Page 101 of More Than Chemical
“None. I downed two of those five-hour energy shots. Extra strength.”
“Holy balls, Ade.”
“Anyway, now I have to avoid him, because if he finds me, I’m afraid I’ll punch him.” My fist went flying in the air. “I’m afraid I’ll knee him in the groin.” I acted out that maneuver too. “And when he’s writhing on the ground, I’m afraid I’ll crush his hands with my feet.”
“Whoa, Ade. Settle down.”
I froze midstomp and cocked my head. “I can’t. This is the kind of danger he’ll be in if I run into him, that’s all. That’s why I had to meet you outside.”
“You do realize he’s in our class right now. He’s going to be taking the test too.”
The wind sent us sailing through the door of the building.
“I know,” I said. “Which is why I made sure we’d get here just as the test was about to be handed out.”
“Also, you said you don’t know him, but I hope you’ve realized that he doesn’t know you either.”
“Yes, he does.” I peeled off my layers. “I told you. He knew my secret. He knew who my father was.”
“He didn’t know your other secret.”
In the lecture hall, we sat with an empty seat between us—test-taking protocol.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I set my calculator on the corner of the foldout desk. “I don’t have another secret.”
Jay tapped his pencil on the desk, then leaned over and lowered his voice. “That you were using him to cure your insomnia.”
My heart stopped. Or maybe skipped a beat. Jay sure had a way of making me sound like the evil one here. Because I wasn’t, was I?
My right leg started to jiggle. But it was true. I’d never told Dallas. Not even the night I had the auditory hallucination.
I tried not to look for him. Not to find the back of his head. But I did. He was sitting at the bottom and to the right of the large auditorium room.
The ache in my chest intensified. I could hardly breathe. Hardly see straight. Jay was right.BothDallas and I had been insincere to each other.
Jay squinted at me. “Are you okay?”
But I couldn’t respond. My heart was beating too fast. A whooshing sound kept crashing in my ears. I couldn’t find words or figure out how to get them out of me.
“Ade, you’ve got to stop taking so much caffeine, and stop hiding behind all of these secrets. You need to embrace the life that you were born with. I promise you that it will be okay.”
The room was full now. Tests were being passed down the row, and I took one. I placed my hand on the stapled packet lying upside down, and I knew without a doubt that I was going to fail. No amount of studying or practicing, no amount of energy supplement, was going to get me through this. Not today.
I glanced around the room at the other students, but they all had deadpan faces. I was the only one about to break in half. Even Jay was calm and collected. I should just leave. Call my mom and tell her I’d meet her at the courthouse earlier than I’d thought. Even though she told me last night that they’d delayed court this morning until ten, making my eight a.m. exam occur at the perfect time.
“Ade,” Jay said, “you can do this. As hard as it sounds, you need to block out everything else and concentrate.”
I nodded in panic.
“Breathe, Ade. Breathe.”
So I did. And it helped. A little.
After the teaching assistant gave us the cue, I flipped over the packet and dug in. I read the first question, and a cylinder fired in my brain. Aha. I knew how to solve this problem. I hunched over and started scratching away, showing my work.
When I got to the last question, I looked up to check the time. Less than two minutes left. Dang. I hadn’t finished. And I wasn’t going to have enough time to look over my answers to make sure I’d done the math right. I scribbled as fast as I could in the time left, making some educated guesses.
The tests were collected, and all I wanted to do was steal mine back.
