“It’s what happened with high school, right? Coral Tree let me in after they saw you—”
“You were a good candidate,” he said. “Straight As at your middle school and you rocked those ISEEs. That’s why they let you in. I didn’t ask them for any special consideration.”
“Yeah, but you went on the tour and they got excited.”
“I went on the tour because I wanted to see the school. Not to impress them.”
I clasped my hands together and shifted to my knees. I couldn’t believe he was saying no. “Please, Luke. You have to. It could make the difference between getting in and not.”
“Your scores are incredible and so’s your GPA,” he said. “You’ll get in on your own—if not there, then somewhere else—and that’s a lot better than getting in because you have a famous relative.”
I let my hands drop. “It’s not me I’m worried about,” I said. “It’s Heather.”
“Why?”
“She’s just . . .” I stopped. Then I said reluctantly, “Her scores and her grades aren’t great.”
“Then maybe she shouldn’t get in,” Luke said. “If there are stronger students, is it really fair for her to get in over them because she knows me? Wouldn’t that be a lousy way for college admissions to work?”
“Oh, don’t get all idealistic on me,” I said, irritable because I did kind of agree with him. But not enough to back down. “People pull strings all the time. So why not us?”
“Because it’s wrong,” he said. “And because I have faith my brilliant girl will get in without my help. And her friend will, too—if she deserves to. Good night, Ellie.” He left.
I dropped back onto my bed, now truly worried about Heather’s chances of getting in early. I had banked so much on this one phone call, sure that Luke would make it for me. He always did what I wanted. I was in shock that he’d refused. And kind of embarrassed that I’d asked.
I was beginning to regret pushing Heather so hard to apply there with me. Now that I didn’t have any way to actually help her, I was scared I might have steered her right into the path of a painful rejection.
The next morning Mom wouldn’t stop talking about Aaron and Crystal (Luke had filled her in on the situation) until I finally lost patience and said, “You seem a little too obsessed with this whole younger-man thing. Luke getting too long in the tooth for you?”
“Stop it,” she said. “I’m not obsessed with it. I’m horrified by it.”
Grandma was in the kitchen with us, mixing some hot grain cereal at the stove and looking not unlike a witch stirring a cauldron in her long purple bathrobe. She said, “Every married woman fantasizes about sleeping with a single young man.”
“No, they don’t!” Mom said.
“They’re just not honest about it.” Grandma rapped her spoon on the side of the pot to clear it. “People aren’t truthful about their emotions. That’s what gets everyone in trouble. If we can recognize that even our worst thoughts are natural, we don’t have to act on them. Repression causes bad behavior. Everyone knows that.”
“I’m repressing something right now,” Mom muttered.
thirty-one
I fell asleep trying to get some homework done that afternoon. When I came downstairs a little while later, still groggy, Mom was searching through a kitchen drawer. “Why can’t I ever find a pen when I need one?” she said. “I buy them. And then they disappear.”
I said, “Hey, George,” with a yawn. “Didn’t know you’d be here.” He was standing near the kitchen table, where Grandma was sitting with Jacob on her lap, the two of them playing a game together on the iPad. “I thought the office was all done.”
“He’s running a couple of errands for me,” Mom said. “As soon as I make a list. Which I would do if I had a pen.”
“You could just text me the list,” George said.
“Good idea. Why don’t I ever think of that?” She glanced around. “And . . . I left my phone upstairs. Hold on.” She ran out of the kitchen.
“Efficiency is not her middle name,” I said.
He flashed a bland smile and turned to Grandma. “So when do you go back to Philadelphia?”
“Friday,” she said. “I’ll be happy to get back to my regular routine, but I’m going to miss my time with this little girl. We’ve had fun together, haven’t we, Ellie?”
“Totally,” I said, and plunked myself down in the chair next to her. I looked up at George. “We really did.”
“I’m glad,” he said, and this time his smile was more sincere.
Mom came back into the kitchen, waving a pen. “I found one on the whatchamacallit—credenza—and saved myself a flight of stairs. Okay, now first I want you to go to Barnes and Noble—” She scribbled the words Overcoming Autism on the back of an envelope. “Look for this book—it’ll be in the special needs section for parents. If you see any other books with autism or Asperger’s in the title that look good, grab those, too.”
“Why are you buying those?” I asked.
“Because I want to read them. And then, George, I need you to go to the Apple Store—my car phone charger broke. I need a new one.” She wrote that on the list and then told him to stop at a wine store and buy a good bottle of wine for them to take as a hostess gift to some party they were going to the following night. “You need anything, Ellie? Mom?”
“I need something fun to read,” I said.
“You know what you want?” George asked.
“Not yet.”
“Text me when you do and I’ll look for it if I’m still there.”
“Or you could get it on the iPad,” Mom said.
“I like real books,” I said. “And I’m in the mood to browse. I’ll go with you to the bookstore, George.”
“I’ve got to do all these other errands . . .”
“I’ll do them with you.” I wanted to spend some time with him, figure out whether he really did like Heather or not—maybe I could get him to say something about her while we were out together.
“Okay,” he said. “If you really want to.”
In the car, I kept glancing at him. He was being very quiet. Polite and not unfriendly. But quiet.
I said, “It’s getting dark so early these days.”
He agreed that it was.
Then we were silent again.
His voice, when he spoke again, was surprisingly gentle. “I don’t know how to say this, but I feel like I need to say something. . . .”
“What?” Oh, God. Was he about to tell me how much he liked Heather? I’d thought I wanted to know, but now I had a sudden overwhelming desire to plug my ears and hum so I wouldn’t have to hear it.
“It’s just . . .” He glanced over at me and then back at the road. “Jonathan filled me in on the Marquand situation. Luke told him, and he knows how close I am to your family and felt I should know, too. I hope it’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” I was relieved that he wasn’t talking about Heather, but not exactly thrilled with this topic either. Why was life such a cringe-fest? “So . . . ?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Okay? Why wouldn’t I be? I mean, it’s sad that they’re separating and all that but—”
“I know the whole story,” he repeated. “Even the part about Aaron and Crystal. How they were—” He cut himself off and started again. “What he was doing to his father.” Quick glance at me again. “And to you.”
“He wasn’t doing anything to me.”
“Come on,” he said. “I know you want to defend him, but sneaking around with Crystal when he was going out with you—”
I stared at him, torn between horror and amusement. “Aaron and I were never going out! Never. We were always just friends.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“Because he was all over me at Halloween?”
“And other times.”
“It was all a mislead—so people wouldn’t notice that he and Crystal were obsessed with each other.”