Begin Again

I’m back in my own coat a few hours later when I’m trudging through the snow to the library to meet the tutor Shay scheduled for me. I scan the tables near the coffee stand at the front for her, and only one of them is occupied—or at least, I think it’s occupied. There are so many books piled on it that I have to circle all the way around before spotting a girl with thick, glossy brown hair and high cheekbones frowning into a paperback, her hand poised over a notebook.

“Valeria?” I ask.

Her head snaps up so fast I almost apologize for startling her. “Oh. You must be Andie,” she says, blinking hard like she’s trying to bring herself back to the library from somewhere far away. She pushes the notebook aside as she stands up and hovers over the two piles of books, trying to figure out which of them to move first to make space for me. “I’m Val. Sorry. I just completely lost track of time.”

“Here. I’ll take the romance pile, you can take the . . .” I squint at the spines of the books, which all seem to feature daggers, skulls, and thorny roses. “Murder pile?”

“Fantasy pile,” says Valeria. “And thanks.”

I heave a portion of them and set them on the floor, but even then barely make a dent. “So did you accidentally join fifteen book clubs?”

Val lets out a laugh, her voice low and warm. “I wish. I was trying to cure my writer’s block. Thought reading anything I could get my hands on might help.”

I maneuver the other empty chair out of the way of the precarious piles we’re making and plop my bag in it, rooting around for my textbook. “Huh. I figured you’d be a math major.”

“Oh, I am,” says Val. She pats the last pile of the books on the floor with the energy of a parent tucking a kid into bed. “Writing is just something I do to pass the time.”

This, I’ve been learning, is a typical Blue Ridge State response. Everyone here is so ridiculously talented that it’s not a matter of whether they can succeed in anything, but a matter of choosing which things they feel like succeeding in.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

I glance down at the stats book in my hands. All Val will have to do is glance at my attempt at this week’s practice problems to know that I’m an exception to that rule.

“What’s blocking you, then?” I ask, moving my bag and settling into the seat.

“Oh.” Val sweeps her curtain of bangs behind her ear, pursing her full lips. With her striking dark eyes, thick lashes, and gentle smile, she fits right in with all the beautiful heroines on the books at our feet. “It’s a long story.”

Ordinarily I might pry, see if it’s a story she wants to tell. But now that I’m here, about to reveal to another student just how in over my head I am with this class, I can’t help the unwelcome nerves that seem to have an agenda all their own.

“But I did manage to change a character’s name three times.” Valeria picks up the notebook full of her scribbled notes and squints at it. “So, baby steps.”

“Well. You’ve made more progress than I have with my stats homework,” I confess.

Val’s lip curves. “Well, that I can do something about.” My expression must relay my unease, because she adds, “Trust me, I’ve been with the tutoring program for almost a year now. Wherever you’re starting from, we can turn it around.”

As it turns out, the nerves were for nothing. I’m usually self-conscious about how long it takes for me to pick up concepts and how much longer it takes for me to actually apply them to problems, but Valeria just patiently guides me though all of it, occasionally falling quiet when she knows I can work something out on my own. I don’t get in my head about it, the way I sometimes used to back in high school when I got put on the spot.

Halfway through our tutoring session Val gets up to grab another coffee, and I’m relieved to see several texts from Connor pop up on my phone: one with a meme of our old high school mascot, another with a selfie of him in front of my old psych building at the community college. His sandy hair is perfectly tousled under the beanie I got him for his birthday. Call tonight? he asks. I press the phone to my chest in relief.

“What’s that smile about?”

“Oh, just a text from my boyfriend.” It feels like a relief to say it out loud, like affirming it with the universe. Everything’s normal. Everything’s fine.

That is, until something in Val’s expression flickers. “Oh,” she says brightly, to make up for it.

“Oh?” I prompt her, half teasing.

She twists her lip to the side. “Ugh, it’s silly. I’ve already talked my roommate’s ear off about it today. But my ex broke up with me over winter break and I’m really trying to get over it, but he’s still texting me every now and then in this way that’s like—not clear exactly what he wants?”

I nod understandingly. “Like he’s just trying to make sure he’s still got you on the hook or something?”

“Yeah. Like that. Because the minute I respond, he basically just ghosts again. It’s driving me nuts.”

But it’s not her phone she glances at when she says this. It’s the notebook, so well-used that it’s tattering at the edges.

“Hence the writer’s block?” I ask.

Val puts her face in her hands, groaning. “It makes no sense. I mean, I started this story before we even met. But every time I actually sit down to write my brain just fixates on whatever his deal is instead.”

“Aren’t there literary clubs on campus?” I ask, looking around for a flyer I’m almost certain I saw on the way in. “Maybe if you talked to other writers or shared some of your work, they’d be able to help.”

Valeria shudders. “Oh, no, no, no,” she says, the words coming out so fast they almost tumble over one another. “If anyone actually read it I’d be like, mortified.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s . . . mine.” Her cheeks tinge a deep and adorable red. “And if anyone read a book about a bisexual, half-Spanish, half-Italian heroine who uses math in a magical realm to save the day, there isn’t a single person in their right mind who wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, this is a self-insert fanfiction.’”

I lean into the table. “Yeah, but aren’t all books kind of self-insert fanfiction?”

Valeria taps the stats textbook, drawing our attention back to the task at hand. “This one sure isn’t.”

I let out a laugh, resigning myself to the math ahead. “Touché.”