Practice Practice Practice - Chapter 7

Chapter 7 Tommy had said it was fine, but was it really fine? The last thing he'd said was, "I'll see you around," but at the place where they ate lunch with the girls, it was just Elizabeth and Rebecca whispering about something from the theatre when Martin arrived. Tommy never showed up. And usually they would have done something right after school, but when the last bell rang Martin looked, but Tommy was gone. Elizabeth snapped her fingers in front of Martin's face and asked, "Hey, are you going to eat that?" He brought himself back to Earth. Elizabeth was pointing at his burger.

The plate in front of her was already empty. They were in a corner booth at A&W for a dinner date. After school, when he couldn't find Tommy, he had caught up with Elizabeth and told her he wanted to take her out on a surprise date. She'd looked elated. Pointing at his burger, she looked bored. "Yes, I mean, maybe," he said and shrugged, "I'm sorry. There's just a lot going on. You can have some if you're still hungry." "What's going on?" He'd been fucking his best friend for one thing. It seemed crazy as he thought about it, sitting across from his girlfriend.

How had he let it get so out of hand? "Ts it the stuff with Tommy?" "What?" Martin's heart pounded in his ears. How did she know? What did she know? He examined her face for signs of anger, but she just looked calm and composed, like always. She had her chin on her hand, her head tilted slightly, and her kind green eyes were patient, watching. "All the studying." She said, "You guys have both been obsessing over the SAT for weeks." "Oh, yeah," Martin looked for something to hide his red face with and grabbed his burger.

He took a bite that was too large and tried to chew as he said, "It's that, yeah." Elizabeth put on a sarcastic look of disgust and said, "Don't choke." Martin nodded and finished chewing. He put down the burger and drank his Pepsi before he tried again, "Yeah, the SAT is a lot to deal with." She leaned in and whispered, "It's not really that important though." "Yes it is!" One eyebrow went up. He continued, "It's a key step to getting into the right university. If Tommy and I don't get to our first choice school it'll be because someone scored higher." "You really believe that?" "Of course!

Lots of people have extracurriculars and grades, so it's the test scores that make the difference with these places. They have so many applicants they have to just run them through a machine and they take the top scorers." "But if you ended up at a backup school that would be ok too." Martin shook his head, "No, because then we might not get the same school. Or we won't get into the same programs, and that messes up the degree qualifications that we'll need to get into the right careers." "But you don't even know what you want your career to be." "Well... yeah, but that doesn't matter.