He frowned. “Why ungraded?”
“Cause not everyone takes the ‘do the practice questions’assignment seriously. Easily half the class blew that off because it’s not for a grade. So tomorrow, when we get to class, she’s going to hand out a pop quiz. Panic ensues. Some people will do fine because they’re good at it, some will freak out and do badly even if they did the practice questions, and then there will be those who can’t quite grasp it or pull it off. The point won’t be whether you can do the work or not…”
“But whether you’re giving the class attention to detail.” Yes, I had given him this same spiel before. “You know I hate tests.”
“You panic.” Some people weren’t good test takers. Bubba definitely fell into that category. It was why he studied and wanted me to tutor him. Why we would go over material he knew inside and out over and over again. “That’s why I’m telling you. The test—it’s going to have questions just like these.”
“You,” he said, putting his hands on the arms of my chair and leaning forward, “are the best.”
I snorted, but I couldn’t help smiling at his enthusiasm. “So, what was the issue with schools that you wanted to talk about?”
A knock on the gate interrupted us, and he reached past me for his wallet. “Hold that thought.” The brush of his warm arm against mine sent tingles through me. Casual touching had always been a thing with the guys—an arm around my shoulder, legs pressed together, bumping, tickling or playing. It never meant anything, no matter how they touched me, not even if I enjoyed it more than I’d cared to admit.
I was their study buddy. One of the guys.
I was also apparently the object of their ‘protection.’ Shaking that off, I packed away the calculus materials, his and mine. A slip of paper fell out of his book. Amanda Winston’s name was on it along with a phone number.
She wasn’t in our AP class, and I knew the name, sorta, but couldn’t place the face. Bubba set the pizzas on the table as I held the slip up. “Sorry, fell out of your book.”
“Eh,” he said, crumpling it in his fist and then dropping the wadded-up ball in his backpack with his book. “She handed me that on my way from 1stto 2nd. I forgot I had it.”
“Is she nice?”
He gave me a blank look as he flipped open the pizza boxes and pushed the pineapple covered one toward me. We were still sitting side by side, so we had to rearrange our backpacks to give us more room. “Is who nice?”
“The girl who gave you her number? Amanda?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “She’s in my lit class—don’t know why I got stuck with that first period. I should have taken AP to hang with you and Coop, but I don’t read books like you, Jake, and now apparently, Coop do.”
I rubbed his shoulder sympathetically. “You got Ms. Young though, right?”
“Yeah, she’s funny. Which helps.” He took a big bite and chewed. It took him two full slices of pizza before he circled back to my earlier question. I ate my slice slower, even though a part of me just wanted to fall on the whole medium and eat it at speed. It was really good, but if I ate that many calories, I’d have a food baby the size of a mini Volkswagen, and I still needed to fit back in my clothes.
“Jake and I are gonna start getting scouted. I mean Jake’s already gotten a couple of offers,” Bubba said, surprising me. Jake hadn’t mentioned those. Again, we all hadn’t really been talking, but if he’d already gotten scouted—that would have been last year, right?
“That’s great. A full-ride football scholarship can save a lot of money.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Harvard doesn’t offer athletic scholarships. They have a good financial aid department and stuff, but straight up? Harvard’s expensive, Frankie.”
“I know. But I like Boston—okay, I like theideaof Boston. I like the idea of seasons. I like the idea of an older academic institution with a lot of history to it and maybe a little prestige. I also like their journalism department.” It was actually high on my list.
“I get that,” he said. “And I know they’d be idiots to turn you down, but I was thinking, if football wouldn’t pay the way, then I need to concentrate on something else.”
“Well you were going to study music at one point.” He’d confessed that way back in the summer between freshman and sophomore years when he taught me how to play Godzilla. “You wanted to master some other instruments, maybe even kick off a band.”
His ears went red. “Mom and Dad used to pay for music lessons, but I let them lapse. Sports—they take a lot of time and… I don’t know if just liking something is enough to make it a career.”
“Talent is one thing—which you have, don’t get me wrong—but drive is the other. You have to know that. You wouldn’t be as good as you are at football if you didn’t have it.”
With a snort, he eyed me. “How do you know if I’m any good? You don’t even like the game.”
“I hear things. I have ears. People talk about how good you are. They talk about how many points you scored.”
“But it doesn’t really mean anything to you.”
I gave a little shrug and hid behind a slice of pizza as I murmured, “It means people admire you, so you have to be doing something right.”
“Well, I try… Anyway, here’s the thing—Harvard has a joint degree program with the New England Conservatory, which is in Boston, too. If I can get into that program—there might be some financial aid for it—and it means I could concentrate on music.” He gave me a little side-eye. “You know, music fulltime rather than playing sports for admission then studying music on the side.”