I manage to crack a half-smirk. “Careful, Nielson. You’ll make me feel like I’m in therapy, and we both know how it worked out the last time a shrink tried to scoop out my brains like an ice cream sundae.”
The look she shoots me is only marginally indulgent of my shit. “I’m serious, Sophie. You’ve been through a lot in the last few months, and that doesn’t even count your life before. Little to no recollection of your home life before the state took you in, lingering medical issues, several foster homes between your initial intake and your placement with the McAlisters. It’s important to acknowledge these things. It’s how you work with and then overcome them.” She smiles. “Which is why I’m actually quite pleased we’re having this meeting today. I have some good news for you.”
My skepticism rises at her claim to have “good news” following the laundry list of “bad news” that’s been my life for the last eighteen years.
She pulls a manila folder from her desk, and I watch her flip it open and page through the contents, looking pretty fucking pleased with herself as she does so.
“Do you remember those scholarship applications I had you submit earlier in the school year?” she asks.
I shrug. “Vaguely.”
She clicks her tongue against her teeth and shakes her head. “I need you to be more mindful of these things, Sophie. Anyway, as your caseworker, I’m made privy to your acceptances and rejections—”
“I don’t think we need to go over rejections,” I cut in.
She smiles. “This isn’t about rejection. This is about acceptance.”
Acceptance? Really?
Picking through my brain’s crackled memory, I think back to all those stupid scholarship applications she had me fill out during our sessions. The details are fuzzy, but I remember thinking how inane the whole thing was.
All those forms promising the false hope of a better future. Gilded prizes allotted to kids just pathetic enough to appeal to rich philanthropists—the kind who don’t actually care about the underprivileged, but who do care about what pretending to give a shit will do for their public image.
I wasn’t a terrible student; I actually made good grades. But I’m not dumb enough to believe that my good grades are enough. I didn’t have any extracurricular activities to boast about, because like hell was Brody going to support something like that for free, and it wasn’t like I was a star athlete or some shit.
I don’t look at my future prospects with the same optimism Ms. Nielson does.
Honestly, I don’t know why she’s trying so hard.
She looks up at me. “Do you remember your application to Hawthorne University?”
“No.”
“Well, they certainly remember you. Enough that the usual one new scholarship student they take every year has been expanded to include two. And one of those students is you.”
I stare blankly at her. “So, what? They gave me a scholarship? I still can’t go. Do I look like I can afford everything else that comes with going to some fancy-ass university—”
“When I say scholarship, I mean not only is your education covered, but your room and board, your meals, as well as a general living stipend awarded to you every month. Your biggest responsibility is to go to class and prosper.”
I know there’s supposed to be some sliver of gratefulness when Ms. Nielson tells me this information.
I know I should be elated, over the moon and back. I should be happy.
Yet I sit here across from her feeling nothing but a vague exhaustion. None of this is anything other than a false hope that things can get better. Rich boys and girls go to college off the money that their parents make. Rich boys and girls go to college, get educated, and sweep another rich boy or girl off their feet so they can get married and have rich babies, and perpetuate the cycle through a new generation of rich boys and girls.
Girls like me get jobs at bars that don’t have a problem employing someone who isn’t even old enough to legally drink the merchandise.
“That’s all well and good, but what’s the point? Send me to a school with all those snotty rich kids, and what does that accomplish? I’m still who I am, and their world isn’t mine. Why should I bother?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” she counters. “What is there to lose, Sophie? Other than the wasted potential that is your life if you pass this up? I’ve seen many kids come and go through this office. Many kids who have potential. Some do something with it, others don’t. But I always see the potential, even when kids like you don’t. Take the opportunity. You’re at a crossroads right now. Why not take the path that could do you the most good?”
She’s trying hard. Her tone is as encouraging as it is pleading.
My stomach twists as I wonder whether, when it was his turn to sit here and get this speech, Jared’s social worker was this concerned about his future. What potential did Jared have offered to him? Did anybody help him? Encourage him? Or was he, like so many kids in our position, ushered in and out as quickly as possible, because social workers are too underpaid for the amount of investment that’s expected of them?
These are questions I have no answers to. Jared is dead, and that’s not going to change.
For the second time today, I think about him lying on that cold, stainless-steel slab in the morgue. I think about his ashes drifting in the wind. Is that the future my path is leading to?
I can’t get the image of Jared out of my head, any more than I can force away the image of myself lying on that same cold table.
That is the path I’m on. Unless I change it.
Drumming my fingers over the arm of my chair, I sigh.
“Alright. Tell me about Hawthorne University.”
5
Hawthorne University is an intimately sized private university just north of LA that’s so elite it takes on exactly one thousand new students every year—no more, but sometimes less, and that number includes the one scholarship student who’s accepted yearly.
Well, two this year.
Backed by a board of wealthy investors keen on supplementing the education of America’s best, it provides over fifty degrees from tech to the arts, molding young minds for a bright, successful future.
At least, that is the impression that Ms. Nielson tried to instill in me when she told me the ins and outs of the school.
Standing before it, I can admit that Hawthorne is pretty to look at, but I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t give off the most pretentious vibes I’ve ever seen in a building before. Probably doesn’t help that the lot is packed full of equally pretentious, equally expensive sports cars.
Brody had a thing for car shows, and he kept a shit ton of magazines around the house. I recognize the models in the lot from all those magazines, from all the times Brody practically gave himself a boner babbling about those cars.
Aston Martins. Maseratis. Ferraris.
They’re all here in the lot, in cobalt blues and liquid silvers, in flashes of candy apple reds for the ones needing to stand out a little more among their peers.
Me? My sexy ride is a shuttle bus, dropping me at the front of this sea of opulence. That is a courtesy of the school, and I have the school to thank for the preemptive delivery of my belongings from the halfway house to the dorms here at Hawthorne. The admins seem determined to prove their goodwill toward their underprivileged students.