I FLING OPEN THE DOOR to my dorm room, praying Joni’s there so I can tell her what Sturtevant just told me, but she’s not!
I plunk down on my bed and text SOS to Julia and Andrea, and a second later they FaceTime me from Andrea’s bedroom. When they pop onto my screen, the sight of them floods me with relief.
“You look awful,” Julia says.
Andrea elbows her. “You have no filter. Right, Frankie? She needs a filter.”
“I miss you guys,” I say, feeling so scattered I hardly know where to start. “And even supermodels look worse on FaceTime. It’s been proven.”
“We miss you,” Andrea says.
“I had to mop the mess hall tonight,” I say, already feeling a lump in my throat. “Because I got in trouble with my TAC, and then she talked to me tonight about how I have to be better here and stop getting into trouble or I could get expelled, and . . .”
“Who’s Zack?” Andrea asks.
“Not Zack. TAC. Tactical officer.”
“Expelled?” Julia repeats. “What did you get in trouble for?”
“Um, well, a few things,” I say, making myself tell them no matter how embarrassed I am. “I answered my phone in PT one morning, and then I snuck out with that cute guy Jack I told you about, and I got caught. Someone—I think this girl Amanda—sent a picture of me out at night to Lt. Sturtevant, who’s like this scary headmaster lady in charge of me.” I picture Jack giving me his number that day in Military Strategy, and the way his dark eyes crinkled at the corners, and how concerned he looked when I had to leave class for the lieutenant’s office. “Today I wore stiletto boots instead of my uniform shoes, and . . .”
“Wait, you snuck out with a guy?” Andrea asks
“Well, not just any guy: Jack.”
She still looks shocked, and I get it, because I’ve never done anything like that before, unless you count my kiss with Josh, which she doesn’t even know about. And it’s not like I was trying to keep what happened with Jack from them, and I’m sure I would have already told them if I were still there, but FaceTime is different, because what if Andrea’s parents (or, worse, her witch-tastic older sister) are right outside the room and can hear our conversation?
Julia doesn’t seem that surprised. This year she told me: Adolescence is a time of vital brain development, Frankie. We have to lay down the proper neural pathway for our future. I wasn’t concerned about my neural development, but now I’m second-guessing myself.
Jesus. And now I’m crying.
“Don’t cry,” Andrea says, sniffling. She always gets weepy when someone else cries. It’s her only soft spot, really. Last year one of her competitors got wind of it and used it against her during a tennis match by pretending to sob while playing.
“I can’t seem to stop doing stuff I’m not supposed to,” I say. I also kissed Josh. I also cheated on a test. “My parents would freak out if they knew. And if I get expelled, that means I’d have to repeat sophomore year in Mount Pleasant! You guys would be juniors, and I’d still be a sophomore!”
Andrea gasps, and I cry harder. Julia says, “Frankie, listen,” and I do, because Julia always knows. “You just need to figure out how to be yourself there and follow all the rules.”
“But what if myself is bad?” I ask.
“You’re not bad,” she says. She taps a finger against her computer screen like she’s trying to touch me. Technology is so weird. “You’re you, Frankie. A total original. So don’t worry about how you snuck out, just don’t do it again.”
It’s the simple-but-good kind of advice you read in Seventeen magazine, the kind of advice that sounds like a no-brainer but actually works if you follow it. And maybe I can follow other kinds of rules, the ones set in place by the Academy to make me stronger and more respectful. Maybe if I tried to follow the rules a little bit closer and attempted to learn discipline, I’d do better. Even if it was more boring.
“Now, how can you get back on this lieutenant’s good side?”
I sniff. “I have this leadership project I’m supposed to pitch to her at our next meeting,” I say. “We have to develop some big idea we work on to demonstrate what great leaders we are. I just have zero good ideas right now.”
Andrea wipes her tears. Julia says, “Make it something only you could do,” and then there’s a knock at the door.
“Hang on,” I say to Julia and Andrea. I move across my room and open the door to see Archie.
“Frankie, hi,” he says. He’s holding a shoe box. “For you,” he says, passing me the box.
“Where did you get these?” I ask. I’ve been waiting for these shoes for weeks!
“Sturtevant,” he says plainly. “I’m on errand duty.”
Lt. Sturtevant must have figured out a way to get me new shoes after our conversation. . . .
“Who’s that?!” Andrea yells from inside my room. “What a hottie!”
Archie glances to the screen and looks mortified when he realizes we’re on FaceTime. “Sorry,” I say to Archie. “She has no filter.” I’m about to say something else, but then Archie politely excuses himself like some kind of concierge.
“Thanks!” I call down the hall after him.
I shut the door and bring my new shoes in a size seven over to my desk. “You’re ridiculous,” I say to Andrea, who’s laughing. I lift my shoes out of the box for my friends to see. I’m embarrassed, not by the uniform shoes, but by the fact that I got myself sent here in the first place.
“We’re gonna need those J. Crew rhinestone shoe clips you wore last summer,” Andrea says.
I try to smile, but Julia doesn’t. Instead, she moves a little closer to the screen, and says, “You can do this, Frankie, I know you can.”