Page 13 of Little Pieces of Light

Emery

After midmorning break, I headed to English class and took a seat beside Harper Bennett toward the back.

In calculus, she hadn’t said a word to me, not that I blamed her.

I’d been a total bitch the other day, and she had every right to ignore me.

But I was aching for a real friend to talk to.

Someone I could share my thoughts and feelings with and not worry they’d be whispered all over the halls the next day.

Someone to talk to about my parents and Jack…

And Xander…

With major effort, I shoved Xander Ford out of my thoughts. We’d gotten things sorted out from a billion years ago, and he was my tutor. End of story.

Except you’re keeping a mental countdown until you see him today, but…sure.

While Ms. Alvarez rifled through papers on her desk, I studied Harper. She wore a corduroy jumper skirt over a black long-sleeved top, brown Doc Martens, and earrings in the shape of little yellow airplanes.

“Can I help you?” she asked without looking at me.

“I’m sorry.”

“For?”

“You know what for,” I said.

She arched a brow, expectant and calm. Not letting me off the hook. I kind of loved that.

“I’m sorry for talking shit yesterday,” I said. “And for not speaking up when my friends talked shit.”

Harper nodded. “Apology accepted.”

“Do you want to hang out sometime?”

She gave me a double-take. “Are you being serious?”

“One hundred percent. Maybe we could go to a movie or grab a coffee milk. I mean…if you want. No big deal.”

“Why?”

The question stung like a bee. I faced forward. “Never mind. Forget it.”

“No, I mean, why do you want to hang out with me ?” She raised a brow. “You don’t have enough friends?”

My friends suck, I nearly said. “You seem…cool.”

“I’m very cool,” Harper said. “I’m so cool, in fact, that I go all the way off the charts and come back around to uncool.” She looked almost shy for a second. “But…yeah.”

“Great,” I said, and felt a lightness in my chest for all of ten seconds until Ms. Alvarez addressed the class.

“We have some changes to our curriculum,” she said stiffly. “We will no longer be studying Sylvia Plath. There have been…some complaints.”

Oh, my fucking God, he didn’t…

My face went hot, and I wanted to sink into the floor.

“Complaints from who?” someone asked.

“The details aren’t important,” Ms. Alvarez said, her gaze grazing me for one second. “Except to say that I’m disappointed, and I encourage everyone to read Plath’s work on their own time. We’ll be shifting focus to Elizabeth Bishop. You’ll find the link to the new syllabus on your iPads.”

Harper leaned over to whisper, “I wonder which asshole parent got their panties in a twist over Sylvia.”

“I wonder,” I murmured, though I knew exactly which asshole parent was responsible. And when class was over, it didn’t shock me in the slightest that Ms. Alvarez asked me to stay behind.

“Emery, I wanted to talk to you about something,” she said after the last student had filed out. She sat on the edge of her desk while I hugged my notebook in front of me.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Alvarez,” I said. “I know it was my dad, but I swear, I—”

“It’s okay,” she said. “After your beautiful thoughts on the Plath poem last week, I have no doubts this wasn’t your idea. Your father had some very strong aversions to Plath. Not her work, but her personal life. Very strong aversions.”

“I’m sorry he got involved.”

She smiled gently. “Can I ask, how are things at home?”

Such a simple question and suddenly, I was on the verge of tears. I swallowed hard. “Things are…fine. My dad is pretty strict. But I’m sure most parents are.”

Ms. Alvarez didn’t agree or disagree, though I felt like she was seeing right through me. I wished she would tell me everything she saw. I wish she’d tell me what to do.

“I’m presuming you have your college plans sorted out?”

“Brown,” I said automatically. Like a program installed in me years ago. Then I thought about Grant, and my terrible father and vacant mother, and how we couldn’t study Sylvia Plath anymore, and I blurted, “But I don’t want to go there.”

“No? What is your dream school?”

“Well, it was RISD, to be an interior designer,” I said, and the words sounded old and covered in dust. “But now, honestly, I think…” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I think I’d like to move far away from here.”

Ms. Alvarez nodded as if she had suspicions that were now confirmed. “UCLA has a wonderful design program. My sister-in-law has a degree in graphic arts from there.”

The idea of moving to sunny California, clear across the country from my parents, and having my life all to myself, lit me up from inside. A second later, reality came down like a shroud.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My dad is paying for college. I can’t get financial aid while I’m stuck to his income, and he won’t let me get a job. I’m kind of…trapped.”

Tears threatened again, and I blinked them away. I knew what I must’ve sounded like: poor little rich girl complaining about the Ivy League when college was a luxury for a lot of kids.

Ms. Alvarez’s brows knit together. “I see. Well, there are scholarships available—”

“For the daughter of a billionaire?” I tried not to scoff. “I’m going to be late for my next class, Ms. Alvarez. Can I go?”

“Yes, but I want you to know that I’m here for you. Even if it’s just to talk. Okay?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“And Emery…” she said when I was at the door. “I know it sounds cheesy, but if you have a dream, don’t give up on it. And if you need anything…help with applications for instance, don’t hesitate to ask. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. For her sake. Because she was being so nice. It wasn’t her fault; she just didn’t know my father.

But at the end of the day, Ms. Alvarez’s suggestion was still rattling around in my head, filling my mind with maybes.

Maybe my dad would have a change of heart and let me apply somewhere besides Brown.

Maybe it was possible I could find my way out of Rhode Island on my own.

Maybe my prom design plan would actually work. Maybe…

The chances of my father changing his mind were slim, but for the first time in a long time, I was daring to dream. Even if it was just a little sliver of hope, it was still hope.

Because Xander is back.

Maybe it wasn’t very feminist of me, but it wasn’t a coincidence that all the plastic, suffocating airlessness of my life became unbearable the second I saw him on the first day of school.

Seven years ago, he’d made me feel less alone.

Now, I felt as if I had someone on my side.

Stronger, somehow, like I could be myself.

After my last class, I practically ran to the library for my tutoring session with Xander. Every study room was filled, and he’d taken one in full view of the rest of the library.

“Hey,” he said as I stepped inside. “I know this isn’t your preferred location, but they’re getting crowded already.”

“It’s okay,” I said, ashamed for making him self-conscious. “But maybe we should have an off-campus backup plan. I have a quiz coming up on power functions, and I am so unprepared.”

“Okay,” Xander said, then paused, looking uncomfortable. “Before we begin, I just wanted to say that I hope everything is copacetic between us after the other day.”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason,” he said in the same casual tone.

Because we weren’t anything to each other. Not really. We knew personal stuff about each other but also didn’t know each other at all. We were stuck somewhere between stranger and friend .

I didn’t like it, but the clock was ticking. If I failed that quiz, I’d be screwed right out of the gate.

Xander pulled out a notebook and pencil from his worn-out backpack. He wore a plain black T-shirt, and I found my gaze wandering over his arms, watching them move. His hands were squarish and strong, one striated with a vein that snaked around his perfect forearm…

“Emery?”

“Right. Power functions. Let the fun begin.”

Xander was a patient tutor, and I tried my best, but it was all gibberish.

My heart just wasn’t in it. My attention kept wandering away from the incomprehensible math—that Xander understood as if it were his native language—to Xander himself.

His eyes were filled with thoughts and figures.

A genius mind working in overdrive behind his glasses.

He’s kind of extraordinary.

Xander tapped the paper with his pencil. “You change the form of the graph by changing the values of k and n . See?”

“If you say so.” I rested my cheek in my palm. “What would you be doing if you were at MIT already?”

“Oh, um…where do I start?”

“How about, what made you get into science in the first place? Because of your dad?”

Xander stiffened slightly. “In a manner of speaking. I grew up with my dad talking about physics, and I became fascinated by those concepts that changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.”

“So you wanted to follow in his footsteps…?”

“Yes and no. I’m just as interested as he is in finding a unified Theory of Everything. He worked at it through particle physics at the NIST and is still working on it at home as we speak. But I want to come at it through the study of black holes.”

“What exactly is a black hole, anyway?” I shrugged at Xander’s quizzical glance. “I honestly want to know.”

“Okay, well, they’re what happens when a large star dies and collapses under its own gravity, compressing its mass into a dense region where nothing—not even light—can escape.

They remain one of the greatest mysteries in physics.

It was only a few years ago that scientists captured an image of one. ”

“What makes them so mysterious?”

Xander gave me another perplexed smile. “Shouldn’t we get back to the math?”

“Later. Right now, I’m learning about black holes.”

He chuckled and pushed his glasses higher up on his nose, which looked both sexy and adorable at the same time.