The Stars Up Here - Spinach on the Gold Medalist

“Wait. Hold up,” Chloe said, dropping her heavy geometry textbook onto the top of her locker with a bang that made two nearby freshmen jump. She spun around, staring at Elena with round, disbelieving hazel eyes. “You sat next to Julian Mercer for three days and you thought he was just some guy who liked coffins?”Elena leaned against her own scuffed locker door, clutching her binder to her chest. Her fingers were still faintly stained red from her diary-writing session the night before. “He was reading about coffins. And old sheep stomach.”“Elena. Sweetie. No.” Chloe grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her once for emphasis. “Julian Mercer isn’t just ‘some guy.’ He’s the reason Mr. Rivers has an ulcer. He got a perfect score on the PSAT as a freshman. He’s the youngest kid in Massachusetts to ever make the US Math Olympiad national pool. Half the college recruiters in New England are already sliding pamphlets under his dad’s front door, and the guy doesn’t even bother taking his homework out of his bag!”Elena felt a cold, sinking sensation settle squarely in the pit of her stomach. “He doesn’t do homework?”“He does it in class while Rivers is screaming at everyone else!” Chloe lowered her voice, leaning in closer with a dramatic whisper. “Last term, Harrison Vance spent six weeks preparing for the regional AMC math test—took extra tutoring, bought five different prep books, didn’t sleep for a month. Julian finished the whole exam in twenty minutes, laid his head down on his desk, and went to sleep. He beat Harrison by thirty points.”Elena stared at a scratch on Chloe’s locker handle.The fiery, red-ink vow she had scratched into her diary under her brass lamp last night— I am going to beat him on the midterms —suddenly felt less like a brave declaration and more like an ant declaring war on a steamroller.“He’s not even mean about it, which makes it ten times worse,” Chloe continued, slinging her canvas bag over her shoulder as they joined the crowd pushing toward the cafeteria. “He just… doesn’t care. He looks at everyone like we’re all playing in a sandbox while he’s off building rockets.””He’s arrogant,” Elena muttered, her cheeks warming as they pushed through the double doors into the noise of the lunchroom.”Of course he’s arrogant! He’s a gold medalist!” Chloe nudged her with an elbow as they shuffled into the lunch line. “Anyway, forget about him. Today’s steam-tray special looks like boiled weeds, but if you scoop around the edges, the mashed potatoes are almost edible.”The Pinecrest cafeteria smelled of floor bleach, stale pizza grease, and melted yellow cheese. It was a cavernous, echoing hall where the acoustics amplified every burst of laughter into a cannon shot.Elena picked up a gray plastic tray. She didn’t want the mashed potatoes. Her stomach was tied in tight, nervous knots. To prove to herself that she wasn’t completely overwhelmed, she took a scoop of the wilted, dark-green boiled spinach resting in a pool of yellowish water, along with a carton of skim milk.He’s just a boy, she told herself as they looked for a table. So what if he’s good at math? That doesn’t make him a king. He’s human. He choked on his water on Sunday. He sleeps in class.She didn’t need to beat him today. But she refused to look like a frightened, mousey girl from the West End who shrank every time he looked her way. She was going to be cool. Unbothered. Sophisticated. She would treat him with the calm, distant politeness of someone who was entirely his equal.”Hey, there’s an open spot by the window,” Chloe said, pointing toward a table near the back.To get there, they had to walk directly past the long table where the junior varsity athletes and the top-track honors kids sat.And there he was.Julian was sitting on the edge of the bench, his long legs stretched out into the aisle. He had his navy hoodie sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing lean, pale forearms, and he was casually tossing an apple from hand to hand while Lucas—the boy from chemistry—showed him something on a graphing calculator. Harrison Vance was sitting two seats down, holding an open textbook and talking loudly about a physics proof, clearly trying to get Julian’s attention. Julian wasn’t even looking at him; he just nodded once, his thumb flicking the apple into the air with lazy precision.Now, Elena thought. Show him.She squared her shoulders. She pulled her chin up, just like she’d seen girls in magazines do. As she passed his bench, she slowed her pace slightly, turned her head, and caught Julian’s eye.She didn’t scowl. She didn’t look away.Instead, she delivered a radiant, practiced, dazzling smile. A smile that said, I am graceful, I am unbothered, and your SAT scores do not intimidate me in the slightest.Julian stopped tossing the apple.His hand caught the fruit mid-air and froze. His gray eyes widened—just a fraction—as his gaze locked onto her face.For two seconds, time seemed to halt in the noisy, chaotic cafeteria. Elena kept her shoulders back, her smile frozen in place, holding his stare with supreme, deliberate confidence.Then, Julian’s jaw worked.His eyebrows twitched upward. His chest heaved once, twice, and a sudden, violent snort broke from his nose.He dropped the apple. It bounced off the table and rolled onto the floor, but Julian didn’t reach for it. He slammed his face directly into his folded arms on the table, his shoulders shaking in a silent, uncontrollable fit of laughter.Lucas stopped talking about his calculator. “Julian? What’s wrong with you?”Julian didn’t answer. He just kept his face buried in his gray sleeve, his back trembling, one hand waving weakly in the air as if to beg for mercy.Elena’s radiant smile faltered. Her knees felt strangely hollow.Why is he laughing? Did I walk weird? Is my hair sticking up?Chloe grabbed Elena’s wrist with the force of a rusty vise and dragged her practically at a sprint toward the empty window table. She shoved Elena down onto the plastic seat and slid in across from her, her face pale, her eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated horror.”El,” Chloe whispered. Her voice was trembling. “El. Oh my god.””What?” Elena’s voice was thin, panic fluttering in her chest like a trapped moth. “What happened? Why was he laughing at me?””Don’t look at him,” Chloe pleaded, reaching across the table to grab a metal napkin dispenser. She turned it around and pointed at the shiny, reflective chrome back. “Look. Right there. Look at your teeth.”Elena leaned forward, her heart hammering against her ribs.She opened her mouth slightly in the reflection.Right across her two front teeth—dead center, large, dark, and impossible to miss—was a massive, stringy flake of boiled, swampy cafeteria spinach. It looked like a tiny, wet leaf had taken up permanent residence right on her enamel, framing her radiant, confident, sophisticated smile in bright, dark green.The air left Elena’s lungs all at once.She remembered the way she’d flashed her teeth at him. The way she’d held her chin up. The way she’d held his stare for two full seconds, practically forcing him to admire her green-flecked grill.”Oh,” Elena choked out.”I tried to tell you before we left the line,” Chloe whimpered, looking like she might cry out of sympathy. “I didn’t realize you were going to smile at the gold medalist!”Elena didn’t say another word. She didn’t grab a napkin. She didn’t wipe her teeth.She simply lowered her head, folded her arms over her cheap gray sweatshirt, and slammed her forehead flat against the cold, Formica tabletop, praying with every fiber of her being that an earthquake would hit Pinecrest, Massachusetts, right that very second, crack the foundation of the building in half, and swallow her whole.