I’ve been told I have a temper.
I prefer to be called tempestuous. Big word for a soccer jock, I know, but work in a bookstore as many summers as I have, and you can’t help but broaden your vocabulary.
tempestuous: typified by strong, turbulent, or conflicting emotion
For better or for worse, that’s me, Willa Rose Sutter, to a T.
Is my fuse a little short? Sure. Are my responses occasionally disproportionate? Sometimes. I could learn to simmer down here and there, but I refuse to subdue the storm inside me.
Because inextricably knotted with my tempestuousness is the force of nature that is my drive. I’m competitive. And that is an advantageous personality trait. I’m an aspiring professional athlete, set on becoming the world’s best in my sport. To be the best, you need raw skill, but even more so, you have to be hungry. You have to want it more than anybody else. That’s how far-off dreams become reality.
So, yes. Sometimes I’m a little feisty. I’m scrappy and hardworking, and I like to win. I don’t settle. I won’t give up. Nothing gets in my way.
Which is why I seriously need to get my shit together, because something is about to get in my way.
My eligibility for next week’s match against our biggest rival hangs by a thread, thanks to the Business Mathematics course and the professor from hell.
I’m late to class, trying not to limp because of how much my muscles ache after a brutal practice. As I scurry down the ramp in the massive lecture hall, it takes everything in me not to say ouch-ouch-ouch with every single step I take.
The room’s packed, only a few stray seats remaining in the very first row.
A groan leaves me. Great. I get to show up late and make that super obvious by sitting front and center. As quietly as I can manage with muscles that are screaming for ibuprofen and a hot bath, I slip into an empty spot and silently extract my notebook.
Professor MacCormack continues scribbling equations on the board. Maybe my late entrance went undetected.
“Miss Sutter.” He drops the chalk and spins, dusting off his hands. “Good of you to join us.” Dammit.
“Sorry, Professor.”
“Get caught up from Ryder.” Completely sidestepping my apology, MacCormack spins back to the board and throws a thumb over his shoulder to the right of me. “He has my notes.”
My jaw drops. I’ve asked Mac for notes three times so far this semester, when I had to miss due to traveling games. He’d shrugged, then said I needed to “problem solve and figure out my priorities.” This Ryder guy just gets them?
That temper of mine turns my cheeks red. The tips of my ears grow hot, and if flames could burst out of my head, they would.
Finally, I turn to where Mac gestured, sickly curious to see this guy that my professor favors with lecture notes while I’m left scrambling to catch up with no help whatsoever. And I really need that help. I’m barely holding a C minus that’s about to become a D, unless God looks with favor on his lowly maiden Willa Rose Sutter and does her a solid on our upcoming midterm.