“Thank you.” He peered down at the mug’s contents. “It looks interesting.”
“Don’t worry if you swallow something solid. Even the dirt is organic. Ah—my toast is done!” She put it on a plate, and carefully spread butter on each slice. George and I watched her in silence. “I’ll take everything upstairs so I’m not a distraction. Work hard, you two.” She left, carefully clutching her mug in one hand and her plate in the other.
There was a pause. Then I said, “You don’t actually have to drink that.”
“Oh, thank God.” He dumped his mug into the sink. He turned to me. “You invited her to go with you to the movies.”
I nodded, still embarrassed that I had felt the need to blurt it out, but glad he knew. “Someone told me I should.”
“I’d have thought that might have the opposite effect.”
“I’m not that big a jerk.”
“I never thought you were.” There was another short silence and then he cleared his throat and said, “So let’s talk about your essay.”
“First tell me what you think of it. Do you hate it?”
“Hate it?” He sat down at the table. “I think it’s great.”
He liked it? My relief lasted about half a second before it turned into annoyance that he hadn’t bothered to tell me before. “Your five-word email didn’t give me a lot to go on.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t at my most communicative that night.”
“Three or four more words would have gone a long way.”
“I loved it. It was honest and unique and it made me want to know the girl who wrote it.”
“You do know me.”
He ignored that. “But, all that being said . . . it’s definitely a riskier choice. The right admissions person will love you for being honest. The wrong one might wonder if you’re incapable of accomplishing anything. You just don’t know how it’s going to be received.”
“So I should use the other one?”
“It’s totally your call.”
“Don’t do that to me!” I came over to the table and dropped into a chair next to him. “Personally, I like this one better.”
“Me too.”
I thought for another moment or two, then said slowly, “Maybe this is nuts, but I feel like I might not belong anyway at a school that would reject me for writing this. Does that make sense?”
“Totally,” he said.
“I’d rather be appreciated for being honest than for being glib.”
“I’m sorry I called you that. That wasn’t fair.”
“It’s fine. Let’s work on this one. I’ve decided.”
We read through the essay together and he helped me find ways to strengthen it. “I’d add at least another sentence about the future and how you feel like you’re figuring yourself out,” he said. “I think schools care more about growth and potential than past achievement.”
“Does this mean you think I have potential to grow?” I asked, half-joking, half-wistful.
“Yeah,” he said. “You invited your grandmother to go to the movies with you, didn’t you?”
“Because you told me to.”
“Did I?” he said, and then shrugged and redirected me back to the essay. But when I glanced up, his eyes were on me, not the screen. He quickly looked away again.
twenty-five
Heather showed up too soon. George and I had worked steadily the whole time—I mean really steadily; no texting, even though I’d heard my phone buzz a few times—but I wanted more time alone with him.
I kind of wished I hadn’t invited her at all—come to think of it, she’d pretty much invited herself—but when I let her in the house, she hugged me so warmly that I felt bad for having thought that.
“Let’s do this thing!” she said. “Let’s submit it and be done.”
“Well, not really done,” I said.
“We’re both going to get in early, right? That’s what you keep saying.” Big blue eyes begged for reassurance.
“Right,” I said. “Of course.” For the first time, I felt uneasy about my optimism. There would be no going back once we clicked send. She’d have used up her early decision shot.
It didn’t matter—Luke would call, and they would let her in.
But would she even like it there? It had become my first choice after I’d visited and loved everything about it. But Heather had never actually toured the campus; she’d chosen it because I had. Because I told her to.
“George is in the kitchen,” I said, forcing a smile.
But she was already ahead of me. “George!” she sang out, bounding through the foyer and running to greet him. She was wearing a flippy little black skirt and a tight pink sweater, and her hair had been plaited into a bunch of tiny braids and then twisted and pinned into a loose, low knot. In the brighter light of the kitchen, I could see that she was wearing more makeup than usual—lots of eyeliner and mascara.
“Hey there!” George said. “I hear you’re just about ready to hit the send button.”
“I’m terrified,” she admitted, dropping into the seat next to him, which had been mine . . . but whatever. “Do you think my essay’s good enough?”
“I do!” he said.
Her face lit up. “And do I really have a shot at going to Elton with Ellie?”
“Ellie might not get in,” he said. “You might not get in. Either or both of you could get deferred. But I’m sure you’ll end up where you want to be when all of this is over.”
I noticed he had managed to dodge her question.
“There’s no way I’ll get in if you don’t,” Heather said to me. “You’re so much smarter than me.”
“We can both get in,” I said. “It’s not either/or. And everyone says applying early raises your odds like a million percent. Which is what we’re just about to do.”
“Right,” she said. “And then we should celebrate. Maybe we could all go out somewhere?”