Page 16 of Dropping the Ball

“Oh, I’m living for this now,” Madison crows. “Spill.”

I groan but straighten. Might as well get the stupidest part over with. “I mostly ignored him and that whole group for the rest of the year. Sophomore year, I only had two classes with Micah, and it was easy to avoid being in a group with him. By junior year, the company wasn’t in the news as much, and I was building up my resume for college, so I tried being more . . . social, I guess?”

To get strong letters of recommendation, I’d had to step it up. I was going to apply to a few Ivies. I didn’t want togo.Dad had loved the idea of me telling Yale “no” so I could dump them for his beloved UT. Grades weren’t enough. I’d needed to be in clubs, get elected to a couple of things.

“By that point, I was indifferent to Micah.” It had started out true that year, anyway. “He had this annoying habit of acting like he was above it all—but he’d quit trying to talk to me, so I didn’t care. We ended up getting grouped together for a project in our econ class in the spring, and he was all right. Did his part. Had good ideas. Didn’t say anything mean.”

“But you still don’t want to forgive him?”

“I did,” I say. “Way back in our freshman year. I was over it.”

“But you didn’t want to be friends?”

“We almost were. Right around then, I found out that he was ranked second in our class. It turned into a semi-friendly rivalry. My day could be made or broken depending on whether I outscored him on a test, even if it was by a point.”

“Can we look at it like the competition was a good thing? Maybe it helped each of you be better than you would have been without the other.”

I turn to look at her. “You really want me to like Micah, don’t you?”

“It’s selfish, but yes.” She glances at me. “I don’t want to worry that I’m forcing you to work with someone who causes you massive stress while I’m cooing at my baby.”

A pang of guilt ripples through my chest. “Definitely don’t worry. Our competition was healthy. It did push me to do better. I already knew that back then.”

“I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t still be mad.”

“I wouldn’t be if he hadn’t ruined everything with two weeks left to go until graduation. You know how I said we were almost friends by then? We’d choose each other for group projects, and sometimes we ate lunch together in the library.”

“Stop. You’re embarrassing me with the spicy details.”

“It wasn’t like that, dummy.”

“But why not?” she demands. “Was he not hot yet?”

I squirm. “He was cute. But I didn’t have the bandwidth for that. I was focused on school.”

“No heart-poundy feelings for Micah. Got it.” I hesitate so long that she reaches over and pinches my arm. “Katie-Kat,yesto heart-poundy feelings?”

“Kind of,” I mumble. Around the last two months of school, I’d realized that it meant something to me when Micah complimented a score I got or gave me a nod when he agreed with a point I’d made in a class discussion. Maybe it was realizing that Micah knew better than anyone how hard I worked, and I liked being seen by him. “I had a crush on him our last semester.”

It’s such a weak word to describe how consumed I was with him. Completely, utterly obsessed. When we were in the sameroom, every single one of my senses was tuned to him. I knew where he was at every point of the day on campus. I studied everything he wore, looking for silent clues or messages about his feelings in the details. Did he switch from his checkered Vans to his black ones because they were nicer and he wanted to impress me? I caught a whiff of his cologne one day in our Chinese 4 class and wondered if he’d worn it because he knew we would work in pairs that day.

As soon as I’d realized that was my hope, I’d also started worrying that he’d see how much I liked his attention. How much I watched him. What that said about how I . . . felt.

I’d spend calculus staring at the back of his head, daydreaming about how he might ask me to prom. Then I’d feel giddy and avoid my friends at lunch—where they would talk about prom as obsessively as I daydreamed about going with Micah. If the subject of dates came up, my face would have given me away and they would try to pry out of me who my blush was all about. If they succeeded, they’d do something well-intentioned but humiliating to get him to ask me, so I’d hidden in the library instead, but sometimes Micah found me there and settled in beside me to eat and study. Then I’d end up with my heart pounding too hard and out of rhythm. I’d last as long as I could with my cheeks flaming. When I couldn’t take it—sure he’d hear my loud heartbeat—I’d mumble an excuse about checking in with a teacher and leave.

That was a rough two months. I touch my cheek, remembering. It’s a miracle I don’t have burn scars from the pining. All that pining that never mattered. He hadn’t asked me to prom. I’d gone with Megan and Lulu. Micah didn’t go at all.

“You had a crush, but now you hate him.” Madison’s tone makes it sound like she’s studying the medical file of a mysterious case. She pauses for a moment, then gasps. “Oh, Kaitlyn, did he reject you?”

“No! Settle down. I don’t think he knew. Not at first. I didn’t get the feeling he thought of me that way at all.”

“Why? Did he say something?”

I make a noncommittal sound. “My insides experienced electrical shorts anytime he was near me, but he acted the same as always, so . . .”

“It wasn’t mutual,” she says.

“I don’t think so. Avoiding him worked pretty well until about a week before finals. But then I stayed late after school one afternoon, and I had to walk by the soccer pitch to get to my car. I wasn’t paying attention, thinking about the chapter test in calculus the next day, and this kid shouts, ‘Hey, Micah, isn’t that the Kaitlyn chick who’s super into you?’”

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