I click Print on my laptop and watch the crisp sheets of paper appear on the printer tray. I grab the stack, tap the pages against the table, and staple them together. I spent the entire flight home from New York and the rest of the night working on the final draft of my personal essay and now it’s ready.
It finally feels personal. It finally feels like the truth.
It’s Friday and school let out a few minutes ago. I’ve been waiting all day to turn this in. I stand up from the small computer bay in the Sanderson-Ruiz Library and glance around the beautiful building. I don’t know how many times I scoured the Internet for pictures of this place. I don’t know how many times I lay in bed thinking about what it would feel like to be here. But now I see the truth behind the glossy exterior. I see the true cost of this building. These books. This privilege.
It’s a price I’m not willing to pay anymore.
I’m just about to start for the door when I see Dylan. He looks like he’s searching for something. When he spots me, he smiles and heads my way.
I hurriedly stuff my laptop into my bag and start for the door. I don’t want to talk to him right now. I can’t be distracted from what I’m about to do.
I bolt outside, into the cool December air. It’s barely four o’clock and the sun is already setting, coloring the campus in the most amazing yellow-pink glow.
“Hey! Kennedy!” I hear Dylan call from behind me. “Wait up!”
I don’t slow. I curve around Waldorf Pond and head for Royce Hall. This paper is burning a hole in my hand. I need to get rid of it. I need to be done with this.
Dylan finally catches up with me at Bellum Hall. He falls into step beside me. “I’ve been looking for you all day. Where have you been?”
Hiding is the answer that comes to mind. “Working” is the answer I give.
The truth is I’ve been avoiding everyone today. I went to class. I kept my head down and my mouth shut. One last day, I kept telling myself. I just have to get through this one last day and then it will all be over. I’ll turn in my paper. Fitz will read it. He’ll tell the dean. She’ll call my parents. Expulsion papers will be drawn up and that will be it.
“Look,” he says, somewhat breathless from trying to keep up, “I’ve been thinking all week. About your story. And I think I found another way in.”
“I told you,” I say curtly. “There’s no more story. I’m dropping it. And you should, too.”
The pathway splits and I veer left toward Royce Hall. Dylan walks briskly beside me. “Kennedy,” he says, an edge to his voice. “Don’t do this. Don’t let them get to you. Don’t let them keep you from doing what you want. That’s their M.O. They try to keep us all in chains. They turn us into monsters. But not you.”
“It’s too late,” I tell him. “They’ve already gotten to me. I’m already a monster.”
“No!” he says. “That’s the thing. You’re not. I mean, yeah, I thought you were. For a long time, I was convinced you were basically their leader. But now I’ve seen the other side of you. I’ve seen who you really are.”
Yeah, I think bitterly. So have I. That’s the problem.
I reach the front steps of Royce Hall and Dylan finally grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop. He gazes into my eyes with an intensity that makes my limbs go weak.
“Finish the story. Don’t give up. We’ll figure out who did it. We’ll find a way.”
“I did it!” I yell, finally losing my patience. “There is no story, because it’s me. It’s been me all along.”
He blinks. “What?”
I hold up the paper. “It was me. I’m the perp. I opened the email account. I stole the tests from the server. I sold them to the students. I’m the monster you always thought I was. And now I’m turning myself in.”
He looks from me to the essay, confusion etched into his face. “But…” he says, rubbing his temples.
“Oh, come on. I know you already suspected me. That’s what you were trying to tell me in the car.”
“No, I was trying to tell you that I was wrong to suspect you.”
“Well,” I say indignantly, “it turns out you weren’t. You were right. I’m exactly the person you always thought I was.”
A flicker of something passes over his face. Pain? Recognition? More confusion? I can’t tell. “But if it was you all along, why were you investigating?”
I push past him toward the stairs. “It’s a long story. You wouldn’t understand.”
Dylan catches up with me again at the top of the steps. “Kennedy. Wait. Think this through. They’re going to expel you.”
“I have thought it through.” My voice softens. “And this is what I need to do.”
He steps in front of me, forcing me to a stop again. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” I move around him, through the front doors, up to the second floor. I can hear Dylan’s feet pounding behind me. I march determinedly toward Fitz’s classroom—211—and rap on the door. There’s no answer. I try the handle but it’s locked. He must have already left for the day.
“Kennedy,” Dylan pleads, panting from the chase. “Don’t do this. You’ll ruin your whole future. Think about Columbia. Think about becoming a journalist.”
I close my eyes, trying to put up a fortress to protect me from his words. They’re not unfamiliar. I’ve heard them all before. In my own head. They echoed inside my brain the entire flight home from New York. But I can’t keep living this lie. I can’t keep hiding from my mistakes. I have to face the consequences.
My dad was right. I’m not a quitter. I follow through with my decisions.
And this is how the decision ends.
I’m tired of lying.
I’m tired of ignoring the truth that’s been closing in around me for more than three years.
I’m tired of saying “I’m fine.”
“I know,” I say quietly. To Dylan. To the universe. To myself. “But I can’t stay here. I ruin people’s lives here. I destroy other people’s futures here. I can’t keep doing that just to save my own.”
“No,” I hear Dylan say, and suddenly the paper is ripped right out of my hands. Dylan stalks toward the nearest trash can, preparing to tear the essay in half.
I groan and follow him. “Dylan. Stop. What are you doing?”
“I’m keeping you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
“This isn’t your decision to make!” I cry. “It’s mine!”
He stops at the trash can, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his hands poised on the sides of the paper, ready to destroy. He looks at me, then at the essay. “You’re right. It’s your decision.” He proffers the pages to me. “Now make the right one.”
I glance down at the essay. It’s creased and a little bent from his grip. I take it, smooth it out against my leg, and turn back to room 211.
“But before you do,” Dylan says, “you should know something.”
I exhale and turn back to face him. “What?”
“Until last week, this place sucked. I hated it here. I just wanted out. But I felt trapped. Because of all the expectations that were shoved onto my shoulders from the minute I was born. But do you know what changed that?”
I feel tears welling up in my eyes. I shake my head.
He takes a purposeful step toward me. “You. I met you. Not the brainwashed, stuck-up girl who went on one amazing date with me and then never returned my texts. Not the zombie queen I thought I knew. But some other version of you. One that I didn’t even realize existed. And then, suddenly, this place became bearable again. You think you ruin everyone’s life by being here. Well, you don’t. Not everyone’s. Some lives you make better by being here.”
He grabs my hand and squeezes it. I feel that same shiver I felt in Peabody’s when he first touched me. I open my mouth to speak but my words are cut off. Suddenly the shiver is everywhere. In my feet. In my hands. In my hair follicles. And mostly on my lips.
Because Dylan is kissing me.
With urgency. With desperation. With longing.
His lips plead against mine. His hands wind into my hair like he’s trying to keep me here. His body pushes me against the wall. And I feel it like I’ve never felt anything before.
It’s the kind of kiss that can make someone reconsider their choices. It’s the kind of kiss that can sway someone’s judgment, change someone’s mind, alter the course of someone’s entire life. I know because I’ve felt it before.
The kiss was different, the boy was younger, but the sensation was the same.
I chose to stay after Austin kissed me in that movie theater. I chose to give up everything I thought I wanted, everything I thought defined me, because of the promise of that one kiss. And I can feel myself wanting to do it again. Wanting to defy my instincts, take the easy road, turn my back on what I know to be right.
“Stay,” Dylan pleads, his breath on my face, his hands cupping my cheeks.
I lean my forehead against his. I breathe in that delicious scent. I take a moment to think about what it would be like. If I said yes. If I ripped up this paper and threw it away. If I quietly finished out my last semester here. Not bothering anyone. Not breaking any more rules. Just keeping my head down and my nose clean. If I had Dylan beside me.
It could work. It could be amazing. It could be exactly the life I envisioned.
But it won’t. Because the life I envisioned turned out to be an illusion. A lie. And I would always carry the truth around with me in the back of my mind.
I would always know that I hadn’t played fair.
“I can’t,” I whisper. Then I duck away from him, walk the three paces back to room 211, and slide the paper under the locked door.