home the day the story broke and told us that it was a major distortion of the facts and explained what really happened.

Madison turned it into an argument, of course, using sound bites from the news to convict him. I tuned her out because she’s jumping to the conclusions the media wants her to draw, but she should know better.

Between the fights at home and the definite side-eye from people in the hall between classes, this library goes from retreat to fortress.

A fortress that Micah Croft breaches, ambling in like the twenty square feet of empty tables and carpet around me aren’t a moat of metaphorical lava meant to discourage random ambling.

No, he ambles up in his Vans, the right toe starting to fray now.

He stops at the other side of the table. “Kaitlyn?”

I glance around like I’m checking for other people before meeting his eyes. “I guess so.”

“Right. I mean, I know you’re Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn Armstrong, right?”

I raise my eyebrows and wait. So help me, if he tells me to smile, I’m shoving this table into his scrawny chicken thighs.

“I’m Micah.”

“I know.”

“That day, um.” He taps the table with his knuckle a few times. “I meant it when I said I like your hair. In Chinese class.”

Like I’m not going to remember. Does he really think I’m going to trust that this isn’t another trick? He was volunteering at the table for the World Without Exploitation Youth Coalition earlier this week during campus club rush. What are the chances he’s suddenly bringing up the hair comment two weeks later, exactly when our company is once again being falsely accused of exploitation?

None. The chances are none.

I roll my eyes and push back my chair.

“Wait, I mean it,” he says.

I stand and hitch my backpack over my shoulder. “You said that. I believe you.”

He pauses. “You don’t.”

“I don’t.” I push in my chair hard enough for it to make a soft clatter when it hits the table. I wish I had something besides sarcasm to rely on. A snappy insult. A way to make him the butt of a joke like Drake made me. But all I’ve got is silence and retreat, so I use them both.

He calls, “Bye?” as I walk out.

I don’t look back.