The Opposite of Hallelujah by Anna Jarzab Page A

you.” When he was out of earshot, I demanded, “What’s up, Derek?” The annoyance in my tone was unmistakable, but he didn’t seem to get the hint. Typical. It was amazing how differently you saw some people once the fog of flattery and attention had burned away.
    “I just wanted to see how you were,” he said. “You were pretty upset yesterday.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Really? You seemed pissed.”
    “I was pissed.”
    “That was what was confusing,” Derek said. “I thought you might be sad or something, but you were just really angry. Not that I wouldn’t be angry if the situation was reversed, but still, it seemed like a weird reaction. Seriously. I was worried.”
    I drew in a deep breath. Derek didn’t know when to quit sometimes. I highly doubted he had spent even a millisecond of his precious time worrying about me, but he needed an excuse to bring it all up again. Just becausehe didn’t want to reel me in didn’t mean he didn’t want me on the hook.
    “Forget it,” I told him. “Things didn’t go as I planned and I’ve been under a lot of stress and I just … lost it. I’ll be fine. I am fine.”
    “Yeah, I noticed.” Derek nodded in the direction Pawel took off in.
    “Pawel’s a cool guy,” I said, hoping that my saying so didn’t make me sound too defensive. I mean, what did I care what Derek thought?
    “Where’s he from?” Derek asked.
    “Don’t know. I only met him this morning,” I said. “If you’re so curious, why don’t you ask him?”
    “Maybe I will,” he said.
    “You do that,” I told him. Why did he care so much about Pawel, anyway? Unless he was jealous. Served him right. “Okay, must get to class.”
    “Yeah, me too. Later.”
    “Bye.”
    He walked off. I stared after him. I felt weirdly out of step. Things were changing fast. Derek had been my boyfriend, and now he wasn’t. Hannah had been a nun, and now she wasn’t. I didn’t know how to act normally around either of them. I liked things clearly defined; it was how I made sense of the world. People were either this thing or that thing. Gray areas made me nervous; ambiguity was to be avoided at all costs. That was why Iliked science and math. Two plus two always equals four, always , and you don’t have to explain why; that’s just the way it is. There are rules, constants. The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second, no matter what. Rules and constants comforted me; even variables had a feeling of stability to them, because they were always part of an equation that you could solve. But what if it was all variables? What if you never knew what was coming next? What if you couldn’t predict which things would change and which things would stay the same? What if there was nothing you could really count on, not even yourself?

    As soon as I got home that afternoon, I went straight to my room. My phone rang immediately. “Hey, Reb,” I said, propping the phone against my ear with my shoulder and rummaging through my bag for my physics book. “What’s up?”
    “I heard two interesting pieces of gossip,” Reb began. “First, you and Derek are friends again. That was quick.”
    “Who’d you hear that from?” I asked.
    “Eesha saw you guys talking in the corridor between periods,” Reb said. “But she insisted that it didn’t look romantic.”
    “It wasn’t,” I told her. “And we’re not friends again.”
    “Good. You need a break from him. I cannot take any pining.”
    What happened to all the sympathy I’d gotten the day before? As this situation had reminded me, things changed awful quickly in high school. “Um, okay. What’s the second piece of gossip?”
    “New Boy. Erin told me you’re in love.”
    I sighed. “I’m not in love with Pawel.”
    “So he has a name,” Reb said. Clearly she hadn’t been paying attention in French class. “What else?”
    “That’s it. His name is Pawel Sobczak and he’s a transfer.”
    “From where?”
    “No idea.”
    “Well,