Senior year AP English is a slog most days. You’re not reading the most engaging material because public schools rarely believe in assigning material written by anyone actually alive. It’s Shakespeare and sonnets and Emily Dickinson and stuff that I could appreciate, but not really connect to. Weller had us digging through Hamlet. It wasn’t my favorite play, but it was better than Julius Caesar and Romeo & Juliet, and it wasn’t as racist as The Merchant of Venice, so I’d take it.

Mark O’Hara was busy reading Hamlet’s part aloud to us, screwing up the pauses and rhythm of the iambic pentameter because some men liked to watch the world burn.

Weller was visibly twitching.

So was I, but it had nothing to do with Mark O’Hara and everything to do with the increasingly alarming muscle constriction happening in my midsection. It’d been going on from the time I woke up, through the ride to school and into class. Most cramping I could breathe through, as I’d been taught in the online class Devi and I took. But there was one—dear God, there was one where I saw Jesus. It started in my back and seemed to move around front, to where the baby rested.

I inhaled sharply and squeaked.

Mark O’Hara stopped murdering Hamlet. Every set of eyes in the room swung my way.

I didn’t care. I was too busy gripping the table in front of me, my fingernails scouring the wood as a solid minute of contraction made breathing almost impossible.

Leaf leaned into me, his concern obvious.

“Are you okay?”

I shook my head in the negative.

“I think that’s enough Hamlet for today,” Weller’s voice rang out. She stood from behind her desk, all six feet of her, in her trusty red cardigan and woolen pants. She adjusted her glasses and scanned the room, knuckles balancing on her desktop. “You have a research paper due next week. You can take the next twenty-five minutes in the library gathering your research materials. Wikipedia is not allowed. Now go.”

It took everyone a moment to get moving because they were ogling me. Weller barked out an, “Excuse me, did I not speak clearly enough?” and my classmates scrambled to get their things together, practically bolting for the door. I clutched at the table. The cramp passed, but I was terrified another one would come. Leaf’s hand was on the small of my back, rubbing in small circles. He knew about the backaches, had witnessed them firsthand. He went straight to what he knew worked best, and I adored him for it.