was involved in the poker ring himself. He seemed to be taking the whole thing sort of personally.
Anyhow, he was so wrapped up in his speech — pacing and waving his arms around — that it was easy to reach into my bag and send Quinn a quick text, though it was a struggle to figure out what to say. I settled on the bare minimum:
Where r u? What’s happening?
This seemed more diplomatic than asking him if he was, in fact, a moron and also more likely to preserve the potential for a relationship if it turned out he wasn’t. Then I just sat there on the stage next to Gwyneth, pretending to listen to Mr. Dudley while in reality I waited for Quinn to text back and tried to shush the competing voices in my head.
It’s not like I have a split personality, and I do have one continuous mental voice that’s entirely mine, but a lot of the time it gets drowned out by the voices of other people that occasionally take up residence, all talking at once and buffeting my thoughts in different directions.
Charley was the loudest today, telling me I had nothing to worry about, but she might definitely be done discussing Quinn. Natalie came in second, making her neatly reasoned case against Quinn and lining up the evidence in an orderly row. Madonna was there, too, singing “Holiday,” and Quinn himself put in a cameo. So all in all it was pretty noisy.
Then, suddenly, the noise stopped, and a single voice took over. It was my mother, and she was telling me to keep my eye on the ball.
This was a strange thing for her to say since she’s not exactly the athletic type — the only sneakers she owns are white leather Tretorns she has polished at the shoe place whenever they get scuffed. She does like hiking, but that’s more about communing with nature than exercise. Ash was my athletic parent, though he was never big on sports metaphors, either, maybe because he grew up in India, where they mostly play cricket, and maybe because he always preferred extreme sports like ice sailing and parkour to baseball or football or anything like that.
But it was still pretty obvious what T.K. meant. It was embarrassing, too, because in her no-nonsense way she was asking me to confront an ugly truth.
And the ugly truth was that I’d completely lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have my eye on the ball — I wasn’t even on the field or at the stadium, or whatever the right sporty metaphor might be.
Because instead of focusing on the evildoers, I’d been obsessing over a guy, like one of those awful girls Charley had warned me about, and reacting to others rather than making the plot unfold myself. And while it probably wasn’t realistic to expect I’d give up on obsessing over Quinn anytime soon, I couldn’t deny my priorities had gotten totally messed up.
After all, it had been nearly forty-eight hours since Charley, Rafe, and I had discussed the next phase of the investigation. I’d promised myself then I’d take action, even if Charley told me to sit tight and eat spaetzle.
But in the time that had elapsed I’d accomplished exactly nothing. If anything, I’d accomplished less than nothing, since I’d lost two days’ worth of potential progress. I’d been too wrapped up in myself to pay attention to what was really important.
So, while Mr. Dudley lectured on, I resolved that now I would plunge into the investigation with laserlike focus. And I also realized who could point me in exactly the right direction — I’d reach out to her as soon as I possibly could.
Though given who it was, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she reached out to me first.
Nine
I tried to lose Gwyneth after class, but it was like I’d accidentally adopted a stray puppy that didn’t have any endearing puppy qualities.
Under normal circumstances I would’ve felt sorry for her — she wasn’t used to being on her own. But today I needed to put Charley in an accommodating frame of mind, and that
Anyhow, he was so wrapped up in his speech — pacing and waving his arms around — that it was easy to reach into my bag and send Quinn a quick text, though it was a struggle to figure out what to say. I settled on the bare minimum:
Where r u? What’s happening?
This seemed more diplomatic than asking him if he was, in fact, a moron and also more likely to preserve the potential for a relationship if it turned out he wasn’t. Then I just sat there on the stage next to Gwyneth, pretending to listen to Mr. Dudley while in reality I waited for Quinn to text back and tried to shush the competing voices in my head.
It’s not like I have a split personality, and I do have one continuous mental voice that’s entirely mine, but a lot of the time it gets drowned out by the voices of other people that occasionally take up residence, all talking at once and buffeting my thoughts in different directions.
Charley was the loudest today, telling me I had nothing to worry about, but she might definitely be done discussing Quinn. Natalie came in second, making her neatly reasoned case against Quinn and lining up the evidence in an orderly row. Madonna was there, too, singing “Holiday,” and Quinn himself put in a cameo. So all in all it was pretty noisy.
Then, suddenly, the noise stopped, and a single voice took over. It was my mother, and she was telling me to keep my eye on the ball.
This was a strange thing for her to say since she’s not exactly the athletic type — the only sneakers she owns are white leather Tretorns she has polished at the shoe place whenever they get scuffed. She does like hiking, but that’s more about communing with nature than exercise. Ash was my athletic parent, though he was never big on sports metaphors, either, maybe because he grew up in India, where they mostly play cricket, and maybe because he always preferred extreme sports like ice sailing and parkour to baseball or football or anything like that.
But it was still pretty obvious what T.K. meant. It was embarrassing, too, because in her no-nonsense way she was asking me to confront an ugly truth.
And the ugly truth was that I’d completely lost track of what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have my eye on the ball — I wasn’t even on the field or at the stadium, or whatever the right sporty metaphor might be.
Because instead of focusing on the evildoers, I’d been obsessing over a guy, like one of those awful girls Charley had warned me about, and reacting to others rather than making the plot unfold myself. And while it probably wasn’t realistic to expect I’d give up on obsessing over Quinn anytime soon, I couldn’t deny my priorities had gotten totally messed up.
After all, it had been nearly forty-eight hours since Charley, Rafe, and I had discussed the next phase of the investigation. I’d promised myself then I’d take action, even if Charley told me to sit tight and eat spaetzle.
But in the time that had elapsed I’d accomplished exactly nothing. If anything, I’d accomplished less than nothing, since I’d lost two days’ worth of potential progress. I’d been too wrapped up in myself to pay attention to what was really important.
So, while Mr. Dudley lectured on, I resolved that now I would plunge into the investigation with laserlike focus. And I also realized who could point me in exactly the right direction — I’d reach out to her as soon as I possibly could.
Though given who it was, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she reached out to me first.
Nine
I tried to lose Gwyneth after class, but it was like I’d accidentally adopted a stray puppy that didn’t have any endearing puppy qualities.
Under normal circumstances I would’ve felt sorry for her — she wasn’t used to being on her own. But today I needed to put Charley in an accommodating frame of mind, and that
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