396. Chapter 396
The only advantage of finals week is that she almost never has to change out of her pajamas.
Maggie says they’re cute.
She only hears Eliza’s voice in her head, laughing softly and asking her why exams prevent her from proper hygiene.
Because of you, Mom, she wants to say, but she only says it in her head.
Because Eliza also texts her every day, wishing her luck while telling her she doesn’t need luck, because she is brilliant, and she is proud of her, and she can do this.
It warms her heart, but it makes her feel the pressure more acutely, somehow all at the same time.
She lets Maggie read the texts over her shoulder.
Maggie never says anything.
There’s been radio silence from her mother for going on five years now.
So they don’t talk about it. Eliza. Because Alex wonders if it’s better to have a mother who showers her with both love and with pressure than to have a mother who doesn’t even know her daughter’s in college, let alone going through finals week.
They don’t talk about it, but Maggie squeezes her thigh and kisses the back of her neck and Alex does the same for her.
It’s just as well.
They have studying to do.
Sometimes Alex needs to down anti-anxiety meds and coffee – it makes her shake terribly, but it keeps her awake and it keeps her from panicking so hard she can’t breathe – and lock herself in a study room in the library, alone.
Maggie smuggles in food at three am, and she makes sure Alex eats and drinks before she retreats back out of Alex’s frenetic study space.
Sometimes Alex needs to lay on the floor of Maggie’s dorm room, flat on her back, her feet up on Maggie’s couch, in Maggie’s lap, while Maggie and Lena quiz her, rapid fire – the only way she likes it, under pressure – on quantum entanglement and polyatomic anions and seventeenth century French politics.
Lena has to help them both with that last bit: boarding school prepared her for those history tests better than anything Maggie or Alex had experienced.
Alex still nearly fails.
Maggie has to hold her all night to remind her that she is not her test grades.
That her worth is far greater, always, than the sum of her scores.
Maggie doesn’t talk much about her own stress.
About the way she studies long after even Alex falls asleep.
Because Lena’s mother is paying for everything, and Alex’s mother is paying for everything, but Maggie doesn’t even know her mother anymore, and even if she did, paying for college would be a waste because she could just stay on the family farm.
She scoffs to herself.
She could have, if they let her.
But they didn’t, so she’s on scholarship. She’s on scholarship that she worked silently, steadily, desperately to get.
She’s on scholarship and she cannot lose it.
Because if she loses it, she will have no education, no housing, no job, no income, no Alex. No anything.
If she loses it, she’ll be fourteen again.
So Alex sets her alarm for four am, because they don’t talk about it, but Alex still knows. She sets her alarm and she bundles herself in her biggest hoodie and she stumbles out to the only all night cafeteria across campus, and she comes back to feed Maggie, just like Maggie feeds her.
She holds her and she tells her she’s incredible and she’s tough and she’s smart and she’s going to kick this exam in the face.
Lena, sleeping on her and Maggie’s couch with an astrophysics book still in her hands, mutters something about blackbody radiation, and Alex and Maggie have to stifle each other’s giggles.
None of them wake up in time for their biology exam.
Lucy Lane has to burst into Maggie and Lena’s dorm, hollering about Alex needing to text when she’s not going to come home, to text when she’s planning to sleep away that perfect grade they all know she’s going to get, and “hey, Sawyer, anyone tell you you look adorable in Danvers’s sweaters?” and “Danvers, I know we have to get going, but damn, do you maybe wanna put on some pants first?”
Her jovial spirit doesn’t fool any of them: they know she’s been up all night, same as them, pacing, panicking, but they know James and Winn kept her sane, kept her safe, kept her stable.
Alex smiles down at the text she gets from Kara, from Eliza, a selfie of the two of them together, holding a sign that Kara clearly made, telling her that her semi-permeable membranes are only letting in the best of luck.
Maggie reminds Alex to eat something to go with her anti-anxiety pill, and Lena takes hers when she thinks no one’s watching. Lucy touches her arm and gives her a small grin.
“The boys are saving us seats,” she tells them all. “I don’t think Schott wanted to risk getting decapitated by any of you if he walked in and you weren’t decent or something.”
“He knows we’re all queer, right?”
“He also knows you’re all dangerous.”
Alex, Lena, and Maggie grin, shrug, and nod. “Fair point.”
They walk in together, and Maggie hugs James, hugs Winn. Lena and Alex sort of grin at them faintly.
Maggie kisses Alex’s hand.
“You’re amazing, Danvers,” she whispers as they settle into their lecture hall seats. “And when we’re done, you can make like DNA helicase and unzip – “
“Oh my god, Sawyer, we’re about to take a final, could you not?”
“Hey, I’m just trying to comfort my girlfriend, you don’t have to get all snappy because you don’t have one.”
She, Lucy, and Alex all stare at each other for a long moment, and then lean into each other, bursting into hysterical laughter.
Maybe this – this friendship, this love, this community – maybe this was more important than the letter they earned, after all.
Alex still nearly throws up when the exam is placed in front of her, and Maggie closes her eyes for a long moment, doing what she always does with exams: wiping her mind completely blank – thank god for yoga – so when she opens her eyes, her knowledge will be fresh, her approach will be fresh, her spirit will be fresh. She focuses on writing her name, clean and neat and confident.
She’ll dive into the rest of the exam with that confidence.
The confidence – the drive – that the burden of her name gives her.
To her other side, Lena is doing the same.
Alex and Lena are the first to finish and the last to leave.
Maggie, James, Lucy, and Winn all finish at different paces, but they all wait, idly going over their tests, doodling on their scrap paper, breathing, fantasizing, wishing, waiting – until Alex and Lena are done meticulously going over their answers, meticulously making sure that not a mark is out of place.
They don’t leave before their friends do because they know it’ll send them into a panic. That they did something wrong. That they’re stupid for taking too long. That they’re alone, alone, alone.
And they’re not alone. So they wait.
And they all leave together, Alex with her phone bursting with congratulatory texts from Kara, taking selfies in her high school bathroom with thumbs up and kisses and congratulations on finishing captions.
They all leave together, pushing out the doors of the lecture hall, out of the maze of the science building, and into the dazzling daylight of their campus.
None of them have slept, and none of them have treated their bodies particularly well, beyond what the people who love them forced them to eat, to drink.
But now? Now they get to lay on the quad – James spreading his jacket down for Lena, Maggie pulling Alex into her arms, Lucy adjusting Winn like he’s a pillow – and they get to laugh, and they get to sleep, and they get to dare to dream that they’re worth it, that they did it, that are, indeed, more than the sum of their scores.