Inevitably Yours

“I will fail if you don’t help me,” I begged. Carl just laughed. “This really isn’t funny!”

“Yes, it is,” he smiled across the lunch table. “The untouchable Quinn has never asked for help like this. You can’t remember some dates and decipher what dead person said to who?”

“Okay, come on,” I deadpanned.

“What’s going on?” Christy said, joining us in the lunchroom.

“Quinn found something she isn’t good at,” Carl claimed.

“I didn’t want to take the advanced course, and you know it. Please,” I pleaded.

“What are we talking about?” Christy asked. A bread roll flew in front of us, landing at the end of the table. I looked down at the other end to see Reese waving with a childish smile on his face. I grabbed one of my carrots and chucked it at him.

“History. Specifically, AP World History that we are only a few weeks into, and Quinn already has a D,” Carl laughed.

“If I don’t pass, my parents will literally murder me,” I said. “Plus, that D or F would look so ugly next to all the pretty A’s on my report card.”

“You know I can’t just get you an A, right?” he replied.

“Make a study group,” Christy interrupted. “That class is with Mrs. Wesley, right?”

“Yea,” I said. “Explain.”

“She teaches her classes all the same. Each day is a lecture, and there is a homework packet that is due the next week covering all the previous week’s lectures. Then on test weeks, it’s all review material until the actual test. You need five people. Everyone picks a day, takes notes, and studies the lecture on that specific day, then does the homework for only those questions. Pass around the homework papers, reword all your answers, and bam. You just got a week of work from only paying attention one day.”

My mouth dropped open in shock. “That is genius,” I whispered.

“You actually want to cheat?” Carl asked unbelievingly.

“Do you think I have a chance at passing any other way?” I countered.

“No, you don’t,” Carl agreed. “I saw your last homework packet.” I scowled at him.

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“As long as I’m not Mondays,” he concluded.

–

Carl caught me after school as I headed to Jazz Band practice. “Hey!” he said.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I got the history stuff squared away, but I have a favor to ask in return,” he said quietly.

“Sure, anything,” I said. I was really grateful for his help with History. My teacher told me before lunch if I had one more failing grade, she had to call my parents.

“I want you to teach me sax,” he said, biting his l*p.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yea, I want to join the band with you in the fall. The director said if I found someone to teach me, he would accept it,” he explained.

“Oh, uh, sure,” I said. “I’ve never taught anyone before, but I don’t see why I couldn’t. But why the sudden interest?”

Carl shrugged. “You seem to have a lot of fun, and while I love the guys and Brina, one of them is going to get arrested and, by proxy, get the rest of us in trouble.”

I frowned. He had a fair point. They were good friends but had a different idea of fun. I didn’t like gambling with my future. “Alright,” I said. “But I won’t be able to give you much time until wrestling is over. I have all that plus Jazz Band two days a week after school.”

“Your boyfriend won’t be upset?” he asked.

“Why would he?” I asked, confused.

He shrugged again. “Seems like the jealous type.”

“You can just say you don’t like him,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Fine, I don’t. But then again, it’s not my place.”

“You’re right. It isn’t.”

“I don’t want to fight about your boyfriend,” Carl sighed. “I just want to learn to play music.”

I uncrossed my arms. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ll teach you. Let me see what I can do about finding you a spare instrument. It’ll be really hard to show you if we are only using mine.”

“Thanks, Q,” he smiled. Carl headed out to his bus, and I continued on my way to Jazz Band, only to be stopped by someone calling my name. Upon inspection, I found Maddison with her usual sneer.

“I need to know what all you prepared for Senior Night?” she demanded.

“What?” I asked, entirely confused.

“Senior Night. In two days. Where all the seniors are recognized at their final home match,” she said matter of factly.

“I didn’t know about that. I was going to try and skip Thursday night if there were enough people,” I told her.

“You’re useless!” she said, throwing her hands up. “The underclassman are supposed to decorate lockers and have presents prepared. You also should be getting flowers for the moms and senior stat girls!”

“You’re the only senior stat girl left, and you don’t tell us anything….” I said.

“Wow. I didn’t realize I needed to hold your hand,” she scoffed. She turned on her heel and stormed away.

“What was that?” I thought as I hurried to practice.

“Something is missing in that girl’s head,” Sapphire agreed.

–

After practice, I stopped by the wrestling room to talk to the coach. He confirmed that our match on Thursday was our Senior Night, and traditionally, the underclassman, stat girls and athletes alike, take care of the celebratory part.

I left the practice panicking and called Tay, who freaked out as well. “Why did no one tell us?” she lamented.

“I don’t know. Maybe it slipped Mr. Ganbar’s mind. But we have two days to figure this out,” I told her as I paced the hallway.

“Okay. Let’s think about this logically. Becca’s mom is a florist; we’ll have her get the flowers,” she said.

“Tell her to make Maddison’s ugly,” I laughed.

“Duh,” she matched my thought.

“Okay, I think I can make decorations for all the lockers,” I said, getting back to the problem at hand. “I can ask a couple of the guys to help me put them up after practice tomorrow. Then, they will be decorated when everyone gets to school Thursday morning.”

“I’ll handle gifts then,” Tay said. “We might actually pull this off.”

“Let’s hope,” I said. “I gotta go. Jaxx is going to be upset, but I’m going to have to cancel our plans to get this done.”

“Good luck.” We got off the phone, and I headed to my locker to get all my things. My phone rang while I was shoving books into my backpack.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“Hey,” I answered. “How you been, stranger?”

“Been better,” Michael said, sounding upset.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. He hadn’t called me in ages; we usually just texted a few days a week. I closed my locker and headed toward the front doors.

“Are you still at school?” he asked, not answering my question.

“Uh, yea. I had practice, and then I just found out about Senior Night. I was trying to figure out how to save the day,” I told him. I stopped at the front doors, seeing Jaxx waiting outside for me. “Are you okay?”

“Yea,” he said quickly. “I should go, though. Sorry.”

“Oh, uh, okay. Do you want to talk later or something?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said. I bit my l*p, still standing inside the doors. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t want to press him to tell me. I hoped he would tell me if he needed to talk about it.

“I’m here if you need to talk,” I told him.

“Thanks, Blue,” he said. The line went dead and left me with a weird feeling; I didn’t like when he acted this way and just hoped he wasn’t in any trouble.

I headed outside to Jaxx’s truck. The door swung open for me as I got close. “Hey, babe. Why the long face?” he asked as I climbed in.

“Don’t be mad. I have to cancel tonight,” I told him.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“There is this Senior thing on Thursday, and I didn’t find out until right after school. All the stat girls are trying to pull it together last minute, so I need to work on some decorations tonight.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.

“You want to help?” I asked, surprised.

“Well, if it makes your night easier, sure. I won’t lie and tell you I love wrestling, but you like it,” he said. I felt myself blushing, and a smile crept up my face. “What?” he asked.

“it’s just really sweet. I would absolutely love some help,” I said. “I’ll even sweeten the deal and cook us dinner tonight. My parents will be back late.”

“Even better,” he smiled.

–

“You guys did an outstanding job. Tonight was great,” Jeff thanked Tay and me as we helped clean up from the match.

“No problem at all,” Tay laughed. I rolled my eyes and finished collecting all the score sheets; Jeff was the only one on the team she made googly eyes at, but so far, she hadn’t broken the ‘no dating’ rule. “So, think you’re coming back next year?” she asked.

“Probably,” I shrugged. “You?”

“We’ll see. Maddison won’t be around to snap at us,” she reasoned. Tay grabbed the pile of scoring books and sheets up in her arms. “I’ll go drop these upstairs. That should be it for us tonight.”

“See you later,” I said, dipping under the table to find my bag.

“Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?” I heard her ask. I peaked up over the table, and sure enough, Jaxx was waiting by the gym doors. A smile broke out on my face. “Okay, that is cute,” Tay teased.

“Bye,” I said to her as I grabbed my bag and rushed over to him. He opened his arms, and I went right into his embrace.

“Done yet?” he asked.

“Yea,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“You seemed pretty stressed last night, and Ricky said you were a little sad at school. Thought I would try to cheer you up,” he said.

He wasn’t wrong. Since his odd phone call, I hadn’t talked to Michael, and getting everything ready for the Seniors had been more work than anticipated. That, mixed in with my struggle in History, had made for a pretty rough week. Jaxx tightened his grip on my waist.

“You were talking to your cousin about me?” I laughed. “What are you doing, spying?”

“No,” he said. “He texted me. If you don’t want to go get dinner with Christy and Aubree tonight, then I can just take you home….”

“No!” I said quickly. “No! That sounds fun, actually. I want to go.”

He smiled brightly. “I thought that might be the case,” he said before leaning down to k**s me deeply.

“Miss Samuels, please take it elsewhere,” one of the assistants grumbled as they passed us.

“Sorry,” I squeaked, pulling away quickly.

Jaxx laughed. He held out his hand for me to grab it. “Let’s go have some fun.”