Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between

“Shut up, Scotty,” they both say at the same time, and then they can’t help themselves: As soon as their eyes meet, they start to laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Stella says after a moment. “There’s just been a lot going on. But we’ll make up for it tonight. Really.”

“You promise?” Clare asks, and Stella grins.

“I double-pinky promise,” she says, holding out her fingers the way they used to do when they were kids. Clare smiles grudgingly, then hooks her pinkies around Stella’s.

“Okay,” she says as, behind them, Oscar thumps a fist on the counter. They turn to see that their slices are ready. Aidan grabs the tray, and they all walk over to an empty table by the window.

As soon as they sit down, Scotty takes a huge bite of his pizza. The cheese is still steaming, and he winces, dropping it back onto his plate. “Too hot.”

Stella rolls her eyes. “You’re a numbskull.”

“Word of the day?” Clare asks. Ever since taking the SATs, Stella has become obsessed with neglected vocabulary, picking a new word to work into conversation every day.

But she shakes her head. “Nope, that’s just what he is. Today’s word is gobsmacked, though I can’t imagine I’ll have a chance to use it, since there’s never anything to be gobsmacked about around here.” She glances over at Scotty with a grin. “Except maybe how much of a numbskull you are.”

“Is that the kind of vocabulary that got you into a fine school like Florida State?” Scotty asks, picking at the crust of his pizza while he waits for the cheese to cool, and Stella—still a little sensitive about her only acceptance—gives him a withering look.

“Says the guy going to community college,” she shoots back, and everyone goes abruptly still. Beside Clare, Aidan lowers his pizza, his mouth still half-open, and Stella, immediately realizing she’s gone too far, turns pale.

For months now, this has been the one thing nobody has said. They’ve all spent the summer tap-dancing around the subject, and even now, on the eve of their departure, it feels somehow wrong to mention it.

Because of all of them, Scotty’s the only one not going anywhere tomorrow.

Not that they didn’t all have their share of rejection this past spring. As much as Stella’s now looking forward to the warm weather in Florida, what she’d really wanted was to be closer to home, just downstate at the University of Illinois. Aidan hadn’t gotten into Harvard, even as a legacy. And though Clare had been feeling confident about her chances at most of the places she’d applied, in the end, she’d gone only four for twelve.

Scotty, though, hadn’t gotten a single yes. After a high school career spent coming up with ever more creative ways to escape his classes, it shouldn’t have been a big surprise. But he and Aidan had spent so many months dreaming of conquering California together that it had taken Scotty weeks to get around to telling them, and when he finally did, they could all see how much it hurt. Since then he’s done his best to make a joke of it—as he does with everything else—but Clare suspects that the only thing harder than leaving is being left behind.

His face is blank now, his ears pink at the tips, and his wiry frame is folded over the table in a way that makes him look even scrawnier than usual. Scotty’s personality is normally big enough to make people forget about his size, but now it’s like the air has gone right out of him.

Stella looks uncharacteristically earnest as she lays a hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” she says. “I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it,” he says. “It’s fine.”