The Monday after prom brought us crashing back to reality.
Finals week had arrived.
I sat at the kitchen table at 6 AM, surrounded by textbooks, note cards, and approximately four hundred highlighters. My AP Calculus final was in three hours, and I was nowhere near ready.
"You need to sleep," Kai said, setting a fresh cup of coffee beside me. He'd gotten up early too, though his Computer Science final wasn't until afternoon.
"I need to memorize integration formulas."
"You know integration formulas. You've been studying for weeks."
"Knowing and remembering under pressure are two different things." I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion making everything blur together. "What if I forget everything? What if I fail? What if"
"Aria." Kai gently closed my textbook. "Breathe. You're going to do great. You always do."
"Stanford is watching my final grades. One bad test could"
