“I have no idea,” I say, lifting my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “You’re the one who suggested it. And now you’re blushing.”
“Because you’re interrogating me!” He whips off his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It was a slip of the tongue. And I hate that too, almost as much as the freckles. It always gives away how I’m feeling. I’ve never been able to talk to a cute girl without turning into a fucking tomato.”
“Would I fall into that category?”
His deepening blush says it all. Huh. Neil McNair thinks I am a cute girl.
“You know you’re not unattractive,” he says after a few seconds of silence. “You don’t need me to validate that.”
True, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nice to hear. I must really be starved for compliments if “not unattractive” makes me feel this great about myself, if the warmth in my chest is any indication.
“Should I just leave them here?” I ask, taking the books out of my backpack. “Or should I write a note or something?”
“As much as I’d love to write in calligraphy ‘Rowan Roth’s overdue library books,’ you should probably just drop them in the slot.”
One by one, I feed each book to the return. They land with increasingly loud thumps.
I’ve been at Westview after hours plenty of times. I know this school so well: best locker locations, which vending machines are always out of order, quickest route to the gym for assemblies. But tonight… it really is spooky. It doesn’t feel like my school.
I guess it isn’t anymore.
We should go, I try to say, because I want so badly to win that money for him, but instead, I find myself drifting toward the stacks. Neil follows me. The library may be eerie, but it’s also peaceful.
“I really will miss all of this,” I say, running my fingers along the spines.
“I think they have libraries in Boston. Big ones.”
I nudge his shoulder. “You know what I mean. This might actually be our last time in here.”
“Isn’t that kind of a good thing?”
I lean against the stack of books opposite him. “I’m not sure.” I reach into my backpack, pull out the success guide. We’ve already shared so much today. After you’ve cried on your nemesis’s shoulder, what boundaries are left? “I was so wrapped up in having this perfect high school experience, and I can’t help feeling disappointed that the reality isn’t what I thought it would be. You’re going to make fun of me, but… here’s that success guide.”
He accepts the wrinkled sheet of paper and scans it, one corner of his mouth tilting upward. I wonder what he’s smiling at: figuring out my bangs or making out with someone under the bleachers.
“I guess I thought I’d be this very specific person by now,” I continue. “And I’m just—not.”
When he gets to the end, he taps number ten in this matter-of-fact way. “ ‘Destroy Neil McNair,’ ” he reads. “I can’t say destroying you wouldn’t have been on my own hypothetical success guide.”
“Obviously, I failed. At everything.”
He’s still staring at it, and it’s killing me not knowing what’s going through his head. “You wanted to be an English teacher? ‘Mold young minds’?”
“What, you don’t think I’d be a good mind molder?”
“I actually think you would be. If you could get over your distaste for the classics.” He passes it back to me, and I’m both relieved and disappointed he didn’t say anything about the perfect boyfriend thing, if only because I’m curious what he would have said. “It’s not a bad list. I don’t know if it’s realistic, but… do you still want any of these things?”
The thought has crossed my mind a couple times today—before I’ve soundly dismissed it.
“Some of the ones it’s still possible to achieve, yes. It’s not something I think about very often, but I’d love to be fluent in Spanish,” I say. “My mom is, and her whole family is, and I’ve always wished I learned it when I was younger.”
“It isn’t too late, you know.”
I groan with the knowledge of him being right.
“And there was a reason you stopped taking Spanish.” When I shrug, he says, “Because your interests changed. Other things became more important for a while. It’s the same reason you don’t want to be a teacher anymore. You can’t tie yourself to this list you made when you were fourteen. Who still wants the same things they did at fourteen?”