Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (ereader with android txt) 📕

If I even explain it to him at all.

Scene 39

Of course, I end up blurting the whole thing out to Andy the minute he picks me up for school on Tuesday. For a minute, he stays parked in my driveway, eyes fixed on the windshield, looking vaguely confused. “You ran lines?” he asks finally.

“Yeah. Pretty much.” I buckle my seat belt.

I mean, it’s true. We ran lines. And it’s not like anything physical happened, beyond hand-holding, and that was just character work. Except for one particular moment. Not that it was a moment. But Matt and I had finally made it through the whole scene without laughing, so we were feeling very smug and self-congratulatory. And somehow our eyes locked, just for ten seconds, maybe twenty, until he opened his mouth to speak. But the words never came.

Instead, he looked away, so I looked away too, and there was this whole electric minute where we were just sitting there in silence. Inches apart, not facing each other. But I kept sneaking glances at Matt out of the corner of my eye. He had this look on his face that reminded me of something.

I’m not telling Anderson that part.

“Are you upset?”

“What? Of course not.” He glances up at the rearview. Then, carefully, he backs out of my driveway and onto the road. “Why would I be upset?”

“I don’t know. You kind of seem upset.”

“Well, I’m not.”

For a minute, we’re both silent.

“Did Matt mention he was inviting me over?” I ask finally.

Andy pauses. Pushes the turn signal. “Nope,” he says.

“Maybe he just decided last minute.”

“Maybe.”

Kind of strange, in a way. Matt must have invited me right after Andy left on Saturday. Also strange the way, the whole time we were together, he didn’t mention Anderson once. Not the superheroes, not the waffles, not anything. Almost like Matt wants to know us separately. Or at least there’s something separate about us in his mind.

I don’t know how I feel about that. I’m so used to Andy and me being this indestructible unit. Not that this Matt thing is destroying us. Destroying is definitely not the word. Because we’d never let that happen. We have ground rules. Anyway, Andy’s not even upset.

I mean, he says he’s not upset.

But I swear he’s not quite the usual bright-eyed Anderson. He’s not even the only-slightly-less-vibrant foggy morning Anderson.

In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, the whole way to school.

Scene 40

But by history class, Anderson’s completely back to normal. Even better than normal. He’s the goofiest, bossiest version of himself, the kind that usually only surfaces for play rehearsal.

I guess Mr. Edelman’s feeling sassy, too, because we’re doing a study notes review game about Puritans today. He let us pick our own teams, so the squad squadded up. We even moved our desks into a pod as a display of team unity and gave ourselves the most atrocious name on earth: Team Massachusetts Bae. Of course, all the other teams immediately followed suit. Team Plymouth Raunch. Team Thomas Hooker. Team Devil’s Playground. Team Cotton Mather’s Cotton Trousers, consisting of Noah and three f-girls. And Colin Nakamura’s group, the Colinists. Something about AP US History does this to people. Like, here we have a bunch of sixteen-year-olds from Roswell who all apparently think we’re Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Each team gets a whiteboard, and Mr. Edelman stands at his podium with a few sheets of questions. Just your basic trivia competition game. Open-book, but no phones allowed. Twenty seconds after the question is read, each team holds up their answer. It’s completely pointless, seeing as there are no prizes, not even extra credit, but it really starts to feel like your pride is at stake. Like somehow Thomas Hooker’s legacy is contingent on whether four f-boys can answer questions about Calvinism. But you’d never know that, watching the room erupt into shouting, finger-pointing, and desk-banging, so loud I’m pretty sure Mr. Edelman will never recover. It is the rowdiest, most aggressive celebration of Puritanism I’ve seen in my entire life.

Team Massachusetts Bae is no exception. We’re not above it. Brandie and I flip frantically through our textbooks, and Raina and Anderson keep yanking the whiteboard back and forth between them. “Okay, 1636,” Brandie keeps muttering. “It’s got to be Harvard, right?”

“Or Yale! Brandie, use the index.”

“Here it is. The Puritans founded Harvard University in 1636.” I slide the whole book toward Anderson. “Boom.”

Something crashes to the ground right beside me, and I’m so startled, I almost leap from my seat. It turns out to be Noah, in a heap on the ground, blinking out from underneath his overturned desk.

“Oh my God, your arm.” I kneel quickly beside him. “Are you okay? Let me see.”

“I’m fine.” He disentangles himself, looking slightly dazed, while two of the girls on his team tip it back upright. He thrusts his cast arm into my hand and lets me examine it.

“Um,” I say, rotating it just a little, and bending his fingers up and down, like I imagine a doctor would. “Cast looks okay.”

It’s the same cast with the illustrated boobs, so Noah’s doctor appointment must be in the afternoon. Maybe even during rehearsal. Not that I care. He shouldn’t be missing full ensemble rehearsals though. I bet Ms. Zhao’s going to be pissed.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that I’m still holding Noah’s cast. And his fingertips too. I jerk my hand back and clutch it to my chest. “You can get up now,” I tell him.

“But it’s nice down here.”

“You’re on a real fucking roll, Noah,” says Raina. “First the tray, now this. Holy attention-seeking behavior. Wow.”

“You just fell out of your desk,” Anderson says. “You really did that.”

“I actually fell with my desk.”

Anderson narrows his eyes. “Were you trying to eavesdrop?”

“Whaaaaaat?” Noah’s voice jumps an octave. “Of course not.” Wow. I have literally never seen anyone look more over-the-top, comically guilty than Noah Kaplan in this moment.

“Noah, it’s open-book,” Brandie says gently. “You don’t have to