Under Pressure

“You ready for these?” Kyle asked.

Bob blinked and looked up from his notes. “Pardon?”

Kyle twirled his pen; it was a nervous gesture, one Bob had seen him perform many times before, usually when he was talking to that girl Mary. “The exams. You know? I’m kinda scared. All the pressure.”

“Oh.” The exams. Pressure. College. Bob supposed he should have been frightened, but he wasn’t really planning on going to college. He didn’t think it would be socially appropriate, as Carolyn always put it, to inform Kyle that he had the money to go to college three times over without going into even a smidgeon of debt. “I guess the pressure is, er, bad.” For him, pressure was not screwing up a gig at an award show on national television.

Kyle arched one eyebrow. “You don’t seem that nervous.” He craned his neck to peer at Bob’s notes. “You must have studied pretty hard, then, huh?”

“I studied as hard as I could,” Bob said.

Mary paused by Bob’s desk. “Ready for this, rock star?”

Bob hated it when people called him that. “As ready as I can be.”

A sour expression marred Kyle’s nervous grin. “Right. I forgot who you are. After performing in front of thousands of screaming fans, a little test is probably nothing for you.”

“Depends on the type of test,” Bob said. He remembered sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting for the test results after his last round of chemotherapy.

The teacher burst into the room. “Take your seats. Test begins in ten minutes.”

Bob didn’t have the heart to tell his classmates that he could do music theory in his sleep. After all, he’d been writing songs since he was five.

(289 words)