When I get home, I change out of my Windsor uniform for the final time and slip into some jeans and a T-shirt.
“Kennedy!” Frankie calls from his bedroom as I pass by on my way downstairs.
I poke my head through his open door to find him on the floor working on his board game. “What?”
“I figured out how to fix it! How to make it way simpler.”
“That’s great! What is it?”
He beams proudly at me. “I’m going to add an Antimatter Tower! To counteract all the matter.”
Even though I don’t have the slightest clue what he’s talking about, I still give him my best smile and say, “Good idea!”
I head downstairs to the basement and pull on the cord to turn on the light. I take a glance around at all the dusty boxes lining the shelves, Mom’s old treadmill in the corner, holiday decorations, boxes of clothes that Frankie and I never wear.
Dad is finally coming home this weekend and I want everything to be ready. It shouldn’t be a problem. After today, I’ll have a lot of free time on my hands.
I switch off my ringer, blast my music through my headphones, and get to work. Clearing boxes, making piles, dusting shelves, sweeping floors.
I’m so engrossed in the process, I don’t even hear the basement door open a few hours later. I don’t hear the heavy footsteps on the stairs. But I do hear my father’s gruff voice when he appears in the doorway.
“Kennedy?”
“Dad!” I yank my earbuds out and stare, flabbergasted, at him. He’s still dressed in his work clothes and he has a pile of mail in his hand. “What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming home until this weekend.”
“I wasn’t,” he growls. “Until I got a very interesting call from your school a few hours ago and I was forced to take an earlier flight.”
My face falls. “Oh.”
“What is this about you dropping out of Windsor?”
I tuck my hands behind my back and nod. “I did. I dropped out.”
“What were you thinking? Are you crazy? We’re going straight back there in the morning and getting you your spot back.”
“No,” I say as sternly as possible.
My dad balks. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, no. I’m not going back. I’m eighteen years old. I’m a legal adult. This is my choice.”
“B-b-but,” Dad stammers, “what are you going to do?”
“I already enrolled at Southwest High down the street. I start January 5. I’ll finish out my senior year there. It will be fine. Everything will be fine.”
He sighs and rubs his forehead. “Kennedy.”
“It’s good,” I tell him. “This is a good thing. You can quit your job. You can go back to photographing things you love.” I gesture to the half-finished space around me. “I’m turning this into a studio for you.”
“What?”
“You’ll need a place to work. You can stay home and take photos and Mom can go back to the office if she wants and everything will be better.”
“Kennedy,” he repeats. “Not this again. I told you. The photo thing is never going to work out. There’s no money in photographing people’s eyeballs. If you did all of this just so that I would quit my job—”
“Oh!” I say, ignoring him. I reach into my pocket and pull out a piece of paper. “Here’s the phone number of the woman who owns an art gallery downtown. I’ve been emailing with her. She wants to talk to you about putting on a show.”
My dad looks at me, completely stunned, then down at the piece of paper in my hand. “A show?”
I nod, beaming. “Yeah. I emailed her some of your old pieces from the Portals project. She flipped. She loves them. And she wants to meet with you.”
He continues to stare at the small scrap of paper with the handwritten phone number on it. I nudge it toward him and he eventually takes it, accidentally dropping the stack of mail under his arm in the process.
The letters fan out across the floor. One larger envelope peeks out from the pile and I freeze when I see the logo on the top left corner.
Columbia University.
The blood in my veins congeals as I slowly bend down to pick it up.
“Dad,” I say uneasily. “What day is it?”
“Thursday,” he replies absentmindedly, still hung up on the fact that I basically just handed him the artistic break of his career.
“No, I mean, the date.”
“December 15,” he says. “Why?”
December 15. Oh my God. This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Early decision letters. I’ve been so preoccupied with everything else going on around here, I completely lost track of the date.
Dad leans in to see what I’m holding and I can feel him stiffen beside me. “It’s big,” he remarks.
I run my fingers around the edge of the envelope. He’s right. It is big. Which usually means good news.
“Well,” he says, nudging me excitedly. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“I’m scared,” I say, turning to face him. My heart is pounding in my chest. This was it. This was everything I’d been waiting for. Everything I’d worked for. For the past three and a half years, this had been the goal. The finish line. The destination.
“You got in,” Dad assures me. “With all of your accomplishments and your GPA at the Windsor Academy, there’s no way they’d reject you.”
Unless they knew the truth, I think bitterly.
“Open it!” Dad urges.
With trembling fingers, I slowly peel away at the top of the envelope, feeling my breath grow heavy with each passing second. I reach into the open slit and pull out a single sheet of paper.
I turn it around so I can read the words.
All I need to see is the first one.
Congratulations!
My knees go weak. All the blood rushes out of my head. And then, just before my legs give out from under me, I swear I feel something pass through me. Like an energy. A spirit. The ghost of everything that I could be and won’t ever become.
And then, I’m falling.
Falling through time.
Falling through space.
Falling onto the hard cement floor of the basement.