“Besides,” he was saying, “he’s still too gutted about Harvard to notice anything else. But it’s over now. So he’ll either get past it or he won’t.”
“He will,” Clare had insisted. “He’ll get past it.”
But Aidan only shrugged. “Or he won’t.”
Now Riley is leaning forward, her eyes wide and owlish behind her glasses, which she pushes up on her nose with one finger. “The thing is,” she says, her voice just a whisper, “it turns out he never even applied.”
Clare stares at her, genuinely shocked. “What?”
“I know,” Riley says, looking half-horrified by the news and half-thrilled at being the one to deliver it. “Dad’s been really upset all summer, but lately he’s gotten kind of weirdly obsessive about Harvard again. I think it’s because Aidan’s about to leave, and he’s having a hard time watching him pack up for another school. He’s been trying to get over it—he really has—but the other night, he asked to see the rejection letter, I guess just for closure maybe, or I don’t know why. But none of us had ever actually seen it.…”
“Me neither,” Clare admits. They’d only shown each other their acceptances, because the idea of handing over a stack of failures—even just to Aidan—was too much for Clare. She’d stuffed all of hers in the trash within minutes of receiving them, burying all the so-sorrys and thanks-for-tryings beneath coffee grounds and banana peels, as if somehow that were enough to strike them from the record. There were plenty of others to celebrate. So that’s what they did.
“Well, he said he threw it away, but he was being sort of weird about it, so I guess Dad finally decided to call the admissions office today—”
“Why?”
Riley shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably to give them a piece of his mind. But it turns out they don’t have any record of the application.”
“I can’t believe he would do that,” Clare says, still reeling. But there’s something else at the edge of her surprise, something dark and unsettling that she can’t quite place until Riley comes right out and says it for her.
“So he really never told you?”
She shakes her head.
“I thought he told you everything.”
“Apparently not,” Clare says, her voice tight.
“Well, anyway,” Riley says, twirling a pen between her fingers, “Dad’s really mad at him now. As you can probably imagine.”
Clare nods, but her mind is elsewhere. She can’t believe Aidan wouldn’t have told her. They tell each other everything. Not just the big stuff, but the little things, too: when Clare decided to switch toothpastes, and when Aidan discovered a penny in his shoe; whenever Clare has a dream about clowns, or whenever Aidan remembers to floss. It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s good or bad, hugely important or completely insignificant: The reward for doing pretty much anything, for surviving it or conquering it or just plain getting through it, is getting to tell Aidan about it afterward.
She always thought it was the same for him.
But now she isn’t so sure.
Downstairs, they hear a door slam, and then a few muffled voices. Riley glances up at the clock above her desk, which is shaped like an old-fashioned teapot.
“I told my friends I’d be there by now,” she says. “I wonder how much longer this is gonna take.”
“Maybe we should try to go rescue him,” Clare suggests with more conviction than she feels, and Riley casts a cautious glance at her bedroom door before standing up with a little nod.
They walk downstairs quietly, their footsteps softened by the nubby gray carpet, then tiptoe through the dining room, where the voices from the kitchen become clearer.
“We’re just disappointed,” Mrs. Gallagher is saying, her tone placating. “You can understand that.…”
“You would have been disappointed either way,” Aidan says, and there’s a hard edge to his voice. “Even if I’d gotten in, it’s not like I was ever gonna go. It’s what you wanted, not me. I was just trying to save us all the trouble of fighting about it.”
There’s a short pause, and then Mr. Gallagher clears his throat. “That’s all fine,” he says, though from the tone of his voice, there doesn’t seem to be anything fine about it. “But the way you did it, in the sneakiest, most cowardly way possible—”
“It was the only way—” Aidan says, but his father interrupts him.
“You think you’re so grown up, heading off to college, but you’re not—not yet. A real man wouldn’t have lied. A real man wouldn’t have taken the easy way out.” He pauses, letting out a long sigh. “But you made your decision. There’s nothing that can be done about it now. It was your choice, and now you’re the one who has to live with it.”
Beside Clare, Riley shifts her weight, and a floorboard groans beneath her. Before they can do anything, the door swings open, and they’re faced with Mrs. Gallagher, whose lips are pressed into a thin line.
“Sorry,” Riley says quickly. “It’s just that Aidan promised to drive me—”
“I’m not sure we’re quite—” she says, but Mr. Gallagher cuts her off.
“It’s fine,” he says, and there’s something wrenching and final in his voice when he turns to Aidan, who is staring at him with a stubborn expression that Clare knows well, his jaw hard and his eyes blazing. “We’re all done here.”
But Aidan doesn’t move. Nobody does.
“We’ll be waiting outside,” Riley says after a moment, then she spins around, and Clare follows her back through the dining room and out the front door, where they stumble into the cool evening air, relieved to be out of the house.
Clare takes a seat on the steps, hugging her knees to her chest. It’s almost entirely dark now, and the yard is throbbing with the sound of crickets, the neighborhood otherwise quiet all around them. Riley sits down beside her and adopts a similar pose.
“He’s an idiot,” she says after a minute or so. “But I also sort of get it.”
Clare turns to her. “Yeah?”
“It’s not that he’s a coward. He’s just realistic, you know?”
“I know,” Clare says, because this is true. Aidan is an optimist at heart, but he’s careful about it. He would never spend the time or energy to go after something he had no interest in having. He’s much too practical for that, far too economical about his hopes and dreams. If he were going to try for something, it would be for one of two reasons: Either he was certain he could get it or he was certain it was worth it.
“But he’s still an idiot,” Riley says, giving her a shy smile, “’cause if he’d gone to Harvard, he could have been closer to you.”
Clare closes her eyes. It’s been a long time since she’s allowed herself this same thought: the two of them shuttling back and forth between Harvard and Dartmouth, a mere two-hour drive, spending weekends skiing in Vermont or picking apples in New Hampshire, going to museums in Boston and watching the boats slip by on the Charles.
She knows this person she’s been trying so hard to keep from imagining—the one with the winter coat and clunky snow boots, bundled up and red-cheeked during those cozy New England winters—isn’t Aidan. It’s not who he is or what he wants. But it still hurts to know that it was never even a possibility, and sitting here in the early darkness of this suburban night, it only makes her feel like it’s already here, this looming distance between them, like they’ve already been set adrift.
“I’m going to miss him,” Clare says with a suddenness that startles them both. She gives a helpless shrug, and Riley nods.
“I know,” she says. “Me too.”
Clare bumps her gently with her shoulder. “And I’ll miss you, too.”
“Yeah?” Riley asks, her face lighting up.
“Yeah. You’d better keep in touch.”
“I will,” she says. “I swear. Even if you and Aidan break up.”
Clare flinches at the words. This is the whole point of the night, of course, its inevitable end. But still, it sends a
little shock through her to hear it said out loud.
Behind them, the door opens, casting a wedge of light over the front stoop, and Aidan steps outside. They both twist to look up at him, and he stands there for a long moment, his eyes distant and blank, rubbing his hands together, though it’s not very cold.
Finally, he tips his head down to face them with a smile that’s full of effort. “So much for quick and painless,” he says with a sheepish expression. “New rule for tonight. No more unscheduled stops.”
Clare nods. “Deal.”
His face softens when their eyes meet, but his words snap like firecrackers in the dark. “Hi and bye,” he says, and she has to swallow the knot in her throat before she can respond.
“Hi and bye.”
The Bowling Alley
9:17 PM
As soon as Aidan pulls into one of the many empty parking spots in front of the Incredibowl—where the only truly incredible thing is just how totally outdated the place is—Riley dashes out of the car, tossing off a hasty thank-you before the door slams shut behind her.
“I think she’s late to meet her friends,” Clare says, watching her trot off through the fog, though she suspects the truth is that Riley’s just eager to escape the strained silence in the car, something Clare half wishes she could do as well.
Instead, she remains sitting there beside Aidan, staring out the dirty windshield at the low-slung building, which is wreathed in neon lights, the entrance bookended by two giant bowling pins with chipping paint, standing guard like weary soldiers.
Aidan hasn’t said a word since they left his house, and Clare thinks this might be the longest she’s ever heard him go quiet. He’s not like so many of the other guys in their class, sullen and moody and withdrawn; if there’s one thing Aidan Gallagher can do, it’s talk. He’s got a knack for keeping up a steady chatter, and he’s never met an awkward silence he couldn’t plow through with idle musings. When they’re together, it’s never mattered whether or not Clare keeps up her end of the conversation. A lot of the time, it doesn’t even matter if she’s listening. Aidan has a habit of answering his own questions, a sort of absentminded call-and-response that requires nobody else on the other end.
“Have you ever noticed that girls always seem to fold their socks while guys always roll them?” he’d said just yesterday while watching her pack. “It’s interesting, right? I wonder which one is actually more effective. Do you think anyone’s ever done a study of that sort of thing? Maybe we should do an experiment right now. Maybe we’ll win an award for our work in the field of hyper-efficient packing techniques.…”
“Aidan,” Clare had said, looking over at him distractedly, “can you please shut up?”
“Not a chance,” he’d replied good-naturedly; then he’d turned to start emptying the contents of her sock drawer. While she packed up the rest of her things, he dutifully rolled or folded each pair of socks with a look of great concentration, providing color commentary all the while.
That’s just Aidan: a natural talker, an unconscious prattler, a cheerful banterer. Though she teases him for it, it’s always been comforting, like being armed with a parachute for any kind of potentially uncomfortable social situation. There’s simply not room for long pauses when he’s around, and Clare—who falls on the quieter end of the spectrum—has always been grateful for that.
But now, after a completely silent fifteen-minute drive to the bowling alley, she’s starting to worry that this night—which was supposed to be all about conversation, all about discussion and dialogue and debate—might already be sunk.
In the quiet of the car, she plays with one of her rings, sliding it off her finger and then back on again, waiting for him to do something first: to speak or get out or drive away again. But as the minutes stretch between them with no end in sight, she finally looks over at him.
“Aidan,” she says, and he doesn’t react. His face is pale in the glow of a nearby streetlamp, and his forehead is creased. “You should’ve told me.…”
When he still doesn’t respond, she wonders if he could possibly be thinking they won’t talk about what happened, if his plan is just to roll the whole thing up like a pair of socks and tuck it away.
“I would’ve understood,” she says, pressing on, and he leans his head back against the seat, his eyes pinned to the shadowy ceiling of the car.
“Like you do now?” he asks in a flat tone that doesn’t even sound like him.
They’re not accustomed to fighting, and when they’ve done so, it’s always had a slightly playful edge to it, more sparring than actual combat. They’d once made a pact to differentiate between Petty High School Dramas and Big Life Issues, swearing that they’d only ever argue when it was something important, something that really mattered. But now that they’re here, now that the stage is bigger and the discussion has widened and they can’t seem to find their way through, Clare wonders if maybe they’re not equipped for the Big Life Issues after all. Maybe they never were.
“That’s not fair,” she says in a voice that sounds way too reasonable. “We haven’t even talked about it yet.”
“Yeah, but I know you, Clare Rafferty,” he says, still without looking at her. “I know you like things a certain way. You would’ve loved to be the girl at Dartmouth with the Harvard boyfriend.”
“That’s not—”
He shakes his head. “I know you’ve been great about UCLA. You have. But if Harvard had been an option—a real on-the-table option—I honestly don’t know whether you would’ve been on my side.”
Clare stares at him, stung by this. “Of course I would have,” she says, even as a part of her wonders if that’s true. The fact that he didn’t even try to get in—not to mention that he didn’t tell her—feels like a kind of rejection.
But what if he had been accepted? If there was a chance for them to be closer next year—if he could have chosen Harvard, chosen the East Coast, chosen her, but didn’t—isn’t it possible she would’ve felt differently?
Last fall, when Aidan was constantly complaining about Harvard, Clare had made him a deal. “If you stop moaning and groaning about being forced to apply to the best academic institution in the country,” she said, “I’ll put in an application for somewhere I don’t want to go, either.”
It had turned into a game, the two of them poring over heavy books filled with rankings and seemingly endless online lists. Aidan’s first suggestions were all jokes, places that were much too close (the community college that Scotty’s now attending), or much too far (universities in Moscow and Tokyo and Beijing), much too technical (MIT), or not technical enough (a college of “living wisdom” where you could actually major in yoga).
But once Clare had nixed all of those, Aidan got serious.
“All your others are on the East Coast,” he pointed out. “So maybe we should find you something out west to balance things out.”
“I like that,” she’d said. “That way, we’ll sort of be mirroring each other, since you’re all West Coast except for Harvard.”
After that, it was easy. Finding the closest thing to Harvard on the West Coast meant one thing: Stanford. And so she’d applied.
When her rejection arrived, Clare didn’t mind. She’d never expected to get in, nor had she ever seriously considered going there, but she was surprised to see a flicker of disappointment in Aidan’s eyes when she told him.
“Well, there goes our safety school.”
Clare had frowned. “Stanford wasn’t my safety. Not by a long shot.”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling, “but it was mine.”
“You applied?” she asked, staring at him, and he shook his head.
“There was just something kind of cool about knowing we might be on the same coast,” he told her. “Kind of like a safety net… you know, for us.”
“Well, there’s always Harvard,” she said, expecting that to cheer him up a bit, but instead, she saw something shut down behind his eyes, and he only shrugged.
“We’ll see.”
Clare doesn’t mind that he didn’t end up applying. Not really. She knows that Aidan’s best and worst quality is this: that he wants everyone to be happy. He’s always bending over backward, doing cartwheels and flips and somersaults in an effort to make sure he doesn’t offend anyone. So she can understand his logic. If he’d applied and gotten into Harvard, there’s no way he could have chosen another school without causing a huge rift with his father. But if he fixed the odds himself, making sure it wasn’t even a possibility, there was a chance he could get out of the trap that had been set for him his entire life with barely a scratch.
Only it hadn’t worked.
And worse, he’d left her completely in the dark.
That’s what she minds: that he hadn’t told her, that he hadn’t trusted her enough to believe she’d be supportive. After nearly two years together—two whole years of being the most important person in each other’s lives—this feels like a kick in the teeth.
“Aidan,” she says now, her eyes trained on his shadowy profile in the dim light of the car. “I’m always on your side. But you can’t put me in the same category as your parents. You can’t lie to me just because you’re afraid of how I might react.”
“I didn’t lie.”
She fixes him with a hard look. “You’re doing it again right now.”
“I didn’t…” he begins, then stops and blows out a long breath. “I didn’t mean to lie. At least not to you.”
“Then why did you?” she asks, feeling her throat tighten a little. “I would’ve understood.”
“Maybe,” he says grudgingly. “It’s easy to say that now.”
“Still.”
He shrugs. “I guess I felt bad about the Stanford thing.”