The Marvels

Ep. 12 | Life Isn't That Dramatic: Sometimes We're a Full 57% Away from Disaster

Vidya crossed her fingers on both hands, hoping for a miracle. It hadn't worked for the last few chapters, and she had no reason to believe it would work now, but she did it anyway. The teacher was returning the latest calculus test, and when Vidya's finally came, face-down on her desk, she found herself paralyzed with fear, unable to reach for it. One more C, and she would never recover. A B, and she might be fine.

The end-of-day bell rang. She held the test against her chest as she left, refusing to look at it. The school's front steps were scorching hot after absorbing so much sunlight, but she sat on them anyway, waiting, and also regretting wearing black pants. Her cryokinesis did not make her insusceptible to heat, and man, was it hot. She set her pager to vibrate and put it in her backpack just as Amber came trotting out the door.

"I can't do it." Vidya practically threw the test at her. "You look."

Amber took it like she'd been bestowed a trophy, looked, and whistled.

Vidya's heart sank. "It's that bad?"

"That was my happy whistle, not my yikes whistle." Amber flipped it around.

It was an eighty. A B.

Maybe Khan Academy was getting through to her, after all.

Vidya let out a sigh so big, she must've been holding her breath all day. It had been a while since she'd been proud of anything in this class, and she broke into a cheesy grin and kissed the test, right on the big red eighty.

"By the way," Amber said, raising both eyebrows. "I think Jonah wants to talk to you."

The whiplash from the extreme topic change left Vidya confused. "Wait, what?"

"He's walking here right now."

Vidya turned around. Jonah was standing there, frozen like a deer in headlights. He'd definitely noticed Amber pointing him out—her suggestive eyebrows were too obvious to miss.

"Hi," Vidya said. Her voice came out squeaky.

He blinked. "Uh, hi."

Then came the awkward silence. Amber stood between them like an interested child, shorter than them both, watching curiously as Vidya waited for something to happen and as Jonah tried to remember why he was even here. She grew bored quickly and said, "I'll see you tomorrow."

Vidya's eyes widened—not in surprise, because she knew exactly where this was going, but in alarm, because she knew exactly where this was going. "But I thought we were—"

"We'll just hang out tomorrow." Amber shrugged, turning around. "Later."

"Amber..."

But it was too late. Vidya's so-called best friend was already walking away. It wasn't often that Amber got to play wing-woman, and any chance she got, she took it.

Miraculously, the awkwardness hadn't driven Jonah away. He was still there, nervously rubbing his hands up and down the straps of his backpack. "I'm sorry about the swing," he blurted out. "I forgot all about it until you came to the party."

"I forgot it, too," Vidya said, lying through her teeth. "But it's fine. No bad blood." That part was true.

Jonah cleared his throat. Or maybe it was a stifled laugh; it was hard to tell when they were both being so socially inept. "We were friends in kindergarten," he said. "Do you remember that?"

Kindergarten, aka twelve years ago, aka too many years back for Vidya to remember anything. She tried anyway, bringing up kindergarten memories—show and tell, story time, lunch buddies—and trying to remember if Jonah was in any of them, but nothing came to mind. "That's—"