Begin Again

“March is a nothing month,” says Shay, scowling at the slush on the sidewalk as we make our way to the library.

“You’re literally a Pisces,” I remind her.Content © NôvelDrama.Org 2024.

“And as one of the more emotionally aware signs, I feel more deeply than anyone how boring this time of year is,” Shay says, capping it off with a long sigh.

She’s not wrong. There’s a restless kind of energy all over campus. That post-midterm, pre-knowing-whether-you-passed-themidterms feeling that has everybody a little bit on edge.

At least it’s been getting marginally warmer, because for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, so far every single yellow-ribbon event has been outside. I can’t say I’ve minded it too much, since it’s given me plenty of excuses to explore the arboretum. I’ve even run into Milo’s mom a few times taking care of things on the grounds. After I lingered one afternoon watching absolutely transfixed as she moved a beehive, she asked if I would be interested in joining an outdoor volunteer society she led. I loved the idea of it, but told her it would probably have to wait until next semester—or at the very least until the ribbon hunt finishes up.

“If it isn’t my fellow reigning trivia champions,” says Valeria, already set up at a front table for today’s tutoring session when we walk into the library. “Happy Friday.”

Shay leans in for a quick hug, easily more familiar with Valeria than I am by now. The All-Knighters have started grabbing the occasional coffee and hanging out outside of trivia, but the two of them both read so fast they meet up to swap books several times a week. They’ve even done reading sprints at that crepe place my dad talked about, enough times that Shay has more than a few Nutella-stained cardigans to show for it.

“The lit mag meeting should only last an hour or so,” says Shay, glancing at the cluster of armchairs where her other friends are starting to assemble. “What time do you guys finish?”

“Right about then, too. Want to grab pre-trivia dinner after we all wrap up?” Before Shay answers, Valeria reaches up and strokes the rosy-orange chunky knit scarf Shay’s sister made her. “Ooh, I love this. So soft.”

“Thanks,” says Shay. “The, uh—the glitter eyeshadow you have on. It’s really cute.”

Valeria smiles that full cover-girl smile of hers. “I’ll bring it to next week’s trivia so you can try it.”

“Sweet.” Shay presses a hand to her scarf in the same place Valeria touched it. “And yeah, dinner sounds great. I’ll come find you.”

I bite down a smile as we settle in our respective library corners. Every now and then Valeria and Shay seem to go on a mutual compliment train that nearly veers off the tracks, and I can’t help wondering if there’s more to it than that.

Alas, any secondhand joy I might have felt at the idea of that gets immediately squashed by math.

“You got stumped by that kind of problem last time, too,” says Valeria when I’ve reached an impasse where my brain simply doesn’t know what to do next. “Did you ever end up going to the TA’s office hours?”

I bite my lip.

“Andie,” says Valeria, her tone chastising.

“I know, I know.” I don’t bother to make excuses about the ribbon hunt or prepping for The Knights’ Watch. They’re all getting old. “But I think the midterm went okay, at least.”

We both stare back down, me frowning at a problem I haven’t mastered, but Valeria going eerily still. I glance up at her in surprise, wondering if she’s really that upset about me bailing on the TA. Then I follow her narrowed eyes across the room, toward the literary magazine meeting. There’s a student at the podium holding this month’s edition, beaming at the small gathered group.

“If nobody else wants to read from the excerpt of Kingdom of Lumarin—a working title, I’m told—I’ll go ahead and read it,” she says. “But I do hope whoever wrote it comes forward! It is such a phenomenal writing sample, we were so excited to publish it in this month’s edition.”

I turn my gaze to Shay, whose eyes are wide enough to serve bagels on. But then we both tear our eyes back over to the podium as the student begins to read.

“The night of Prince Colton’s ball was the very same night the witch’s prophecy came true,” she narrates, the lit club group listening with rapt attention. “I was meant to be finishing up the final touches on my gown. Instead I was scraping spectre guts off my mother’s vanity.”

By the first paragraph of the excerpt, Valeria has already gathered up all her books and shoved them into a bag. I quietly follow suit, trying not to cringe as it becomes abundantly clear that whatever’s happening here, it’s the last thing Valeria wanted. I try to make eye contact with her, but her lips form a tight line and her eyes are staring holes into the floor, determined not to let me.

Toward the end of the reading, Valeria rises abruptly to her feet. Shay and I both follow, meeting her at the entryway. People are applauding, but all I hear is Valeria addressing us through her teeth.

“Outside,” she says. “Now.”

Despite the heels on Valeria’s knee-high boots, Shay and I can barely keep up with her as she stalks out of the library and down the front steps, leading us to one of the giant trees on the path just outside it. Before we even fully stop, Valeria whips around and finally meets my eye.

“Andie, what were you thinking?”

I blink. “Huh?”

“You submitted my personal writing to the school literary magazine?”

I raise my hands up like some kind of surrender. “Heck no.”

Valeria’s lip wobbles, clearly reluctant to continue accusing me but unsure what else to do. “But you were so fixated on me figuring out the ending. Who else would—”

“I did it,” says Shay.

This knocks all the hurt right off Valeria’s face. When she turns to Shay, her voice is quiet with disbelief.

“You did?”

Shay nods slowly, her eyes searching Valeria’s like she’s trying to find a foothold. “I didn’t think they’d publish it. Usually they run it past the writer first, let them pick a stock photo to go with it. But I submitted it without a name, so I guess they just went for it.”

Valeria looks down at the ground, her fingers clenching at her sides. I take a small step back, unsure which would be the worse move: ducking out and leaving the two of them on their own, or standing here and witnessing something I’m not sure they want me here for. But then when Shay opens her mouth to speak again, she looks at me first, the “please stay” clear enough to root me in place.

“The plan was to run it past you if they wanted it, so you could think about it,” says Shay. “So you’d see people actually want to read it.”

“That’s not the problem, Shay!” Valeria’s eyes are wet, her face puckered with anger. “The problem is I don’t want them to read it!”

Shay just shakes her head. “Val . . . you’re phenomenal. Why not?”

Val lifts a hand up to her forehead like she’s steeling herself before the compliment can sink in. “Because—because it’s not ready yet,” she says. “And it’s mine. It’s the only thing that’s just mine, and I trusted you with it, and now it’s out in the world where twenty-four thousand students can hate it or make fun of it or use it as toilet paper.”

“Or love it just as much as we do,” Shay cuts in stubbornly.

Valeria lets out a strangled, verge-of-tears kind of laugh. “It’s like—like, if someone took my diary, and just posted the whole thing on the internet. That’s what this is. Don’t you get it?”

Shay reaches out to touch Valeria’s shoulder, but Valeria jerks herself away as Shay says, “I never meant for it to get published without you knowing.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything with it in the first place. That was my decision, not yours.” Valeria runs her hands through her hair, shutting her eyes. “Just—dammit. There’s no way out of this, is there?”

“Nobody has to know it was you,” Shay says quietly.

“But that doesn’t mean I won’t hear what they think about it. And I’m . . . I’m not ready for that.”

The late winter wind picks that particular moment to gust in that rib-chilling, unexpected way it sometimes does near the arboretum on campus. All three of us tense up, looking at one another like something will suddenly resolve itself, as if one of us will have the magic words to make it okay.

“I’m sorry,” says Shay again.

Valeria’s shoulders slump.

“I know you are,” she says. “But I just . . . I’m gonna go.”

“Val,” Shay pleads.

Valeria turns around, swiping at her eyes with her coat sleeve. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Neither of us answer her, watching as she turns the corner of the library down the path that leads to her dorm. The sun was already setting when we walked out here, but now a cloud has blotted it out completely and made the darkness fall with unnatural speed.

“Shit,” Shay mutters under her breath, turning on her heel in the opposite direction. Yet again, I have to adopt a half jog to keep up.

“It’ll be okay. She just needs some time to cool off,” I tell her. “One stupid thing isn’t going to ruin an entire friendship.”

“Friendship,” Shay says with a bitter edge.

I pick up the pace to match hers, unsure how to respond. “Or anything else,” I hedge.

When Shay answers, the words come out so loud with frustration that several heads swivel in our direction. “I really, really like her.”

“Oh,” I manage.

Because I had imagined this conversation before—I hoped she might say something on a walk home from the broadcast, or one of those nights when we’re both practically drunk on sleep deprivation cramming for exams. That at first she’d be shy about it, but eventually that giddy, new crush feeling would win out, and she might tell me then.

What I didn’t imagine was her blurting it out in the middle of campus, fleeing the library like we just set it on fire.

“Yeah,” says Shay. “Oh.”

Okay, then. Giddy crush feelings later. Damage control now. The gears in my brain are already turning, thinking ahead to tomorrow, to next week, to the conversations that need to be had and the understanding that needs to be shared. “We can fix this.”

Shay stops so fast that I almost skid on the slushy pavement to follow.

“No, we can’t,” she says. “I fucked up, Andie.”

I open my mouth to say she didn’t mess up so much as make a well-intentioned mistake, but she shoots me a warning glance.

“Okay, yes, this wasn’t ideal,” I say, shifting course. “But it’s not like—the be-all, end-all of you guys having a relationship.”

Shay holds up a hand to stop me. “I can’t even think about that right now.” She takes a breath, then glances around the quad like she’s worried someone will overhear. But for once, it’s just us. There’s no mistaking the finality in Shay’s tone when she looks at me and says, “I don’t want your help with this. Just don’t get involved, okay?”

It stings more than the bitter wind, but it’s not about me. I know that. So I nod. “Okay. I won’t.”

Shay lets out a long breath. “Sorry. I’m just—so mad at myself.”

“I know,” I say, keeping my voice low, too.

She gestures out toward the main road off campus. “I’m going to just . . . walk for a bit. I’ll see you back at the dorm.”

After she leaves I stand on the edge of the quad for a few moments, trying to decide what to do with myself. But before I can, my phone buzzes in my hand. I wince, certain it’s going to be my dad—I have been passive-aggressively playing voicemail tag with him for weeks—but it’s an email letting me know the score from my latest statistics test is in.

Sixty-seven percent.

The blood in my body pretty much stops moving as I scroll farther down, certain I read it wrong or the Scantron got bungled in the machine.

“Chocolate-covered pretzels,” I mutter. “Oof.”

My nose is deep enough in my phone that I walk right into a very tall human being’s arm. I smell coffee and faint citrus and know exactly who it is before his hand reaches out for my elbow to steady me.

“Sorry,” Milo and I both blurt at the same time.

He gestures at his phone. “I was . . .”

“Same,” I say, holding up my phone with an embarrassed laugh. But Milo doesn’t laugh back. In fact, he looks like he’s had a run-in with the ghost everyone claims haunts the arboretum’s lake.

Just like that, the exam score is completely out of my mind. “Are you okay?”

Milo blinks. “Yes. I mean.”

Instead of telling me, Milo hands me his phone, which is also open to an email.

“Congratulations, Milo Flynn,” I read out loud, “on your acceptance to . . . wait.” I keep waiting for the words to change, but they don’t. “Isn’t this school in California?”

“Yeah.”

So basically as far from Blue Ridge State as he can possibly get. I hand him back the phone, trying to smile, but my face feels all wobbly. He doesn’t notice, still staring at the screen like it’s going to start talking to him.

“They’ve, uh—they’ve got a good broadcast program there,” he says.

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. So do we. But he knows that. He’s been so diligent about keeping his identity as the Knight under wraps that Shay and I just assumed he was applying to Blue Ridge State’s program. The broadcast program still resents the show for existing outside their jurisdiction, so it could only hurt his chances if they knew.

Maybe that’s why this feels like such a surprise. I knew he was trying to transfer. I’ve known since the literal day we met. But somehow over the past months of early mornings in the recording studio and afternoons at Bagelopolis and late nights at trivia, I let myself forget.

This is the part where a good friend would ask him how he feels about it, or what he thinks he’s going to do. But as soon as I think up the questions I know I don’t want to hear the answers. All I see is our little friend group falling apart before it even really had the chance to solidify.

“Well, good for you.” My voice is too tight, too chipper. I take a breath and ground myself. “I mean—I know how hard you worked for it.”

He nods. I nod back. A group of students spills out of the science building, and we both use the commotion as an excuse to wave and keep walking in opposite directions, the weight of those emails feeling heavier with every step.