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Once when our class voted for freshman-class rep.
Then in AP Chem junior year, when our misguided partnership led to a lab station bursting into flames.
And finally, my personal favorite: right before she kissed me for the first time.
When it came to our rivalry, she always wore a mask of confidence. For so long, all I could see was her ambition—and her irritation with me when my ambitions matched hers. It’s only recently that I’ve gotten to know the girl behind that mask, the one with vulnerabilities and fears she doesn’t always show the world.
Whatever she’s about to share, it must be serious.
“You can tell me,” I say softly, trying to encourage without pressuring.
A nod, and then a deep breath. “My first assignment… didn’t exactly go the way I planned.” She reaches into her bag and takes out a couple folded sheets of paper stapled together. Passes them to me.
Rowan doesn’t share her writing easily. Essays and projects, sure, but anything remotely personal—that’s just for her. At least, it was until she let me read her fiction for the first time in June, the romance novel she’s been working on for the past couple years. And then surprised us both when she read a portion of it out loud at an open mic.
The prompt for this assignment was a deceptively simple one that Rowan bolded at the top of the page: What brought you to this classroom today? I read her writing first and then the critique from her professor that I know must have felt terrible, no matter how kindly it was delivered. I feel the same kind of ache, a stomach-churning discomfort. When you’re as conditioned for straight A’s the way we’ve been, you can’t focus on the positives. You see red marks on a sheet of paper and only the negatives matter. The rest of it might as well not exist.
“Artoo. I’m sorry,” I say. “I know that’s not what you wanted to see.”
“You think the writing’s bad?”
“No!” I place a hand on hers, meeting her eyes with mine. “Absolutely not. But I know how you write. And I don’t know if it’s up to your usual standards for yourself.”
She chews her lower lip. “That’s fair. And true. It’s like, the nicest note, though. I don’t know why I’m so upset about it.”
“How did you feel when you turned it in?”
“Not great.”
“Maybe you were putting too much pressure on yourself?” I say. “With it being the first assignment and wanting to impress your professor. Because I get it—I’ve been feeling the same way. Or maybe you were holding back because you don’t know her well enough yet?”
“Probably some combination of the two. I must have been too in my head. Old Rowan is back with a vengeance,” she says, and then groans. “Oh my God. Have we both been holding back in different ways? You with New York, me with writing? What is wrong with us?”
I can’t help laughing at that because she might be right. “I don’t know. It’s just different now. We knew the rules at Westview. Small fish, meet big pond.” To illustrate this, I wave a hand at the park surrounding us.
“It’s not fair that we can’t have everyone from high school here with us. To make the pond a little friendlier.”
“You really want Brady Becker in your creative writing class?”
“Fine, not everyone.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I was late to linguistics my first day—”
“Neil McNair? Late?” She feigns a gasp as I nudge her, a half smile playing on her lips. “Let me write up a tardy slip.”
“I’ve barely spoken in class since then. Which I suppose is mildly ironic.” It’s true, and I’m not proud of it. Of all my classes, Psych 101 has been the one keeping me up late with reading and only partially because there’s just so much to read.
I picked it for a science requirement, and it’s been a complete surprise. We began with the brain, because nothing else we learned would make sense if we didn’t understand how our bodies’ command center operated. I assumed the lecture would be huge and impersonal, without much engagement, but Professor Bayer is animated and passionate. The first few classes, I noticed some laptops open to social media or online shopping; now nearly everyone is immersed in their notes.
Though I took AP Chemistry and Biology in high school—fives on both, thank you very much—I’ve often felt more drawn to the humanities. And yet I realize I am curious about the human mind, too, those age-old questions about nature versus nurture, whether we’re born innately good or innately evil. How we make decisions and how we tune our moral compass.
Questions that might help me understand my own family, if answers exist.
“You’ll get there,” Rowan says, and I wish I had her confidence in me. “It’s strange, isn’t it, to be somewhere no one knows you. To not have that history with anyone.”
“To not have you there, urging me to be better.”
Her eyes hold all the warmth and understanding I love so much. “I miss it,” she says softly. Then she seems to brighten. “I had this idea,” she continues, tapping my chest with her index finger. “Something that might make this year easier.”
