The next day, we’re called into the principal’s office again.
It’s all the same. The same dull carpet, the same two seats pulled up in front of the desk, the same suffocating air. The same nerves coiled in the pit of my stomach. The only difference is the way Julius’s eyes catch on mine when I sit down next to him.
“Well, hello, captains,” Principal Miller greets.
“Hi,” I say cautiously.
“You’re looking great today, Principal Miller,” Julius says.
I’m almost impressed by his ability to dive straight into such shameless flattery at any given moment. It’s way too early in the morning for this. “Is that a new tie?”
The principal glances down at his plain black tie, which looks identical to every single tie I’ve ever seen him wear. I wait for him to scold Julius, but his poker face breaks into a pleased smile. “Why, yes, it is. Thank you for noticing.”
You’re kidding me.
“What did you want to talk to us about, Principal Miller?”
Julius asks.
The principal refocuses. “Ah, right. I know it’s been a while since we had our last conversation about your little . . . incident.”
His mouth puckers with distaste, as if the incident in question involved us publicly vandalizing his office or undressing the school mascot. “I just wanted to check in with you two. How are we feeling? Have you been enjoying your time with each other?”
“Yes, I’ve been having a wonderful time,” Julius says.
When I turn to him in surprise, he tilts his head almost imper-ceptibly toward the principal, his eyes narrowing.
“Simply incredible,” I agree, catching on. If we can just convince Principal Miller his plan worked, we might be able to finally leave the emails behind us and go our separate ways.
“We’re so close now. We’re basically best friends.”
“The best of friends.” Julius nods fast. “We hang out even when we’re not at school. She’s the first person I think of when something goes well and when something goes wrong. We even finish each other’ s—”
“Math questions,” I say. “He’s been a great help in class.”
“She’s right. I help her all the time.”
I let out a high- pitched laugh. “Although, of course, I help him plenty as well, seeing as I’m much more familiar with the syllabus than he is—”
“But only because I’m so busy doing the advanced questions.”
Julius’s grin is so wide it looks like it hurts. There’s a visible muscle twitching in his jaw. “And because I don’t find memorizing the syllabus to be an effective study method, although I concede that it may be beneficial for those with a rudimentary understanding of the content—”
“Which is exactly the kind of thinking that could lead some people,” I say in a bright voice, squeezing my fingers together under the desk, “to lose three marks on an important test and then complain that the topic wasn’t covered, when it was actually stated in black and white.”
Principal Miller’s brows furrow.
“All of this is to say that Julius is lovely,” I say quickly.
“And Sadie is the light of my life,” Julius says, his lip curling, even though there’s an odd note to his tone. Something that could be confused for sincerity. “The sun in my sky, the source of all my joy. She’s the reason I wake up every morning excited to go to my classes. Not a day goes by where I’m not grateful that she exists, that she’s there, that I get to talk to her and pass her in the halls and listen to her laugh.”
I’m concerned he’s gone a bit too far with the irony, but Principal Miller looks convinced. No, he even looks moved.
“That was beautiful,” the principal says, and I have to remember not to roll my eyes. “Truly. I have to admit, I was somewhat skeptical about how well this would work out between you two given the rather intense nature of those emails, but . . . well, I always knew I was a miracle worker. I guess I really do come up with the best solutions.”
My mouth falls open on its own accord. I can’t believe this is the conclusion he’s come to.
“I just have one last task for you,” Principal Miller says. “The senior trip is coming up soon, and after the less- than- positive feedback we received for last year’s trip—”
“You mean when the teachers took the class to a sewage treat-ment plant?” I clarify.
“. . . Yes.” He rubs the back of his head. “Yes. To be clear, that was a case of false advertising and miscommunication, but that is indeed what I’m referring to.”
“Got it.”
“That’s why for this year , ” he says, “we want more input from the students. I’m going to trust you two to provide a few sensible, budget- friendly suggestions for where you could stay. It would be great if you could get this organized as soon as possible and hand me a proposal tomorrow morning.”
“Wait.” I exchange a quick look of disbelief with Julius, and for once, the battle lines seem to be drawn before us, instead of between us. “ Tomorrow—”
“That is correct.” The principal makes a hand gesture that’s probably intended to be encouraging, but looks more like he’s threatening to punch us. I feel like I’ve been punched. “Best of luck, captains.”
“You’re late,” I inform Julius the second he walks in.
I’ve booked one of the study rooms in the library for us to use throughout our spare period. The pros: There’s an arched, stained glass window offering a stunning view of the rippling lawns below, and the walls are perfectly soundproof. There’s also a whiteboard for me to stick up photos and details of all the destinations I’ve gathered.
The cons: It’s clearly designed to hold only a single person, which means he has to squeeze his way past the chair to reach the square of empty space available beside me. Which means we’re standing much closer together than I’d like. Which means I have to take a deep, steadying breath, forcing myself to focus on the board, to keep my eyes off his face.
“I remember when you used to at least pretend to be civil,”
Julius remarks as he lifts the coffee cup in his hands to his lips.
“You would offer me a terribly fake smile first, then come up with a long- winded way to remind me of the time, like: Is it just me, or has the school bought new clocks? The minute hand looks really different. Now you seem to have no problem criticizing me to my face. Real progress.”
I carry on as if he hasn’t spoken. “You’re late because you went to get coffee?”
“See.” He points at me, as if I’ve just offered valuable evidence for his thesis statement. “So much more straightforward.” He takes another slow sip. “And yes, congratulations, your beverage-detection abilities are impressive. It is, in fact, black coffee.”
I wrinkle my nose. The bitter scent is so sharp I can practically taste it. “How do you even manage to drink that without sugar or cream?”
“I find it bracing.” The corner of his mouth quirks, his eyes black and razor- sharp on me. “And perhaps I prefer the challenge.”
“Sounds masochistic.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” he says. Then he turns to the board.
Looks over it— my hard work, the resources I’d prepared ahead of time, the detailed sticky notes and calculations— for all of five seconds before he tells me, “The beach destination won’t work, by the way. We should eliminate that right off the bat.”
“Excuse me? Why not?” The beach retreat was the place I’d found most promising. It’s only a two- hour drive from here, and the scenery is beautiful: smooth sand and turquoise waves and hammocks strung between palm trees. I’d even started making a list of all the activities we could do, from beach volleyball to surfing to picking up trash, which isn’t as fun but is definitely good for the environment. The environment committee could write an article about it for the yearbook.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty,” he says with a shrug. “But that’s also the problem. It’s too romantic.”
I stare at him.
He sighs. Like I’m being dense on purpose. “Do you know what the teachers’ biggest fear with these kinds of retreats is?”
“That one of us will drop dead and the school will end up involved in a long, painful, costly lawsuit despite the fact that they made all our parents sign that form that says in very fine print that nobody is to blame if we’re injured, abducted, or murdered.”
“Close, but no. If we die, that’s very inconvenient for them. If we hook up, that’s both inconvenient and awkward for them.”
I’m pretty sure all my organs stop functioning. “ What—”
“When I say we, I obviously don’t mean— us,” he clarifies, and despite the taunting note in his voice, his cheeks turn red.
He’s blushing, I realize. It’s so bizarre. So unlike him. It’s a visible weakness, and I quietly file it away for later use. “I mean in general. I believe there’s a scientific equation for it: The proba-bility of teenagers sneaking into each other’s rooms and hooking up increases by zero- point- four when you put them in a scenic beach setting.”
“You’re making that up,” I tell him. “You’re literally just saying that because you enjoy disagreeing with me.”
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m only saying what I know is true.” Then he moves to take down the beach retreat flyer from the board.
In one quick movement, I clap my hand over his. Force his fingers to flatten. Ignore the heat of his skin against my palm.
“We’re meant to agree on a destination together. And I don’t agree with you right now.”
“When have you ever?” he mutters. But he shakes his hand free from mine, which should be more satisfying than hurtful.
“I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be an issue if the retreat turned into some kind of . . . matchmaking process,” I tell him.
“But is the beach necessarily conducive to that? Who says it has to be romantic?”
“I don’t know,” he says sarcastically, pretending to think.
“Only every movie and beach read and song to come out in the past decade.” He must see the stubborn disbelief written over my face, because he tilts his head. Sighs again. “Okay, since you’re so lacking in imagination, let me set the scene for you. It’s sunset, the sky is the perfect shade of pink, the air just warm enough that you can slip out of your sweater and set it down on the sand like a towel. You can hear the waves lapping against the shore, taste the salt on your tongue. There’s music playing softly from someone’s phone speaker. You’re sitting next to the person you’ve been eyeing for the whole semester, and when a breeze rises and messes up your hair, he lifts his hand and . . .”
And he actually demonstrates, reaching out across the tight space and brushing a stray strand of hair behind my ear, his cool fingertips grazing my skin. It’s such a small, brief motion, the lightest touch. It’s pathetic that I would even notice it. But I feel a sharp pang echo through my ribs, so intense it almost resembles pain. My whole body overreacts as if I’m in mortal danger, my heartbeat thudding faster and faster until I can’t stand it.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the emotion, and when I open them again, he’s staring at me, his jaw strained.
He swallows, once.
“ I— don’t see your point,” I manage, my voice too loud.
His brows rise, his hand still lingering above my ear.
“You don’t?”
It requires an incredible amount of strength just to speak.
“No. And—” I push down the odd lump in my throat. Do my best to sound as flippant as possible. “I think you’re not giving our— peers enough credit. They have some discipline, you know.
It’s not like they’re going to try and sneak off into the cabins to make out just because the view’s pretty and someone touched their hair—”
“Not even if they did this?” he asks quietly, and he leans forward. All at once he’s too close, overwhelmingly close. I’m frozen to the spot as he pauses on purpose, his mouth bare inches from the base of my neck, so I can feel his breath trembling against my skin. “Do you need me to demonstrate further?”
A low, hoarse sound escapes my lips. It could be a protest or a plea; I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.
“What was that, Sadie?” he presses, lowering himself by just another fraction of an inch—
I shove him away. “I get it. ” My heart is still beating at an abnormal rate, heat coursing furiously through my veins. Yet even worse than my fear of what might’ve happened is the disappointment that it didn’t. And the fear that he can somehow sense my disappointment, the itch in my skin from where his mouth had hovered seconds earlier. Only physical attraction, I remind myself sternly. It must be some kind of unfortunate side effect leftover from the kiss at the party. “I get it, okay? You didn’t have to make your case in such a disgusting manner.”
Something shifts in his expression. Then he smiles, and it’s as smug as ever. “Are you admitting that I’m right?”
“Yes. Fine. Whatever,” I spit out. I’ve lost the argument, but it feels like I’ve lost something more than that. “Let’s hear your proposal, then.”
“That’s exactly what we should’ve done from the beginning.”
He steps back and starts searching locations up on his phone with the brisk manner of someone in a business meeting, leaving me to wonder if I’d hallucinated the past five minutes. The only evidence of it is the uneven beat of my pulse and the hair tucked behind my ear. “How about this?” he asks, showing me the photo on his screen.
It’s a retreat in the middle of the mountain range three hours from here, and all the walls and floors are made of glass. It also happens to be suspended almost two thousand feet above a val-ley, with an “ open- air seating area” available on the rooftop. The main website describes the views as “thrilling,” which I mentally translate into “terrifying.”
“You realize there are at least five people in our year level who are scared of heights, right?” I ask.
He doesn’t even bat an eye. “Then this is precisely what they need. Exposure therapy has been proven to work, hasn’t it?”
“How can you be so— so callous?” I demand.
“I’m not callous. You’re just soft.”
I grit my teeth. “Considerate, you mean. Thoughtful.
Responsible.”
“In futile, stubborn pursuit of making every single person happy, is what I mean,” he corrects.
“And what of it?” I shove his phone back into his hand. “This is the last trip we’ll ever have together as a year before we graduate. I want everyone to have the best time of their lives, and that’s not going to happen if some people can’t even comfortably walk from one room to another. Also, do you see the reviews? You literally need a helmet and a harness just to climb into bed.”
“Which definitely solves the hooking-up problem,” he says.
“Don’t sound so certain. Some people are into that kind of thing.”
He looks, briefly, stumped. Then he bites down on his lip, his shoulders shaking so hard he appears in danger of falling over. His voice is saturated with amusement when he slides forward again. Tilts his head at me. “Wow. I never pegged you as the type.”
“Shut up,” I grumble. “I was just making a point.”
“So was I.”
“Your point isn’t convincing enough,” I say, shaking myself free from his gaze. “Let’s go back to the drawing board.”
“Your wish is my command,” he says sweetly. Sweetly enough that I stare up at him and stumble over my thoughts and fall headfirst into his trap. “You really like that, don’t you?” He starts laughing again as my face overheats. “So you are the type—”
I twist my head away and drag my laptop closer toward me like a shield. We spend the remaining period going back and forth on every possible option. I suggest a farm; he says he would like to go somewhere free from the looming threat of accidentally stepping into animal excrement. He pulls up a website for an
“affordable” five- star hotel in the city center; I remind him that it would only be affordable if the school sold drugs or donated all our kidneys, which leads us on a tangent about which teacher looks most like a potential drug dealer (we both settle on Mr.
Kaye, and I observe how depressing it is that this is somehow the only thing we’ve managed to agree on so far). I then raise the idea of traveling to a national park; he protests that he doesn’t enjoy parks.
“Why are you making this so hard, Julius? Didn’t you hear the principal? The second we finish this proposal, the torture will stop and we’ll be released from each other at last. We won’t even have to speak to each other ever again.”
A strange look crosses his face. “I know that.”
“ Then—”
“Let’s choose this place,” he says, the humor gone from his tone. He points at a lakeside location I’d picked and he’d dismissed because he found the welcome message on their home page suspiciously friendly.
I blink. “Really? That’ s— You agree?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He stands up and grabs his coffee cup, all without looking at me. And even though I should be glad we’ve ticked off our final task, gladder still to be rid of him, I feel more like I’ve missed a step on the stairs. Before I can put a finger on it, he turns around on his way out and says only, “Congratulations, Sadie. The torture is over.”
