The next two weeks passed by in a blur of Juliana Walker.
———————————————————————
Two Weeks Ago
"Ok class. I have your first unit test back for you. Most of you did extremely well." I look over at Julie, seeing her sitting up straight, feet swinging, with a smile plastered on her face.
She's wearing a light blue Nike crewneck with one of her white tennis skirts, paired with white Converse and a light blue ribbon in her hair.
I smile as I think back to those matching outfits she used to have on as a kid.
She looks cute.
What am I saying? I'm supposed to hate her.
I look at Julie again, this time in disgust as I pay attention to Mrs. High passing out our tests.
"Well done Jace." She hands me my test back with a 93 written in red ink in the corner, complete with a smiley face sticker.
I studied my ass off for it, so I'd hope to get a good grade.
I look over to Julie, who's not so confident anymore.
Mrs. High pulls out her test from the large stack she's holding. "I'm very impressed Juliana." She places her test down, and my jaw drops. Written in the same red ink is a 100 along with the same smiley face sticker.
How the fuck did she manage this? A hundred percent? Is she a mini Einsteinet?
She smiles down at her paper, taking a quick glance at me, shooting me a smirk as she returns to the conversation she's having with Mrs. High.
How am I supposed to compete with her?
Mrs. High leaves to return the other tests, and Julie turns to me, pride written all over her face.
"So," She glances over at my test. I smack my hand over my score, not letting her get the upper hand here. "what did you get on the test?"
"None of your business." I state.
She scoots closer towards me. I can feel her body heat radiating off of me as she's practically hovering over me. She gets closer to my ear, the smell of her vanilla perfume wafting towards me.
God. Why does she smell so damn good.
"It's ok." She whispers. I shiver automatically at our proximity. "I know you scored lower than me."
Just like that, the warm, vanilla smelling enemy moves away from me smirking as she looks down at her test again.
I stare at her, shocked, not only because of our differing test scores but from how close she got to me.
She looks over at me, down at my test, then locks eye contact with me again. She shrugs, placing her face in the palm of her hands, smirking at me. "Better luck next time."
With that, she ignores me for the rest of the class period.
Game on Juliana Walker.
———————————————————————
About A Week Ago
We jumped around a little with our AP Chemistry curriculum, and now, we're currently reviewing how to balance reactions. Worst of all, we're learning how to balance Redox reactions, and I only half understand what we're doing.
Right now, we're working on a graded partner worksheet again. Julie seems to be flying through it, while I'm slowly trudging along but I think I'm right.
"Hey." Devin walks up to Julie and I's lab table with his worksheet in hand. "Do any of you get this?"
Before I could tell Devin our grades fucked, Julie waves him over. "I know how to do it. Let me see what you have."
"Oh thank god. My partner and I have absolutely no idea what we're doing." Devin lets out a sigh of relief while passing his paper over to Julie.
She takes a scan through his paper. I don't even know how she's reading his handwriting. The other day he came up to me in the locker room to compare lab results, and I couldn't read a damn thing.
Julie clicks her mechanical pencil so lead is out, and circles some part of his paper. "You're honestly on the right track. You just didn't balance the electrons right."
Devin smacks his head with the palm of his hand. "You're right. I don't know how I missed it."
Julie smiles at Devin. "It's ok. Everyone makes little mistakes like these. The electrons should be six each."
I look down at my paper, scanning through the scribbles of what I call numbers, and I don't see a single six electrons written anywhere.
"Six electrons?" Devin looks up from correcting his paper as Julie puts her pencil down to look at me. "I'm sorry, but I don't have six electrons written anywhere when balancing the equations and I'm pretty sure I'm right."
Julie shakes her head, lips pierced together. "No. There definitely should be six electrons while balancing. Your work must be wrong."
"Another argument?" Mrs. High comes up to us, leaning against the countertop.
"Yes. I was correcting Devin's paper, and I pointed out how he needed to balance number two out with six electrons. Jace, here, doesn't have six electrons written anywhere. Now, we're debating who's right." Julie explains. Mrs. High looks between the two of us amused before she starts to go through Julie's work.
I shake my head at her, standing my ground. "I'm right here. You must have messed up along the way while you were speeding through these equations."
"How does knowing what to do effect my work?" She asks, eyes challenging me.
"Error. You're not looking closely enough like me."
She scoffs. "You mean not going as slow as you."
Devin stifles a laugh, while Julie looks at me all confidently.
"Sometimes accuracy is better than being fast."
"Julie's work seems right." Julie shoots me an 'I told you so' look, while I roll my eyes. There goes my ego. "What did you do wrong?"
Devin and Julie chat while I sit with Mrs. High figuring out how to make this make sense to me.
Julie - 2, Jace - 0
———————————————————————
So far, Julie's bested me in everything without it even being a competition.
I roll my eyes as Julie hands me a pair of goggles for today's lab. I put them on as Julie starts to measure everything out.
"Reminder class! This lab is extremely important and deals with chemicals that are stronger than what you're used to in regular chem! Please be careful!" Mrs. High emphasizes for the 5th time already.
We get it lady. This is a potentially harmful lab. We're in an AP class. No one here will be reckless.
"Can you read me how much sulfuric acid to add again?" Julie asks as she grabs the beaker and bottle of sulfuric acid.
I glance at the worksheet, reading through the instructions to find what we need. "25 ml."
Julie stops unscrewing the cap and looks at me puzzled. "That's quite a bit, isn't it?"
I shrug as I read the paper again. "It's exactly what it says."
"Are you sure it isn't the measurement for water to dilute it?"
I shake my head, already annoyed at what's coming next. "No Julie. Read it yourself if you don't trust me."
She puts the bottle down and grabs her paper, skimming over the information "It's not that I don't trust you. I'm just making sure we have as little errors as possible, but you're right. It's 25 ml."
Score! Take that Julie.
She pours in the acid carefully, trying not to go over the 25ml line.
The phone rings, and Mrs. High rushes over to answer it while I start diluting the solution.
"Jace." She looks over at us. "Juliana. You're needed at the office."
Both Julie and I look at each other, confused as hell.
Why are we needed at the office?
"Should we bring our stuff?" I ask Mrs. High.
She nods her head. "Both of you will have to analyze someone else's data for this lab."
We both nod our heads, pack up our stuff, and make our way to the office.
"I can practically hear your thoughts from here." I look down to see Julie, worried expression etched on her face, pulling her hair: a habit she tends to do when she's nervous.
"I don't know! What if we're in trouble?" She rambles.
"We're not in trouble."
"How do you know that?"
I shrug. I honestly don't, but I have a feeling we aren't. "We aren't. Trust me."
She looks away from me hesitantly.
Before I could even think, I grab her hand.
There's that feeling again. That feeling that her hands were meant to fit with mine. Surprisingly, she doesn't slap me or pull away. She relaxes with my touch.
I give her hand a slight squeeze. "It'll be ok. Nothing is wrong. Let's take it one step at a time, and not think too far ahead." I smile slightly at her, hoping that this is helping her feel better.
She looks up at me, and that soft and sweet Juliana I once knew returns, smiling a genuine smile. "Thanks Jace."
We continue to walk hand and hand down to the office.
This feels so natural, almost too natural. I kept looking down at Julie to see if she's ok or not, and surprisingly, she seemed completely normal, content even.
I let go of her hand to get the door, and the loss of contact is driving me crazy. We're sitting in the waiting room, and seeing her hand right there, available to pick up and hold, is driving me nuts.
Make up your mind Jace: do you like her or hate her?
"Juliana? Jace?" Mr. Davenport, our principal, calls us in.
Juliana quickly gets up, and I extend my hand letting her go first into the office.
We get inside, taking a seat next to each other as Mr. Davenport types away at his computer.
Julie's leg starts to bounce, and I place a hand on her knee. She looks up at me, and I give her a reassuring smile before taking my hand off.
"I'm going to make this quick, since I need to run to a meeting. You two are probably wondering why you're here." Mr. Davenport starts. "Well, you see, both of you were valedictorian: Juliana at her old school and Jace here. We honestly don't know how this happened. It's almost impossible, but" He turns his screen around showing our transcripts. "your transcripts are almost identical."
Julie and I inch closer, examining the transcripts for some sort of flaw because this shit only happens in the movies, but upon further investigation, he's right.
Take away our names, and I'd think hers was mine. Holy shit.
We have the same amount of credits in each subject, taking the same amount of AP and duel enrollment courses, taking almost every class the same year with the same grade in each course.
This is fucking psychotic.
I look over at Julie, and she's sitting there with the same expression as me. She looks even more shocked in my opinion.
Mr. Davenport spins around his screen monitor to face him again. "This poses an issue."
"We can only have one valedictorian, and no one below you guys are close enough to rival. We discussed this with your counselors and the school board, and since your schedules are relatively similar already, we've decided to make your schedules identical to reassure fairness. Whoever gets the higher grades and GPA at the end of the semester is valedictorian. Any questions?"
Any questions? This a bomb being dropped on us.
An identical schedule to Juliana Walker? I spend the whole and entire day with Juliana Walker.
Not only that, but we only have until the end of the semester to determine who's valedictorian? A spot I've been working towards since freshman year.
Someone kill me already.
"I don't understand how this is going to work?" Julie starts. "Jace and I barely get along. Us two enduring a whole day together is a little extreme isn't it?"
"Why are you telling us now?" I add. "We're already into the semester, into our classes, why change now?" I don't understand why they're making us switch classes now when we just settled into a routine.
"This is only to make it fair between the two of you given your identical transcripts already. We thought it would only be fair, and Jace, we only got this approved yesterday. You're enrolled in the same classes. We just rearranged your schedule so they're identical."
Julie shakes her head. "This doesn't make any sense."
"I understand that Juliana, and I'd be happy to answer more questions. For now, I must get to a meeting. You're dismissed."
Julie quickly grabs her backpack, practically running out of the office, leaving me behind.
"Julie!" I call out.
I catch up to her while she's grabbing her tennis bag out of her car.
"Julie. Are you ok?" I breathe. Damn this girl walks fast.
She starts shaking her head, putting her hands out to keep distance between us. "No. Don't Julie me. We're supposed to hate each other. Be competing against each other."
"It's outside of school hours right now Julie." I chuckle nervously.
She continues to shake her head, slamming the car door shut. "No Jace. You made it clear that we can't be friends, and with this new news, we clearly can't be." Julie leans against her car, head in her hands.
I reach over to place my hand on her shoulder, but she smacks it away. "No! Please no. I'm-" She breathes in a long, deep breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have acted that way. I- I have to go get ready for my match. I'll- I'll see you in calculus tomorrow."
With that, she leaves me standing here, looking like an idiot.
Here I thought we're finally getting somewhere then, of course, a bomb is dropped on our relationship again.
I definitely leaning towards hating Juliana Walker.