B is for

July 11, 2011

I’m expecting a letter from Tina, so one of the first things I do after breakfast is grab the mail key. Coda trots after me and so I scratch behind his ears and let him come outside. It’s a beautiful Salinas day, all gray clouds and dreary skies.

I pound down the five long steps and unlock the mail box, pulling the wads of newspaper and junk mail from within its depths. There’s a couple official looking letters. But nothing from Tina.

Mail and key in hand, I whistle at Coda and he abandons whatever he was smelling to bound inside after me. I toss the mail onto the kitchen table and am headed for the computer when I catch sight of my name on one of the envelopes. Maybe Tina wrote me after all. I pull the envelope from the pile, noting the return address is Everett Alvarez High School.

Oh. It’s my grades.

Part of me doesn’t want to see these. It was a rough semester and I know my grades are even rougher. Sighing, I tear at the envelope and pull out the paper with shaking hands.

AP Chemistry … A-

Oh thank goodness. Ms. A was kind to me then. I guess cluing her in a bit on what was going on made her sympathetic enough to give me the couple extra points I needed for the A.

AP Statistics … A+

Not a surprise there. I loved statistics.

I scan the rest of the list with mild interest. My AP’s were the classes I was worried about.

Band … A

Pre-calculus … A

Honors World History … A

Honors English … B

What?

I reread the grades several times but it doesn’t change the teeny little B next to English. I knew Mrs. Lloyd didn’t like me, and I wasn’t particularly fond of her either. But a B?? I was sure that my grade on the final would bump me up from my 89.7%. I guess I was wrong.

Glancing to the right of that grade, I see she gave me an “unacceptable” under my citizenship behavior as well. God.

There goes all of my dreams of being Valedictorian. There goes Stanford and any hope of getting out of this hell-hole called Salinas. There goes scholarships and my perfect record. The last B I got was in 6^th grade P.E. when I was too chubby to run fast enough for an A.

I just.. don’t need this on top of every other crap thing I’ve endured so far this summer. Tina moving away. Mom playing World of Warcraft for hours and not giving me the time of day. Trying to get over you. Your absence is still so startling. 

For a second, I’m tempted to text you. You would come. You would hold me and make it better.

But I can’t do that anymore. We aren’t together and.. there’s just something that I can’t put my finger on. I don’t much want to see you. It’s a new feeling for me, and a complex one at that. I don’t want to see you.

It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still half in love with you.