one
CATAPULT
Bel
Family lore has it that my dad wanted to name me Joy when he found out I was going to be a girl. My mother insisted on Isabel, having already established a taste for saints’ names, but thanks to my inability to pronounce the letter S, it got shortened to Bella. Then, because I hated that and refused to answer to it, it shrank down to Bel, which is ultimately a testament to how compromise leaves both parties unsatisfied.
To my dad’s credit, I’m not a joyless person. Like most people, there are things I love in life—cheese, being right, the beautiful rarity of a well-timed clapback—and things I don’t. The top of that second list? Team sports, being asked what I’m doing with my life, and the faint but harrowing sensation that something critical may have slipped my mind.
“Oh man, I forgot it was catapult day,” says Jamie, surveying her kingdom from our lofty perch at the top of the quad. “First project of the year—so cute! All the little Physics babies squawking around like tiny frightened birds...love that,” she soliloquys, powder-blue nails tapping the can of her dystopian-flavored LaCroix. “Where’s yours, by the way?”
Hmmmm. Crap.
Okay, so I know the catapult project was probably (definitely) in the syllabus, but in my defense, there was a huge essay due in English last week and I have a quiz this afternoon in Statistics plus a group project in Civics, and anyway, it’s really not my fault my grasp of time is so flawed. Aren’t there a million different scholarly articles about the impact of academic stress on teens or something? I’m pretty sure I could find at least a dozen if I really put some effort into researching. (I won’t, but it’s a valid thought, right?)
“Isabel Maier,” prompts Jamie, who is unfortunately still here and not part of a distressing dream I’m having. “Your silence is highly suspicious.”
“Uh,” I say, cleverly.
Spoiler: I do not have my catapult. Primarily because it doesn’t exist and secondarily because no miracles have occurred in the last thirty seconds. The only thing currently springing to mind is a very unhelpful slew of obscenities that would cause my mother to make the sign of the cross and then ask me where she failed as a parent. (Hot tip: that’s a rhetorical question.)
“Hello?” Jamie says, waving a hand in my face. “Bel?”
“I’m thinking,” I tell her, glancing down at my phone screen.
Woof. Class starts in fifteen minutes.
“Excellent,” Jamie says doubtfully. “Promising start.”
Like all girls who get told they talk like a grown-up from age six, Jamie Howard wants to be a lawyer. Her career goals involve wearing high-powered skirt suits in Manhattan while barking orders at her associates from a corner office littered with ferns. She’s the sort of girl who stalks around campus with determination, practically bowling over anyone in her path, and who laughs much too loudly at anything she finds funny. Luckily, I have been one of those things since she was conscripted to guide me through transfer student orientation six weeks ago.
“Do you have any, like—” Hm. “Tape?” I ask optimistically.
“What?” says Jamie.
“Tape,” I repeat. “Do. You. Have. Any?”
“Bel, I can hear,” she informs me, “and not that you’ve asked my opinion on this, but I don’t think any amount of tape is going to help you build the catapult you so obviously forgot to do.”
“Allegedly,” I correct her. “Allegedly forgot to do, and is that a no?”
“Of course it’s a no. Who carries around tape?”
“I don’t know, some people,” I say, groping for the strap of my backpack where a more carefree version of me tossed it below the table. “Don’t you carry around a mini stapler?”
“Yes, obviously,” sniffs Jamie, “but seeing as I’m not a postal worker or currently enrolled in kindergarten, I don’t have any use for tape.”
“You’re literally not helping,” I point out.
“I’m literally not trying to help,” Jamie replies with a breathtaking lack of shame. “You do realize this project is, like, half your semester grade, right? If you get a zero, that will reflect very poorly on me.”
“Okay, now you’re really not helping,” I inform Jamie. “And considering I’m in a crisis, you could stand to be a little more upbeat.”
“You’re right, sorry—if you get a zero, that will reflect very poorly on me!” Jamie singsongs.
Marvelous.
For what it’s worth, even I initially assumed that Jamie’s interest in me was because she takes all of her extracurricular responsibilities this seriously—like, to a possibly insane extent. It’s unclear why a person actively gunning for valedictorian would choose to hang out with someone who doesn’t even own a day planner
unless it’s a matter of professional courtesy. But seeing as Jamie’s still “checking in” with me every day without fail, I think we took an unexpected turn into genuine friendship somewhere between following each other on Instagram at orientation and baking cookies with her grandma last weekend.
“Okay, well, not that this technically changes anything,” I say, doubling back on the only option I can conceivably extract from my brain, “but for the record, I don’t want the tape. I want the container.”
Jamie looks at me blankly.
“You know, the plastic thing that holds the tape?” I attempt.
Nothing. Nada.
“Okay,” I sigh, “I have fifteen minutes to fix this and zero time to explain it to you. Can you just be helpful, please?”
“Probably not,” she says. “Maybe try the office?”
Oh good, great, I’d love to start my afternoon by asking one of the illustrious Essex Academy for Art, Science, and Technology administrators for tape, having narrowly survived an interrogation just this morning about whether I’ve scheduled some sort of career assessment with my counselor. I sensed an underlying hint of suspicion from them, which I didn’t think was fair. Very few of my answers were lies, so I could definitely be doing a lot worse.
But considering my options are either this or the inevitable lecture from my mother...
“Ugh,” I say, wheeling around to aim myself in that direction.
“Good luck!” Jamie shouts after me.
Yeah, sure. Because luck is definitely what’s missing from the equation.
At my old school, which was admittedly a sham, there was none of this fussing about whether or not people had taken the SATs or chosen a course of study, and don’t even get me started on college apps. Branford had about four AP classes and either you were smart and took them (like my middle brother, Gabe) or you didn’t care about school so you messed around all day until baseball practice (like my oldest brother, Luke).
This school, on the other hand, is like a weird laboratory for startup CEOs. It’s private, per my mother’s insistence, and despite being less than ten miles away from where I used to spend all my time, Sherman Oaks is definitely no Van Nuys. When it comes to the lovely little armpit of Los Angeles that we call the Valley, you can feel the tax bracket changing while you sit on the 405.
So yeah, I’m not particularly jazzed about visiting the Essex Academy mothership. Thankfully, my phone buzzes before I get very far.
Jamie: lora just got here
Jamie: she says to try the library?
That’s better, considering it’s the closest building to where I’m currently standing. Viva Lora! I veer off my current trajectory and pop inside, where the stars have smiled on me despite my vulgar language and probable
blasphemy. The main librarian is currently helping someone understand the finer details of the Dewey decimal system, so I snatch a deck of tape from the counter and make every effort not to draw attention to myself as I flee the scene of the crime and head outside.
I pause at the edge of the quad, recalculating. Okay, ten minutes, what do I have? A pen, great. That’s actually more miraculous than it sounds. A rubber band. A water bottle.
Hm, that’s a thought.
“Are you done with that?” I ask some passing kid in my periphery. He looks up at me in terror, so I’m guessing he’s a freshman.
“This?” he echoes, holding up the bottle of Smartwater he’s just finished.
I may have only been here for three weeks, but I’m still a senior, so I give him a somber upperclassman nod. “Single-use plastics are like, extremely irresponsible,” I tell him, because that’s the sort of thing that makes people around here feel guilty. “I’m just, you know. Recycling.”
Unless he’s some kind of hoarder of empty water bottles, he should let me have it. Slowly, he offers it up to me, still looking like he thinks I might bite.
“Thanks,” I say, and then pop over to the recycling bin at the base of the quad. Hopefully the freshman isn’t watching as I withdraw two more bottles (gross, I know, but my mom’s an ER nurse who loads me up with hand sanitizer—it’s fine) and unscrew the caps.
I step back with all four bottle caps in my hand, bumping into someone as I turn.
“Watch it,” says the voice belonging to the body I’ve just collided with.
His name’s Teo Luna, which I wish I didn’t know, but unfortunately everyone here is in love with him. A pie-in-the-sky sort of love like applying to Stanford, since he’s the incredibly loaded son of some tech god. Obviously at this school full of mutants they don’t have a normal prom king character like my brother Luke, who drinks a lot of protein shakes and has one of those loud, megawatt smiles to complement his pectorals. Instead, their version of a heartthrob takes a full load of AP courses and looks like he’s probably vegan “for the environment” or whatever.
Sure, Teo Luna is captain of about eight hundred science-y things that typically win stuff and he’s got those Internet Boyfriend curls to go with his perma-tan, so I guess that’s appealing in a hipster kind of way. In my opinion, he could stand to take the arrogance down a notch.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” I say, briefly cosplaying as Oliver Twist after smacking directly into his chest. He frowns, adjusting the Essex soccer jersey he’s wearing in place of his usual senatorial button-down, and in response I bob a curtsy.
“Oooookayyyy,” he says, deliberately drawing it out and turning with a roll of his eyes.
Gross. Bye.
Seven minutes. Eight? Okay, more like five. The deck is nearly out of tape, so I pull out what remains, offer my silent apologies to the Essex Academy recycling initiative for my abominable waste, and wrap the rubber band around the empty roll, breaking off a bit of plastic to hold it
plastic pen cap and a few bottle caps later, I’ve got a thing that looks vaguely like a duck on circular legs. The base will keep it upright, and the rubber band will work like a slingshot. It’s a miniature take on a catapult, but there was no size requirement. All it has to do is work.
Do I have time to test it?
Bell rings, so that’s a no. We’ll just have to call this a Hail Mary.
(On the bright side, a Hail Mary of any sort might actually please my mother.)
Jamie: so?? are you totally screwed??
Bel: not yet, mon ami
Bel: not yet
steady. A little finagling with the
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