Rules for Being a Girl

“It’s done, honestly,” I confess, dumbly pleased that he’s been paying close enough attention lately to know what is and isn’t like me. “Or, I mean, it’s done in that it’s a five-paragraph essay with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I just keep noodling on it though. I want it to be absolutely one hundred percent.”

“Curse of the perfectionist,” Bex says with a knowing smile. “Want me to take a look?”

I shake my head. “You don’t have to do that.”

“No, seriously,” he says. “I want to.” He sets his own battered MacBook down on the table. “Come on, hand it over.”

“What, right now?”

He shrugs. “Do you have a better time?” He sits down in the empty chair across from me, holding his arms out for my laptop. I click my browser shut—probably there’s no reason for him to know that I’ve been procrastinating by trawling Riverdale fan fiction—before passing it across the table, wrapping my hands awkwardly around my empty cup.

“Well, I definitely can’t sit here while you’re reading it,” I announce barely five seconds later. I get up and stand in line for another latte—unable to help glancing over my shoulder, searching Bex’s face while he reads. His eyes are serious behind his tortoiseshell glasses. The weak afternoon sunlight catches the gold in his hair.

A few minutes later, I walk back to the table, chewing my lip.

“This is fantastic,” he says before I even sit down.

I manage to stop my hands before they fly to my mouth, but barely. “Really?”

Bex nods. “Honestly, Marin, I’ve read a lot of admission essays, and I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Your writing is, like, super mature.”

“Well, thanks.” I glance down at my cup, trying not to smile too widely. He’s not the first teacher to tell me that; still, coming from Bex it’s like it somehow means more. “I mean, realistically I’m still going to be messing with it until the deadline, but I really appreciate it.”

Bex laughs. “I’m the same way. Like I said: curse of the perfectionist,” he says, tilting his chair back onto its hind legs as if he’s sitting in a classroom himself. “Listen, I don’t know if you know this, but I went to Brown. And so did my dad . . . and so did his dad, actually.” He smiles a little sheepishly. “When you go for your interview, look out for Beckett Auditorium.”

“Oh, wow,” I say, eyes widening as I cop on. I had heard his family had money, but I never realized there was that much of it. “Yeah, I will.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you ever wanted me to put a call in, try and throw my weight around a little bit, I’d be happy to do it. I don’t know if anyone there will give a shit, but it couldn’t hurt, right?”

“Thank you,?

?? I say, nodding my head and mustering a smile. “That would be amazing.”

Bex nods, satisfied. “Honestly, my pleasure. You earned it.”

“So, um, what about you?” I ask, motioning with my cup at his laptop. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, Jesus,” he says with a rueful shake of his head. “You don’t want to know.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Well, now you have to tell me.”

“My novel.” Bex visibly cringes, dropping his face into his hands. “I can’t believe I’m even saying that out loud to you right now. Go ahead, have a laugh.”

My eyes widen. “You’re writing a novel? Seriously? What’s it about?”

Bex sighs theatrically, lifting his head to look at me again. “I’m trusting you with this, you realize. You could ruin me.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“No, I know you wouldn’t.” He shifts his weight again, the front legs of the chair hitting the tile floor with a clatter. “It’s about a guy who wants to be a theater actor, but he’s not a very good theater actor, so he’s working for a children’s theater doing puppet shows about the Revolutionary War and stuff. And then his dad dies.” He makes a face. “See, it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” I promise immediately. “Honestly, it sounds good. Is it, like, autobiographical, or . . .”

Bex makes a face, enigmatic. “My dad is alive,” is all he says. “Anyway, I’ve been writing it since undergrad, and I’ve got a mostly done draft. But I just keep on . . .”

“Noodling?” I supply with a laugh. “Curse of the perfectionist, right?”

“Exactly,” he says, tapping his paper cup against mine.