Wait a minute, I think, my head clearing briefly. I thought I was a shoo-in because my interviewer essentially told me I was.
“Um,” I say, getting to my feet so quickly the paper bag slides to the tile; I bend down and scoop it up before thrusting it in Gray’s direction, swinging my still-open backpack onto one shoulder. “I just remembered I left my notes for next period in the car. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” Gray’s eyes narrow a little. “Sure.”
Then, laying one big hand on my arm: “Marin,” he says, “Are you sure you’re okay? You just got, like, super weird all of a sudden.”
“Yup,” I call over my shoulder, pulling gently away and darting down the hallway toward the exit. “Everything’s fine!”
Out in the parking lot I dig wildly through my backpack until I find the business card Kalina gave me on the day of the interview; it’s crumpled at the bottom, crumb-stained and soft around the edges. I dial her office number with shaking hands, squinting up at the midmorning sunlight.
“Marin,” Kalina says, once the front desk assistant puts me through to her office. Right away she sounds uncomfortable, and I wonder if any authority figure is ever going to be happy to hear from me again. “How are you?”
“Um, not great, actually.” I dig the nails of my free hand into my palm, trying not to sound hysterical. I’ve only got six more minutes until I have to be in class. “I just got a rejection letter from your office.”
Kalina makes a sympathetic sound. “Oof, I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “You know, the university gets over thirty thousand applicants each year, and there’s such a limited number of spots that often even when a candidate is qualified—”
“No, I know,” I interrupt. “It says so in the letter. And I’m sorry if it’s inappropriate to be calling you like this. I know it’s probably bad form. But I just wanted to know what happened. For, like, the future.”
“Unfortunately I can’t really speak to the specifics,” Kalina says. “We’ve got a policy of not commenting on individual applicants—again, the pool is just so large—”
“Kalina,” I say, and my voice is dangerously close to be breaking. “Please? You had all the information when we met, right? And you said—”
“I shouldn’t have,” she interrupts me. “I know you and I had a rapport, but I was speaking out of turn, and I’m sorry if I—”
“Was it my grades?” I ask. “My extracurriculars? What?”
Kalina doesn’t say anything for a moment. It’s like I can feel her debating something with herself on the other end of the line. “Look, Marin,” she says, and her voice is very quiet. “Ultimately the admissions board received some information that made us feel like you might be a better fit elsewhere, that’s all.”
All at once I stand up a little straighter, a sensation like a spider scuttling up along my spine. “What information?”
“Marin, I really can’t—”
“What information? Kalina, if somebody said something about me that made it so I can’t get into college—” I shake my head, catching a glimpse of the window of the newspaper office out of the very corner of my eye; then, all at once, the penny drops. “Oh my god. Was it Bex?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Beckett,” I say. “Jon Beckett, my English teacher. He—he and I—his family are these huge donors, and—” I break off. “Is that who it was?”
For a long time Kalina doesn’t answer, and that’s how I know that it’s true.
“For what it’s worth, I went to bat for you,” she tells me finally. “I’m really sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah,” I say, dimly aware of the bell for the end of the period ringing in the distance. I tilt my head back and look up at the tree line, my eyes blurring with tears. “Me too.”
Thirty
I stumble back into the building, my chest tight and my breath coming in frantic, ragged gulps. I feel like I could rip tree trunks in half with my bare hands or burst into flames in the middle of the hallway. In the back of my mind I know that not getting into my first-choice Ivy League university is the very definition of a champagne problem: after all, there are plenty of other colleges. There are plenty of other paths.
But this is the one I wanted. This is the one I earned.
And he just . . . took it.
There’s only one concrete thought in my head as I careen down the hallway:
I have to find him.
I know from back when we used to be friends, or whatever it is I thought we were, that Bex doesn’t have a class this period. I head for the newspaper office, but the room is dark and empty when I arrive, the Bridgewater screensavers glowing vacantly on the computer screens.
I try the cafeteria next, then the admin suite where the copier is, coming up empty. I’m fully prepared to march right into the teachers’ lounge, to interrupt whatever secret, sacred stuff they all do in there with their microwave and their electric kettle, but instead, when I turn the corner near Ms. Klein’s lab there he is strolling down the hallway in my direction, his stupid messenger bag slung across his chest.
I gasp, freezing for one icy moment before I manage to make any words. “Um,” I announce, the sound coming out phlegmy and garbled. “I need to talk to you.”
Bex frowns. “Marin,” he says, with this tiny pause like I’m some random student he’s never taught before and he needs to search his mental contacts list for my name. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”
“I don’t think it really matters at this point, does it?” I shoot back. “You made sure of that.”
Bex’s eyes narrow for the briefest of moments. “Well, it’s pretty obvious you’re upset,” he observes mildly, like the emotion has nothing whatsoever to do with him, like I’m a character on a TV show he doesn’t much like. “Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”
“Somewhere like your apartment, you mean?”
It’s out before I can stop myself, and I think I shock us both in equal part: Bex’s lips thin, a muscle twitching erratically in his jaw.
“This is really inappropriate,” he murmurs with a shake of his head, turning away and making to brush past me down the hallway. “If you want to have a conversation related to your schoolwork, you know where to—”
I laugh out loud, hysterical and cackling like the witches from Macbeth. I know I sound exactly as crazy and ungovernable as everyone in this school already thinks I am, but for the first time since this all started I 100 percent do not care.
“Seriously?” I can’t help asking. “I’m inappropriate?”
“Enough.” All at once Bex turns around again, grabbing me by the arm and steering me down the hallway into the south stairwell, the door slamming shut behind us with a startling chunk. “Jesus Christ, Marin,” he says, bewildered. “What is your problem right now?”
In the back of my head it occurs to me to be afraid of him. Instead, I stand my ground, planting my feet on the linoleum and willing my voice not to shake. “Did you talk to the Brown admissions board about me?”