And They Were Roommates(19)

“You can trust me with your emotions,” Jasper says. “We’re roommates.”

Strangely, my first instinct is to believe him. Although Jasper has been as obnoxious as predicted since I got here, he’s also been oddly kind to me, constantly asking to be my dining hall buddy and trying to learn more about me so we can bond. Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he remembered.

“Jasper?” I say.

He watches me just as brightly as he did two years ago. It’s enough for my senses to come roaring back. Jasper showed me the same kindness then. The only difference is that I was still naive enough to believe it.

What am I thinking?

“Never mind.” I take a breath. “Roses are red. Violets are blue. I…” I rack my mind for something. Anything. “If only … this wall … weren’t between us, our love could … grew. Grow. Wait. Roses are red—”

Jasper yanks away the notebook. “You will attend love lessons with me daily.”

I must’ve heard wrong. “But I have to study!”

“This is a race against the clock, von Hevringprinz. On top of our usual demands, the winter mixer is nearly here. Our busiest event of the year.”

Delilah claimed the mixer is the only time Valentine students are allowed to have fun. I never believed her, though, since the word mixer only evokes a sense of cringe within me. What would she advise me to do if she knew I was being asked to break the rules? Would she encourage me to screw the Valentine system with a tossed middle finger in typical Delilah fashion or to keep my head down like Mom?

All I want to do is hunt down my phone locked in the depths of campus and message her updates like I did throughout school last year, even though she couldn’t read any until her own phone was released at the start of winter break. Now that I’m enduring this phone-less life, I get why she nonstop messaged me all day and night—which I admittedly slept through—until she returned to campus. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to stay up.

“Is the mixer that huge of a deal?” I ask Jasper, since he’s all I have instead.

“It’s everything. A tradition as ancient as STRIP itself. A celebration of every Valentine couple, new and old. We’ll serve hundreds of lovesick souls.”

I still don’t understand. STRIP can’t be worth all the risk that comes with it just for the sake of tradition, and it causes my biggest anxiety spike of the night.

It must be obvious because Jasper closes the distance between us to clap my shoulder. I instinctively lower my face. “I need one week to prepare a lesson plan,” he says. “You’ll start as our face in the library then. We’ll hold your lessons after. Agreed?”

Will I have the time? Create a strict study regimen, wake up early, and stay up all night to please a poet who only respects himself? Besides, spending more time with Jasper outside our trapped room would only give him more chances to look at me closer.

But it would give me a chance to keep an eye on him. Stop him from investigating into who I am on his own. Give me a small bit of control.

And the room. I need this room to myself.

“Fine, Jasper.”

“Tutor Jasper.” He grins.

I clench my jaw. “Tutor Jasper.”





Chapter 9

THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN




TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

Ms. Nallos blows her whistle from the bench she’s leisurely sitting on during PE class. “Great laps! Head to the showers!”

I lean over myself on the track, gripping my thighs as sweat drips down my forehead. An impromptu twelve-minute run on the hottest, most sweltering day of the year so far, according to the locker room thermostat. A real-life curse after my weekend of sleepless nights glued to textbooks to make sure I rank tomorrow. One world history group project. Two forty-question-long calculus assignments. Two free-response papers. It all has to be perfect.

But we had to reach at least ten measly laps today. I got six.

Will my PE grade drop?

Laughter booms down the track. Xavier, lucky spoon between his fingers, high-fiving two others. Since they kept whizzing past me, I recognize the back of their stubby buzz-cut heads. They must’ve gotten quadruple my laps.

I barely summon enough strength to walk to the locker room. A sea of drugstore colognes attacks me, and fluorescent lights cast a grim glow, because the concept of a boys’ locker room wasn’t terrifying enough. I approach the lockers to search the bottom row for VON HEVRINGPRINZ, stepping over two used towels, a mound of plaid clothes, a bruised banana, and a few sparkly trading cards that look like Robby’s from the library. One is overturned, showing off artwork of an illustrated spotted horse.

Boys’ locker rooms are stranger than I thought.

Splashes echo from around the corner. Showers, probably, and ones I’ve never used. Last week’s PE classes left me tired, but not too sweaty. Today, though, I’ll spend the next seven class hours drenched if I don’t rinse off. Grabbing the towel that I’ve left untouched all week, then my uniform, I follow the splashes.

Then I freeze, my uniform slipping out of my hands.

Naked bodies. Facing shower heads. No privacy curtains divide them. Mirrors stretch along the walls, doubling them. They laugh with each other as if they’re at a baseball game.

Not showers. One communal shower.