Chapter Fifteen
3 years, 19 weeks, 1 day
My brain throbs with a painful rhythm, trying to escape the household of abuse that is my skull. I crack my eyes open, light assaulting them. I wince and yelp, and pull the covers over my head. Whose bed is this? Why am I wearing this soft white shirt?
And then it hits me, and my brain melts out my ears. This is Avery’s house. Avery’s guest room. Jack’s shirt. I’m hungover and wearing Jack Hunter’s shirt. My breathing quickens, panic settling on my chest like a fat, evil little man. No one’s next to me in the bed. It’s completely made, so no one slept there. It was just me. I think. I frantically scrabble in my mind for memories of what happened last night, but it’s a massive blank. I don’t remember anything.
I ease out of bed and test my weight on the floor. My mouth tastes like sin on a hot biscuit. I go into the bathroom and rub toothpaste on my teeth with my finger. It’ll do for now. I sniff at myself—I don’t smell like sex. That’s a good sign. But it doesn’t mean nothing happened. I wish I could fucking remember! I pull the shirt off and put my costume back on. How did I ever manage to get this off? Or did I not take this off? Did someone else? Did Ja—
The door opens, and Jack looks in. He’s shirtless, his stomach and chest torqued with fine definition. It almost distracts me from his worried face. Almost.
“You’re up,” he says.
“What the hell happened last night?”
“No time. Kayla needs you.”
He ducks out of the door. Cold dread settles in my stomach, and I follow him down the hall. Candy wrappers and empty red cups litter the floor. The barest of sunlight streams through the windows—it’s not full morning, but it’s not night, either. I check my phone. Six exactly. Most of the party crowd’s gone. Jack urges me to hurry, and waves me into another guest room at the end of the hall. Kayla’s sitting on the bed, Wren beside her. She looks terrified and exhausted—her mermaid skirt askew and her makeup smeared. Wren offers her a roll of toilet paper, and she takes some and blows her nose with a loud honk.
I rush to her, kneeling and putting my hand on hers. “Kayla! What happened to you?”
“Avery.” She breaks into a fresh wave of sobs. “Avery . . . my drink . . . she put something in my drink, Isis!”
I shoot a look at Wren. “What, like a date rape drug?”
He nods. “She couldn’t move for a whole thirty minutes.”
“Did anyone—”
Wren shakes his head. “Avery locked the two of us in here. Barred the door with a chair and said we couldn’t come out until we . . .”
Kayla wails, and looks to Jack lurking in the doorway. “Where were you? I was so scared! Why didn’t you— Why didn’t you—”
“I feel asleep in another room,” Jack says softly, but doesn’t move any closer to her. “I’m sorry.”
Kayla puts her face in her hands and wails. Wren flinches. I rub Kayla’s shoulder.
“Hey, listen. You were safe. Wren’s a good guy, okay? You didn’t need to be scared.” I look up at Wren. “Right? You didn’t do anything? Tell me the truth now, and I won’t disembowel you.”
“I swear to you, Isis. I would never—I’m not a monster.” His eyes go wide. A surge of shame makes me back down.
“Yeah. I know. Sorry for doubting.”
“Avery thought . . . I guess she thought . . .” Wren winces. “She thought I would.”
“And use it as blackmail against you for those funds,” I finish. He nods. Jack instantly springs into action after hearing that, walking over to the mantelpiece and shoving the ornaments there aside. He picks up a clock and smashes it.
“Jesus!” Wren shouts as we both jump. Kayla shrieks and covers her ears. Jack turns to us, holding a tiny black box.
“A camera,” he says dully.
“For evidence,” I mumble, slowly standing as the rage fans its flames higher in me. “That fucking bitch—”
“Don’t!” Kayla clings to my arm. “Don’t, Isis, please! She’s my friend! She’s . . . she’s the only friend I have—”
“Wrong,” Jack interrupts, voice hard. “Look around you. It’s the people here now who are your real friends.”
Kayla looks like he slapped her. She breaks into tears again, and Wren winces, unsure of what to do but so obviously wanting to help. He looks to me.
“Let’s go. We have to confront her.”
I scoff. “Confront her? That’s a little mild, don’t you think? I’m gonna rip her tits off.”
Wren smirks and we stride down the hall together, leaving Jack and Kayla alone. We weave around groaning people waking up, puddles of vomit and sticky booze, and the occasional pile of shed clothes. We go to the second master bedroom, and Wren knocks. No answer. I motion for him to stand back, and kick the door with all my furious might.
Avery’s room is painted pale purple, with a beautiful canopy bed in the center. She sits up from the pile of silky sheets, princess costume still intact, if slightly disheveled. She sees me, sees the look on my face, and tries to bolt for the window. I lunge at her, pull her back by her hair, and punch her hard enough to have her crashing to the floor.
“You really don’t learn, do you?” I say softly.
“Wh-What—” She coughs. “What are you talking about?”
I lean down and grab a chunk of her red hair and pull. Hard. She screams and twists.
“All right, all right! I’m fucking sorry!”
“No. You aren’t. But you will be.”
“You aren’t getting the funding, Avery,” Wren says stonily. “Not now, not ever. I’m declaring the president of the French club unsuitable for duty. I’m putting a sanction on you. You’re officially banned from joining any clubs and attending senior prom and graduation night.”
“You can’t do that,” Avery snarls. “I’ve been homecoming queen for four years straight! I’m in the running for prom queen and everyone knows I’ll fucking win. If you ban me, no one will come to prom. No one will come to your stupid little graduation night, either!”
“Do you really think you have that much influence over the student body?”
Avery scoffs. “I say jump, they jump. You know that.”
“Do you think you’ll have that much influence when we tell everyone you drugged someone at your own party? How many girls will trust you again? How many will brave the threat of being date-raped to come to your parties?” Wren coolly asks.
Avery’s face goes white. I pull her up by her dress and sneer.
“If you so much as breathe in Kayla’s direction ever again, I’ll kill you.”
Avery rips out of my grip and points at Wren. “You did it! Don’t lie, you sanctimonious bitch! You’re a sniveling little coward opportunist and I know you slept with her!”
Wren smiles, hell-bent gaze turning more determined, more fixed and just slightly amused.
“I’m not that boy in the forest anymore, Avery. I’m not someone you can force into doing what you want. We’re older. And I’m never going to let you hurt another girl again.”
Avery takes a step back, shocked. She looks down at her hands, turns them over.
“That’s right,” Wren says. “You were so caught up in getting those funds, you didn’t realize you were doing the same exact thing you did to Sophia. You did it again. You haven’t learned at all. And you’ll probably do it again, and again, until you kill someone or someone kills you for it.”
“I was doing it for Sophia!” Avery screams, livid. “Those funds, the French club trip, it was for Sophia! She doesn’t have long, Wren, you know that! You fucking know that!”
“So you’d hurt someone else to help her?” he asks.
“I’ll do anything to help her,” Avery says through gritted teeth. “Anything.”
Wren smiles. “It’s too bad you can’t wring the money from your parents. Then again, they’re too smart, aren’t they? They raised you, after all. You’re their spitting image, and they keep perfect record of their money. They’d track where it went, who was invited. They’d find Sophia’s name, and dig around in her background. And then what you did would be brought to light. It’d explode in your face. The whole town would know. Maybe it’s time the world knew.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she snarls. “You and Jack would get dragged down with me.”
“Maybe. But I’m sure in court Jack would get a pardon, and I could plead I feared for my life. We’d get off more easily. But you? No. You’d get something much longer.”
“GET OUT!” Avery roars. “GET OUT!”
She throws things—a vase, a picture frame. She rips a fancy lamp from the wall and chucks it at my head, but I duck just in time. Glass shatters and I run after Wren, back to Kayla’s room.
“We need to go,” Wren pants, helping Kayla off the bed. She leans on his arm, tears almost dried, but still looking confused.
“What’s going on?”
“Give me your keys,” I say. Kayla rummages in her purse and hands them to me. Wren helps Kayla downstairs, and Jack lags behind with me. Avery’s screaming is waking up what’s left of the party. It sounds like a banshee being squeezed out in a wringer.
“Someone’s unhappy.” Jack smirks.
“Wren threatened to come out with the truth about what happened to Sophia,” I murmur. Jack’s face falls and settles into a granite-hard determination. Wren and Kayla stumble across the lawn to her car. Just as Jack and I get out the door, rapid footsteps come down the stairs and race behind us. I turn just in time to see Avery, nose bloody from my punch, eyes wild with savage fury, her red hair like the mane of a fire goddess, and a baseball bat raised, inches from coming down on my back. I duck, the bat swinging over me, and there’s a snap, the sound of something being forced, and Jack suddenly has the bat. Avery pants, shrinking away as Jack looks at the bat, observes every inch of it.
“Just like the good old days, hm?” Jack smiles predatorily at Avery. “Although the one I used was metal, wasn’t it?”
Avery’s fury drains so fast she looks like a punctured balloon. Terror claws at her expression as she scrabbles backward, jumps to her feet, and runs back into the house, slamming the door shut and locking it.
Jack doesn’t say anything more until I’ve dropped off Kayla. Wren drove behind us, and got out to help Kayla to her front door. She thanked him, quietly, and he watched her go inside. Wren and I nodded at each other in a farewell, and he even nodded at Jack. When we’re on the highway and I’m driving toward Jack’s house, I spare a glance at him. I’d given him back his shirt, and he has his chin in his hand, fingers over his lips thoughtfully, watching the world flicker by outside his window.
He speaks first. “I broke up with Kayla.”
“Shocking. I thought you two were going to last forever.”
He shoots me a sardonic smirk. “Haven’t you heard? Good things never last.”
I switch lanes. Jack turns on the heater. It smells like skunk. He shuts it off quickly.
“What happened last night?” I ask.
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember being . . . I remember being scared. Shaking.”
“That’s all?”
I nod. Jack goes still. His eyes are unreadable chips of ice as they always are, but for a split second I swear I see them crack on the inside with pain.
...
She was scared. She didn’t enjoy any part of it. If she did, she would’ve remembered. But her fear overwrote her memories.
The wound is far deeper than I’d imagined.
I watch her face as she drives, hands white on the steering wheel. She’s waiting, confused, trying to piece the blanks together in her mind. She blocked it out. Last night was too much like the time that caused the wound. I want to tell her I was trying to make her feel better, or tell her that I was trying to help (liar, you were taking advantage, just like he did).
In the sober light of morning, what I’ve done hits me with petrifying acidity. I forced a kiss on a drunk girl who’d been forced upon before. I’d touched a girl terrified of being touched at all. I lost control. I, Jack Hunter, the one person who keeps calm and cool and collected at all times, lost all control. And it hurt Isis so bad she blocked it from her memory.
It’s better if she doesn’t remember.
...
But the cracks fill in, icing over again, and Jack shrugs lightly.
“You were pretty drunk. Some guy with a disturbing mask jumped out at you from a corner. You were shaking fairly hard for the rest of the night.”
“And why was I wearing your shirt?”
“You bumped into someone while dancing and spilled Coke on your costume. It was sticky. So I offered you my shirt, and you washed your suit off and left it to dry on the floor.”
It sounds like something I’d do. I nod.
“Makes sense.”
...
She pulls up to my house, and I get out and hang in the window.
“Take care of Kayla in the next few days,” I say. “She’ll need you.”
“Since when did you start caring about her?”
She’s important to you. So I care.
I don’t say that. I shrug and lie instead.
“I know what it’s like. Breaking up. And GHB.”
“Client of yours get too creepy?”
“Just a bit.”
My eyes find her neck, and my breath hitches. There, just below her jaw, is a soft red hickey.
“Something wrong?” she asks.
If she doesn’t look up and use a mirror to see under her chin, she won’t notice it. I shake my head. “Nothing. Thanks for the ride.”
“Thanks for helping. With Avery. And for lending me your shirt. And . . . for dating Kayla. It made her really happy.”
It made you happy.
I smirk. “Anytime you want to give me another two hundred dollars to go out with one of your friends, let me know.”
She snorts, and I step back and watch her pull away from the curb with something like regret festering in my chest. I tuck last night somewhere deep in my mind—lock it away for good. I’ll revisit it when the longing gets too bad. But it doesn’t exist, not anymore. It never happened. And that’s for the best.
I’m the only one who remembers.
And that’s for the best.
...
Northplains, Ohio, is a town full of secrets.
You’d think the boring Midwest wouldn’t have things like savage popular girls with baseball bats and shady events that happened in the past no one wants to talk about. But it’s got those by the truckload. Deception, revenge, lies. They all merge together like a vortex over the school, hanging heavy in the air on Monday.
Jack walks into the main hall, takes one look at Kayla and me on the bench, and walks right past us. Kayla, of course, bursts into tears. It took a lot of coaxing and chocolate on Sunday to convince her to come to school on Monday. I’m torn between my urge to punt him for making her cry, and knowing the breakup was the best thing for both of them. It was inevitable. A guy like Jack Hunter just doesn’t date girls his own age. That’s the general consensus around school. Of course Kayla only lasted two weeks! He’s Jack Hunter! He runs around town with rich girls in Porsches. He got early acceptance into Harvard, a fact Mr. Evans has taken to reminding every student of when they look like they’re slacking in study hall.
Jack Hunter is just meant for bigger and better things than Northplains, Ohio.
His legion of admirers makes a quick comeback. The statue in the art room has the sheet taken off its head and it’s moved to the middle of the room again, the artist happily chipping away at the features. Drama Club Wailer primps and preens in front of the bathroom mirrors like a seven-year-old who’s just discovered her mother’s makeup. The girls have returned with an admirable vengeance.
Avery hasn’t come to school in three days. No one talks about her bat-wielding fury, so I can only assume she threatened them to keep them quiet. But people say she isn’t well. The official rumor is she’s sick, but I know better. She’s licking her wounds, trying to figure out which designer skirt will hide the tail between her legs when she finally does come back. It’s only a matter of time. Sometimes I feel sorry for her. But then I remember what she did, and I just feel sorry for her body parts.
I take deep breaths to calm my rage and focus on something else. Mrs. Gregory drones on. I doodle her face on my paper and then gracefully draw a banana for a nose. I still can’t remember what happened that night at the party. I was pretty drunk, so it’s understandable, but I’ve been drunk a few times before, and though things were fuzzy, I’d always remember bits and pieces. But the other night? Nothing. It’s a massive black blank smeared across my memory. I don’t slip up like that—my mind is a fantastically sexy piece of equipment I keep in tip-top condition. So why can’t I remember even a scrap of that night? It was probably the booze. That was more than I’ve drunk in a long, long time.
Kayla’s taken over Avery’s position as temporary queen bee. I watch her mope through the lunch line, the girls around her cooing sympathetically and insisting she’ll find someone better even as they shoot sultry glances at Jack from across the cafeteria. Jack eats alone, reading a book as he munches a sandwich. I wonder what the girls would do if they knew I’d worn his shirt? Probably put an apple in my mouth and roast me to suckling browned goodness. I’m ready to die, but I’m not ready to die with a fruit in my mouth. That’s a whole other ball game.
“What’s a whole other ball game?” Wren asks, sliding his tray across from me and sitting.
“Ah, nothing.” I wave him off. “So what’s up with you, my majestic prez? Busy making peace treaties with Iran? Scouring the globe for alternative energy sources?”
“Making sure Avery comes back to slightly less power around the school. You’d be surprised how many teachers she has under her sway with blackmail. Did you know Ms. Hall is having an affair? With two different guys? And Mr. Ulfric drinks on the job in the janitor closet during recess.”
“No surprise at all she’s got them under her finger, then. I’ve seen how she works.”
“Hopefully she’ll have the sense not to work for a while.” He sighs. “I really don’t want to go to Evans about the date rape drugs she’s been using.”
“Or what happened that night in middle school.”
Wren’s eyes flash behind his glasses. “That was a bluff.”
“And you huffed and you puffed, and you bluffed the house down.”
Wren watches me for a moment before lowering his voice to a bare murmur. “She was our friend.”
I look up from my hot dog. “Who?”
“Sophia,” Wren continues. “Jack, Sophia, and me. We were best friends in elementary school. We lived next to each other. We played on the same street, in one another’s yards. Every summer and winter break we were together, for days on end. It was the happiest time of my life.”
He inhales and pushes his tray away.
“Avery was on the outskirts. She’d come over sometimes, since she was Sophia’s best friend. She wasn’t anything like who she is now. The old Avery was loud and bossy, but kind. She’d do anything to make Sophia laugh. She hated Jack—but I always knew that was because she liked him and also didn’t like the way Sophia liked him. She was jealous of him getting Sophia’s attention, and jealous of Sophia getting his. She was caught in the middle and it ate away at her as we got older, I think.”
I try not to move, or breathe too noisily. The last thing I want to do is jolt him out of the story. Wren looks up.
“There’s something I want to show you. After school. Can you drive us there?”
I nod, and he smiles.
“Good. I’ll see you then. I’ve got a Run for Charity to organize, so, I’d better go.”
“Later.” I try to sound casual. I watch him leave the cafeteria, the curiosity eating me alive.
...
After school, Wren instructs me on where to go. He leads me to the airport, almost all the way in Columbus. After a few more turns, we’re in an airport-adjacent suburb, complete with cracked road, constant overhead noise from the planes as they go rumbling by, and faded yellow grass yards. Chipped-paint houses and trash line the streets. A pair of tennis shoes hangs mournfully from a power line above. I park and follow Wren. He leads me up the stairs of a tiny, two-story house with clean yet old-looking windows. The porch is weather-beaten and strewn with plastic kids’ toys. A woman answers the door, peering through the screen.
“Wren!” Her face lights up. “Come in, come in!”
“Thanks, Mrs. Hernandez.”
“Is this a friend?”
“Yeah, she’s helping me at the food bank.”
“Oh, how nice.” Mrs. Hernandez wipes her hands on her apron and holds one out to me. “I’m Belina. It’s good to meet you.”
“Isis. Nice to meet you, too.”
“Well, come in! Don’t just stand there in the cold!”
She ushers us into the tiny house. It smells like spicy meat and fresh laundry. A porcelain image of the Virgin Mary hangs from almost every wall, and the couches and chairs and tables are shabby, but clean. Two kids race by, screaming and chasing each other with toilet brushes, using them like swords. Mrs. Hernandez snaps something in Spanish at them and they cower and immediately run into the bathroom.
“Sorry about that.” Mrs. Hernandez smiles. “I’ve been baking tostadas all day and letting them play with whatever.”
“As long as they don’t wave those swords around the food,” Wren jokes. She laughs and motions for us to come into the kitchen.
“Would you like some juice? I have milk, too.”
“No, it’s all right,” he says. “We’re just here for a moment. I wanted to know if you could get me your WIC paperwork. I need the PIN number to update it and I was in the neighborhood, so I figured I’d drop by.”
“Of course! One second.”
She shuffles upstairs. Wren turns to me and sweeps his arm around.
“It’s cozy, isn’t it? Four bedrooms. Three baths. Not bad for a single mom with two mouths to feed.”
“It’s nice, but I don’t understand—”
“She works as a maid. Almost minimum wage.”
“So how does she get the mon—”
“Jack.”
I immediately start choking on nothing. “What?”
“He sends the money. Through me. To Belina, I’m a student who works with the food bank’s outreach program to supply funds to single mothers. But in truth it’s only her who gets the money.”
“But why—”
“I don’t know what Jack does exactly to get this money,” Wren interrupts coolly. “But I have an idea. If only someone could confirm it for me, I’d be very grateful.”
I bite my lip. “I can’t. He made me promise, Wren. He has my voice on tape—”
“I understand. That’s more than enough. Thank you for confirming my suspicions.”
“You can’t tell him you know.”
Wren chuckles. “Do I look like I have a death wish?”
“So . . .” I lower my incredulous voice. “So why Belina? What did she do?”
“It’s not what she did. It’s what Jack did.”
It dawns on me, a slow crawl of illuminating light-thought.
“Whatever he did that time in middle school. That’s linked to Belina?”
Wren nods. I’m about to ask another question when Belina trundles down the stairs. Wren makes a show of checking her papers and making small talk. So the money’s not just for Sophia. He lied. But why? Because he didn’t want me to know? Why the hell would Jack feel he owes Belina money? It’s a nice thing to do, but it has to have a reason. I feel like I’m missing some huge part, the one clockwork gear in the middle that’ll connect all the others and make them move in tandem.
“Forgive me for asking, but is there any news?” Wren softly asks Belina. “About your husband?”
Belina’s dark eyes crinkle with despondence. “It’s been five years now. The police don’t keep me updated as much anymore.”
Wren nods. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope they find something soon.”
She smiles wanly at him, then at her children in the living room. “I always pray to God for a clue, a single word from him. Some days I imagine him just walking back into the house like he never left—like he’s coming home from work. But he never does.”
Wren’s quiet, and Belina shoots me the same thin smile.
“I’m sorry. It’s rude to keep a guest in the dark. My husband went missing five years ago. But we do our best to move on, to keep living despite our pain.”
I nod, my voice quiet. “That’s really brave.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s just something I must do. For my children. For myself. There is no bravery, only necessity.”
I understand it, but saying I understand will sound shallow, hollow, untrue. So I try to smile, try to show her I understand with my face.
Wren and I leave, Belina waving from the porch and my head filled with more questions than ever. Wren won’t answer any more of them, keeping his mouth shut the entire way to his house.
I go home and scribble madly on paper like it will help me unravel the threads.
Two men hired by AveryBaseballbatSophiaWren with cameraJackBelina Belina moneyHusband?JackAveryWren fear SophiaJack Jack jack Jack Jack???jack
Sophia
Sophiais important
Jackloves her
My stomach twists.
Jack lovesher
...
There’s a sad finality as Thanksgiving approaches. People start freaking about college application deadlines. Teachers nag us to finish them and turn them in. The weather gets bitter cold, the last of the trees shedding their golden fall leaves. The piles turn to mulch, and mulch turns to dirt the winter-fall rains wash out of the gutters and streets. Nothing is pretty anymore—gray skies and gray earth and gray, naked trees shivering in the breezes.
After two weeks, Kayla’s conquered the act of looking at Jack without bursting into tears. Wren was there with a box of tissue on her way to mastery, though, and for that she smiles at him more and even sits with him and me at lunch. Something’s brewing between them, and it makes me smile knowingly, because even if they are two hopeless nerd idiots, they are my hopeless nerd idiots, and I only want the best for anything of mine.
The graveyard’s presence is cold and hollow, like a metal needle in my brain.
Avery’s comeback was a lot more anticlimactic than we all thought it’d be. She just showed up one day for school, dressed in her same clothes and with the same savage smile on. The girls flocking around Kayla instantly swarmed back to her, Kayla not included. A surge of pride ran through me when Kayla turned her back on Avery’s motion for her to come over. Kayla laced her arm in mine and we strutted away like the bad bitches we are.
Jack hasn’t looked at me, much. Which isn’t weird, since I know I’m a maggot on his shoe and all, but it’s a little odd he doesn’t like being in the same room as me, either. World history is the worst—he’ll make excuses to go to the nurse’s, and most days he’ll just straight up play hooky and never show for class. But I see him walking around campus and going to other classes. It’s only the class we share he never shows up for. I’d confront him about it, but I’m still torn about what really happened that night. His explanation made sense, but it didn’t ring true. It didn’t feel right.
And I’m bored. God, so bored. Now that we aren’t warring, my days are filled with nothing but homework and staring at teacher foreheads, wondering where they got their worst zits when they were my age.
I sit in Evans’s office, serving the last of my detention. One more day and I’m free of grading his easy-peasy papers and watching his balding head shine in the light of his self-inflicted glory.
“So, Isis.” He clears his throat. “The deadline for Yale’s application is next week.”
“I’m not going to an Ivy, Evans. We’ve discussed this previously. To death.”
“There’s no point to life if you don’t go to a good college,” he insists.
“Have you watched the Food Network recently? Eating is a fantastic reason for living.”
“If I may be completely honest with you, Isis, college is mostly for drinking and crying,” he says. I smother a laugh, and he becomes all business again. “But where you decide to go to drink and cry sometimes gets you far. Like, for instance, Harvard. You can get a mediocre grade in a mediocre-earning field and get a degree but it will be a Harvard degree, you see? It’ll speak volumes more than a Redfield degree about your level of commitment.”
“And snobbery,” I mutter.
“Regardless,” he talks over me. “It’s too late. I’ve already applied you for Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.”
“What?” I bristle. “How—”
“Your father was very accommodating. He only wants the best for you, and provided all your personal information.”
“But my required essay—”
“I pulled a few spectacularly funny yet poignant and observant essays from your English and world history classes. They fit nicely.”
“My SAT scores—”
He holds up a paper. “Your father informed me you took the ACT before you left Florida, at his behest. You never got the scores because you moved, but your aunt sent them along. Take a look.”
Four massive black numbers glare back at me: 32, 35, 33, and 9.
“Exemplary scores across the board! Marvelous. You must have been in a much better state of mind for that test.”
“I can’t—” I’m speechless. “Where do you get off deciding where I should go to college?”
“Your father also told me you’re a particularly dutiful daughter, and that your mother is going through a rough patch in life. Trust me when I say I understand—”
“Do you?” I snarl. “I doubt that, baldy.”
He smiles patiently. “I had a father who was ill. Cancer. I stayed behind for three years to take care of him while my friends went off to college. He kept telling me to leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to. When he died, the guilt that I couldn’t save him crushed me. But the way he told me he was proud of me—me, the boy who worked gas station night shifts—that made me feel even guiltier.”
I go quiet, my rage simmering instead of bubbling. I had no idea Evans had a life like that.
“So what, you tell me your whole sobby life story and I feel sorry for you and decide to go to Stanford, is that it?” I ask quietly.
“No. I just wanted to tell you that I understand. I know what it’s like, to be kept against your will, even if your heart wants to stay. You’ve written off completely the idea of going out of state. You’re willing to settle for a school that wouldn’t challenge you, just to take care of someone you love. Jack nearly did the same thing.”
I clench my fist around the armchair. Evans smiles.
“Sometimes, we can’t do the things we want to do for ourselves. Sometimes we wait for someone else to do them. You can’t always wait like that. You have to seek out change on your own. But in the meantime, I had to step in.”
I snort. He presses on.
“Even if you get accepted, you don’t have to go. Choose whatever path you like. But I can rest easy now, knowing you can at least see the open paths before you and make an informed decision.”
“So this has nothing to do with the funding you get if your students go to an Ivy?” I snap.
Evans smiles. “It’s also about that. But that’s only a small part.”
The bell rings. I put my pen down and gather my stuff. I can feel Evans staring at me like a massive, balding elephant who smells. Like a poop-covered busybody.
I stop at the door and look over my shoulder. “Thanks. I guess.”
“Consider it an apology for the pictures.”
“It doesn’t make up for it. You’d need like, a million cakes and a dozen clones of Johnny Depp to even begin to make up for that.”
“There’s a very good cloning program at Duke—”
I politely scream “Ugh!” and slam the door shut behind me.