So I just look at her and say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Then I drop my suitcase on the floor and walk into the bathroom. I take deep breaths and splash some cold water on my face. I am strong, I am confident, I am in control. I repeat the mantra to myself and then return to the room.
I intentionally avoid Lyla’s gaze. Her eyes are this deep, rich brown, the kind of eyes that change color depending on her mood or the lighting, going from dark to light back to dark again. I remember when we had our fight how I couldn’t stop looking at her eyes, how I could tell she was really mad by the way they kept changing, like flashing lights warning me to back off. But I couldn’t stop it. The damage was already done. And even though I kept trying to reach out to her, it didn’t matter. She was done with me. And Aven, too.
Whatever. I have enough to worry about right now without thinking about that. It’s in the past. I pick up my suitcase and drop it onto the other bed. I will not look at Lyla, I will not look at Lyla, I will not look at Lyla. It’s taking every single ounce of my willpower not to ask her what she’s been up to, if she ever thinks about me and Aven, if she got the email she sent herself and if she’s going to do what it says.
“I’m assuming you took that bed?” I ask instead. I’m trying so hard not to let her see how flustered I am that my tone sounds a little harsher than I intended.
“Um, well, I’m not sure,” Lyla says. “I mean, I didn’t want to take it before everyone else got here, so I just thought that maybe—”
“Well, whatever,” I say. “You can have it. Let Aven sleep on the cot.”
“Aven?”
“Yeah.” I’m rummaging through my bag, looking for my bathing suit. I finally find it buried under a pile of tank tops. I pull it out, along with my cover-up and flip-flops. “She’s our third roommate.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” She sounds genuinely shocked. How did she not know that Aven was our roommate? Did she not look at the paper they gave us on the bus?
“Yup.” I shake my head. “Apparently she’s still living in fantasy world.”
Lyla frowns and pushes her hair back from her face. “What do you mean?”
“Aven was in charge of making the room assignments. She’s on the Student Action Committee.” I feel bad for a second, because I don’t know for sure Aven’s the one who made the room assignments. But what are the chances she didn’t? There’s no way we just randomly got selected to be put together. No way.
“The Student Action Committee?” Lyla’s asking. “I’ve never even heard of the Student Action Committee.”
“That’s not surprising,” I say. What I mean is that she’s probably never heard of it because the Student Action Committee is worthless, but Lyla looks like she’s been slapped. And then I realize she must think I mean she doesn’t pay attention to anything, and that’s why she’s never heard of it. I open my mouth to explain. But then I think, so what if she thinks I said something bitchy to her? I tried to reach out to Lyla so many times, I sent her text after text after text for days after our fight, only to be ignored. Why should I feel bad for being a little bratty to someone who treated me like that?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lyla asks. She sounds halfway defensive, and halfway like she really wants to know.
“Nothing, just that sometimes you don’t pay attention to what’s going on.” Like when I’m passing her in the halls at school and she’s totally consumed with her boyfriend, Derrick. Seriously, it’s so annoying. I’m sure they’re like ohmygod totally in love, but really? Do they have to walk around holding hands like lovesick puppies? Actually, lovesick puppies don’t hold hands—they just stare at each other with love. But I’ve never seen Derrick and Lyla staring at each other with love. At least not in a while. Are those two having problems? I remember how Beckett Cross was carrying her bag on the plane, and I wonder if there’s something going on between the two of them.
“Yeah,” Lyla says. “And sometimes you pay too much attention to what’s going on.”
I open my mouth to let her know her remark makes no sense, that there’s no way someone can pay too much attention to what’s going on. I mean, seriously? But then I realize what she means. That I told her secret. That I screwed everything up. That if I’m being completely honest with myself, the real reason Aven, Lyla, and I aren’t friends anymore is because of me.
It’s not one of those “oh, everyone had a part in it, it’s a complicated situation” kind of things. It’s my fault. I told Lyla’s secret. I betrayed her. And I can’t take that back. But instead of dealing with any of that, I close my mouth and march into the bathroom, where I change into my bathing suit and cover-up.
When I come back into the room, I make a big show of unpacking my stuff and placing it in my drawers. I’m already late to meet Celia and Paige for the beach, but I don’t care. I want to give Lyla a chance to say something else to me.
But she just makes some snide remark about how I’m unpacking my clothes at a hotel, which is a ridiculous thing to make a snide remark about, because honestly, who doesn’t unpack their clothes at a hotel? What is she going to do with hers, just leave them in her suitcase? That’s a horrible idea. They’ll get all wrinkled. And how will she be able to find anything? She’ll have to go pawing through her suitcase every time she wants to change.
I’m just finishing up when a key card slides into the door and Aven comes strolling in. She looks around the room and sees me putting my stuff into the dresser by one bed and Lyla sitting on the other. I wait for her to freak out about the fact that we stuck her with the cot.
“I guess I’m taking the cot,” she says happily. Wow. She doesn’t even have the decency to look guilty about how she manipulated things and got us all put in the same room. Talk about an abuse of power. I’ll bet if I told Mr. Beals about this, he’d totally kick her off the committee. I think about marching downstairs and telling him right now, just to be a brat. Then maybe he’d fix it and I could go back to being roommates with Paige and Celia and not have this whole vacation be a total nightmare.
“I think we could all benefit from spending some time together,” Aven says when she realizes that Lyla and I are just staring at her incredulously. “I know that our misunderstanding got out of hand, but with graduation coming up, I think it might really be time to move past it.”
For a second, a weird kind of hope blooms in my chest. Are we going to talk about this? Like, really talk about what happened? Here? Now? Are we going to maybe work it out?
But Lyla just laughs bitterly. “Is that what you think it was? A misunderstanding?”
“I know your feelings are still probably really hurt, Lyla,” Aven says, her tone serious. “But Quinn and I never meant to hurt you.”
“Don’t speak for me,” I say automatically. I didn’t mean to hurt Lyla—in fact, it was the last thing I wanted to do. How was I supposed to know that telling her secret was going to end up in disaster? When I did it, I didn’t realize what the consequences were going to be. But letting Aven talk for me is a bad idea, since the reason we’re in this mess in the first place is because of everyone talking behind each other’s backs.
Lyla glares at me. “So you did mean to hurt me?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Why is she so angry all the time? So defensive? What does she think, that people never get into fights? She never even gave me a chance to explain, even though I tried to talk to her dozens and dozens of times. So maybe this whole thing wasn’t completely my fault. If Lyla had just given me an opportunity to explain, maybe we could have worked it out. Suddenly getting into this right now seems extremely exhausting and a complete waste of time. To do the same things over and over again, hoping for a different outcome, really is the definition of insanity.
“Whatever,” I say. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t even care about this. It takes up, like, this amount of space in my mind.” I hold my fingers an inch apart, so they can see how little I think of it. It’s a half lie.
I try not to think about the two of them that much, but only because it’s way too painful.
And then, before they can say anything else, I turn and walk out the door. I’m suddenly super angry at both of them. How dare Lyla not give me a chance to explain when we first had that fight? And how dare Aven set us all up to be in the same room? This is our senior trip, too, and she knows Lyla and I wouldn’t have wanted the three of us to be roommates. Talk about being selfish.
I open the door to the room and poke my head back in. “Keep your hands off my stuff, Aven,” I say. “I know you like to borrow people’s things.” Then I give them both this really big fake smile and slam the door.
I stand out in the hallway for a moment, not moving. I thought snapping at them like that would make me feel better, would make me feel like I had at least a little bit of control of the situation. But it didn’t. In fact, it just made me feel worse.
Go back in. Apologize. Maybe we really can work this out.
My phone buzzes.
Paige.
Where r u?!?!
I sigh and head for the elevator bank. Quinn and Aven are a part of my past. And that’s where they’re going to stay.
When I get to Paige and Celia’s room, Celia is already tipsy, and Paige is looking at her in thinly veiled disgust.
“How are we going to get her downstairs and past Mr. Beals?” Paige asks as soon as I walk in.
We both glance over at Celia. She’s sitting on her bed, talking to someone on the phone and painting her toenails bright red. When she sees me, she breaks into a huge smile and then hangs up on the person she’s talking to without even saying good-bye.
“Quinny!” she says, even though she knows I hate that nickname. “What took you so long?”
“I was getting ready,” I say, deciding not to get into the fact that I was trying to avoid a fight with my ex–best friends and freaking out about my official Stanford rejection letter, which has apparently just arrived at my home and fallen into the possession of my unreliable older brother. “What have you been doing?”
She looks around. “Shhh!” she says. Then she reaches under the bed and pulls out a bottle of Corona. “I got this. From a guy.” She giggles.
“From a guy?” I look at Paige, who shrugs.
“Some guy was coming door-to-door asking if we wanted to buy beer,” she says. “I think he was one of the local college kids, trying to make a buck.”
“And you let her buy some?” I take the Corona out of Celia’s hand and study it for signs of tampering. “Are you crazy? That’s how girls end up raped and dead in the woods.” What is wrong with the two of them? I mean, seriously.
“Oh, relax,” Celia says. She waves the nail-polish brush in the air, and little drops of red polish fly off and drop onto the white comforter. “I made sure the bottles were still sealed.” She caps the polish and starts blowing on her toes. “I’m not stupid.”
And that’s the thing. She really isn’t stupid. She just makes really bad decisions. “How much have you had to drink?” I ask.
“Only one and a half, Mom,” she says. When she sees the look Paige is giving her, she throws her hands up in the air. “Oh my god, not you too, Paige!” Hmm. What’s that supposed to mean? That she expects me to be lame, but she can’t take the idea that Paige might give her a hard time, too? “I thought you wanted to buy the beer!”
“I did, but I didn’t want to start drinking it right away. I thought we’d at least save it for later.”
“We have plenty for later,” Celia says. She motions us over and lifts up the comforter on one side of the bed. Three six-packs stare back at us. “Can you believe he was charging fifty dollars a six-pack?” She throws herself back on the bed and giggles. “Not that I care. I think he was surprised I didn’t try to haggle.”
For the first time, I say a quick prayer of thanks that I’m not rooming with Celia and Paige. If I got caught with alcohol in my room, there’s no way I’d be allowed into Stanford. I’d get sent home from the trip and it would appear on my permanent record. I know because it was all over the informational packet they sent us—that if anyone got caught with alcohol, it would go on our permanent records and any colleges we’d applied to would be notified. Say what you want about Lyla and Aven—but at least I won’t have to worry about them bringing beer into our room and getting me kicked out of school.
But Celia and Paige don’t really think about things like that. They can hardly even fathom the idea they might get caught, and they figure that even if by some small chance they do, nothing will really happen. They think rules are just scare tactics.
I sigh. “Are we going to the beach or not?” They were bothering me to rush down here, and they’re not even ready.
“Of course.” Celia hops off the bed. “Just let me pee real quick.”
She passes by us in a cloud of perfume.
Paige looks at me.
I shrug. “She’s tipsy, yeah, but I don’t think it’s that noticeable, as long as we don’t stop to talk to anyone.”
“Okay.”
Celia emerges from the bathroom looking fresh as a daisy. Her hair is smooth, and she’s wearing a pink-and-orange paisley bikini, with no cover-up.
“Aren’t you going to wear something over that?” Paige asks.
“Why?” Celia twirls around and checks out her butt in the mirror. “Does it make me look fat?”
“No, but do you really want to be parading around in just a bikini?”
“Yes,” Celia says very adamantly. Then she giggles and hiccups. “I want to get tan all over. In fact, I wish I didn’t even have to wear a bathing suit.”
Paige and I exchange a look. Celia wouldn’t actually try to get naked on the beach, would she? If she did, there would really be no way to stop her. But we’d have to try. There’s a difference between Celia doing her normal crazy stuff, and her getting nude in front of our whole class after she’s had a few drinks. Although if I’m being completely honest, she doesn’t seem like the alcohol is really affecting her that much. Drunk Celia isn’t really that much different from Sober Celia.
“Come on, Mustang Sally,” I say, shaking my head. “Let’s go.”
When we get down to the beach, my mood instantly lightens. The sun is shining bright in the sky, the air is salty and humid, and the sand is cool against my feet. The water is blue and sparkling, the waves calm and soothing. It’s gorgeous, and exactly what I need to relax my mind and focus my intentions.
I decide that after I put my towel down, I’ll get to work composing an email to Genevieve in admissions. I thought about calling her, but then I decided an email is definitely better. I can make it sound very professional. And I can ask her when a good time would be to call her and discuss the appeals process for her decision. Maybe I should even put in a little dig about how since my application got lost, that maybe I really shouldn’t be penalized, and that maybe a lot of well-qualified students had their applications go missing and how maybe the media might be interested in that story.
I’ll bet some reporter somewhere would want to cover it. How my application got lost and so other less qualified applicants got in, thereby putting Stanford’s pristine reputation in jeopardy? It’s totally one of those stories that could go viral on BuzzFeed. I even have a bunch of pictures my mom took of me in a Stanford onesie when I was a baby. I could include those to give the story a good human interest angle.
I lie back on my towel and adjust the straw hat I’m wearing before slathering more sunscreen onto my legs. I have very fair skin, and I burn super easily. Sometimes if I’m even just walking around outside for a few minutes, I get red.
Celia lies down next to me and immediately falls asleep. I can’t tell if she’s passed out from the beers, or just tired. I look at Paige, kind of like, Should we wake her up? But she just shrugs, and so I decide to let it go. How much trouble can Celia really get into if she’s sleeping? And I told her to put sunscreen on, but she didn’t listen. She said she wanted to g
et color. So if she gets burned, it’s her own fault.
Paige pulls a bunch of magazines out of her bag and spreads them out on her blanket. I take one and pretend to be paging through it, but the whole time my mind is working on composing an email to Genevieve.
Finally I pull my phone out and surreptitiously type away, letting Genevieve know that I appreciate her decision and that I understand that my application was late, but that it was through no fault of my own, and that I don’t think it’s fair that people who are underqualified got in over me. (I decide to leave out the part about the media being interested in the story, because honestly I don’t want to threaten her right away. If she gives me crap after this, then maybe I’ll go there.)
I proofread the email, then hit send.
I take in a deep breath. There’s a definite satisfaction that comes after you’ve done a task. I wish I’d made a to-do list and put “email Genevieve” on it. Then I could cross it right off.
My phone rings then. Could Genevieve be calling already? I’m very good with the written word, but I didn’t realize I was that good! Oh. It’s not Genevieve. It’s Neal. Probably calling with an updated argument on why I shouldn’t send my parents a video of me opening up my nonexistent acceptance letter.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“Lying on the beach, listening to the waves, relaxing . . . What are you doing?”
“Nothing, really.” Pause.
“Okay.” He still doesn’t say anything. “Well, are you calling for a reason?”
“Of course I’m calling for a reason, Quinn. We just talked an hour ago. Why would I be calling you back already if I didn’t have a reason?”
“Okay, so then what is it?” Seriously, you’d think for someone who has higher-than-average verbal skills, he’d be a little better at communicating.