Pregnant For my School Rival

The Panel

Alexander waited until the car door shut before he let his face drop.

"Rough day?" Gus asked, eyes in the rearview.

"Just drive."

Gus drove. He'd driven the Blakes since Alexander was nine, and he knew which silences to leave alone. The wipers went back and forth. The gates of Westbridge slid past, wet black iron, and then the road bent down toward town and the lights of the diner on Fulton came up on the left. LINDY'S, in red neon. A woman in a pink apron stood in the window carrying four plates up one arm.

He looked away from it. Then he looked back. Then he put his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes.

Somebody handed it to me.

Great line. Really solid work. He'd said the first dumb thing that came into his head, because the true thing was worse. The true thing was that the page had been folded into the vent of his locker at 7:15 that morning, with a yellow sticky note on it in block capitals, no signature.

SLIDE 4. LINE 2. DON'T SAY WHERE.

He should have thrown it out. Any sane person would have. A page in a stranger's handwriting, a stranger who knew his locker combination or at least which locker was his, and that stranger wanted him to hand Emma Wilson a mistake. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it was a favor. He'd stood there in the empty corridor with the note stuck to his thumb and tried to work out which, and he hadn't managed it. He'd just known that the number was wrong, and that if she walked into the final with it, she'd lose. And that he would win.

And that for some reason he couldn't stand it.

So he'd given it to her. And she'd looked at him like he'd keyed her car.

"Mr. Alexander," Gus said, softly. "We're here."

The Blake house sat at the top of Larkin Hill, and from the road it looked like a very expensive apology. Pale stone. Too many windows. Inside, the hall floor was marble, and everything echoed.

Dinner was at seven. It was always at seven. His father sat at the head of the table with his phone face-down by his plate, which was as close as Richard Blake came to showing respect for anyone. Nora, fourteen, braces, a book propped against the salt, was on Alexander's left. The chair on the right had been empty since his mother left, and nobody had ever moved it.

"You were late to assembly," Richard said.

"Traffic."

"You have a driver."

"The driver was in traffic."

Nora snorted into her soup. Richard didn't. He cut a piece of lamb into a perfect square.

"Dr. Pruitt tells me you took it well. About the panel."

Alexander put his fork down. "Dad. You should step off it."

"Should I."

"I'm a finalist. You're my father. It looks-"

"It looks like what?"

"Rigged."

The word hung over the table. Nora's eyes came up over the top of her book.

"To whom?" Richard asked.

"To everybody."

"To the Wilson girl."

His father said it the way some men say the name of a restaurant that gave them food poisoning. Alexander kept his face still. He was good at that. He'd learned it at this table.

"She's got a name," he said.

"I know her name. Scholarship student. Mother works at a diner on Fulton." Richard patted his mouth with the napkin and set it down. "Do you think I take a seat on this panel for fun, Alexander? The trustees asked. The Hale family will be watching how I conduct myself this year, and I will not be seen to flinch because a girl from the wrong side of town might feel uncomfortable."

"Why does the Hale family-"

"Did I ask for your opinion?"

"No, sir."

"Then eat."

He ate. The lamb had no taste. Across the table, Nora turned a page very, very quietly.

Upstairs, Alexander locked his door and pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. Beneath old chargers and a broken watch, in a plain manila folder, he kept one sheet of paper.

Lowell Cup. Sophomore finals. A score sheet, creased from being folded and unfolded too many times, and in the right margin, in his own handwriting from two years ago, a decimal point circled twice in red.

The tip had come the night before. A message on his phone, no name, just a screenshot of a figure from Emma's slide deck and a line underneath. Her margins are wrong. Look at line 9. He'd looked. It had seemed right. It had seemed so right, and he'd been fifteen and sharp and a little drunk on being sharp, and he'd stood up in front of the whole school and said charity math.

A week later, in the library, he'd run the numbers again with a calculator and a cold stomach.

Her decimal had been correct. His had been the mistake. Not hers.

He'd never told anyone. Not her, not Gus, not the mirror. He'd just let her go on hating him, because the hate was fair, and because it was easier than the other thing. The other thing being that somebody had fed him a lie and he'd swallowed it whole and enjoyed it.

He turned the sheet over. On the back he'd written one sentence in pencil, a long time ago, and never erased it.

Who sent it?

He still didn't know.

And now there was a second page. A second anonymous nudge, aimed at the same girl. He set the Lowell sheet on the desk next to the yellow sticky note and looked at them side by side. The handwriting on the note was blocky and deliberately plain. Nothing on it. Nothing at all.

Somebody had sent him a bad number when he was fifteen. Somebody had sent him a right one today.

He didn't know which was worse.

A knock. Soft, two taps, and then the door handle turned and caught on the lock.

"Alex. It's me."

He crossed the room and let Nora in. She slipped past him in her pajamas, with her book under her arm, and sat on the end of his bed with her knees pulled up.

"You okay?" she said.

"Fine."

"You look like you did when Mom left."

"I'm fine, Nor."

She chewed her thumbnail. Her eyes were a pale, unnervingly steady gray, their father's eyes, and they were fixed on the paper on his desk. He moved to block it. She pretended not to notice.

"Dad was in the garage before dinner," she said. "On the phone. I went to get my bike."

"Okay."

"He was yelling. He doesn't yell. He said if the Hales pulled out, we were done." Her voice dropped. "Not like, I'm done. We. Who's done, Alex?"

"Nobody. It's business. He says stuff like that."

"He doesn't, though."

He crouched in front of her. She was too young for this. She was fourteen and she still slept with a night-light she thought nobody knew about.

"Go to bed," he said.

"I'm just saying."

"I know. Go to bed."

She slid off the mattress and went to the door. She stopped with her hand on the frame, and she didn't look back.

"Is it about that girl?"

"What girl?"

"The one he doesn't like. I heard him say her name on the phone, too."

Alexander's hand closed around the Lowell sheet. The paper crumpled in his fist, softly, with a sound like dry leaves.

"Which phone call?" he said.