But she was broken. She’d loved him. Or at least she thought she had. Certainly, she had trusted him with everything she was, everything she had.
Unfortunately, the lesson wasn’t over quite yet.
Just her luck that Dean rigged his phone so he could save what was supposed to have been erased. Of course, HushDuo wasn’t so secure after all. He didn’t write back to her, but he did forward that very private and very personal photo to a few of his friends. Someone posted it on Instagram, someone else on Facebook, and after that, it spread like wildfire. By the time she returned to school in January, she couldn’t walk down the hall without a whisper or a comment thrown her way. Because of Dean, she developed a reputation, and it was the antithesis of the hardworking, studious nerd that she’d been before. Suddenly, she was known as a “whore” and a “slut” and all kinds of other horrifying names the kids at school threw at her. Even her teachers gave her terrible looks. Instead of picking on her, Mr. Foster couldn’t even look her in the eye.
But the worst part wasn’t even that.
The worst part was when her parents got called into the principal’s office. The worst part was when they saw the photo and read the comments. The worst part was sitting in that stiff leather chair waiting for her father’s reaction. The worst part was his cold, empty stare, the fact that she’d failed him completely, that “this phase” had ruined her completely.
When he left five days later, she broke down. They came home from returning Christmas presents at Water Tower to find his desk empty, his closets mostly cleared out, no explanations, no good-byes. This wasn’t just a weeklong business trip. This was different.
That was the absolute worst.
She learned that her parents were right. She learned that she’d ruined her life, completely. She learned that love is a distraction. She learned not to love, not to trust, and not to—ever again—let anyone else in.
PART TWO
Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe’s College Application Checklist
□ May: AP Exams bombed
□ June–July: Design and Engineering Summer Academy thwarted
□ July: Work on College Apps
□ August: Work on College Apps; Study for SAT
□ September: Finalize Stanford Application
College Admissions Tip #1
Extracurricular and summer activities demonstrate your enthusiasm for the experience of learning. What’s even more important is that you grow from the experience in new and important ways, and that you communicate that growth in your college essays.
The very first day of Bennett Tower Pool’s Memorial Day Weekend Grand Opening is the exact opposite of inertia.
It’s chaos.
Pure and utter chaos.
It’s early Saturday morning, and the gate isn’t even open yet, but the line outside is already packed with screaming kids, frantic mothers, oblivious fathers, and retired old couples desperate to get in. I’ve lived here for five years, but I don’t recognize anyone. Perhaps that’s equally due to my life as a hermit.
Mr. Bautista leads us to our permanent post at the front desk, where we’ll be scanning membership cards, checking IDs, recording visitors’ passes, and selling snacks, and then he promptly checks his phone. “I’ve got a leaky faucet on the twenty-fifth floor. You’ll introduce your friend to everyone, Sammie?”
“Will do,” Sammie says, and he disappears.
I put my textbooks down on the counter. “I thought he was in charge?”
“He’s in charge of the Bennett Village maintenance, but Virgo is the pool manager.”
Virgo, who’s placing towels on a shelf, hears his name and comes over. “Got yourself an accomplice this year, Sammie?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Virgo, this is Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe.”
“Viviana, you say?” He rolls the r’s and accents the a’s perfectly. “Ciao, bella! Are you, by chance, Italian?”
“No,” I say. “My mom is Jewish, born in Russia, but she spent time in central Italy.” I briefly explain the history of my mom’s journey around the world. “They were only there for a few months when she was young, but she still gave my sister and me Italian names, she loved it there so much.”
“Do you speak?”
I shake my head. My mom knows Russian, Hebrew, some Yiddish, and even a little Italian, and yet she never speaks any of the languages to us. My dad tried to convince her to speak to me (“Stanford loves multilingual students!”), but she refused. She never really does anything cultural or religious with us. Except for telling us her story, she says she wanted to leave those worlds behind.
“Poverino! Viviana!” Virgo, who has to be at least six feet tall, starts to sing my name in a gorgeous operatic voice. My name reverberates over the empty pool and into the sky. “The most beautiful operas in the world are Italian.”
“Don’t listen to him. He’s Colombian but thinks he’s from Rome.”
“Actually, I’m from Irving Park, born and raised. But yes, my full name—Virgilio—is Italian, and so I am Italian in my soul,” Virgo says, pressing his hand on his heart.