Wait. What do you mean, you have to leave?”

Nina rocked back on her heels with her hands clasped behind her back, a thoroughly apologetic look on her face. It took her longer than a minute to finger spell the words academic decathlon as I waited impatiently beside my locker.

“Our presentation for Wells is tomorrow,” I pointed out.

Less than twenty-four hours before we were supposed to give a presentation to class for our AP US History midterm, and Nina was telling me she had to leave for some academic decathlon? Nina was always on top of her game when it came to schoolwork; why hadn’t she mentioned this before? With the chemistry mess behind me, I couldn’t survive another exam screw-up.

“Here’s . . . thing,” Nina said. “I talked . . . Mr. Wells . . . because Beau’s partner . . . with me too, he . . .”

I turned to Kathleen, desperate for her to interpret.

Nina launched into some explanation, including her apparent remedy for our presentation for Mr. Wells tomorrow. I learned my partner was bailing on me to go to an academic decathlon in Greeley, over an hour away. Apparently so was Beau’s partner, Kyle Matthews. Mr. Wells agreed to let Nina and Kyle write an essay in place of presenting, and his wild solution was that Beau and I were now partners. Apparently, we were being given the choice to present on the topic Nina and I picked, or the one Beau and Kyle had chosen.

Nina kept signing, SORRY, and said, “. . . warned Mr. Wells . . . might happen, but . . . didn’t think . . . get . . . finals for . . . last minute . . . another school dropped . . .”

I started to space out, blanking on the rest of Nina’s explanation.

I could take comfort in the fact Beau took his grades very seriously and would want to give as professional and well-planned a presentation as possible, but this was so last minute. And what if Beau didn’t care one iota about our presentation topic? That I would not stand for.

The universe was definitely conspiring against me.

I gave a start when Nina got hold of my forearm and squeezed gently.

“. . . fine,” she said. “. . . total faith . . .”

TRUE, Kathleen signed when I glanced her way. GIVE B-E-A-U CHANCE.

I bit down on my lip to keep from huffing out a disgusted sigh.

I supposed Beau did deserve a chance. I didn’t completely understand his reasoning behind wanting to learn sign language, but he was getting pretty good at it. And it was fun talking with him, annoying Jackson during lunch with our overly dramatic signing and pointing toward him.

If he was that interested in sign language, maybe he’d catch on to DPN just as quickly.

“Fine,” I said. “But you owe me.”

“Deal,” Nina said, shaking my hand.

“This is hardly necessary,” I told Beau, standing beside his car in the student parking lot with my arms crossed.