Willa
Playlist: “Hurricane,” Bridgit Mendler
I’ve been told I have a temper.
I prefer to be called tempestuous. Big word for a soccer jock, I know, but work in a bookstore as many summers as I have, and you can’t help but broaden your vocabulary.
Tempestuous: “typified by strong, turbulent or conflicting emotion.”
For better or for worse, that’s me. Willa Rose Sutter, to a T.
Is my fuse a little short? Sure. Are my responses occasionally disproportional? Sometimes. I could learn to simmer down here and there, but I refuse to subdue the storm inside myself. Because inextricably knotted with my tempestuousness is the force of nature that is my drive. I’m competitive. And that is an advantageous personality trait. I’m an aspiring professional athlete, set on becoming the world’s best in my sport. To be the best, you need raw skill, but even more so, you have to be hungry. You have to want it more than anybody else. That’s how far-off dreams become reality.
So, yes. Sometimes, I’m a little feisty. I’m scrappy and hardworking and I like to win. I don’t settle. I won’t give up. Nothing gets in my way.
Which is why I seriously need to get my shit together, because something is about to get in my way. My eligibility for next week’s match against our biggest rival hangs by a thread, thanks to the Business Mathematics course and professor from hell.
I’m late to class, trying not to limp because of how much my muscles ache after a brutal practice. Scurrying down the ramp in the massive lecture hall, it takes everything in me not to say ouch-ouch-ouch-ouch with every single step I take.
The room’s packed, only a few stray seats remaining in the very first row.
A groan leaves me. Great. I get to show up late and make that super obvious by sitting front and center. As quietly as I can manage with muscles that are screaming for ibuprofen and a hot bath, I slip into an empty spot and silently extract my notebook.
Professor MacCormack continues scribbling equations on the board. Maybe my late entrance went undetected.
“Miss Sutter.” He drops the chalk and spins, dusting off his hands. “Good of you to join us.”
Dammit.
“Sorry, Professor.”
“Get caught up from Ryder.” Completely sidestepping my apology, MacCormack spins back to the board and throws a thumb over his shoulder to the right of me. “He has my notes.”
My jaw drops. I’ve asked Mac for notes three times so far this semester when I had to miss for traveling games. He shrugged, then said I needed to “problem solve and figure out my priorities.” This Ryder guy just gets them?
That temper of mine turns my cheeks red. The tips of my ears grow hot, and if flames could burst out of my head, they would.
Finally, I turn to where Mac gestured, sickly curious to see this guy that my professor favors with lecture notes while I’m left scrambling to catch up with no help whatsoever. And I really need that help. I’m barely holding a C minus that’s about to become a D, unless God looks with favor on his lowly maiden, Willa Rose Sutter, and does her a solid on our upcoming midterm.
Rage is a whole-body experience for me. My breathing accelerates. From the neck up, I turn into a hot tamale. My heart beats so thunderously, my pulse points bang like drums. I am livid. And it’s with that full-body anger coursing through my veins that I lay my eyes on the favored one. Ryder, Keeper of Notes.
He wears a ball cap tugged low over shaggy dark blond hair. A mangy beard that’s not terribly long still obscures his face enough that I don’t really know what he looks like, not that I care. His eyes are down on his paper, tracking, left–right, so I can’t see what they look like. He has a long nose that’s annoyingly perfect and which sniffs absently, as if he’s completely clueless that I’m both watching him and that he’s supposed to be sharing those lecture notes. The notes that I could have used to avoid failing the last two pop quizzes and our first writing assignment.
My eyes flick back up to MacCormack, who has the audacity to smirk at me over his shoulder. I shut my eyes, summoning calm that I don’t have. It’s that or tackle my professor in a blind rage.
Eyes on the prize, Willa.
I need to pass this class to stay eligible to play. I need to stay eligible to play because I need to play every game, both to maximize my team’s chances for success, and because Murphy’s Law states that scouts come to games you miss. Well, really it just states that if something can go wrong when it’s real inconvenient, it will. The scout scenario is my version of it.
The point is I need the damn notes, and in order to get them, I’m going to have to swallow my pride and explicitly petition this jerk who’s ignoring me. I clear my throat. Loudly. Ryder sniffs again and flips the page, his eyes glancing up to the equations on the board, then back down. Does he turn? Acknowledge me? Say, Hi, how can I help you?
Of course not.
MacCormack prattles on, his notes both on the chalkboard and in large, clear font on a projector for those who can’t see or hear him well to follow along. The next slide pops up before I got it all written down, and I grow angrier by the minute. It’s like Mac wants me to fail.
Taking another steadying breath, I whisper to Ryder, “Excuse me?”
Ryder blinks. His brow furrows. I have the faintest hope he’s heard me and is about to turn my way, but instead, he flicks to a previous page of the printout, and scribbles a note.
I sit dumbfounded for minutes, before I slowly face the board, fury shaking my limbs. My fingers curl around my pen. My hand whips open my notebook so violently, I almost rip off the cover. I want to scream with frustration but the fact is that all I have control over is the here and now. So, I bite my tongue and start writing madly.
After twenty minutes, MacCormack drops his chalk, then turns and addresses the class. In the haze of my wrath, I vaguely hear him field questions. Students raise their hands and answer, because they’ve actually followed this lecture, because, unlike me, most of them probably don’t have two lives pulling them apart. Athlete and student, woman and daughter.
Because they have leeway, wiggle room, which I don’t. I have to be excellent, and the problem is that this pressure is instead turning me into an absolute failure. Well, except for soccer. Over my dead body will I fail at that. Everything else, though, is going to shit. I’m a scattered friend, an absent daughter, a lackluster student. And if this professor would just cut me a damn break, I’d have a chance of at least scratching one of those failures off my list.
MacCormack must feel my eyes burning holes into him, because after he accepts the last answer, he turns, looks at me again, and smirks.
“Professor MacCormack,” I say between clenched teeth.
“Why, yes, Miss Sutter?”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“I’m sorry, no, that is not the correct formula for calculating compound interest.” Turning back to everyone, he offers them a smile I have yet to see. “Class dismissed!”
I sit, stupefied that I’ve been swept aside by my professor, yet again. It’s the cherry on top when Ryder rises from his seat, slides those precious notes into a worn leather crossbody bag, and throws it over his shoulder. As he secures the flap on his bag, his eyes dart up, then finally meet mine. They widen, then take me in with a quick trail over my body.