Wren and I take our 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 moneyJackAveryWren 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 I 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.
Avery’s comeback was a lot more anticlimactic then 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 nurses, 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’ 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 an Ohio State 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 while my friends went off to college to take care of him. 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 he was proud of me, 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 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 the idea of going out of state completely. You’re willing to settle for a school that wouldn’t challenge you, just to take care of someone you love.”
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 at least you can see the open paths before you.”
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.
-14-
3 Years
22 Weeks
4 Days
Knife-kid comes up to me nearly four weeks after Avery’s party – right before Thanksgiving break. We’re watching a movie in English, bags of chips and trays of cupcakes littering the counter from the last-day-before-break party Mr. Teller let us have. It’s dark, and people are whispering and laughing and making plans for break and not paying attention to the movie at all.