Second Place Is Not Enough

"Baby, score a few more points next time and our names will be right next to each other." I was passing an empty classroom when I heard it: the number one in my grade, coaxing his number three girlfriend.

And me, I was the one wedged between their two names, the eternal runnerup the whole school liked to joke about.

For as long as I could remember, the thing I loved most in the world was the way people looked up at whoever was first. I looked at the Scholars Board and laughed, furious.

Instead of letting her pass me, I'd just pass him. Chapter 1 I'd been a grinder since I was little.

The day I became the first kid in class to finish the timed math drills, the day the teacher praised me and everyone else envied me, my whole life locked onto its track.

My vanity only swelled as I got older. Before Halcyon Academy I had a near monopoly on first place in my grade.

And when the looks people save for a genius landed on me, the rush went all the way up my scalp. That's how shallow a showoff's happiness is.

At the end of ninth grade I took the citywide entrance exam and got into Halcyon Academy with the highest score in the city.

And of all the places in the world, this was where I ran into Isaac Ortega. Two entire school years, tenth grade and eleventh, and I never came in first! Not once!

Me, a showoff down to the bone, nailed in place as the eternal runnerup. Every time, a teacher would comfort me. "Gen, you're already doing wonderfully.

You were just a little unlucky. Be more careful next time." But I heard how they talked about someone else when they thought no one was around. "That Isaac.

His brain just doesn't work like other kids'. The way he sets up a problem is so mature.

I hear he used to do olympiad math." Classmates would come to me for help with a problem, and then, with all the emotional intelligence in the world, slide a knife between my ribs on the way out. "Queen Gen, holding second place this long basically makes you a genius too.

You're the only one in our grade who can go toe to toe with Saint Isaac." Saint Isaac. I smiled, serene, the picture of a girl above all this. "What can you do?

He's just better." I was livid. Livid! The second the classmate with the question walked off, Bianca, who sat next to me, leaned in, all mystery. "Genny.

Gossip." "Mm?" My eyes stayed on the problem. My ear drifted toward her. "Isaac has a girlfriend." And this concerned me how? "Guess who." I looked up from the test.

Bianca was milking it. "Who?" "Hazel," she said, low. "Who's that?" Bianca went quiet. Then she rolled her eyes at me. "My Queen Gen.

You don't even register anybody who scores below you, do you?" "Last marking period she ranked right behind you and Isaac in our whole grade." From Bianca I got a rough picture of my rival's love life.

Isaac and Hazel were both in the other cohort, and Hazel had been somewhere in the teens last semester. This semester she'd shot straight up.

With rankings, climbing two hundred places isn't that hard. Going from the teens to the top few is another matter entirely. "I heard they started last semester.

Every break, the two of them are doing problems together. Number one in the grade, tutoring her one on one. No wonder she's moving that fast.

Topdollar tutor, that's what he is," Bianca said. I remembered who Hazel was. Bianca had it a little wrong. After every exam, I checked the names right above and right below mine.

Chapter 2 Hazel had long black hair, round eyes, lashes that curled.

Very cute. "You really don't have any thoughts about this?" Bianca poked me and put her mouth next to my ear. "The teachers can see it, you know.

It's just that it's Isaac, so they look the other way." The school hadn't officially banned dating, but the teachers at this magnet school had always treated it as a distraction, and the second somebody's rank slipped, that person got called in for a talk.

But this was number one and number three in the grade, and their idea of dating was holing up together over problem sets.

What were the teachers supposed to say? "Nope," I said, smiling. "What thoughts would I have?" Date away. Date each other all the way to the bottom of the rankings, both of you.

I thought it viciously. The last markingperiod scores of eleventh grade went up, and the Scholars Board had a crowd around it.

I stood toward the back, but I could see the whole list. Second. Again. Mad enough to go home tonight and put away two dinners.

Before I was done being mad, someone up front said, in that teasing voice, "How does Gen keep ending up stuck between those two lovebirds, thirdwheeling it, hahahaha…" "Our grade really got saddled with two walking plagues.

First and second have never once changed hands. Although I think Hazel's got a shot at passing Gen next time. She was only six points off." … And it didn't stop there.

At the end of the day I realized I'd forgotten my house key and went back for it, and passing the other cohort's room I saw Isaac walking Hazel through a problem.

The two of them were the only ones left in there. By the window.

Isaac's voice drifted out. "Baby, score a few more points next time and our names will be right next to each other." … Being the eternal runnerup was bad enough.

And it turned out nobody was rooting for me to drag Isaac off of first. More than one person was rooting for somebody to drag me off of second?

I laughed, furious, and something in me went dark. The lovebirds wanted their names next to each other? I'd take first and give them exactly that.

At dinner my parents took second place in stride, the way they always did, and praised me right on schedule. "Second is already incredible.

Your mom and I never scored anything close to that when we were in school. Don't put so much pressure on yourself." Out of the question. First place was happening.

But at my level, hiring one of those topdollar tutors wouldn't do much.

A car came up the driveway next door. "Des is home for the summer," my mom said offhandedly. "Want me to go ask him for his old notes and handouts?" Desmond Caldwell was two years ahead of me.

His senior year, a top university locked him in early off his national olympiad results and threw in a full ride.

When the news broke, our school hung a banner and ran it on the marquee for two weeks, and even the local paper picked it up. For a while there he was impossible to miss.

Before I could get a word out, my dad said, "Des went the olympiad route.

That stuff of his might not suit our girl." The second he said it, everything came clear and I shot to my feet. "What is with you, jumping around like that?" My mom startled.

I sat back down, shoveled through my second dinner as fast as humanly possible, set down my fork, and said, "I'm going over to borrow some material from Des." Their front door stood open, so I walked right in, said hello to Mr. and Mrs.

Caldwell downstairs, and went straight up. Desmond was on the couch in the upstairs loft in a white tee and wideleg jeans, messing around on his phone.

The lights were down low and the glow of the screen lit his face, laying out that obnoxiously good profile of his in full. Honestly? I did not like Desmond Caldwell.

Chapter 3 From the first time I met him, when I was ten and our parents were trading parenting notes, I knew this one was a showoff too.

No showoff likes anyone who can show off better than she can. And sure enough, all the years since had confirmed my first impression of Desmond.

He raised an eyebrow when he saw me. "Well, if it isn't little Gen—" Before he could finish, I dropped straight to my knees in front of him.

I hadn't even opened my mouth yet and Desmond shot up off the couch. "Genevieve, why are you on your knees?" I looked up at him, completely serious. "Des, I heard you're home for the summer.

I want to hire you as my tutor." Desmond came over to pull me up. "If you want to hire a tutor, hire a tutor. What's with the kneeling?

You're going to scare me to death, and if my parents see this they'll kill me." "It's the please part," I said, blinking at him. "One knee would be strange.

Two knees is more sincere." … "Des, can I keep you for two months?

Market rate." "…Maybe don't make hiring a tutor sound like that." "Oh." Desmond hauled me up by the arm and looked me over for a good long while. "I thought you did well in school.

Why do you need me as a tutor?" I hesitated, wrestled with it, and then told him the truth. "So what you're telling me is that since you got into Halcyon you've been second in your grade for two years running?" Desmond stared at me, then gave me a thumbsup, with total sincerity. "Amazing." … Was he making fun of me?

As far as I knew, Desmond had gone the olympiad route, but any time he sat for a schoolwide exam, nobody could pry him off of first.

He had no weak subject. "So you're here to learn the secret of coming in first?" My ears went hot, but I nodded honestly. It really does take a showoff to read a showoff.

Desmond let out a laugh. "If you talked yourself into coming over here to beg me, you must want this first place pretty badly." We showoffs hate asking for things.

But Desmond didn't need the money, and if I didn't beg, why would he agree to tutor me?

Next to that, another year as the eternal runnerup would actually kill me. "So will you teach me?" I looked up at him, pleading.

Desmond had that smile on, the same lazy one he'd been wearing two years ago as a senior when a top university locked him down. Showing off without breaking a sweat.

So jealous. "Bring me your last exam tomorrow and I'll take a look," Desmond said. "I'm not promising I can teach you." Which meant he could.

We showoffs love leaving ourselves a little room. The next day I brought Desmond my tests, not only the last marking period's but the two before that.

He went through every problem I'd missed. His first comment was, "Nice handwriting." … Obviously. I've known since I was little how much good handwriting matters.

I filled a whole crate of penmanship workbooks at home as a kid, purely so that when somebody at school complimented my handwriting I could say, breezily, "It's okay." Bliss. "You're barely dropping points anywhere, and you're careful.

Basically, if you've learned it, you're getting the credit for it. Your biggest problem is the hardest one at the end of the test.

Some of those go past the curriculum, so it's normal that you can't do them." Desmond stopped there. He left the rest unsaid, but I got it. I couldn't do them. Isaac could.

That was his advantage over me. Chapter 4 "And you can't only chase points in math and science. Ideally you pull another five to eight points out of English and Spanish.

Take a few from every subject." I gave him a wounded look. Like I didn't know that? English, fine. But another five to eight points in Spanish would be just about a perfect score.

Easy for him to say. Desmond looked at my tight face and grinned. "What's that look for? You hired me to raise your scores, didn't you? You doubting me?" Such a showoff.

When would I be able to show off that effortlessly?

Desmond's parents were thrilled when they found out I'd hired their son, on the grounds that it would cut down on the hours he sank into video games. ?

He sinks into video games and still coasts as a genius? I was going to cry from jealousy. College let out in midMay. High school didn't, so I could only get next door on weekends.

On school days I photographed the problems I'd gotten wrong and sent them to Desmond, and he went through them all at once on the weekend.

The truth is that with almost every one of them, I'd already worked out the approach myself before I sent it.

On the weekend Desmond asked, "You get them?" I nodded. "I got them." So Desmond pulled out a pad of scratch paper with a few problems written on it by hand. "Try these." His handwriting was clean and strong and evenly built, the kind that really does tell you something about the person.

Which reminded me of something: the handwriting class my mom signed me up for had been Desmond's parents' recommendation.

I'd never seen the problems on that pad, but they were the same type as the last big one I'd missed. The first two I got by applying the same idea.

The third one stuck me for a while, my paper filling up with crossingsout, and I stumbled my way to an answer in the end.

The last one ate two whole pages, and every approach I tried went nowhere.

I finally put my pen down and looked at Desmond. "I can't do this one." Next to me, he tipped up a corner of his mouth. "That's fine. That one's an olympiad problem.

Normal not to get it." … Extremely blunt goading. I stared at the problem for a long stretch, like I could stare a hole through it.

Desmond was enjoying himself. "All right, how about you let your Mr.

Caldwell make himself useful?" That longfingered, sharpknuckled hand picked up a pen and circled two key points on the problem.

His voice came from very close, and he turned a little toward me while he explained.

The approach that had been fog cleared up in two or three sentences. "You probably won't run into this kind of problem on a test.

Think of it as a workout for your head." Then he went back to the one before it. "My answer was right." I didn't understand why Desmond was wasting time on it.

Desmond smiled. "Same hard problem at the end of the test. You can do it, so can everyone else. How do you show that you're better than they are?" I thought about it. "The work.

Cleaner and easier to follow is better." "What else?" I had no idea. "Think about it, Genevieve.

A hard problem, and everybody else has one method, and you have two, or more." Desmond wrote Method 2 under my work. ? It hit me, and I looked up at him with my eyes shining.

Oh, this was good. So showoffy. I loved it. Then Desmond laid out five more ways to do that problem, two of which you don't touch until college.

And by the time he finished explaining, I understood them. … Chapter 5 So jealous. By early June I was out for the summer too.

When final grades came out I was still at Desmond's house doing problems. I looked at the ranking. Second, again.

Desmond glanced over. "Grades up?" I made a limp noise. "That's pretty good. Five points off the top on total score.

Better than last time." Nobody at school thought I could outscore Isaac, mainly because he used to beat my total by tenplus points, flat out. At school I was serenity itself.

In reality I was grinding my teeth to powder. Desmond's comment did not comfort me. Then he handed over a notebook. "Earlystage review plan, made for you.

Put in one summer first, and you can go compare yourself to people next semester." "Who's comparing?" Desmond nodded, humoring me. "Right, right, nobody's comparing.

A soldier who doesn't want to be a general isn't much of a soldier, and a student who doesn't want to be first isn't much of a student." … When something goes unfinished long enough, it settles in you and hardens into an obsession.

That summer I reported to Desmond's house on schedule and studied until I couldn't see straight. Even a tutor gets time off, though, and on his days off I ran problem sets at home.

Once in a while classmates asked me out, and I went. When the conversation got around to who was signed up for summer tutoring, I smiled a little. "I'm not doing any tutoring.

I've mostly been watching shows and playing games." The shows were real. Recap videos, at three times speed. The games were real too.

Desmond insisted on worklife balance and dragged me into a couple of matches. My classmates reacted exactly the way I'd expected. "Queen Gen, what would you need tutoring for?

If I were you I'd be packing for college already!" "Must be nice, having grades good enough to do whatever you want. My mom just got me a topdollar tutor, one on one. Watch shows?

I don't have the energy to hang myself." "Queen Gen, what game do you play?" I told them the name, and their face lit up. "No way, Queen Gen.

We should queue up together sometime." "Sure," I said, smiling. Great. Now I had to find time to get good at the game.

Desmond's tutoring was nothing like any tutor I'd had before, and he said so himself, bluntly. "Shoring up the basics matters, but basics alone won't carry you.

The problem types I'm giving you, you may not see once in all of senior year, but they'll train the way you think." He didn't only tutor math and science.

He took English and Spanish too. I studied in the upstairs loft at his house, at Desmond's own desk, which had been carried out of his study for me.

During the day Desmond's parents were both at work, so the house really only had the two of us in it, plus the housekeeper who came to cook.

Desmond, though, would ask me regularly, in the most tempting voice, "Genevieve. Junk food?" I suspect a solid share of what my mom paid him went straight into our stomachs.

While I worked, Desmond sat behind me on his phone, and when I finished I'd turn around for him to check it. I turned around and found him asleep on the couch.

I crouched down next to him and got a close look at skin without a single flaw, at the high bridge of his nose, at those thick lashes. … Jealousy came as easily as breathing.

I waited tenodd minutes, and when he showed no sign of surfacing, I reached over and poked his arm. Desmond woke and looked, bleary, at me, crouched beside him.

Chapter 6 It took him a few seconds. "You done?" He sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Sorry. I was gaming until four in the morning.

Little tired." Then he went to the desk, picked up the scratch paper I'd worked on, and called each answer right or wrong on sight. I watched him darkly.

Gaming until four in the morning, and then getting up early the next day to earn money tutoring? That much energy. Jealous. That was my whole summer, studying with Desmond.

Every time I thought about my first place, I studied straight through meals and sleep.

I worked through the officially released exams from the past few years and every old district common exam I could get, and on anything that wasn't openended, I took the points I was owed.

School started before I knew it. I went back earlier than Desmond did, and he produced another review plan. "Your teachers have to pace the whole class. This plan is yours.

These workbooks are ones I picked out for you at the bookstore. Message me when you have questions." I have to admit, Desmond was a conscientious tutor.

The tutoring was billed by the hour, and Desmond routinely ran long and wouldn't take the extra my mom tried to give him.

Senior year didn't reshuffle the cohorts, so the faces around me were the same ones, but the room felt noticeably tighter.

The motivational lines came from every teacher, one after another. Nothing's decided yet, so any one of you can still be the dark horse. I'd heard that one several times already.

Then came the first markingperiod exam of senior year. In every subject I gave the test my whole attention, and when I finished I checked everything over carefully.

Hiring Desmond really hadn't been a waste. I could feel that my thinking was clearer than before.

The day the rankings went up, I held down the restlessness and strolled past the Scholars Board like it meant nothing. My eyes moved slowly to the first name on the board. Genevieve