Chapter Text
“Is college better or worse than high school?” Keefe asked, his phone propped up against one side of his desk on speaker. He was snacking on goldfish over two open notebooks: his sketchbook and his calculus notebook. He couldn’t focus on math homework for long periods of time without a distraction, so he let himself doodle when his brain needed a break.
Right now, he was focusing on neither, though he absentmindedly added a few lines to his sketch as Fitz replied through his phone, “Definitely better. Make sure you sign up for afternoon classes. I haven’t gotten this much sleep in ages.”
“You could have gotten more if you didn’t do every existing club plus study into ungodly hours of the morning,” Keefe pointed out, shaking his head fondly at the memory of his friend’s insane high school study habits.
“Yes, but then would I have been valedictorian?”
“I’m going to be valedictorian,” Keefe pointed out, “and I barely study at all.” Although, that was exactly what he had been doing when Fitz called, but Fitz didn’t need to know that.
“You don’t know that,” Fitz reminded him. “Sophie’s a pretty strong contender as well.”
Aaaand there it was. The reason he was studying.
“Yeah, but she won’t beat me,” Keefe said with more confidence than he felt. The truth was, she probably would have if he hadn’t suddenly started caring and he would have let her without even noticing. He hadn’t thought about his grades really at all. They just were. He didn’t put in effort, but he’d glance over his textbook enough that his photographic memory helped him out on tests, and… yeah. His GPA was pretty good, and his attendance record was trash. That was all.
Until he’d gotten into that one stupid fight with Sophie Foster.
He and Sophie didn’t really hang out. Keefe mostly admired the way her hair fell over her shoulders from afar. The most he knew about her before then was that she was drop-dead gorgeous and incredibly intelligent. But on the first day of AP English class their senior year, their teacher made everyone trade phone numbers with the person next to them, and Sophie and Keefe had been paired to trade numbers. The idea was that if they were ever sick and missed class, they could text that person to get notes.
Sophie had mumbled something under her breath about how getting Keefe’s number was pretty useless, since he never even showed up to class. And, well, Keefe had felt the need to defend himself against her, especially since he hadn’t imagined her with a sharp tongue. In his head, she was a fairy princess goddess who talked in intelligent-sounding paragraphs during class and then tucked her hair behind her ear with her mechanical pencil and went back to taking notes. In his defense, that was all he’d seen of her beforehand.
“I don’t show up because I don’t need to,” Keefe said as flippantly as he could as he typed his number into Sophie’s phone.
“That’s rich.”
“Really? Then why do I have a 101.8 GPA?”
“Because you don’t come to class,” she replied. “I do come, which is why I have a 102.1 GPA.”
Stupid 100-point-scale GPAs. “If we were on a four point scale, I guarantee you we’d be tied.”
“And yet we’re not, which is why I’m going to be valedictorian and you aren’t.” She took her phone back out of his hands, saved his number, rolled her eyes, and promptly went back to ignoring him.
Keefe couldn’t ignore her, though. Not just because she was the most gorgeous sight in the room, but also because despite the fact that he’d never given a second thought to his grades in his entire life, he suddenly became determined to prove her wrong. “I’d be willing to bet I’m the one who gives that valedictorian speech in June,” Keefe ventured.
Sophie turned back to him, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll take that bet if it means you buy me a ukulele if you lose,” she said, clearly thinking he was joking.
“Bet,” Keefe said without hesitation, though he hadn’t been expecting Sophie to ask for a ukulele. “And if I win…”
“You’re serious?” Sophie asked, blinking once. “Really? You’ll buy me a ukulele if I’m valedictorian?”
“Unless you’d rather change the terms. And if I win, you have to go out on a date with me.” What? Keefe wasn’t probably going to shoot his shot ever, so this was about as good a chance as he was ever going to get.
Sophie raised both her eyebrows incredulously. “I don’t want to go out on a date with you.”
He flashed his signature smirk. “Better get studying then, Foster.”
And that was how the bet was formed. Hence, he was studying calculus.
“I wouldn’t be so positive,” Fitz warned him. “She’s a smart cookie, and especially now that you’ve mixed a bet into the deal, she’ll be putting her all into those grades. With a new ukulele and not having to go out with you on the line…”
“Going out with me is a privilege, thank you very much.”
“Is it really? Then why does she only have to do it if she loses?” Keefe could hear Fitz’s challenging eyebrow raise through the call, despite the fact that he couldn't see him.
“Cause… well, she’s way out of my league. Only girl who is. And she’d probably never say yes to going out with me under normal circumstances anyway, so…” Keefe shrugged. “I don’t know. I was never going to ask her out otherwise. I don’t exactly have a chance, do I?”
“Your hero worship of Sophie Foster has gotten way out of control.”
“I do not worship her!” Keefe countered, though it was kind of a lie. “I just acknowledge the objective facts, like… she’s beautiful and smart and well-spoken and talented and apparently secretly likes music, since she asked for a ukulele…”
“Dude, you have it so bad.”
“Yeah, well, maybe when I’m valedictorian and she goes out with me on our obligatory date, she’ll change her mind about me,” Keefe pointed out. “Especially since she’ll have to admit she was wrong about me being stupid.”
“She didn’t say you were stupid, she said you didn’t go to class,” Fitz pointed out. “Talk about objective facts.”
“Yeah, well, class is stupid,” Keefe replied, as though it was the most valid excuse ever made. “So much sitting around. I don’t need it. Ugh, if I’d let them skip me a grade, I’d already be in college,” he complained.
“Hey, you’re the one who decided not to.”
“Yeah, because I’m not playing into my dad’s ploys to make me seem like some ultra special Sencen. The more shame I can bring on my family’s name, the better. I’m not letting him have something dumb like that to brag about to his stuffy friends,” Keefe said more bitterly than he intended. “If he can’t be proud of me for being myself, he doesn’t get to be proud of me.” Okay, now he was getting all pouty. He needed to subject change before Fitz called him out on it. “Anyway, now I’m in Sophie’s grade, meaning I get to beat her for valedictorian and earn that date with her.”
Fitz laughed. “Yeah, okay. Well, if you really want to earn a date with her, I suggest being real with her. She doesn’t strike me as the type of girl to go for your ‘bad boy’ persona.”
“Think she’d fall for a valedictorian?”
“You are down so bad.”