Chapter 4

For the next two weeks, Chloe actually opened her textbooks.

She stopped sleeping in class. She stopped playing games during study hall. Instead, she sat with a sophomore math textbook open in front of her.

I glanced at the page she was struggling with—quadratic inequalities. Material from the first semester of sophomore year.

She had been staring at that single page for ten minutes, her pencil tracing random circles on her scratch paper.

In our past life, she sat in that exact same spot while my brain ran through the entire derivation of those inequalities. She had simply closed her eyes, leaned back, and copied my mental steps line by line.

She never took notes from the board. She never borrowed my binders. She only had to close her eyes to get an A+.

But now, all she could hear in her ears was "dit-dah-dit".

I lowered my head and went back to my own study guide, letting out a very faint, amused sigh.

She heard it. She whipped her head around instantly.

"What's so funny?"

I put down my pen and met her gaze.

"I just solved a tough problem. I'm in a good mood. Is that a crime?"

"Why do you keep staring at me lately anyway? Do I have the answers written on my face?"

Chloe’s gaze went icy. She pressed her lips together and turned back to stare at the sophomore math page.

During AP Physics on Wednesday, the teacher called on Chloe to solve a mechanics problem on the board—a basic block-sliding-on-an-incline problem. Sophomore-level stuff.

Chloe walked up to the whiteboard, spinning the dry-erase marker nervously in her fingers.

She wrote "F=ma" on the right side, paused for two seconds, and squeaked the eraser over it. Then she wrote a force decomposition formula, only to erase half of it again.

The classroom started whispering.

"Isn't this a total freebie question?"

"It's just sophomore force diagrams. You just draw the vectors and you're done."

"Why can't Chloe solve this? She used to ace physics."

I leaned back against the desk behind me, crossing my arms as I watched her.

Chloe stood at the board for almost three minutes. She wrote three different formulas and erased them all. The whiteboard was now just a smear of black ink.

Her hand started to shake. The marker squeaked loudly against the board, the tip bending under her pressure.

She tossed the marker into the tray.

"Mr. Harris, I don't feel like solving this."

Mr. Harris adjusted his glasses, his fingers freezing over his grading binder.

"Chloe, what is going on with you lately? First the midterms, now this. Your physics grades used to be flawless."

"I'm just not feeling well, Mr. Harris."

She walked straight back to her seat and buried her face in her arms on the desk.

She bumped the corner of the desk as she sat down, sending her pencil rolling onto the floor. Nobody picked it up for her.

I leaned back in my chair, looking down at the rolling pencil, then at the back of her head buried in her arms.

The second the bell rang, she lifted her head and glared at me.

"You were laughing again, weren't you?"

I closed my textbook and turned to face her.

"You've asked me that twice today, Chloe."

"Maybe instead of worrying about whether I'm laughing, you should focus on your work. You haven't even finished that sophomore inequality chapter, have you?"

The girl sitting in front of us turned around to peek, then quickly turned back.

Chloe’s nostrils flared, her eyes wide with rage.

"Aria, don't get too cocky."

I crossed my arms and smiled.

"I'm not. I've just never seen a 'genius' who can't even draw a basic physics force diagram."

"You used to beat me by one point on every single test. You were the genius, and I was always second."

"So why didn't you show us your genius on the board today? Your erased scribbles are still up there. Want to go back up and finish them?"

Chloe slammed her hands on the desk and stood up, her chair screeching against the floor.

The classroom went dead silent. A dozen students turned to look at her.

Ignoring them, she bent down, bringing her face close to my ear, and whispered through gritted teeth:

"You think you can ruin me with those stupid ticking sounds? I have a million ways to make sure you never recover from this. Just wait."

Her voice was so low only the two of us could hear.

I tilted my face, looked into her eyes, and smiled.

"Go ahead and try."

"But next time Mr. Harris calls you to the board, make sure you don't use the 'sick' excuse again."

"Do it too often, and people might actually think you're brain-dead."

Fuming, she grabbed her bag and stormed out of the classroom.

While I was filling my water bottle at the cooler, Zach jogged up and tapped my shoulder.

"Aria, what is going on between you and Chloe? You guys used to be so chill. You in second, her in first."

I pressed the button on the water dispenser.

"Zach, let me ask you a question."

"How do you think someone who sleeps in class and plays video games all day manages to beat me by exactly one point, every single time?"

Zach scratched the back of his head.

"Talent? I mean, everyone says she's a genius."

I took a sip of my water.

"A genius who can't even draw a force diagram? A basic sophomore question, and she couldn't write a single correct line."

Zach froze, his mouth hanging open.

I patted his shoulder.

"Pay close attention next physics class. Let's see how many lines she can write then."