Keeping pace, p.1
Keeping Pace, page 1
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Control Number 2023042096
ISBN 978-1-4197-6875-0
eISBN 978-1-64700-997-7
Text © 2024 Laurie Morrison
Book design by Deena Micah Fleming
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For anyone who needs a reminder that we are more than what we achieve.
And for Sam and Cora, always.
Tuesday, June 18
JONAH, 6:52 a.m.:
Good luck today. Hope you don’t get another “stomach bug” . . .
GRACE, 6:53 a.m.:
It WAS a stomach bug!!
GRACE, 6:55 a.m.:
Hope you don’t screw up multiplying 7 × 8 like in Math Counts last year.
JONAH, 6:57 a.m.:
You had to go all the way back to 7th grade to remember the last time I made a mistake huh?
GRACE, 7:00 a.m.:
No! My brain’s just full of math! I don’t have room for all your embarrassing errors.
JONAH, 7:02 a.m.:
Guess my brain’s bigger than yours then. I have room for everything . . .
CHAPTER 1
It’s 7:46 a.m. on the final day of middle school.
There’s one exam left. One last academic showdown with Jonah Perkins, which I will win, and then I will be eighth-grade top scholar, and Jerk-ins will not.
I hope.
But Mom couldn’t drop me off because she had an early meeting, so nothing about this morning is going the way it’s supposed to. I should be at school already, claiming my good-luck desk in the front right corner of the math room and listening to my tune-everything-out playlist while coloring the next page in my coloring-for-stress-relief book. Getting in the zone.
Instead, I’m sitting in the passenger seat of my sister Celia’s car, waiting for our cousin Avery to come outside. When we pulled into the driveway, Avery texted that she’d be out in two minutes, but that was eight minutes ago and counting.
I slurp a sip of my brain-power smoothie and announce, “I’m gonna go knock.”
“She already knows we’re here,” Celia says without looking up from the list of Spanish vocabulary words she’s reviewing.
“And yet she’s still inside!” I point out.
Celia tucks a strand of her wavy light brown hair behind one ear and sighs. “Your exam starts at 8:10, Grace. It’s a five-minute drive to your school. We’re fine.”
Maybe it would be a five-minute drive if Mom were behind the wheel, but Celia drives several miles per hour below the speed limit and takes the long way because she’s too nervous to make a left turn on Elm Street. I hold myself back from pointing that out, though.
“Well, I can’t just waltz in at the last second,” I say. “I have a system. I need—”
“Grace,” she cuts me off. “I have an exam this morning, too, in case you forgot. I promise you’ll be on time for your test. Now can you let me study in peace for two seconds, please?”
“Cramming before an exam doesn’t work!” I blurt. “If you don’t know the material yet, you’re not going to retain it!”
The words fly out of my mouth, and for a second, I feel better than I have since before I saw Jonah’s first text this morning.
But then Celia’s face falls, and I feel even worse. “Thanks for that helpful and reassuring wisdom, Dad,” she mutters, shoving her Spanish vocab list deep into her bag.
I try to backtrack. “Sorry. You’ve really studied this year. I’m sure you know the words.”
Celia turns on the car. “Avery’s ready, anyway. Let’s just go.”
Sure enough, Avery’s rushing down the front steps of her house, her backpack dangling from one shoulder and her soccer bag hanging off the other. She’s carrying a half-eaten toaster waffle wrapped in a paper towel.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” she says as she hops into the back seat. “I was up too late studying and I overslept. We’re still OK on time, right?”
“We’re fine,” Celia replies, shooting a warning glance at me, and then—very, very slowly—she backs out of the driveway and into the empty street.
Avery’s blond hair is down and bouncy, and her eyelashes are spiky with the brown mascara Celia once told her was better for her coloring than the black she “borrowed” from Aunt Jen. We’d be more OK on time if she’d scraped her hair into a ponytail and skipped the makeup, but that’s a useless thought to have when we’re less than thirty minutes out from exam time.
“I’m sorry, Gracie. I know you wanted to be early,” Avery says through a mouthful of waffle, and I soften.
“It’s OK. You need pencils?”
She nods. “And a calculator if you have an extra. I can’t find mine anywhere.”
I set my smoothie down in the cup holder so I can dig into my school bag. Avery and I have been in the same grade since kindergarten, and I always have extra stuff for her. Pencils, calculators, period supplies—you name it. I find my backup calculator in the outer pouch and pull out three sharp number 2 pencils.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she says as I hand everything back. And then she gives me her best puppy dog eyes. “So, I still don’t understand the two variable equations. I seriously tried, Gracie. So hard. And I know you don’t like to talk about the stuff that’s on a test this close to exam time, but I’m super stuck on number twelve on the review sheet . . .”
She trails off, and my stomach churns.
I take a long, cold sip of smoothie and remind myself that Avery could have asked me to explain number twelve on the review last night, or over the weekend, or when Ms. Martinez gave out the review packet two weeks ago. I can’t risk getting flustered by talking about the test material now.
“I’m sorry, Aves,” I start.
And then a red car pulls out of a driveway at least twenty feet ahead of us, and Celia slams on the brake. I lurch forward, my stomach crashing into the smoothie cup. The lid comes partway off, and cold, sticky liquid seeps through the fabric of my shirt.
Celia gasps. “Oh no! I’ll pull over.”
“Just drive. Please!” I beg. “I don’t care about the shirt.”
This is a lie, but Celia mumbles, “Sheesh, OK,” and keeps going.
Everything smells like avocado and blueberries, which are excellent for brain power but honestly not so excellent as a car fragrance. And there’s a huge green splotch covering the bottom front part of my favorite purple flowered shirt.
Avery passes me her paper towel, and I mop up as much smoothie as I can, but the damage is done. Two of the white flowers are goose-poop green.
“I have a T-shirt in my soccer bag,” Avery offers.
But I don’t wear T-shirts on exam days. Dad says people should dress up for exams, not down. If you put loungewear on your body, you’re telling your body it’s time to lounge, and this is not the time to lounge. It’s time to dominate.
I shake my head. “It’s OK. I have a sweater. Thanks, though.”
Papers rustle in the back—Avery taking out her review sheet to try number twelve again on her own, I assume—but I stare out the window, silently willing Celia to drive faster and repeating my exam-day mantra inside my head. I know the material. I’ve done the work. Now is my time to shine.
Celia finally, finally drops us off at 7:56 and keeps going toward the high school.
Avery and I wish each other good luck, and then she takes off to find our friends Jade and Eliana, while I step into the bathroom, where I give myself one minute to deal with my shirt.
It’s one of the few pieces of clothing that I picked for myself instead of inheriting from Celia. I got it in March, when we visited our grandparents on Mom’s side in Florida, and it’s soft and cozy, but the pattern makes it dressier than my other shirts, and I love the way it falls. I always feel confident when I put it on—when it isn’t covered in cold green liquid, anyway.
I rinse the stain in the sink and wring out the fabric, and then I stand under the hand dryer, angling my body so the hot air hits the wet part. There. The spot is still damp and discolored, but at least the fabric is warmer and the white flowers have faded to a less disgusting green.
7:58 now. Twelve more minutes. Enough time to listen to a couple of songs on my pre-exam playlist and color in a few calming swirls, maybe.
I slip on my sweater and hustle past all my classmates who are cramming for the test that’s about to start or squealing about summer plans even though middle school is not over yet. Most people are still out here in the halls. Maybe by some exam-day miracle, my favorite seat will be free.
But Jonah’s th
He grins his cockiest grin when he catches my eye.
Hope you don’t get another stomach bug.
Guess my brain’s bigger than yours.
Ugh!
My jaw clenches, and my stomach aches, and my brain’s all jumbled up and spinning.
No amount of calming coloring is going to get me in examdomination mode with Jonah smiling that smug smile from across the room. I need a Jerk-ins-free zone to find my focus, fast. So I drop my stuff on my second-choice desk and bolt to the one place that might help.
CHAPTER 2
I head for the empty hallway outside the auditorium where the eighth-grade award plaques hang.
The science prize. Math. English. Spanish. History. Sportsmanship. And the fanciest plaque of all, with the words “Eighth-Grade Top Scholar Award” carved into the top in gold letters. Below the title, names and dates are etched in—the best student in every class dating back more than fifty years.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see your name up on that plaque when you graduate, Gracie.
That’s what Dad told me almost three years ago when we walked through this hallway before I started sixth grade, and I knew right then that I’d do whatever it took to make that happen.
Mom and Dad had brought me to middle school orientation and stuck around for the family tour even though Celia had just finished eighth grade in this very same building. They’d been fighting for months by then, but they seemed so relaxed and happy as the three of us followed a student tour guide down halls they'd already seen.
Their fighting had gotten worse after Celia’s grades took a nosedive and she didn’t get into the honors track for high school. Dad thought Celia needed consequences and incentives, and Mom thought she needed unconditional support. If that drove them apart, then I thought maybe my excellent grades could bring them back together.
Spoiler alert: they couldn’t.
But still. The goal of winning top scholar has been my anchor. The one thing that’s stayed constant. Every time I look up at this plaque, I can see that expression on Dad’s face—hopeful and proud and focused on me and only me. That’s how he’ll look at me again at graduation if I win. When I win.
Footsteps pound the floor behind me. “There you are, Grace Under Pressure,” an extremely obnoxious voice says.
That’s what Jonah’s been calling me since January, when we took the standardized tests to determine who would qualify for the honors track in high school and I got sick right before the test started. Never mind that I aced it once I recovered.
I whip around to face him. “What do you want, Jonah?”
Most of the boys are wearing athletic shorts and T-shirts today, but Jonah has on nice shorts and the royal-blue shirt with a collar that looks annoyingly good with his blue-green eyes. I wonder if he got Dad’s no-loungewear talk, too, way back when.
“You looked pretty nervous back there,” he says. “Just thought I should check on you. Make sure you’re not having any stomach troubles.”
Ugh squared. “I’m fine.”
He wrinkles his freckled nose. “Why do you smell like avocado?”
I pull down the bottom of my sweater. “I don’t.”
He nods toward the top scholar plaque, and I brace myself for more trash talk. “My grandma hates these things,” he says instead.
I blink. “Wait. What? Why?”
His grandma, Dr. Perkins, lives next door to me. She’s a retired biology professor who was on the faculty at Hempstead—the college in town where my parents both teach—until a couple of years ago, and Jonah used to go to her house all the time. When we were little, he did “Grandma Camp” in the summer, spending every weekday with her while his parents were at work. Celia had real day camps and zillions of friends inviting her on play dates, but Mom and Dr. P took turns occupying Jonah and me—and Avery, too, once she and Aunt Jen had moved to Oakview.
We used to read in our treehouse or kick around a soccer ball if Avery got her way. Sometimes Mom would take us to the pool, and sometimes Dr. P would set up science experiments or let us work in her garden. She still tells me to help myself to her herbs and berries any time I want.
Jonah shrugs. “She thinks all this attention on awards teaches us that ‘what we achieve is more important than who we are.’ Direct quote.”
“Yikes.” That sounds like something Mom would say.
“She went off on me the other day—about how sometimes my priorities are messed up.” Jonah’s lightly freckled, always pinkish cheeks flash darker pink. There’s no teasing edge to his voice, no smug smile. There’s nothing defensive or obnoxious at all . . . and I wish there was.
Because right now, he looks way too much like the boy who was heartbroken when Dr. P bought us a little netted habitat to watch caterpillars turn into butterflies, and one got stuck in its chrysalis and came out with its wings bent and tiny. It couldn’t fly—it could barely even hop. But Jonah took care of it for days after we let the other butterflies free, feeding it watermelon slices and sugar water on cotton balls so its short life would be happy.
Jonah isn’t that sweet kid anymore.
He’s made it very, very clear he’s finished with our friendship. Up until sixth grade, he went to a private school a half hour away, in Philadelphia. He transferred to Oakview Middle at the beginning of seventh grade, the year after his dad died, and I was happy we were going to be in school together. I thought I could be there for him. I thought we’d be Grace-and-Jonah, like before.
But he told me I didn’t know him at all anymore and should forget I ever had. And for the last two school years, he’s found a way to contradict every point I make in class discussions. He mocks me when I get something wrong, attacks my essays during peer feedback, gloats if he beats me on a test, shines a spotlight on all the things I’m insecure about.
He clears his throat. “It’s helped me, though. Having these plaques here with empty spaces at the bottom. It’s kept me going.” Now he looks me right in the eye. “You’ve kept me going.”
There’s a tiny scar above his left eyebrow from when Avery accidentally scraped him with a stick when we were seven, and it’s pale and shiny under the overhead lights. His hair is darker than it used to be—more reddish brown than strawberry blond—but everything else is so familiar. The color of his eyes. The curve of his earlobes. The line of his nose.
“Competing with you, I mean. It’s helped,” he says. “So, thank you. I guess. Is what I’m trying to say.”
It’s helped.
He didn’t mention his dad, but his dad is there behind those words. The reason he needed something to keep him going. How hard and sad everything must have been after his dad died—how hard and sad it must still be now.
Too many words spin around in my head. Things I’ve tried to say and failed, things I wish I could take back, things I don’t have words for even though I’ve earned one hundred percent on every vocabulary quiz in English class all year long.
“All right, people!” Dr. Cohen’s voice booms from down the hall. “Last exam of middle school. This is it, friends!”
This is it.
It’s 8:10. The math exam. Now.
For somebody so smart, you can really be clueless, Celia sometimes says, in a way that’s joking but not.
Jonah’s messing with me. He’s trying to get in my head.
I may be clueless about stuff like how to manage my curly hair or the steps to the TikTok dances Avery, Eliana, and Jade all know. But I’m not clueless when it comes to Jonah. Not anymore.
I take off back down the hallway to where the math teachers are ushering people into exam rooms.
I sit at my desk in the front left corner. If I angle my body just right, I don’t have to see Jonah.
Ms. Martinez passes out the exams, and as soon as she tells us to begin, I attack each problem, one after the other. This morning has not gone according to plan, but this test still can.
After I finish the last problem and check all my work, I’m about to stand up to turn in my exam, but the legs of someone else’s chair scrape against the floor first.
