Family lore has it that my dad wanted to name me Joy when he found out I was going to be a girl. My mother insisted on Isabel, having already established a taste for saints’ names, but thanks to my inability to pronounce the letter S, it got shortened to Bella. Then, because I hated that and refused to answer to it, it shrank down to Bel, which is ultimately a testament to how compromise leaves both parties unsatisfied.
To my dad’s credit, I’m not a joyless person. Like most people, there are things I love in life—cheese, being right, the beautiful rarity of a well-timed clapback—and things I don’t. The top of that second list? Team sports, being asked what I’m doing with my life, and the faint but harrowing sensation that something critical may have slipped my mind.
“Oh man, I forgot it was catapult day,” says Jamie, surveying her kingdom from our lofty perch at the top of the quad. “First project of the year—so cute! All the little Physics babies squawking around like tiny frightened birds...love that,” she soliloquys, powder-blue nails tapping the can of her dystopian-flavored LaCroix. “Where’s yours, by the way?”
Hmmmm. Crap.
Okay, so I know the catapult project was probably (definitely) in the syllabus, but in my defense, there was a huge essay due in English last week and I have a quiz this afternoon in Statistics plus a group project in Civics, and anyway, it’s really not my fault my grasp of time is so flawed. Aren’t there a million different scholarly articles about the impact of academic stress on teens or something?”
I’m pretty sure I could find at least a dozen if I really put some effort into researching. (I won’t, but it’s a valid thought, right?)
“Isabel Maier,” prompts Jamie, who is unfortunately still here and not part of a distressing dream I’m having. “Your silence is highly suspicious.”
“Uh,” I say, cleverly.
Spoiler: I do not have my catapult. Primarily because it doesn’t exist and secondarily because no miracles have occurred in the last thirty seconds. The only thing currently springing to mind is a very unhelpful slew of obscenities that would cause my mother to make the sign of the cross and then ask me where she failed as a parent. (Hot tip: that’s a rhetorical question.)
“Hello?” Jamie says, waving a hand in my face. “Bel?”
“I’m thinking,” I tell her, glancing down at my phone screen.
Woof. Class starts in fifteen minutes.
“Excellent,” Jamie says doubtfully. “Promising start.”
