About halfway there we stopped at McDonald’s for a late breakfast; the guys ate an obscene amount of food, and almost everyone fell asleep afterward, save for me and Mrs. Wentworth. When I checked compulsively in the backseat, I saw that Lindsay had rested her head on Ezra’s shoulder. He was dozing, too, and he didn’t seem to mind being Lindsay’s human pillow. It surprised me—not only because of Lindsay’s choice of headrest, but also because Ezra was one of the last people you’d call cuddly.
We passed through the gates of Reeding University around eleven, and there it was: My postcard laid out before us for real.
There was the Office of Student Affairs, the porch where the postcard kids had sat. There was the Student Union, and the dorms (originally built in 1920, most recently remodeled in 2009, according to Lindsay on the ride up), the science building, the theater. There was a chapel, tucked away among a grove of trees.
They definitely had the curb appeal thing down. But it was more than that.… It wasn’t just buildings and landscaping. It was the people. Clumps of students studying in the shade or walking together between buildings, talking animatedly. These people were ACHIEVING THEIR GOALS. They were STARTING THEIR FUTURES.
And just being there, seeing it, it was as if all of a sudden something had opened up inside me. All of a sudden I wanted that, too, I wanted it for myself.
Mrs. Wentworth had scheduled the trip pretty much to a tee. On the bright side, it didn’t leave much time for Cas and Linds’s free vacation. But it was also a hell of a lot to take in. We ate in the cafeteria, did a campus tour, and met with admissions counselors.
The trip was accomplishing everything Mrs. Wentworth had in mind for me. I was in love with Reeding. I wanted to write better college essays. I wanted to score higher on the ACT. I even—albeit briefly—considered trucking the Future Science Revolutionaries to the science museum just to pad my résumé. Assistant to Sports Documentation wasn’t looking so bad now.
At the end of the day we stopped off at the bookstore.
“Ooh, Champ.” Jordan squeezed my shoulders as I perused a pile of Reeding hoodies. “You’re going to look great here next year.”
Just hearing someone say it out loud sent a little surge of excitement through me. “Blue does work well with my coloring.”
“And red and black’ll work with mine.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell Wentworth, but I’ve got a verbal agreement with Georgia.”
“No way!”
“Now, if I can just get Ezra there, it’ll be perfect. A defender’s only as good as the guys he’s defending, you know?”
I glanced across the store at Ezra, who was scowling at a display of key chains. He poked at one, which then fell off the display. He leaned down to get it, and when he straightened up, he bumped the rack and jostled several more onto the ground.
I couldn’t help but smile a little.
“Why are you such good friends with him?” I asked, watching Ezra scramble for the key chains.
He shrugged. “Why are you such good friends with Cassidy over there?”
Cas, meanwhile, was following Lindsay around the place, picking up and then putting back down every book, souvenir mug, and pencil she touched.
“Why are any of us friends with the people we’re friends with?” Jordan went on. “They’ve got qualities we like—maybe some we see in ourselves. Maybe some we want to see in ourselves.”
“What are Ezra’s … qualities?”
“What aren’t Ezra’s qualities, baby? He’s got ’em all.”
“Most people tend to think he’s kind of a jerk.”
Jordan nodded. “I’ve heard people say that before, but they just don’t get Ezra. It’s just that he’s so…” He screwed up his face in thought. “He’s so fucking concentrated. He’s like … like baking chocolate. You ever eat the baking chocolate when your mama makes cookies?”
“Yeah. It looks just like regular but it tastes disgusting.”
Jordan laughed. “Okay, so maybe Ezra’s not like baking chocolate. But you know what I mean? When you cook it up, it’s full of flavor. But by itself, it’s too … intense to be understood. Ezra’s just a really intense dude. You got to get him in order to really … get him.”
“So how did you get him?”