Page 41 of Dropping the Ball

There’s no bite to her tone, and I’m glad for multiple reasons that I convinced her to come today. One is that I can see we’vedefinitely left behind our antagonistic dynamic. But the second is that I can show her things about me that she doesn’t know.

“Not the way you think. You were honest about how hard high school was because of nonschool things, so I’m going to tell you some stuff you don’t know about me. Couldn’t know, because I made a point of not telling anyone my business at Hillview.” I shake my head, remembering how much I cared about this back then when I don’t care at all now. “I did go there on family money, but I was a charity case.”

Her forehead wrinkles, and she pauses in the act of lifting her fork. “Don’t those two things cancel each other out?”

I reach over and pluck a loaded nacho. “It’s like this nacho. I eat it like normal-to-poor people do: with my fingers. You eat it with a fork.”

She glances from my nacho to her fork and takes the bite from her fork anyway, eyeing me like she’s waiting for me to continue.

“My mom is a Croft, so she grew up with lots of money. But for a lot of reasons, she was a hard person. She made choices that made her life harder. Got disinherited, but didn’t want much to do with her family anyway. Not until I was getting close to high school age. My grandparents had passed by then, so she went to my uncle and made a deal with him that meant he would pay for me to go to Hillview.” I take a bite of my enchilada, thinking about how hard that must have been for her given how much she hates accepting help. “She was fine never seeing a dime of her parents’ money, but she didn’t want me to have less advantages than she did. So I went to Hillview.”

Kaitlyn hasn’t taken another bite through this. “Wow. I had no idea. So you were a loser poor kid?”

She says it with such a straight face that I laugh and choke slightly on a piece of shredded chicken. When I wash it down with a gulp of water, I grin. “Yes. The trashiest of trash.”

A small smile peeks out at me. “There’s a lot of gaps in that story. I have a feeling that’s where some of the hardest stuff is?”

I nod. “Perceptive.”

“I’ve been getting a lot of unlicensed therapy,” she says.

“You—what?”

“Madison. She’s been working off and on with a therapist for the last two years, and she likes to try it out on me. Maybe I’m getting infected.”

I tilt my head to study her. “Nah. You’ve always been perceptive, seeing things other people don’t.” I wonder if she’ll ask how I know this, but the tops of her cheeks flush pink, and she lets it pass.

“I didn’t see that you weren’t a regular Hillview student.” She shakes her head. “No, that’s not right. You went out of your way to be different than the other students. I didn’t realize you weren’t one of us trust fund kids.”

“I went out of my way to fly under the radar, that’s all. I only cared about getting the grades that would get me a full ride to college.”

She starts to take another bite—with her fork—then pauses and sits back, stares at me, understanding dawning on her face only to be chased by a flicker of guilt. “And I was so mad at you for taking valedictorian.”

“Winningvaledictorian,” I say. “It’s not my fault you bombed that calculus test like a dummy rich kid.”

“Isn’t it though? How do I know you didn’t go out to the field that day specifically to distract me when I was walking out of school?” she asks in a teasing cross-examination.

Interesting. She’s going to go there. “You mean when I was out there shirtless, showing off my sorry biceps?”

“The pecs were the problem.” Then her eyes widen slightly, like she hadn’t meant to make the joke aloud. “Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t gracious about it. I had no idea.”

“Sorry,” I say, rubbing my chest. “Did you say something? I got distracted by my problematic pecs.”

“You’ll be okay. You can’t break your nose on them.”

I switch to my most pedantic voice. “Well, actually, you didn’t break your nose on them. You broke it on a post.”

Kaitlyn blinks at me, then her mouth twitches. “Micah, did you just ‘well, actually’ my post?”

That makes us both laugh, and I want to high-five or fist-bump her in appreciation, but while it’s a shade more than professional, it veers into friend zone territory, and that’s not where I’m trying to steer.

I offer her a handshake, and when she takes it, still smiling, I make sure to brush my thumb over her knuckles, up then down, leaving no question that I mean to do it. “Well done, Kaitlyn.”

She slides her hand from mine and shifts in her seat. “Thanks. And Katie is fine.”

I lean forward and prop my chin on my hand. “Are you saying our truce is real, Katie?”

“Didn’t I tell you that in my office before you spiffed it up like a good friend does? Thank you again for that.”

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