Hate to Love You novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lab Partners

The chemistry teacher pairs Kennedy with Shay; he is funny and careful with the equipment, and she learns he lost his scholarship offer last March. Hook: Shay: 'Why do you flinch every time someone says Hollowell?'

I did what he told me.

I sat there with a fry in my hand and said nothing while my brother and a stranger stared each other down across twenty feet of linoleum.

A lunch aide arrived and sent them to opposite ends of the room.

Mason went first.

He walked out of the cafeteria, and his friends followed.

Shay took his tray to the trash and left through the other door.

"Wow," Jess breathed. "Wow, wow, wow."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"It hasn't happened at all. He's been gone since March." She pulled out a notebook. "Do you realize you have a front-row seat to the best story in the county?"

"I'm just trying to pass chemistry."

"Same thing."

Chemistry was sixth period.

I walked into Room 208 with my schedule in my hand and a headache behind my eyes.

The teacher stood at the whiteboard drawing a diagram of a molecule.

She turned.

"New seating chart," she said. "Lab partners for the semester. Let's see. Henslow, Dunleavy."

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, Shay was already at the back bench, setting down his bag.

He looked at me and raised both eyebrows.

"Statistically," he said, "this is hilarious."

"I'm not laughing."

"You're a little bit laughing."

I sat down on the stool beside him.

The bench between us smelled like gas and old rubber.

"I won't make you talk about the cafeteria," he said.

"Good."

"But I want to say I'm sorry you had to see that. First day and all."

"You don't have to apologize to me."

"Yeah, I do. I made a scene." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm trying not to make a scene. It's sort of my one goal this year."

"Your one goal?"

"Graduate. Don't get punched. Learn what a mole is."

I handed him the worksheet.

"It's a unit," I said. "Like a dozen. But bigger."

"A bigger dozen." He wrote it down in slow block letters. "I knew I'd like you."

The teacher handed out goggles.

Shay put his on over his curls and they sat crooked on his forehead.

I tried very hard not to stare.

It was not a good sign that I noticed which hand he wrote with.

We worked through a titration, and he was careful with the glass.

He read each line twice and moved slowly.

"You're good at this," I said.

"I'm not. I read the instructions." He shrugged. "My mom's a nurse. She says the only difference between a good one and a bad one is checking twice."

"Smart mom."

"Terrifying mom." He smiled at the beaker. "She's why I'm here. She took a job at the hospital in July so we could move away from Eastlake."

"Away from what happened?"

"Away from everyone who knows what happened."

I looked at the flask in my hand.

I knew something about wanting to be somewhere nobody knew you.

"Did you want to leave?"

"I wanted to play." He said it flatly. "I had an offer. A small school in Ohio, full ride, my name in a letter. Two weeks after the game it was gone."

"Because of the suspension?"

"Because of the video the school sent. A coach watched one clip, from the wrong side, and decided he'd seen enough." He set the pipette down very gently. "I'm not saying I'm innocent of everything. I'm saying I didn't do what they say."

I wanted to ask what he did do.

I wanted to ask what the video showed.

I wanted to tell him my brother was a good person who sometimes made bad choices when he was scared.

I said none of it.

I wrote the number on the worksheet.

Shay watched me for a second.

"Can I ask something else?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"It's a flaw." He glanced at me sideways. "Every time someone says the name Hollowell, you flinch. Little thing, around your mouth. I noticed it in homeroom and then in the cafeteria."

I put down the beaker.

"I don't flinch."

"You do. Not a lot."

"That's called being new. This place has a lot of loud people."

"Okay."

He nodded slowly.

He didn't look like he believed me.

He didn't look like he minded, either.

"I'll stop," he said. "But for the record, if you ever want to tell someone something, I'm a good listener."

The bell rang.

I packed my bag so fast that I knocked my pencil case onto the floor.

He picked it up and handed it back.

His fingers touched mine for half a second.

It was nothing.

It was a pencil case.

I walked out of the room with my face burning, and the worst part was that I wasn't sure it was embarrassment.

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