Elizabeth had been completely right. The more time I spent around Kiegan Hunt, the more I realized he was completely coddled by his family. And at the same time, he rebelled against them. He didn’t show up to functions, I would hear him sneak into the house at three in the morning – my room was right next to his – or catch him throwing out empty alcohol bottles when he was still sixteen.
There was no one I could talk to about the bullying, either. Usually it just took the form of snide comments about my weight. I tried dieting, thinking that if I lost ten, maybe fifteen pounds he’d lose interest, but it didn’t work. It turns out revenge isn’t exactly the best motivation to lose weight, at least not for me.
For over two years I had to deal with that shit. I had to deal with it each and every day. And there was nothing I could do about it. Our parents got married, and he was my brother. We were supposed to be equals, but we absolutely weren’t. I knew I wasn’t really a Hunt. My name had been changed, and I was now Tina Hunt, but no one in the family, or outside it, really considered me to be a part of them. They were too good for someone like me.
The worst thing that Kiegan ever did to me was two months before I left the family forever. I was about to graduate from Moreton Academy, top of the class. I only had one more semester to go. I’d been accepted to a few colleges, was waiting on application results from others, but I was looking forward to leaving the Hunt estate and going out on my own at college.
In particular, I wanted to go to Harvard. When we lived in Boston I had never dreamed of being able to attend such a prestigious school. After all, not only did I figure they wouldn’t take someone from a pretty low level public school, but even with scholarships and financial aid it would have been a very tough call financially.
But now, I was part of the Hunt family, and that meant some access to their huge fortune, as well as having a transcript from the most prestigious school in Boston. Surely that had to help, right?
The last part of the application process had been to send in an essay about a challenge that I’d had to overcome in life and how it had made me a better person.
I’d worked my ass off on that essay. It was the last shot, the last thing I had to do before getting in, and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the road of that.
A full week before it was due, I gave the letter to Mr. Andrews to send out with the rest of the family mail.
For three weeks I waited on tenterhooks to find the results of my application. Every day I’d rush home after school and check for mail. Finally, the letter arrived. The packet was thinner than I’d hoped, but I knew that didn’t really mean anything these days. A few of my acceptance letters had been small, then a bigger package sent in the mail later.
I forced myself to treat the letter like glass, when really I wanted to just rip open that envelope and devour the contents like a starving woman in the desert who just found a bag of chips.
Dear Ms. Hunt,
Unfortunately, as we did not receive your final essay in time, we are unable to accept you into Harvard University at this time. We receive thousands of applications every year and blah blah blah
Of course, blah blah blah wasn’t actually written in the letter, but that was where I’d stopped reading. I let the letter fall from my hands as the words on the page sunk in. Then, I picked up the letter again to re-read it. Surely I must have read that wrong. Surely. There was no way.
“Mr. Andrews!” I called out. He came immediately.
“Yes, Ms. Hunt?”
“Do you remember when I gave you that letter to send to Harvard?”
“Of course.”
“Did you actually mail it off?”
“Yes. I put it in a pile with the other things to be mailed that day in Mr. Hunt’s study. It would have been sent out with the day’s mail.”
“They say they never got it.”
“Oh… dear. Well I’m sorry, I imagine the letter must have gotten lost in the mail.”
I ran to my mom, who told me to call Harvard. I did, and while the lady on the other end was sympathetic, I was told there was nothing they could do.
By that night, it had sunk in. Somewhere along the line my essay had disappeared, there was nothing anyone could do about it, and my dream of going to Harvard was dead.
I had come so close, but no cigar. I was going to have to go to college somewhere else.
It was like a giant weight was crushing down on me. An unbearable pain ran through me all the time. My grades, my education was the most important thing to me. I didn’t have anything else. And now my biggest dream was gone.
I tried to reason with myself. I would get over it. I would go somewhere else. I would still go to a great college, I would still get a great education. But it didn’t matter. Nowhere else was Harvard, and that was where I really wanted to be.