There is a red D scrawled across the top of last week’s Twentieth-Century Europe quiz. Not a low B or even my greatest fear, a C, but a fucking D. I’ve never gotten a D on any test, quiz, or assignment, ever. My brain doesn’t even know how to compute a D.

My heart hammers in my too-hot chest. I tried my hardest, but I can see from Professor Hart’s notes on my quiz that I overlooked many of the critical points covered by our reading material or his class lectures or both. How could I have missed so much? Surely I can’t be this stupid.

Professor Hart doesn’t waste time discussing the quiz, just dives right into a lecture on the rise of Adolf Hitler. I try to adjust my focus based on the comments he left in my blue book. He seems to care less about the how of any particular event and more about the why. I think I’m meant to understand the mindset of the people, the culture and collective mentality that enabled millions to look the other way while a sociopath gained control.

Why, not how. My pulse roars in my temples while my mind and pen scramble to keep pace with Hart’s lecture. I jot questions in the margins of my notebook: points to consider, details to research, events that might correlate with one another. My normally meticulous handwriting deteriorates into a sloppy, panicked scrawl.

When the lecture is over, I’m emotionally exhausted. My cello is still back at the music school in the practice room across from Bethany’s, and she’s expecting me back there for another couple of hours of practice. After that, I’ve planned to meet Daphne for some more hip-hop humiliation, and then I still have a mountain of homework and studying to do tonight. But all I want to do is curl up in my bed and cry.

I’m already fighting back tears as I stuff my notebook and pens into my backpack. I color-coded my notes, for god’s sake. That’s always worked for me in the past, but now I feel like I’ve been relying on a gimmick, and all those years of good grades were just dumb luck. I hate that my dad’s face comes to mind, and I hate that what he told me is true: The reason you do so well in school is that we’re in a tiny town full of redneck morons who can’t tell their ass from their face. As soon as you get out into the real world, you’ll see how you slip in the ranks.

Color-coding. God, I am so fucking lame.

“Hey, how’d you do?”

I shrug my backpack onto my shoulder and turn to see, of course, Creepy Elevator Guy standing in the aisle, smiling. He looks friendly enough, but I can’t deal with his bullshit right now. I’m barely holding back my tears as it is.

“I take it you didn’t do so well,” he says. “Sorry.”

Is he making fun of me? I grit my teeth and blink, and to my horror, a tear slips out. I bat it away and shove past him.

“Whoa, hey, it’s just one quiz,” he says, trailing behind me. “Two more and then the exam, right? And the exam gets more weight than the quizzes, so you still have a chance to pick your grade up.”

I descend the steps without answering him. He follows me into the hallway. “I bet you didn’t even do that bad. What’d you get, a C?”

“I got a D,” I say flatly without turning around.

“Aw, shit. Yeah, that’s not good.”

I push open the door to the outside. The day is overcast and muggy, and there’s a charge in the air. It’s going to rain.

“You can still turn it around.”

I hate myself for asking it, but my curiosity is too much. “So what did you get?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps trailing behind me.

I stop walking and wheel on him, crossing my arms. He couldn’t have—dressed like that, baggy clothes, pants hanging off his ass. “For fuck’s sake, just say it.”

“An A,” he says, and I grunt like a petulant child. “Well, an A-minus, really. A low A. It was just a 90.5. Practically a B.”

“Smart-ass.” I smile a little and shake my head at him.

“Hey,” he says, holding up his palms. “I studied my ass off.”

“I thought I did too.”

We resume walking. “You the honor society type?”

“Supposedly.”

“Cheerleader and shit, right? Popular, always get everything you want?”

I snort. “Is that really the vibe I give off?”

“Not at all. I was fucking with you.” He laughs, and we stop at a T in the sidewalk.

“Gee, you’re hilarious.”

“I get that a lot. What’s your name, anyway? I know it’s not really ‘Nope’ like you told me on move-in day.”

I roll my eyes. “Malory.”

“I’m Rome.” He reaches out a hand. It’s warmer and softer than I thought it would be. For some reason I was expecting clammy.

“Yeah, you told me in the elevator. So, is that like, your real name or your rapper name?”

He snickers and shakes his head like he can’t believe I would ask such an offensive question, but at the same time, the smile in his eyes tells me he’s not really offended. “If your mom named you Romeo, you’d come up with a ‘rapper name’ too.” When he says the word “too,” he turns the pitch down at the end, breaking it into two syllables.

“So, are you from Miami, or what?” I ask.

“How’d you guess?”

“You have an accent.”

“Nah, you have an accent. I talk normal.”

“Touché,” I say, though his last words were even more accented than anything he’s said so far, the “R” of “normal” drawing up into a deformed “W” and making the word come out “NO-wah-mole.” I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me. “Well,” I say, pointing in the direction of the music building. “I’m going this way.”

He lifts his eyebrows and chin in that universal masculine gesture of acknowledgment. “All right, Malory-formerly-known-as-Nope. I’ll see you around.”

---

Garrett and I seem to have formed a tacit agreement to see each other only on weekends. It’s Wednesday, and I haven’t heard from him since Sunday when he texted me that he’d had a good time Saturday night. I can’t tell if this arrangement has come about because I told him I didn’t have time for a relationship or if he’s keeping his distance from me for some other reason, like that I bore him.

Either way, I can’t keep visions of him from ambushing me at inopportune moments. One moment I’m practicing, riveted on a complicated scale variation, and suddenly I’m back at Garrett’s house, perched on his kitchen counter, arms pinned, legs spread, panting and pleading for him to finger-fuck me. Then my bow flies off my string and I need to stop playing for a second to pull myself together. I wouldn’t want you to do anything you might regret, he said. I think he meant to be chivalrous, but he made me feel…slutty. I’d damn near tried to rip his pants off, and he’d rejected me.

Even during my lesson—I lost my place in the Popper etude I was playing for Professor Yarvik because I was slammed by an image of Garrett’s thick-lashed swimming pool eyes flicking all over me while he played me better than I play my cello. And during my music theory class I had to get up and leave the room for a minute because I could not sit still any longer with the memory pinging through my consciousness, me on that counter Come on, Garrett, fuck me, please, please. I had to go to the bathroom to splash water on my face.

The only class where I successfully avoided thoughts of Garrett was Twentieth-Century Europe, and that’s only because my brain was wholly consumed with trying to get the notes down, too busy to permit thoughts of anything else.

Now I shake away the image once again and wipe my sweaty palms on my pants. I’m practicing in my dorm today because the practice hallway where Bethany and I normally meet is being painted, and the few available rooms were already occupied. I could have gone downtown to combine practicing with making some money, but the weather is still dreary and I don’t want to risk my cello getting rained on.

I focus on the Elgar, running a difficult two measures with my metronome, increasing the tempo a click after each repetition, drilling the notes all the way down into my bones, over and over and over, committing the movements to permanent memory. It’s that machine feeling I’m after, the one I get when Yarvik drills me, the one that pushes Garret’s touch from my brain. Soon I’m so engrossed in the notes that I barely register when there’s knock on my door.

Shit. It was only a matter of time before I bothered somebody.

I stand with my cello and open the door. “Sorry, am I too loud? I can practice with my mute if—”

“Are you kidding?” Rome is standing in the hallway, and his eyebrows have disappeared under the brim of his hat. “I had to knock just to see where that…that sound was coming from. I couldn’t take it anymore, not knowing.”

I smile through pursed lips. I can feel my cheeks turning pink.

“Girl, you’re killing me. Killing me. I’ve been standing out here for a fucking hour, like, dying, because I’ve never heard anything…I mean, seriously? Jeeeez.” He takes his hat off and scrapes a hand over his short black curls.

I have to laugh; I’m honestly a little flattered. “Well, I’m a music major, so I should hope I’m capable of producing something that’s at least unobjectionable.”

“Unobjectionable? I can’t handle it, girl, I just can’t handle it.” He growls the last words and stomps his foot with a swing of his arms, just like the guys down the street from Aunt Bonnie’s. They seemed to speak with every part of their body too, not that I ever had a conversation with any of them.

“Simmer down there, guy,” I tell him. “I’m not that good.”

He puts his hat back on. “Ah, yeah, fine, whatever. Anyway, this is just perfect. I was thinking earlier that we should make a study group for Twentieth-Century Europe. Get together a few times a week and discuss the lectures and reading material. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know what room you were in.”

“You could’ve asked me in class tomorrow.”

“True.” He grins. “But I’m excited. I want to start now.”

I actually like his study group idea. I don’t trust myself enough to risk another D on the next quiz, even if I change my study tactics, and Rome obviously understands the material better. Still, I just can’t help myself: “Are you sure this isn’t another sneaky bid at getting me alone like the time you tried to convince me to come get high?”

He throws his hands up. “Oh my god, girl, when are you gonna figure out I was just trying to be—”

I laugh, nudging him in the arm with the hand that isn’t holding up my cello. “I’m totally joking. It’s cool.”

“Man, you really are a fucking smart-ass.” But he’s smiling at me.

“So who else is going to be in this group?” I ask him.

“Uh…” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Just me and you?”

I laugh loudly now, almost doubling over. “You are trying to get me alone! Perv!”

He’s laughing too, and I can’t believe it, but I’m actually enjoying the guy’s company, despite how weird he is.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he says. “We can invite more people if you want. I just felt so bad that you were upset, and I wanted to help you. And…”

I cock an eyebrow.

“And it just so happens I have a music appreciation course that I’m kind of bombing…”

“Ah, a very happy coincidence for the both of us, yes?”

He shrugs, holding his palms out in that “what’re you gonna do” sort of way. “Funny how shit works out, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it was meant to be.”