Ellie stumbled out her house, pulling one of the straps of her handbag back up her shoulder as she forced the front door closed. She brushed at her messy hair as she dashed down the pathway and got into the passenger seat, panting slightly.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry." She put her hand to her forehead. "I completely forgot we were doing this."
"It's fine." I grinned. "This was your idea, anyway. I was happy to just find out my grades when we go back."
"Ugh, no. Mrs. A can get them to us early, so if I can see them now, and make sure I did as well as I wanted, I can try to relax for the rest of the holiday." She started pulling things out of her bag. "Maybe."
I shrugged. "Good point."
I started up the car to set off for school, and she skilfully applied makeup along the way. She was oddly silent for most of the drive, even after she was done getting ready, but I chalked it up to the fact that she'd been rushed this morning and was possibly still waking up. It wasn't until we got stuck in traffic that I started to worry that maybe it was something else.
"I think there's been a crash in the intersection." I craned my neck. "I think I can see flashing lights."
"Oh no!" She sounded genuinely upset.
I frowned. "Relax. The limit's low here, so I don't think anyone could get really hurt."
"No, it's not that, it's-" She sighed. "Ugh. Never mind."
"Are you okay?" I turned to face her.
"I'm fine." She avoided my gaze.
"Is it something with Gary?"
"No, things are fine with Gary. We're taking it slow, and we're both just focusing on prelims." She shifted uncomfortably, but smiled slightly. "His will end tomorrow, so we'll see each other after. It's not that."
"Then what is it?" I tried to keep my voice steady. I'd been so paranoid during prelims that she was mad at me. The way she was acting had reminded me to worry about it again. "You've been avoiding me since the holidays started, and I basically last saw you before prelims. We're still friends, right?"
"Yes! Of course. It's not that. It's..." She took a deep breath. "I know about you and Jamie."
My head snapped up. She darted a glance at me, and looked away again.
I leaned back in my seat and groaned. "Ellie, I'm so sorry. I really wanted to tell you, but-"
"What?" Her head jerked back, and she stared at me.
"I just thought Jamie might not want you to know, and I-"
"Jay." She put her hand on my arm. "Jamie told me. I thought you'd be mad that I was prying again. I'm the one who should be sorry. And I am. Really sorry."
Relief flooded through me, and I let out a short burst of laughter. "Don't be. I kind of thought you hated me."
"Never." She grinned.
"Besides, I only didn't tell you because I wanted to respect Jamie's privacy. If I was mad at anyone, it'd be him, right?"
"Well." She grimaced. "Maybe?"
"What does that mean?"
She sighed. "Okay, so I think about two weeks ago - around Saturday - I looked out my window and saw his car pull up to your house, and you letting him in at the gate."
"Oh god."
"Yeah." She bit her lip. "So I went outside to wait by it, and ask him what he was doing at your house so late when he got back."
"You sat around his car, in the early hours of the morning, for-"
"It wasn't a great plan. I thought he'd dipped in to get some emergency physics notes from you or something... I didn't know he'd be in there for so long, and I had this great big dramatic prank in mind. It was going to scare the crap out of him and everything."
"What did you..." I shook my head. "What happened?"
"So, it kind of worked - I jumped out and said 'Boo' and he screamed. That was kind of funny. But then I... Oh god, I almost don't want to say."
"What?"
She scrunched up her face. "I made some joke... about how it was rude of you two to have sex without me, because I didn't think... you know... Jamie, of all people, would-"
"Oh god." Poor Jamie. That was probably not a great thing to have been confronted with, in the middle of how he was reacting that night.
She cringed. "Yup. And that's when he proceeded to have a breakdown, and told me everything."
"Does he think I told you?"
"No, I made it pretty clear that I was just joking, and that he'd accidentally over-shared." She sighed deeply and dipped her head. "But god, I felt bad. I think he needed someone to talk to about it anyway, but that was definitely not the right way to start."
"Yeah." I nodded. "He's been avoiding me since that."
"I think he's embarrassed." She relaxed back into her seat. "He won't talk much about how he's feeling about all of it. But he did tell me that he felt like an idiot, after... you know."
"I do."
"And he's been dashing out of prelims so he doesn't have to talk to you afterwards - not that he'd tell me that."
"I noticed." We'd edged our way through the traffic, and had crossed the intersection. Someone's window was shattered all over the middle of the intersection, but it looked like the cars involved had now been dragged off to the side. I didn't see anyone being attended to by paramedics, though. Just two very pissed off people glaring at each other. The school was right past that, so once we'd gotten through the drive was basically over.
"Can I tell him you know that I know now?" she asked as she got out of the car.
"Um..." It took me a second to process that. I shut my door and waited for her to walk around. "Yes. I think so. If you don't think it'll freak him out."
"Okay, I think he's here, so I'm going to go find him and catch up with you later." She ran off, and I made my way to the bulletin board outside of Mrs. A's class. Louis, Angela and Sue were already there.
"I don't know why she didn't just post this online." Sue said irritably as I walked up to the three of them.
"It's not the final list, so she can't. Mrs. A's just doing us a favour, because she's on the committee. You're lucky you're getting it this early." Angela smiled patiently.
Sue stomped her foot, and continued pacing. Louis laughed, and turned to face me. "Hey Jay."
"Hey. Did I miss anything?"
"Just Sue somehow still finding a way to complain about being the only students in the district who get to have an early sneak-peek at their grades."
"Fine!" Sue threw up her hands. "I'm glad I had to come to school in the middle of my holidays. Yay, paper!"
We all laughed, and Mrs. A approached the announcement board to pin up the sheet. She'd always been one of my favourite teachers - dry and sarcastic, with dark hair and big glasses that made her look like a grumpy librarian. She didn't look at the four of us as she marched over to the cork board and started pinning up the pages.
Other people were around, but Sue had demanded that the four of us stand right next to the notice board, so as Mrs. A walked back our way and then passed us, she smiled wryly. "Have at it, piranhas."
Sue launched immediately at the board, studied it for a second, and bounced away joyfully.
"I'm number seven. I've gone up one!" She was ecstatic, and we all congratulated her.
Louis and Angela went next, calmly standing alongside each other as they studied it. They looked at each other for a second, and then came back to us.
"I'm still number three." Angela sounded zen and satisfied.
"I've also gone up one. I'm number five." he said to me happily, "Jay, you really need to go look."
"Okay." I walked over and ran my finger hand down the list.
Mrs. A usually showed us these lists at the start of every year, too. Maybe she was trying to get us to be competitive. She'd cross out the names of students that weren't from our school, but we could see where we ranked in the district, and what our average grades were. I didn't expect that prelims had brought down my grades, even though they were supposed to be more difficult, because I'd put a lot more work in than usual. My hand went to the spot I was used to, somewhere around the mid-teens.
"You might want to look a bit higher than usual." Angela said from behind my shoulder.
She was right - I wasn't there any more. My finger moved up the list, until I got to a number that made me blink and look again, not quite believing it.
"Number six?" I turned around. Angela and Louis were beaming.
"WHAT?" Sue stormed to the board. I backed away slowly to where Angela and Louis were standing. Angela shot Sue a worried look.
"I wonder if that's right." Sue paced back towards us, her eyes wide with shock. "I'm not number two in the school any more."
"You're still in the Top Three." Angela used a soothing tone. Sue just nodded. I guess both of them weren't counting Louis yet - since he was still technically enrolled at North Grove. He'd probably always ranked above her in the district list, anyway.
She wandered back over to the list, and ran her hand down it again. She paused, a fair distance down the page. Then she spun around and strode back to us, smiling.
"Guys. Caitlyn is going to DIE over this. She's number 24!" Sue had clearly found her silver lining. "Well done, Jay. I hate you a little, but well done."
"Thanks." I laughed. My mind was still kind of reeling.
Breaking the top ten in the district was awesome. Beating Sue was hilarious, too - now that I knew she wasn't going to murder me for it. And my mom was going to freak out. In a good way. My best ranking before had been twelve, but that had seemed like a weird anomaly. Louis just smiled at me, and gently bumped into me from the side. I laughed again.
"Well we should definitely go celebrate now." Angela gave Sue a pointed look. "No bars. It's still morning."
"I know. I'm not an alcoholic." Sue scoffed. "We can go get breakfast or something."
"Should we invite Ellie?" Louis asked.
"Would that be okay?" I turned towards Angela and Sue. "I'm supposed to be her ride home, so it would be weird to drop her off and then head off to something without her."
"Ellie should definitely come," Angela said. Sue just nodded.
I could see Ellie and Jamie approaching the notice board. They were both pretty solid students - they were both surviving AP maths, after all - but Jamie had never exactly acted like he cared too much about school. Although I went out of my way to pretend I didn't either, so maybe he did the same. Both he and Ellie had probably both done all right, though.
"Don't invite Jamie." Sue hissed. "Or there's too many of us for the car."
Jamie was likely to try and avoid me again, anyway, so it'd be easy to catch Ellie alone. They walked up to the list, and Ellie said something to Jamie and smiled. Jamie looked back at the list, laughed, and pointed to it. Whatever he'd said caused her to shut her eyes and let out an annoyed groan.
