Chapter 1 Too Tiny

Tessie's pov I have been in love with Luke Reed for one hundred and twelve days. I know because I counted. I also know that he takes off his left glove first, one finger at a time, like he's apologizing to it. That he drinks cinnamon hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and pretends it's coffee. That he sits three rows ahead of me in Microbiology 201 every Tuesday and Thursday, which I choose to see as fate and not a registrar's error. That he holds the door for whoever is behind him, even a freshman with a granola bar who isn't looking. What I don't know is anything about hockey. I don't understand icing. I don't understand offside. I once cheered when the other team scored because someone fell near the net and I assumed that was the point. Nineteen home games this season, and the only rule I'm sure of is that when Luke is on the ice, I don't blink. I am his biggest fan. Today is Tuesday, and the Knights practice at noon, which means Luke's whole day runs on a schedule I could recite in my sleep. Dr Crane's class ends at 11:50. He fills his water bottle at the fountain by the east stairs, collects his friends Nate and Eric, and walks across the quad to the rink. He's in the dressing room by 12:05. Every Tuesday. Never early, never late. That is why I'm in the back row of Microbiology 201, my heart doing laps, a granola bar going stale in my hand, and my midterm about to come back. Dr. Victor Crane took over two weeks ago, when Dr. Adams, who used to draw smiling microbes on the whiteboard, left to have her baby. He is the opposite of smiling microbes. He has the shoulders of a linebacker and the patience of a tax auditor. His lab coat hangs open like a cape, and he clicks his pen when he's disappointed, which is all the time. Today he doesn't fling the booklets. He walks the aisles and lays them face-down on each desk with a soft, ominous slap, like he's dealing a card game nobody can win. He delivered a disappointing speech," he tells the room. "90% of the class failed." Mine lands. I turn it over with one eye shut. 98. Slashed across the cover in red ink. And beneath it, in handwriting that looks furious at the paper, two words I've never seen him write: Excellent. Rare. Me? I aced it. Wow. I'd be lying if I told you that it wasn't a shock to me. All I did was answer a couple of bullshit questions to fill my booklet, and I got an A. Okayyy, girl, I am so proud of myself. I stare at them. Around me, the room is a chorus of groans. A girl whispers, "The average was a forty-one." Somebody asks, out loud, whether Northgate gives refunds. Three rows ahead, Luke folds his booklet in half without looking at it, calm as a lake. Down the aisle, a billionaire, hockey captain, loudest man on campus, who sees himself as chris brown of Northgate, is holding his booklet away from his body as if it owes him money. I slide mine under my notebook like contraband. I'm the only scholarship student in my year. My scholarship comes with exactly one rule: keep a 3.9 GPA. I'm at a 3.8, I work two jobs, and I have a plan to become an orthopedic surgeon, so my mom never has to scrub hotel bathtubs on a ruined back again. I do not have time for a boy, well, unless it's Luke. But it's a ninety-eight. In the class that's eating this campus alive. If I can survive Dr. Crane, I can survive anything, even telling Luke Reed how I feel. And Today is the day, so wish me luck. At 11:50, Dr. Crane clicks his pen once, a sound like a gavel. I'm out the door before it stops echoing, booklet in my fist. ***** Okay, let me tell you how it started. On the first day of the semester, a boy in a gray hoodie stopped me outside the science building and asked where Lab 214 was. Dark hair, kind eyes, and the posture of someone who wished he were invisible. I walked him there. He said "thank you" and smiled at me, small and a little shy, like I'd handed him something much bigger than directions. That was it. That was the whole thing. I have been a goner ever since I even started planning our wedding in my head. Because here's the thing about Northgate: everybody is rich. Everybody. Not some, " Well, you can exclude me; I am just a scholarship student. The parking lot looks like a car show, and the loudest boys here, the ones with penthouses and trust funds, walk around like the campus is a stage built for them. They flash their parents' money, hook up with a different girl every weekend, and treat anyone who isn't them like background noise. Most of them have noticed me the way you notice a stain on a rug. Luke Reed is nothing like that. He doesn't brag. He doesn't flirt with every girl who looks at him. He stays in his lane, shows up early, and thanks the person who refills his water cup. The first time I offered him a bottle of water after a late lab, he smiled, said, "Thanks, Tessie," and held on to it as if it mattered. He is nice to me. He is nice to me specifically, in a way I've decided is not an accident. He lingers by the snack bar window. He goes quiet when I talk to him. Obviously, he likes me too. He's just too shy to ask me out; that is why I want to relieve him of that. Aside from being kind to me and not flaunting his parents' wealth, he is beautiful. Yeah, I know it is wrong to use "beautiful" to describe a guy, but y'all should trust me when I say he is beautifully cute, OMG. I could cum ten times just staring at him. Two weeks into the semester, I found out he played for the Northgate Knights, and I applied for a job at the rink snack bar the same afternoon so I could be close to my crush. I know y'all will judge me for being a lover girl, but whatever, who cares, not like it is affecting my grades anyway. Now I work the counter on game nights and cheer at every home game, in a sport I don't understand, for a boy who has never once looked at me for longer than a second. So after I left Dr Crane's class I hit the Beanery in the science atrium first. Cinnamon hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, a dusting of cinnamon, five twenty-five, which is a rounding error for everyone else here and a small sacrifice for me. Then I power-walk across the quad, which takes nine minutes when you're five feet tall and carrying a cup like it's a bomb. The Knights' dressing room is at the end of the east corridor of the rink, past the championship banners and a trophy case with more silver than my family has seen in three generations. I plant myself outside the door and rehearse. Hi. Luke. I have something to tell you. Hi. Luke. Don't freak out. Hi. Luke. I got a ninety-eight, and I think it's a sign. Hi luke. I know you like me, and you are too shy to ask me out, so will you marry me? Sorry, date me. I mean, will you date me, like be my boyfriend? Ouch, I hit my hand on my head... seems like I am not ready. At 12:05 on the dot, they turn the corner. Luke walks in the middle with his gym bag over one shoulder, hair still messy from class, wearing the black hoodie that makes my knees feel like they belong to someone else. On either side are his two new friends from the team. Nate Cooper, tall and cheerful, with a grin as if he has never had a bad day. And Eric Blake, stocky and quiet, already looking at his phone. They're close. Close enough to hear. I should wait. I should abort this mission. I don't wait. "Luke," I called his name. He stops. His face softens, the way it always does when he sees me, and my heart does something dangerous. "Hey, Tessie." "Hi." I hold out the cup. "I brought you this. Cinnamon. Extra whipped cream." He takes it. His fingers brush mine. I almost die right there, which would honestly be the best outcome. "You didn't have to," he says. "I wanted to." The words come out in a rush. "Can I tell you something? I've been trying to say it since September." Nate looks up. Eric stops scrolling. Abort. Abort. My heart raced. "I- I-hmmm. I think I am, um. He walked closer and held my hand. Are you okay, Tessie? I like you," I said. "Like, a lot. More than a friend. I have since the day you asked me where Lab 214 was." Silence. He gently let go of my hands. It's a very long silence. I can hear the Zamboni humming somewhere behind the wall. I can hear Nate breathing through his nose. Luke's face goes still. Not cruel, not angry, just blank, like someone has switched off a light in a room I thought I knew. "Is that why you've been so nice to me?" he says. I blink. "Hmmm?" "All these weeks." He glances at the cup, then at his friends, then at me, and something in his expression slams shut. "Sorry. You're not my type. You're too tiny for me." Nate winces. "Dude." Eric, I notice, has raised his phone. Everything became a blur. My vision blurred immediately. Where is this dizziness coming from? Why does it look like the hallway is moving? Somebody, hold me; I don't want to fall. I stand there with my hands still half lifted, like I'm waiting for someone to hand me back the last ten seconds. Too tiny. I'm tiny. I've been tiny my whole life. I have been called short, small, cute, pocket-sized, and "aww." I have never once been called too tiny to be liked. I mean, I am petite, not too tiny. "Right," I hear myself say. "Okay. Cool." Luke doesn't say anything else. He just stands there holding the hot chocolate I made him, like it's a bomb. Nobody laughs, which is somehow worse. Nate rubs the back of his neck and says nothing. Eric lowers his phone an inch, then raises it again. Luke stares at the floor, at the cup, at anything but me. I do the only thing left to do. I reach over, take the cup of cinnamon hot chocolate back out of Luke's hands, and take a long, scalding sip. I mean, if I am too tiny, my coffee is definitely too tiny for you as well. It burns the entire way down. "Thanks for the feedback," I say, and turn on my heel. I make it down the corridor, past the banners, past the trophy case, and into the empty stairwell before my hands start to shake. I don't cry. I'd like that on the record. I sit on the concrete step with a burned tongue and a cup that is rapidly going cold, and I stare at the wall and tell myself: It's fine. That is how love works. It's a thing that happened. Nobody saw us. Don't be embarrassed. I am proud of you. My phone buzzes. It buzzes again. Then it starts ringing, over and over, and I see Zoey flash across the screen with a string of skull emojis. I answer. "Hi." "TESSIE." My roommate's voice is a shriek. "Where ARE you? Do NOT look at your phone. Actually, look at your phone. Actually, don't." "Zoe, what's happening?" "Okay, so. Don't freak out." I am already freaking out. I pull the phone away from my ear and open the first notification that came, which is the Northgate gossip page, @NUTea, which is how most of this campus gets its news. The top post was uploaded forty seconds ago. It's a video, grainy, shot from a low angle, and I recognize the corridor, Luke's black hoodie, and a small girl with her hands half raised. It's thirty-one seconds long. I watch it with my stomach dropping through the floor. "Sorry. You're not my type. You're too tiny for me." Then, off camera, someone whispers, "Oh, he did not." The caption reads: snack bar girl just got benched by Luke Reed. "too tiny." RIP SCHOLARSHIP GIRL. Four thousand views. Five thousand. I scroll to the comments, and the top one, with eleven hundred likes, says: not him rejecting the only girl who brings him hot chocolate. The second says: Tessie from the snack bar?? She's literally the tiniest 😭 And just like that, my humiliation has a fan base. It takes me ten full minutes to stand up. Then I do what any self-respecting person does after a public humiliation. I pull my hood up, buy the biggest coffee the Beanery sells, and head back to the science building for my one o'clock lab, eyes on the floor. If I never look up, nobody can recognize me. I got a 98 today. I also got a nickname. Guess which one is trending?.