Page 4 of Daydream

I’m doing a lot of things that go against my natural instincts, basically.

I didn’t even drink at Anastasia and Lola’s joint birthday dinner because I fell down an information wormhole about the ties between sports performance and alcohol consumption.

So the fact that Faulkner is angry with me about something when I’m trying really hard to do a good job makes me more than a little nauseated. My fist knocking against Coach’s office door seems to echo around the room. “Come in,” he yells. “Take a seat, Turner.”

He points toward one of the worn mesh fabric seats opposite him and I do as I’m told. It’s through me trying my hardest to pay attention to this man that I can clearly identify his three main states of being:

Irrationally angry and loud.

Irritated by a life surrounded by hockey players.

Whatever the word is to describe the way he’s looking at me right now.

He taps his pen against the desk repeatedly, the plastic making a sharp clicking noise against the wood. It takes everything in me not to lean across and take it away from him to stop the noise. “Do you know why I called you in here?”

“No, Coach.”

He thankfully puts the pen down and pulls his computer keyboard toward him. “I just received an email requesting a phone call to discuss you, because you failed your paper in Professor Thornton’s class, and instead of going to Thornton to find a way to fix it, you went to your academic adviser to try and get out of his class. Do you have anything to say for yourself before I dial this number?”

Every single word I’ve ever learned evaporates from my head other thanoh shit.

“No, Coach.”

He runs his hand across the top of his head like he’s brushing back a mane of hair. I’ve always wanted to ask why, considering he’s bald, and according to the game tapes we’ve watched, has been bald for the past twenty-five years. Despite encouragement from some of the guys, Nate told me not to ask him that unless I wanted a world of misery, which I don’t. But the question plagues me every time I watch him brush away his nonexistent hair. “Okay, then.”

His chubby fingers practically poke a hole through the handset as he punches in the number and rests the phone between his ear and shoulder. I have no choice but to listen while he introduces himself then ums and ahs through the call. Nate always told us that Faulkner can smell fear, so you should never show him your weaknesses. Admitting I fucked up the semester before I’ve properly started it feels a lot like weakness.

He puts the phone down and stares at me so intensely it feels like he’s staring at my soul.

“Ms. Guzman said she reminded you three times to schedule your appointment to register for your classes—”

“That’s true.”

“—and by the time you tried to register, the class you wanted was full. So you picked Thornton’s class thinking you could get on the waiting list for something else and drop him during swap week.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t add yourself to the waiting list and you didn’t try to drop it during swap week.”

I intended to. I truly did, but I’ve been so busy worrying about following Nate and being a good captain that everything else took a mental backseat. Every obstacle let me push things off, and I kept telling myself I’d fix it until it was eventually too late.

“Also true.”

“So, you mean to tell me,” he says, then pauses to take a long sip from his coffee mug just to make me extra miserable. “That despite ample opportunity to rectify the situation yourself, you didn’t, and now you’re here, disturbing the few sweet hours in a day where I don’t have to look at your face, expecting me to help you?”

I want to point out that he invited me in here and I went to the adviser who is specifically employed to support student athletes for help, but I suspect he’d take that as well as he’s taking me failing one assignment. “I guess.”

“What’s your grievance with Thornton?”

I think back to what Anastasia and I workshopped ahead of my visiting Ms. Guzman. I repeat her words like a parrot. “His teaching style and my learning style are incompatible.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that, Turner.” Faulkner sighs, leaning back in his chair. He clicks his mouse and stares at his computer. “You’re excelling in everything else, and I know you’re ahard worker. So what is it with this class that makes you think you need to quit?”

I’m trying to remember how I explained it to Anastasia and Aurora the day I came home from my first session with Thornton. I ranted for five minutes and then had to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling for an hour. “I need to take a writing intensive class to meet the requirements of my major. Professor Thornton’s syllabus is known for being a lot of reading and researching—it’s why nobody wants to do it. He essentially teaches world history; it’s barely even about the art. I struggle to focus on the material because there’s so much that’s irrelevant to what he wants… I think.

“And I don’t love reading things I’m not interested in. I struggle to stay focused. I also don’t understand what he wants most of the time. I’ve found myself in information black holes to only end up in the wrong place anyway, and then of course, failing.”

Faulkner sighs again. I wonder if he does it at home or if it’s something he reserves for this office. I wonder if it gives his family the same sinking feeling it gives me. “It says here you have a similar kind of class with Professor Jolly and you’re not trying to drop that.”

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