Despite the A-minus on his presentation, Luke was more than likely going to pull an A, if not an A-plus, in English. Because of my stupid gym grade, even if I got a perfect score on every test (as I fully intended to do), Luke’s GPA would be 0.008 higher than mine. He’d get the scholarship. He’d go to Tufts.
I’d have to go somewhere else. I’d be saddled with debt, have to take on a couple of jobs, try for every merit scholarship there was. It was possible. I could do it.
I’d applied to the colleges like Harvard and Yale that had huge endowments for kids in my shoes, but I wasn’t likely to get in. All their applicants had fabulous grades, too, and grades were the only thing I had going for me. I lacked any extracurriculars aside from the Math Olympics, too busy studying. No sports to sweeten the pot, no hours of community service, no trips abroad to dig wells.
I wanted to be a doctor—I loved science, and I could see myself in surgery, saving lives, beloved by my peers, not having to worry about clothes because of scrubs. For that career to come true, I needed great grades from a great college to help me get into med school, which would cost at least another quarter of a million dollars.
It would be a long, long road without the Perez Scholarship.
The Fletcher boys had everything. Two parents who loved them and each other. Their father owned the boatyard, his mother was not only the postmistress of our town but also ran the general store (same building, very cute, a must-visit if you were a tourist). As year-rounders went, they were set. They weren’t wealthy but they were solid. I imagined that Luke would be accepted at many colleges, get plenty of merit and sports scholarships.
But I needed the Perez Scholarship. And it looked like I wasn’t going to get it.
One day in early December, as I sat in the cafeteria, not eating (chubby girls didn’t eat in public), reading The Scarlet Letter, Luke approached me, his sycophants trailing behind him.
“Hey, Troll, guess who called me yesterday?”
Even as he insulted me, I couldn’t help the blush of attraction that burned my chest and throat. “I don’t know.”
“The soccer coach from Tufts. Said he can’t wait to have me on the team. Guess the scholarship’s mine. Nice try. But you knew it would go to me, didn’t you? Deep down inside that fatty heart of yours?”
His fan club laughed. He rapped his knuckles on my table, making me jump, getting another laugh, then left.
Tears stung my eyes, and hatred—for Luke, for high school, for myself—churned in my stomach. There had to be something I could do. Something that Luke couldn’t. What that was, I had no idea.
Finals were approaching, and both Luke and I knew we had to ace every damn test. Uncharacteristically, he was studying, no doubt to make sure he wouldn’t hand me the win. Every day after school, I saw him in the library, once my refuge, and he’d mouth, “Sorry, Troll.”
I was doomed.
With two weeks left in the semester, with the January announcement of the Perez Scholarship recipient coming just after break, I was desperate. I pored over my report cards, doing the math again and again. Even if I got an A-plus on every exam, if Luke did the same, he’d win.
But there was that matter of the A-plus on my speech to his A-minus. The tiny ray of hope. It was possible that one A-minus could drop his term grade to an A, and if that happened...well, shit. Even if that happened, he’d still be the tiniest bit ahead.
On the last day of classes before exams, Mr. Abernathy wished us luck, told us to study hard. “Won’t make a difference,” Luke said as he passed my desk, bumping it with his hip.
I sat there, my face burning, pretending to take a few last notes, waiting for everyone to leave. It didn’t take long.
“Everything okay, Nora?” Mr. Abernathy asked, gathering up his own stuff from his cluttered desk.
“Oh, sure,” I lied.
“I have a meeting, I’m afraid. Do you mind turning out the lights?”
“Not at all, Mr. A.”
He smiled and left, and I sat there for another minute. Told myself I’d done all I could. That the University of Maine would give me a good package. Or maybe I’d go to community college for a couple of years and then transfer somewhere. I told myself that while the road to my adult life would be longer and harder without the scholarship, it was still a road I could travel.
But my heart, that stupid organ, ached. My stomach, that bottomless pit, growled. I’d go home, stuff my face, have a cry and a binge before Lily came back from whatever she did after school.
Tufts had been so close. A free ride. The beautiful dorm room. Expenses. The pizzas. The friends.
I got up to turn off the lights.
Then I saw it.
There, on the messy, dusty blackboard filled with quotes from Shakespeare and Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and homework assignments from the last two months, was my chance.
It had been there all along, written in Mr. A’s messy scrawl on the very first week of school, on the far left-hand side of the board. Underneath a caricature of Edgar Allan Poe and above a quote from Heart of Darkness, was my future.
The words were faded and smudged, but still mostly legible.
ECP: 12 Great Works
ECP stood for extra-credit project.
Now I remembered. Mr. Abernathy, his eyes twinkling from beneath his bushy eyebrows, had told us on the first day of the school year, back when the board was still clean, that if anyone had extra time, he or she could do a twenty-five-page essay on any common theme running through twelve great works of literature. In the twenty-nine years Mr. Abernathy had been teaching at Scupper Island High School, no one had ever taken it on, he told us. Not even Dr. Perez. Nevertheless, Mr. A had passed out a list of a hundred suggested titles, all in addition to the ones we already had to read, from Homer’s Odyssey to We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. It was due at the end of the semester.
Ten days from now.
Even I hadn’t had the time to tackle that project. Not with all my other advanced classes and AP workload.
Twelve books, a twenty-five-page paper during finals. That was freakin’ impossible.
My heart began a sickly roll in my chest. Already, I knew I would do the project, and I’d get an A, goddamn it. And Luke would not do the project.
I wasn’t going to let him.
If he hadn’t called me Troll...if he hadn’t told me the scholarship was his...if he hadn’t made me fall that day...if I hadn’t once loved him with all the fervor that every fat, ugly, ignored girl has nurtured...
I poked my head out the door. School was over, and the halls were empty. From far away, I heard Mr. Paul, the nice janitor, start to whistle. The sharp smell of disinfectant was barely detectable. He was washing floors over by the gym, then. I was alone.
ECP: 12 Great Works
My heart felt huge and sick, heaving now.
Carefully, I pressed my arm against the already-fuzzy words. Just a little smear—didn’t want to be too obvious. I erased the round part of the P, subtly added a line to the C. I faded out the 1 of the 12... Just a little rub. Smeared the k, picked up a stub of chalk and added a squiggle, then topped the whole thing off by tapping the eraser so a shower of chalk dust antiqued my efforts.
Just in case.
I stepped back and took a look. I was pretty sure the extra-credit assignment had been there long enough to be virtually invisible—it had been to me—but if someone looked now, it looked more like EGI 2 Great Words.
Just in case.
Was I proud? No. But the hate burned white-hot in my chest, outweighing morality.