According to the Onward entrance exam, I was a genius. And we needed geniuses in the service, same as anywhere else. Maybe more than anywhere else. You didn’t want to hand a bunch of idiots military tech. Hiding my light under a bushel wouldn’t help me or my country or my family—any of my families.
For as long as I had understood that college happened after high school, I’d known that my mother was waiting for me at the Air Force Academy. Not literally. She wouldn’t be in the next room, ready to come in and chat when I couldn’t sleep, or sit up sipping tea with me, the way Beth did sometimes. But we could experience more time together than we’d ever had before. Dinners. Weekends. Trips off base. Not just for a week or two at a time, like we did now over spring break, but for years.
Years when I was supposed to be spreading my wings.
That didn’t scrub all of the military as a prospect. I didn’t have to go to the Academy. Just like Brandon didn’t have to go to an Ivy League school to do math. Being gifted didn’t go away because you chose a different fork in the road. That was the beauty of taking your brain with you wherever you went.
You didn’t have to be the first person to be good at something to own it. The air force wasn’t my destiny, but I’d been running toward it and away from it for too long.
Maybe I’d enlist right out of high school, like my mom had done. Maybe I’d go to college first and enter as an officer, like my uncle Marcus. That wouldn’t make it less mine. Just like sharing this summer with Isaiah wouldn’t diminish my memories of camp.
I was ready to be comfortably in the middle of a story instead of running toward the end. I was done trying to outpace myself.
I got dressed and stacked my suitcase, laptop bag, and backpack on my bare mattress before descending the stairs to the first floor. It wasn’t like anyone could send me home. The freedom was empowering, like wearing an invisible mecha robot suit or one of the force fields that Isaiah always threw up when we used to play together. I was almost disappointed when I got to the end of the hall and didn’t get caught. I knocked on the ampersand between the chalk Wy & Zay.
A rail-thin white kid with fluffy blond hair answered the door, his eyes wide as he said, “Uh-h-h…” with such sustained breath that I was actually impressed.
“You must be Wy,” I said. When he didn’t move, I gestured to myself. “I’m Isaiah’s sister. I need to talk to him.”
“Oh, right. I’ll leave you guys alone,” Wy said, jittering away from the door and clearing a path for me to step inside the dorm. Instead of closing the door behind him, he slipped through it. “See you at breakfast, Zay!”
Isaiah was sitting on his bed. He hadn’t yet unmade it. The sheets were neatly tucked under the corners, ready for another night.
“Have you heard from Aunt Bobbie?” I asked.
He glared up at me. “Why?”
I put my hands up in surrender. “My folks are going to be here at ten. I was wondering if they caught the same flight.”
“Must have,” he muttered. “My mom will be here at ten, too.”
“Good,” I said. “I need you to stay with your team. Go to the skirmish. Start competing.”
He squinted at me like I’d lost my mind. “What? No. Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to?”
“You’re telling,” he shot back.
I held my tongue and counted to ten. Then I tried it again with Mississippis. There wasn’t a world where he made it easy to be nice to him.
“Whoever they see first is going to take the brunt of this,” I said.
“So?” He smashed his arms over his chest. The movement threw a wall of his cologne at me.
“So, that should be me,” I said, wincing at the smell. I guess it would mask whatever was happening with all of Wy’s dirty clothes. I squared my shoulders. “You were right, Isaiah. You need this more than me. You need the room to make this choice for you. Go compete. If you can beat my team, then I don’t doubt that you’ll get your placement here. You deserve a scholarship here.”
He stared at me, possibly waiting for me to crack up and tell him it was all a joke. When I didn’t, he sniffed. “Is this because you kicked me in the stomach?”
I scuffed my heel against the carpet. “Sort of. I don’t mean to be a bitch to you. You’re just…” I thought about Leigh saying how hard it was to make friends when you’re always the youngest, and Crumbs ignoring Brandon’s pleas in French. “You’re the baby. It’s not your fault that you’re an annoying douche-canoe. You just make it so hard to be nice to you. We were doing okay before you tried to blackmail me during the lightsaber duel.”
He hung his head, clasping his hands together. His thumbs rubbed together awkwardly. “I wouldn’t have told anyone about your boyfriend.”
I gritted my teeth. “The first chance you got, you told your mom I was here.”
“Well, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “But she would have found that out when she got here, wouldn’t she?”
“Make sure that you make it to the skirmish. Before I change my mind about trying to be nice to you.”
He examined my face. “Are you going to enlist?”
I shrugged. “Someday.”
“Because that’s what Lawrences do?”
“I’m not a Lawrence.”
“Are so. You’ve got two last names, don’t you?”
He got to his feet. I was momentarily paralyzed with fear that he was going to hug me, but he straightened up tall and saluted me.
“Aim high, Ever.”
I returned the salute. “Fly, fight, win, Zay.”
*
As I opened the door to the stairwell, the pocket of my shorts buzzed. I froze, bracing for another rage-filled text from one of my parents, but was surprised to see Leigh’s name pop up.
Come to breakfast! I found Rowan! I am the greatest detective in the world!!! (Simone helped.)
I paused. I had some time before the plague of screaming adults was timed to hit campus. And I would get hungry while they were yelling at me. And maybe if I made it to the end of breakfast, I could say good-bye to Brandon. Or not say good-bye and just see him again. Depending on my current level of cowardice.
There wasn’t much left on the breakfast buffet when I made it to the dining hall. I managed to get a single pancake and a couple of sausages before throwing myself down at the open spot at the end of the bench, next to Perla.
“Ever!” Meg said, barely concealing her shock. “I didn’t think you were going to make it down today. I got a message from Professor Cheeseman last night—”
“I was hungry,” I said simply, ignoring the confusion passing around the table.
“And just in time!” Leigh said, leaping off the bench and showing zero sign that she was feeling any of the rum we’d shared the night before. She threw her arms out wide. “May I have your attention, please?”
“Leigh,” Hari said wearily. “Sit down.”
“Stuff it, Bhardwaj,” Leigh said, pirouetting to point a finger at him. She strode to the middle of the dining hall. “Pop quiz! Who is Salieri?”
There was a lot of confused muttering before one of the guys from the Team Five table called out, “He was Beethoven’s nemesis!”
“Mozart, not Beethoven,” corrected Fallon loudly from the Team Two table. “Get it together, Team Five.”