Been Here All Along Read Free Page A

best I’ve ever had, because I don’t think he’s dating me just to be able to say that he’s dating a cheerleader.
    I thought for sure my senior year would be completely boring and devoid of fun. Until Kyle showed up, looking adorable and nervous as he approached me at the homecoming dance back in October. For once there was a guy who liked me who didn’t say all the right things.
    I’d be lying if I said I’d never noticed him before. It was hard to miss him when he was a sophomore playing starting center. He made a pretty big splash for a kid who up to that point seemed to have only one friend.
    When the pep rally finally ends, I help the other girls clean up some of the posters and confetti. I spot Kyle and Gideon leaving the room together. They’re like magnets. They will find each other anywhere, anytime.
    After they’re gone, I think about how other people look at them. People who don’t know them. But it’s hard, now that I’ve spent time with Kyle and Gideon, to look at them the same way I used to.
    I used to think they were just really big nerds.
    Looking back, though, I also remember seeing them laughing all the time. Like they were sharing the best jokes that the world has ever known. They didn’t actually care if I was sitting across the cafeteria from them, thinking that they were nerds. It didn’t keep them from passing notes in Elvish.
    It still doesn’t keep them from doing that, no matter how many times I’ve joked about being uncomfortable that they’re talking shit about me in a made-up language. Kyle insists that they’re not saying anything bad. But he never actually says they’re not talking about me.
    But as Kyle is so quick to remind me, not everything is about me.
    I like to tell him that it should be. And I’m only joking a little bit when I say it.
    Kyle
    I think the new English teacher is out to get me or something. Mrs. Masterson, my old teacher, who was really, really, really old, freaking loved me. She knew I was smart and she didn’t pressure me. I’d had her for English since freshman year, and she let certain things slide. Like how bad my spelling is or when I couldn’t make the right connections between characters while we were reading The Crucible .
    But we only read two or three books a year with her. It helped that she would read most of them to us in class, because I don’t think she knew what else to do with the time. Also she’d read us a lot of poetry. She was really into poetry.
    During winter break she fell on some ice and broke her hip. I guess that made her realize how old she was, so she decided to retire. Now I have this new teacher for English, Ms. Gupta, who’s trying too hard to connect with everyone.
    We started on a Shakespeare unit in January. Our first play was King Lear , and I just didn’t get it. None of it made sense to me. Sometimes she’d give people parts to read out loud. That’s when she noticed how much trouble I have with reading. I just couldn’t keep up. My hands got all sweaty and the words started to blur. The worst part was how quiet everyone else got around me while I tried to push through one stupid sentence.
    We’re juniors in high school. We should never be forced to read aloud in class. I can read fine to myself when I can go slowly. I’m just really bad at not getting nervous and stumbling and I take a long time. Everyone gets bored listening to me.
    And in elementary school I used to get made fun of because I was so bad at reading. That doesn’t help. That doesn’t make you a very confident reader later in life. But that shouldn’t make or break my English grade ten years later.
    After the King Lear incident, she started calling on me more, and then she started asking me to stay after class.
    So for the past three months she’s been trying to “work with” me because apparently in her world I’m