Learning to Fall

“Everybody’s downstairs… Why aren’t we?”

Alex is sitting down on Tara’s bed where he shrugs. He picks up a picture frame which happens to hold a photo of Tara and Jack. He makes a disgusted face and puts it back down. His eyes travel up and meet my own.

“Her last boyfriend raped her.”

His voice is low and shaky, and his eyes are dark.

“What? Alex-”

“I’m not kidding, Stella… He… I fucking hate him.”

My hand covers my mouth in shock and a gasp escapes. If I had ever suspected a real reason for his hatred towards Jack, this was not what I suspected. Tara’s so… carefree – there was never any sign to lead me to believe she had been raped.

“Remember Michael Bryer?”

“Yeah… he got expelled and…” Suddenly I realize something. “And you got suspended. For getting into a fight with him. Why weren’t you expelled too?”

“Michael had other issues too… Something about drug possession. But now you know why I was suspended. And why I don’t like Jack.”

“Alex… Oh, my God… she definitely did not want me to know that…”

I sit down beside him on the bed and he shrugs.

“I’m sorry… I’m just really… I found this today,” He pulls a piece of paper out of his sweatshirt pocket. “It made me really…I don’t know.” He unfolds the paper and hands it to me. “My SAT scores. My mom hid them.”

I read the first score out loud. “You got 600 on reading. That’s fantastic, Alex-”

“Keep going.”

“Math – oh… Well, listen –”

“I fucking suck at math, Stella… I just can’t get it right. And I definitely didn’t do very well on the final the other day.” He sighs and puts the paper back into his pocket. “The colleges I applied to are not going to want me.”

“Alex… they will want you,” I assure him. I take both of his hands in my own and try to get him to look at me, but he won’t. “They don’t just look at these numbers. Here,” I pull him up from the bed. “I promise you right now. I am going to get you at least a B in math for this semester.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it isn’t. You just have to trust me. You do trust me, don’t you?”

“Well… yeah, of course I do, but how-”

“Then don’t ask questions and let me figure this out.”

*

“You two weren’t having sex in my room, were you?” Tara questions the second I step off the last step. I blush lightly and shake my head.

“No. We were talking.”

“Actually, we were having the best sex ever, thanks for asking, Tara,” Alex says when he walks past us and heads into the living room.

“Eww, Alex, you’re so gross,” I mumble to myself, but Tara hears me.

“He’s so lovely. What were you two talking about?”

I bite my lip and shrug. I don’t want her to know what I know. So I sell Alex out instead.

“His SAT scores.”

“Oh I forgot to ask him about them. They came in the mail a week ago, though. Why didn’t he mention them to me?”

“Because his mom hid them. He did really badly on the math section…”

As much as I know that revealing this information without Alex’s permission is a bad idea, I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to tell Tara what I know about her, so I figure that this is an easier discussion.

“Oh man… His mom hid them? Why the hell would she do that?”

I shrug and take a step to my right; hopefully she gets the hint that I want to go into the other room.

“God… I’ll talk to him about it later-”

“No, no don’t do that. He’s too upset. Let him come to you.”

She pauses and gives me a funny look. “Okay…”

“I’m going to go find Alex,” I say and I push past her and make my way past a group of people standing in the way. I see Alex sitting on the couch and Jack sitting beside him talking a mile a minute. Alex looks interested.

I sit down beside him and rest my head on his shoulder. As he responds to Jack’s question about guitar pickups, he moves his hand to my waist and pulls me closer, not showing any intention of letting go.