Puppy? History Finals

The second-floor hall felt too bright. Sun through the high windows, dust in the beam, the squeak of sneakers on tile. Joey kept one hand on the strap of his bag and one in his pocket, moving with the crowd because it was easier than thinking about where to put his feet.

Nate peeled off a locker and fell into step. “You alive?”

“Barely.”

“Big night.” Nate’s grin was the easy kind that didn’t need a reply. “You were glued to Maya.”

Joey rubbed at his eyebrow with a knuckle. “I wasn’t glued.”

“Man, you followed her from the kitchen to the porch to the fire pit. You did laps.”

He had a quick slide of memory. Red dress under string lights. Music that was too bass and not enough song. A flash when Maya laughed and bent to hear someone, hair falling forward, his eyes glued down her neckline, his drink warming in his hand because he forgot to sip. He looked away from the picture and back to the lockers.

A door clanged shut to their left. Alina stood there with a binder at her hip and her ponytail clean enough to catch the light. “Morning,” she said, taking them both in. “You two look like trouble and a nap.”

Nate pointed at Joey with his chin. “Ask him about last night. Puppy mode.”

Alina tilted her head a little. “Aww was it? Sad little boi?”

Joey felt heat climb his neck. He shifted his bag higher, found her eyes, and tried to make his voice sound bored. “It wasn’t like that.”

Alina waited.

“It wasn’t,” he said again, then let the words roll out as if he was correcting something simple. “It wasn't just me! It was her to!"

"Girls our age are definitely hornier than guys. They just don’t show it.”

The sentence sat between them and did not wobble. A small buzz moved through his chest, low and quick, like a phone on silent against a table. It stopped as fast as it started. He blinked once.

Alina held his eyes for a beat. Not a smile. Not a blush. Just a click of understanding, like a note tucked into a book. “If you say so,” she said, dry but not sharp. She shifted the binder to her other arm and slid past them into the room.

Nate snorted under his breath. “Defense, counselor.”

Joey let out air he had not meant to hold. “Shut up.” It came out lighter than he felt.

They stepped through the door. The room smelled like pencil shavings and coffee that had sat too long. Ms Lindstrom stood at the front with a stack of tests and a pen between her fingers. “Phones off. Bags closed. Names at the top.” She moved down the rows, placing packets like cards.

Joey found his seat in the third row. Nate dropped into the desk to his right and bounced his knee until he remembered not to. Maya swept in just before the bell, braid over one shoulder, sweatshirt over last night’s tan. On her way to the window seat she glanced at Joey and gave a small nod that landed and was gone. Not a smile. Just a mark.

The packets reached their row. Joey wrote his name. His letters looked shaky. He took a breath that did not help and took another that did. The first question asked about causes. Bread drifted through his head like a dumb joke. He pushed it away and wrote about tax and grain and crowds and the way anger pools when you try to cap it.

Silence settled. Paper moved. The vent clicked on and sent a thin line of cool across the back of his neck. Ms Lindstrom’s steps traced the walls. He kept his head down and worked, but the room pressed in around the edges. Small things he would not have noticed yesterday.

Two rows up a girl with a messy bun shifted her chair an inch closer to the aisle so her knee brushed the boy beside her when she reached for a fresh sheet. At the far window a girl in a green sweater had her lip caught between her teeth while she read, then let it go and smoothed her mouth with her thumb. Alina wrote in short, neat lines. When she paused to think she did not curl around her paper. She sat back, pen at her lip, and let her gaze drift. It hit him, held for a count, and moved on like that was normal.

He dropped his eyes and finished a paragraph that felt like it might hold. He crossed out a sentence that didn’t and replaced it with one that did. He let the pencil sit heavy in his hand and found a rhythm.

Maya had her chin in her palm and the pencil spinning a slow circle in the margin like she was keeping time with a song only she could hear. When she looked up to think her eyes slid past him and kept going. No flinch. No game. Just open.

The clock moved. His headache stepped back half a pace. He drank from his water bottle and let it sit in his stomach like a coin. The hum in his chest did not come back, but he could still feel where it had been, a faint ring on a table after the glass is gone.

“Two minutes,” Ms Lindstrom said, calm and even.

He printed his name where the line asked and closed the packet. He set his pencil across it and waited. Around him chairs scraped, paper stacked, zippers opened. At the front the pile grew crooked and then straightened as Alina laid hers on top of his and said, “You look better than first period.” It wasn’t a flirt. It just belonged to this moment. Maya brushed his elbow at the bottleneck near the desk and did not apologize.

Back in the hall Nate bumped his shoulder. “Puppy.”

“Shut up,” Joey said, but he was smiling, and that surprised him a little.