to redo that project, I have to go back. For four whole weeks.”
Ari plucks a few strings, then frowns and shakes her head. She finally looks up at me. “Why can’t you just settle for the C?”
I give her a withering look.
She shrugs. “Just saying. It’s what almost anyone else would do.”
“Well, it’s not what I would do. A C. It will haunt me the rest of my life if I don’t get it fixed.”
“Will it, though?” says Ari sweetly. “It’s not like you’re going to need science credits when you apply to business school. Literally no one but you cares about this project or the grade you got.”
“Exactly. I care, which is the most important thing.”
She considers this. “I suppose that’s true. So you’re officially volunteering at an animal rescue center for the next month. How very selfless of you, dear Prudence.”
“Hey, I can be selfless,” I say, noting the dryness in her tone.
She laughs. “I know you can, but don’t you see the irony? You’re only doing this for the grade.”
“So?” I sit up, suddenly defensive. “Actions make a person good, not motives.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that,” she says wistfully. “But it’d make a good theme for a song. Good or bad, right or wrong … do the means justify the ends and vice versa…” She goes into her dazed songwriting look, but it passes quickly. She bends over the phone again, long wisps of dark brown hair falling over her face like a curtain. She pulls them back with one hand, twisting her hair once at the nape of her neck, before letting it drape across her shoulder. The wisps will return in a few minutes, and I consider offering her my hairband, but she never uses them so I don’t bother.
Ari’s brow furrows and she plucks the same strings over again. She harrumphs, frustrated. “Other than fish smoothies, how was it working with Quint?”
I snarl. “It feels like I’m being punished for something.” My brow crinkles upon further consideration. “Although I guess it wasn’t as terrible as it could have been.”
Her eyebrow lifts, and I grab a pillow to throw at her. She hunkers forward, protecting the guitar. “Stop it. I am not interested in him. I’m just saying, evidently, he can be a halfway-decent human being when he’s doing something he cares about.” Because I could tell he does care about the center, a lot. “That still does not excuse all the stress he put me through this year. And I guarantee that when it comes time for us to finish this project, again, it’s going to require just as much prodding and tooth-pulling as it did the first time. Ideal scenario: I do it myself and we just use Quint’s email address to submit it, so our teacher thinks he was involved.”
“I thought you said part of the reason you got a bad grade was lack of teamwork?”
I sneer. “Again—not my fault. You try working with him.”
Ari giggles. “And yet, you’ve signed up to do just that.”
“I know.” I groan and stretch out on my side.
Ari tries the strings again, playing the same melody over and over until she lets out a frustrated groan. “Okay, this is clearly not right. Whoever wrote this arrangement had no idea what they were doing.”
She stands up and goes to her shelves of vinyl records. She scans the spines for a second before pulling a record from its paper sleeve and setting it onto the ancient turntable that has lived in this room since the day I met her. Probably it’s lived in this room since the day her family moved into this house. Ari’s record collection is something else—an entire wall of built-in shelves, floor to ceiling, each one packed full. There’s an order to the system, but it’s lost on me. Genre? Era? I know there’s a section of Mexican music somewhere, because Ari introduced me to an eighties rock band called La Maldita a while back, and they turned out to be pretty awesome, but I couldn’t say where their records live in all of this.
I do know where to find the Beatles, though.
That’s not what Ari is putting on now.
A beautiful melody begins to play, but it takes me a minute to place it. “Elton John?”
Ari shushes me. “Just listen. Oh, I love this intro. A flute! Who thinks of that? I never would have thought of that. But it’s so perfect!”
I make a face. Whatever you say, Ari. But she’s not