Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders) (14 page)

Chapter Eleven

Claudia and I both needed challenges. Everyone else was still working on theirs, since Oliver had extended his beyond going to the first youth group meeting to actually spending some time with the guy he’d met there.

“I want you to keep going with the math,” Claudia told me as she traced invisible lines from the back of my wrist up to my elbow, then down again. It was Thursday at lunch and we were sitting in the library, at least twenty other kids and a couple adults all in the same well-lit room, and I had never been so hyperaware of my forearms in my life. She wanted me to do math? Yeah, okay. I’d do whatever she wanted as long as she kept touching me.

And she seemed to realize that, because she took her hand away and said, “Do
you
want to keep doing math?”

“I kind of have to. The course isn’t over.”

“You got an eighty-two percent on your last quiz, and I seriously think you should go in and argue for a couple more points. You’re caught up. You could just settle back and maintain now, if you wanted to.”

“Wait. What are we talking about, then? What does ‘keep going with math’ mean to you?”

She shifted around so she was facing me, which was nice, except that it took her hand even farther from my arm when she did it, which left me wishing for a bit more contact. “Keep doing
extra
math. Start exploring things beyond the course.”

“Exploring extra math,” I said, trying the words out to see if they made more sense when I said them than they did when I heard them. “Why? I mean, I’m not arguing, exactly, I’m just trying to figure it out. You think the inner me is mathier than the outer me? Or…?”

“No, not really.” She frowned. Not like she was trying to figure out what she thought, but like she was trying to figure out the best way to say it. “I just think you might want to try—” She stopped, thought for another moment, then said, “I think you might want to try
trying
. You know? It doesn’t have to be math, if that’s not your thing. But Karen said—okay, let me admit right from the start that Karen and I both combined still know next to nothing about hockey—but she said Tyler said you’ve been working harder in practice lately, and in games, even. She said the coach even commented on it?”

That was true, actually. It was weird that she’d heard about it through her spy network instead of from me, but she was being so careful with her words that I didn’t really feel like I had any right to get snarky about it. “Yeah, maybe,” I admitted instead.

She nodded. “So—I was wondering if maybe things had kind of spilled over from the math? I’m not trying to give myself more credit than I deserve.
You
asked for tutoring, and
you
did all the work. But I wonder whether deciding to try harder at math kind of—I mean, it’s kind of scary to really try at something, isn’t it? If you don’t even try, then it’s no big deal if you fail. But if you try and still fail, then you’re a failure. You did your best and it wasn’t good enough? That sucks, right?”

I wasn’t enjoying the way this conversation was going. “We shouldn’t ignore the strong possibility that I’m just really, really lazy, right? Like, all the psychobabble stuff is interesting, but also—” I leaned back far enough to give myself room for a wide-armed stretch of relaxation. “Doing nothing is way easier than doing something.”

“Easier, but not better,” she insisted. And damn it, she was just so—so
Dia
. So serious and sweet and cute and smart and, unfortunately, so likely to be right.

“So you want me to try at something.”

She shook her head. “No. I want you to
want
to try at something. Not because I’m asking you to, but because you really want to. Because trying at math paid off, and trying at hockey is paying off, and if you keep trying, at them or at something else, maybe you’ll get even more of a payoff.”

“Or maybe I’ll be a failure,” I pointed out. If she was going to make up theories about me, she should at least look at all sides of the theory.

She didn’t seem too worried, though. “Or maybe you’ll learn that failure is temporary. When you were a baby, you couldn’t skate at all. The first time you stepped on the ice, you probably wiped out. Probably a lot of times. But now you’re apparently pretty good at it.”

“Okay, you don’t need to add the ‘apparently’ there. You’ve seen me skate, Dia. You know I’m good at it.”

“Good enough, I guess. But not as good as you could be if you really, really tried.” Her eyes were dancing and I knew she was mostly just teasing. Mostly. But as usual with her, there was something serious going on as well.

“So why do you want me to do my ‘trying’ at math, exactly? I mean, if you know I’m already trying harder at hockey, isn’t that enough?”

“No, it’s
not
enough!” And the teasing was gone. “Hockey isn’t the whole world. I know you love it, and I’m starting to see why, but if all you ever do with your life is get really good at a single game, you’ll be missing out on a lot of important stuff. I don’t care if you do math or something else, but I think you should do something with your
brain
. Brains are important, you know!”

“Why math?”

She calmed down a little. “Because that’s what I can help you with. Because I like the idea of being able to help you. And because—” The mischief was back. “There’s a math contest next week. I checked, and it’s not too late to register if you want to do it.”

“A math contest.” Yeah, I was back to repeating her words. But it wasn’t really helping, because they still made no sense.

“It’s sponsored by the University of Waterloo—the school I want to go to. Rumor is that if you do well enough on the competition, they’ll fast-track your acceptance. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m still going to write the contest. And I think you should, too. It’d be a good sort of message, you know? Like, math isn’t just for nerds? I think you should do it.”

“I should enter a math contest,” I said carefully.

She squinted at me. “What are you doing? It’s like you’re
tasting
the words.”

“Nice image. Very poetic.” And that was an opportunity too good to pass up. We’d been talking about me for way too long, and it was time to turn the tables. So I shuffled through the loose notes stuffed in the back of my binder until I found the sheet I was looking for. “Very,
very
poetic,” I said, and I handed her the piece of paper.

She scanned it, then looked up at me. “You want…me? To do…this?”

“I want you to
think
about doing it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Obviously. But, yeah, I think it’d be cool if you did.”

“A poetry slam.” I could tell she was trying the words out just like I had.

“What does it taste like?”

“Humiliation and shame.”

I reached over and yanked the page away from her. “Don’t do it, then. I can think of something else. I can
try
to think of something else.” Had that been enough of a dig? Probably—Dia was pretty sensitive. So I let it go and pretended to move on. “Honestly, you have no idea how hard I’ve been working to keep the challenges nonsexual. I think you could give me some appreciation for
that
, at least. But, okay, also nonpoetic. Huh. I’m going to need to—”

She snapped the sheet of paper back out of my hands, and I worked to cover my triumph while she reread it. “It’s just students,” she said thoughtfully. “High school only. And it’s in Kitchener…not like it’s in Toronto or something. It’s not
that
big of a deal.”

“Probably not worth your time,” I said, and half tried to take the page back from her. I was pushing my luck, but I liked living on the edge.

And she held on tight to the sheet. “You think I should do that
Choices
one again? It’s not exactly Shakespeare.”

“It was the performance, not the words. You said them like you
meant
them. Really meant them. So, yeah, you could do that one again. Or a new one, if you wanted. Whatever.”

She tilted her head and looked at me. “If I do this, you’ll do the math contest?”

“I need more information on that. I mean…
Math. Contest
. Is it just a bunch of people doing math? Like, really fast, or what?”

“There’s a time component. But mostly it’s based on your ability to solve math problems. If you get the question right, you get points. If you explain your answer clearly and accurately, you get points. Just like a math test, really.”

“And this is something worth trying at? I mean, why do people do this?”

“Why do people chase a little chunk of rubber around a frozen sheet of water and whack at it with sticks?”

“For the babes.”

She sighed. “That’s why people do math, too. You should see the math bunnies.”

“I’m looking at a math bunny right now, and I like what I see.”

“So you’re in, then? You’re ready to start attracting groupies in two distinct fields?”

“You’ll do the poetry slam?”

She looked down at the page again, and her expression was a strange mix of sad and hopeful. Wistful, maybe? “I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Okay.”

“And you’ll think about the math contest.”

“Nah. I don’t need to think about it. I’m in.”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “It tasted weird, but it didn’t taste like humiliation and shame. If you’re going to
think
about the poetry slam, I can do the math contest. No worries.”

She frowned. “And you’ll really try? I mean, you won’t do well. You’ll be competing against the best math students from across the country, people who’ve been working on math for most of their lives. So you’re not doing this for the scoring, you know?”

“I’m doing it for you,” I said. I’d have thought that was obvious.

“No! That’s what I said I didn’t want! This is supposed to be about you
wanting
to try something. Damn, maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for you to be spending your efforts on something you’re not really into, and not really good at. These challenges are supposed to be things you do for yourself, not for me. Are we messing up the awesomeness?”

“You can just never be satisfied, can you?” I wanted to kiss her, but managed to hold back. “We’re not messing anything up. We’re good.” I let myself reach out and smooth the frown line between her eyes. “Stop worrying. I’ll try at the math contest because—because I don’t really hate math, and maybe I’ll like it even more if I get better at it. Okay? I want to try, just for myself. The awesomeness is unmessed.”

“I’ll do it,” she said quickly. “The poetry slam. I’m in.” Maybe she was saying it a little too quickly.

“Just think about it. You don’t have to decide right now.”

“Now who’s worrying?” She raised her eyebrow at me, that cocky, daring Dia sneaking out. I wasn’t sure which of her personalities I was crazier about. Probably the blend of the two, and the contrast between them, and the way they just swirled together and made me dizzy and happy and alive.

“Okay,” I said. “Math contest for me, poetry slam for you. It’s on.”

Chapter Twelve

Another weekend with Chris on the road, another near-delirious reunion, and then the almost-routine-but-still-thrilling weekdays. We met before class and at lunch for quick kisses mixed in with our studying, and then he’d come over to the house after practice for a bit more studying followed by some fairly blistering good-night kisses.

Oliver had decided he didn’t really want to go much further with Scott, guy number one, so Chris and I went back to the youth group with him the next week and helped him pick Misha, guy number two. Karen was still working on her campaign of visible niceness, and the other sisters were adding evidence of their own awesomeness to our visual file. Ms. Coyne told Karen and me stories about her branch of the sisterhood, and stayed after school to help me work on my performance for the poetry slam. I’d decided to take the original
Choices
poem and add to it a little, but mostly we were working on the dramatics of it all.

“Words are powerful, but
voices
are even stronger,” Ms. Coyne told me. And then she nagged me about my posture and my eye contact and the way I fidgeted. She was tough, but her advice was really valuable. And it made me feel better about speaking up in general, not just in a poetry slam. That’s right: getting ready for this weird event actually
was
making me a bit more awesome.

Another weekend, this one with two home games for Chris. I sat next to Karen in the “girlfriends” section and tried not to feel too self-conscious about it. I learned more about the game, figuring out most of the rules except for the thing about icing
sometimes
being “waved off,” and really enjoyed myself. And when I went to the hockey party with Chris after the Saturday night game, it wasn’t the drunken orgy I’d been afraid of. I mean, people were drinking, and there
were
half-naked people of both sexes, but it didn’t freak me out. I think I was okay because Chris was there, strong and solid, next to me the whole time.

The math contest was on Thursday, first two periods of the day. All the contestants gathered in the library and were then divided up by grade. Chris and I sat at tables next to each other, and as we checked that our pencils and erasers and calculators were all ready, I realized that I wasn’t nervous.

I should have been nervous. I’d been nervous before the contest every previous year, and they hadn’t even counted for anything. This year, when the results might actually influence my academic future, I was totally calm.

Because of Chris. Chris, and the new life that had come with him. And that was when my stomach started to churn. Had I lost my mind? I’d let myself be distracted by a
guy
?

I felt like such a cliché. Girls only care about math because boys don’t care about
them
. If they get a little masculine attention, it won’t be long before they’re back in front of the mirror, preening and giggling as they make themselves pretty for the boys.

Was that me?

I looked down at the large, flat envelope on my desk. In a minute or two I’d open it, and I’d do my best, but would I be prepared? Maybe my mom had been right. I’d lost sight of my goals; I’d gone out with Chris when I should have been studying. I’d spent valuable time going over the basics with him when I should have been working on the more difficult equations myself.

Chris didn’t need to do well on this test. Chris didn’t even want to go to university, not really. For him it was just a backup plan, something he might do someday when there was nothing else on his schedule.

“Okay,” the supervising teacher said. “It’s now nine o’clock. You can open the envelopes and begin.”

I took a deep breath, trying to center myself, and then ripped the top of the envelope off. I refused to look over at Chris. I didn’t want to see him enjoying himself.

…

If anyone ever tells you math contests are fun, tell them they’re crazy. I mean, it would have been easy if I’d treated it as a joke. I could have just sat there and drawn pictures of talking dogs on the answer sheets if I’d wanted to. But I’d actually tried to study for this, and I was going to try to do well, too.

So for two straight hours, I mathed. I guessed at some of the answers, sure, but not until I’d really worked to solve the problems. And some of them I actually
knew
. I kept looking over at Claudia, wanting to let her know that I was doing okay, but she was in the zone, totally focused on her own stuff. When the teacher in charge said the time was up and we had to put our work back in the envelopes and hand it in, I thought maybe she was going to argue with him. She seriously looked like she was going to grab the envelope and run. But she didn’t.

The teacher dismissed us and then asked me to help him move a few tables back where they belonged. By the time that was done, Claudia was long gone.

It seemed weird that she’d left without saying anything, but maybe there were some weird math contest traditions that I didn’t know anything about. Maybe she had to go sacrifice a chicken or something. Or a can of chickpeas, to avoid any vegetarian-related issues.

Anyway, I texted her to say I thought I did okay and that it had been kinda fun. Then I texted her again to say that didn’t mean I ever wanted to do another math contest in my life. And then I went to the cafeteria and waited for the lunch crowd to arrive.

When they did, though, Claudia wasn’t with them. I texted her again, just asking her where she was, and then I tried to call her. No answer.

I asked around, but no one had seen her.

I finally went to the library, and she wasn’t at our table, but her book-loving friend was. “Hi,” I said, wishing I could remember the girl’s name. “You haven’t seen Claudia, have you?”

She shrugged like she didn’t want to tell me but also didn’t want to lie. I straightened up and looked around the room and caught her looking kind of sneakily toward one of those study boxes. Carrels, maybe they’re called? Anyway, I followed her gaze and saw a familiar set of shoes on the legs tucked under one of the desks. I nodded a sort-of thanks to reading girl and tried to think of what to say as I walked over.

“Hey,” I whispered, crouching down by Claudia’s side. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. But she barely glanced at me before looking back at her book. Her math book.

“Did the contest go okay?”

“I need to study.”

“Oh. Okay. Have you got a test?”

“Eventually.” She sounded miserable, and maybe a little pissed off.

“Was the contest
really
bad? You’re probably being hard on yourself—how long before we get the results?”

“
We?
” she demanded, turning to stare at me. “How long before
we
get the results? As if you actually care how you did?”

“Okay,
you
. How long before
you
get the results?”

There was a moment when I thought maybe she was going to keep fighting, or else stand up and storm out. But then she sighed, like she was exhaling the anger out of her body, and said, “Four to six weeks.”

“Shit. That’s a long time to be going crazy.”

She looked away from me, then looked back. “I’m being completely unawesome, aren’t I?”

“This isn’t your peak of awesomeness, no. But you’re still good. You’re fine. You’re allowed to be upset about stuff.”

“You never are.”

I thought about disagreeing with her, but shrugged instead. “I’m not you.
You’re
allowed to be.”

“And you just have to put up with me?”

“I don’t have to. If you get to be too much, I can walk away.” I reached out and wrapped my hand around her ankle, which was maybe kind of a weird body part to focus on, but it was handy. “But you being upset about something you take really seriously not going well? Trust me, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that before you’re too much. A lot more.”

She covered her face with her hand, like she was trying to keep herself from seeing me. “I need to spend more time studying,” she said. “If I don’t score well on the contest, I need to have better grades.”

“You’ve already got, like, a ninety-eight percent, right? There’s only so much higher you can go.”

“Well, I need to go there.”

I thought about arguing. I knew exactly what I’d say, and I was pretty sure it made sense. But I didn’t think it was what Claudia wanted to hear, and it didn’t seem like a good time to push her in a direction she didn’t like. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you need to do. You can stop wasting time tutoring me, okay? I’m caught up now, and you’ve done it long enough to put it on your application. So you can save some time there.”

She nodded, looking miserable. “I think I have to.”

I was surprised by how much that bothered me. Partly because I’d actually started to like the math and chemistry, and definitely liked having some idea of what was going on during classes. But more because it felt like Claudia was giving up on
me
.

It didn’t really make sense. I mean, math to her was like hockey to me, and she’d never questioned that I had to put hockey first. She’d never complained about the road trips or the curfew or anything. So I was just being a suck because she’d been supergood to me for a while, and I was going to miss it. And I guess because I
had
been trying, and it was kind of disorienting to think I could just stop caring now. But that was my problem, not hers, so I smiled and took a waddling step backward without rising from my crouch. “Okay. You study. I bet you did fine on the contest, but if you need better marks, I get it.” Maybe I should have left it at that, but I didn’t want to. So I added, “But let me know, okay? When you
do
have time? If you want to take a break, or whatever?” I pulled my phone out and held it out like a rare artifact. “Communication device. I’ll keep it with me. Activate it at will.”

She nodded a bit shakily, but managed a smile. “Okay,” she said, and she looked back down at her books.

So that was it. I was dismissed.

I took another step away, then straightened, turned, and headed for the door. Claudia’s friend was watching me with a satisfied expression, like she was happy things were going back to the way she wanted them. I tried to forget about her and just kept moving.

I had the library door pushed open when I sensed movement behind me, and I turned around as Claudia reached me, practically tackling me. I staggered a little, more from surprise than from the impact, and she reached up and grabbed my head, pulling our mouths together almost violently.

She was a whirlwind. An explosion inside a sealed drum. Controlled frenzy. Her hands slid down to my shirt, grabbed hold of the fabric, and held on tight, and her mouth demanded everything I had.

There was whooping, some from the hallway and some from inside the library, and I knew people were staring, and knew that Claudia would hate that. But she didn’t even seem to notice.

She didn’t let go of me, but she let me move us out of the doorway and into the hall, where at least we were less likely to get yelled at by a librarian. And that was about the end of my common sense and self-control. I spun us around, pinned her to the wall, and pressed up against her. I braced my forearms on either side of her head, trying to block out the curious stares, or maybe trying to cage her in and keep her from running.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. Then I kissed her, slow and deep. And right there in the hallway outside her study cave, she kissed me back, and everything was okay again.