Page 24 of TJ Powar Has Something to Prove
Her shoulders sink from released tension. Maybe that’s just it. Maybe no one will notice. Maybe it’s all in her head.
∗
A few minutes before the bell for first class, the practice ends. Charlie and Nate have late passes for their first period, but they promptly dip out to head back to Whitewater, leaving the Northridgers to move the desks back into place. When TJ finally leaves Mrs. Scott’s classroom, she runs straight into Chandani and Piper in the foyer. They’re lugging their soccer bags into the school.
“There you are,” Chandani drawls. “How was debate practice?”
TJ shrugs. Her team won the practice round. Saad had poked fabulous holes in Nate’s and Ameera’s contentions in his rebuttal, and in a surreal turn of events, Charlie actively backed up TJ’s arguments when Simran went after them. The whole thing didn’t devolve into bad jokes and heckling until the final speeches, which is pretty impressive for a debate practice. “Fine, I guess.” She squints. “Wait. How’d you know where I was?” She definitely hadn’t told anyone.
Chandani’s eyes glint. “Well, when I was coming into theparking lot just now, I saw this guy driving out who lookedreallyfamiliar.”
TJ nearly groans aloud.
Last year, Chandani had volunteered as timekeeper at one of their more informal tournaments—only because Mrs. Scott had offered extra credit in her English class. Somehow Chandani found a way to be assigned to one of TJ’s debates, which just happened to be against Nate and Charlie. She’d spent most of it on her phone. TJ was fairly sure she wasn’t using it to keep track of time limits, either. Actually, she wascompletelysure, because Charlie had gone two minutes overtime in his first speech before she noticed.
TJ had been pissed. Especially since Chandani was clearly paying attention tosomethings, just not things that mattered.
Chandani smiles evilly. “It was that one guy with the brown hair...”
“Oh, great,” TJ says. “That really narrows it down.”
“Shut up, bitch. You know who I’m talking about. And let me say, Northridge just doesn’t make them like that, honey.”
Piper pulls out her phone. “Who are you talking about? Let’s find him.”
“His name is Charlie Rosencrantz and he’s got Instagram,” Chandani says shamelessly. Piper taps away at her screen. After a minute, her eyes go round.
“NowI understand why you’re in debate club, TJ.” She and Chandani cackle. TJ does not. “His profile says he’s student president at Whitewater. Did you know that?”
“No.” Of course she did. She’s stalked his Instagram multipletimes; last year when he got re-elected for the position, he posted a completely unrelated photo of himself hiking along with a long caption about howgratefulhe was to his team. Performative prick.
The warning bell rings, and Piper bids them goodbye to hurry off to art. Meanwhile, TJ and Chandani walk back to Mrs. Scott’s classroom for English. TJ tries not to show her trepidation. This is a class she shares with Liam.
When they enter, her treacherous eyes seek him out immediately. He’s at the back of the class. His friends are talking around him, but he’s focused on folding a piece of paper methodically into smaller and smaller squares. A nervous habit of his.
As if sensing her stare, he looks up and sees her. He starts rising from his desk, but TJ looks away and sits in her usual place several rows away. She’s still half-angry, half-embarrassed. They’ve never fought like this before.
Silent reading is the first thing on the schedule, so TJ digs her book on genome editing out of her bag. Hopefully debate research will take her mind off Liam. Besides, she needs all the extra help she can get for Provincials.
However, halfway through the reading period, Mrs. Scott gets distracted chatting with the teacher across the hall, and the volume in the room rises steadily. TJ’s trying her best to focus when Chandani leans across the desk, voice pitched low. “Don’t panic, but you need a threading appointment stat.”
Colour floods TJ’s face. She touches her jaw. “Oh.”
It’s not a very convincing show of surprise. Chandani’s eyebrows rise.
TJ puts down her book and wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans. She hasn’t told anyone about her resolution yet. But Chandani’s clearly awaiting an explanation, and, well, it’s not like she’s going tostopnoticing the more TJ’s hair grows in.
She beckons Chandani closer, and Chandani ducks her head so TJ can whisper. “I’m letting it grow on purpose.”
“What?”
Chandani’s voice is loud enough to make people around them pause.
TJ speaks even quieter. “I’m not threading or waxing or shaving anything. I’m stopping all of it.” The words are hard to get out. They feel strange to say.
Clearly, they’re even stranger to hear. “Are you joking?” Chandani asks. “Why would you do that?”
“To prove a point.” TJ swallows. If she can’t even say this to Chandani, who she’s been friends with since she was little, then who can she say it to? “That it’s okay to be... you know. Not hairless.”