12. Mina

I'm actually not, recent events notwithstanding, a fool. I am in fact very fucking smart. So I lie around the house all weekend gathering the facts and figures. Quinn has certainly been acting oddly. He's sort of been going out of his way to talk to me. He is always kind of looking at me lately. He probably had in fact mentioned me to Caplan. He offered to walk me home and didn't even try to shove me off his skateboard or physically kick me to the curb. But an urge to right the wrongs of childhood tormenting, to subvert that narrative, is not the same as a crush. And being curious what it would be like to put the freaky girl in a prom dress is a tale as old as time. Inherently wrong and grotesque, uncanny, and ultimately, illicit. Tempting. Like wanting to watch a pimple pop.

I tell all this to Caplan when we take a walk on Saturday, and he says he literally can't follow a single thing I've said, but if I'm comparing myself to a zit, I need more psychiatric help than he in good faith can provide. Then he says I must be reading too many creepy books and he's going to confiscate my copy of Jane Eyre. I come this close to opening my mouth and admitting I know Quinn may actually like me and asking what I should do next, but I don't want to sound hopeful. It's not that I'm embarrassed in front of Caplan. Somewhere in the country of childhood, between panic attacks and car sickness and the time he laughed so hard he wet the bed, I lost the ability to be embarrassed in front of him. But if I don't want to sound hopeful, it must mean I don't want to feel hopeful, and hoping you won't feel hopeful is basically the same thing as hoping. On Sunday, he tries to get me to come with everyone to swim at Little Bend. I say no chance. No more normal all-American-girl fun for me.

That evening, my mom emerges from her room to tell me my grandmother called, asking if we've sent the full payment to Yale yet.

"I told her we had," she says, not looking at me.

"But we haven't?"

She is touching the molding on my doorframe gently as if testing to see if it will crumble away.

"We haven't, right?" I say.

She sighs.

"Mom."

"We would have missed the deadline."

"You did it without talking to me."

"What is there to talk about?" She's already turned to the side, like she's leaving, a slim shadow in the hallway.

"I don't think I want to go to Yale," I say.

Finally, she looks at me. I wait for her to ask me why.

"They offered to pay for Yale," she says quietly.

"I got money from Michigan."

She doesn't move. She stands looking at the inside of my doorframe.

"I don't want to go to Yale. I'd rather stay home than go there."

"Please, Mina, don't become a rebellious teenager now. You've always wanted to go to Yale."

If one more person tells me that, I'll scream, I think as she turns to leave, but what I open my mouth and say is, "So it's about their money?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, if I don't need their money, do you?"

She looks like I've slapped her. I try to feel bad, but I can't. I've gotten a reaction.

"It's about keeping a relationship with them. And a connection. To your past."

"You can just say to Dad."

"Mina." She puts a hand over her eyes as if we're not inside with all the lights turned off.

"It's not my fault we're not close to them," I say. "You can't send me to Yale to make up for it."

"I tried," she says, "with his friends, with those families. They all had kids your age."

My stomach folds in.

"They still invite us on that vacation. Every year. But when you said you never wanted to go again, I didn't ask why. I didn't complain. I know you haven't always found it easy to make friends—"

I step backward into my room and shut the door. I stand there, with something like nausea rising inside of me, pinching the inside of my arm to keep myself here. I wait to hear her walk away.

"I am not the only one who isolated us," she says to my door.

It is pouring on Monday morning, and the sky is so dark that I sleep through my alarm. I left my glasses in Hollis's bathroom, so I have to put in contacts, and for some reason, this minor inconvenience makes me so irritated that I ignore the mug of coffee my mom has left out for me, even though I know it's an apology.

Because of the rain, Caplan offers to drive, but he's running late after dropping off his mom. I can feel myself being cold in the car and wait for him to call it out, to talk and joke till I relent, but he's quiet, too. I walk into homeroom well after the bell like a miserable drowned rat. I can feel everyone looking at me, I assume because I'm late. But when I sit down and drop my bag onto my desk, I knock something to the floor. It's a tiny blue origami elephant.

Caplan's voice crackles to life over the loudspeaker. I put the small creature in my palm. I can feel people still looking and I think about putting it away in my bag, but don't want to crush it, so I put it back where it was originally placed, on the left corner of my desk, facing the board.

I find Caplan outside of the main office, still looking grumpy.

"So how cringey was that?" he asks.

"What?"

"My promposal?"

"What do you mean?" I'm trying to keep an eye on the distant corner of the hallway. I don't want to be surprised by Quinn.

"I asked Hollis over the loudspeaker. Did you not hear?"

"No," I say. "Sorry, I was distracted." I hold out the blue elephant. "Am I being punked? Did you dare him to do this?"

"What's that?"

"An elephant."

"Yeah, I see that. Is it Quinn's?"

"I think so."

"Where'd you get it?"

"It was sitting on my desk when I walked in."

Caplan stares at the little elephant. Hollis walks up to us holding roses. She bops him on the head with them.

"Thanks for these. And I say yes, by the way."

Caplan is still a statue.

"What's up?" She follows his eyes down to my palm. "Who's this little guy?"

"Quinn put it on Mina's desk," he says finally.

"Oh my god." She shoves her roses into Caplan's arms and picks up the elephant. "That is so cute I could die." She hands it back to me. "Wait, so are you and Quinn going out now?"

"No, what?" My shirt feels too tight around my neck.

"It's just an elephant," Caplan says stupidly, clutching his roses.

Mercifully, the bell rings, and Hollis glides away, but not before telling me she hopes I'm feeling better. I tell her I am, thank you, never better, breathing through my nose and reminding myself that I know the closest routes to the single-stall bathrooms from any spot in the school by heart.

I plan to avoid lunch altogether since I'm beginning to accept that everyone has lost their minds and I don't understand anything or anyone anymore, but it's still raining, so we're all quarantined to the cafeteria. I confuse myself as I walk in, torn between my usual move to stare at my feet, and my anxiety to know where in the room Quinn is. I get stuck somewhere in the middle, looking straight ahead, beelining for a table in the corner that is empty except for Lorraine Daniels, her red glasses a beacon of safety. Because of this, I don't see Quinn until he steps directly in front of me.

"Hi!" he sort of shouts at me.

"Hey," I say.

"No glasses," he says, pointing like he's going to touch my face and then quickly folding his arms.

"Yes, I misplaced them."

"You look nice," he says.

"Oh," I say.

"Sorry." He scratches the side of his head. "I'm being super weird."

"That's okay—"

"I meant to text you like all weekend and then waited too long and made it a thing in my head and then couldn't do it and I thought maybe you'd be at Little Bend since you've been coming around more but then you weren't so instead I left you the elephant and I meant to just give it to you in the hallway but then you were late so I went to leave it at your homeroom desk but everyone watched me as I did it and I realized it was probably a weird thing to do but then it was too late so I just left it on your desk and dipped. I hope I didn't embarrass you or something."

I make myself shut my mouth. "That's okay," I say, raising my fist, which I've kept locked carefully around the elephant all morning, and open it for him like a flower. The elephant is lying there on his side. Quinn reaches out and rights him with careful fingers.

"You still like elephants, right? I remember you did that awesome report on them in, like, fourth grade and your diorama, like, put everyone else to shame. You said they were your favorite animal because they were lucky and wise and remembered everything."

"That's—that's right—they do," I hear myself say.

"Sick," he says.

"Okay, well."

"Do you wanna hang out this week?"

"What?"

"Like see a movie or something?"

"Like, a date?"

"Only if you want to," he says, uncrossing and then recrossing his arms. "Yeah, we don't have to. It's all good—"

"No, I want to," I say.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Okay, awesome. I'll text you."

"Okay." I turn to leave.

"Wait, do you, like, want to come eat with us?"

"No thank you," I say quickly, feeling faint, "but please text me."

I force myself calmly through the cafeteria, with the vague idea of going to sit at the table with Lorraine, but I can't seem to be able to alter my path, so I head for the closest exit that leads outside. As I turn, I see Quinn in my periphery with his hands in his pockets, doing a funny little skip back to his table. Someone gives him a high five. I throw myself against the doors, out into the warm rain.