I wanted something back for my honesty—some sense that George appreciated it and valued the courage it took. I also wanted him to see that the essay was my way of saying I screwed up with Grandma and that I was glad he called me out on it, because I really did want to be a decent person, even if I didn’t always act like it.
But as good as I was at talking other people into things, I couldn’t succeed at convincing myself that George was saying he understood all that in those five short words.
twenty-three
Ben and I needed to write an official email about the Holiday-Giving Program’s annual Thanksgiving Food drive, which would have to be approved by the head of the school before we could forward it to all the parents. We had the previous year’s letter as a template, but we had to change the dates and some other minor details.
He offered to drop by my house on Tuesday evening, which was fine—with Luke and Mom out of town, I was happy to host. When he showed up, I was surprised to see he’d brought Arianna with him. I’d thought it was just going to be the two of us.
It didn’t really matter—actually, I figured an extra set of hands and eyes could come in handy—but she kind of annoyed me right at the start by saying, “Oh my God, your house is amazing!” as they walked in the door. Not that there was anything wrong with the compliment. There was just something about how her eyes were darting around, greedily sucking in every detail, that made the words grate on me.
“Thanks,” I said. “We like it.”
“It’s so big. I can’t believe how big it is. How many of you live here?”
“Just my family. And the house may be big, but we always end up doing everything in the kitchen. Which is where we’re going now.” I led them that way. “You guys want something to drink?”
“Water’s fine,” said Ben.
“Can I see what you have?” Arianna asked, and opened the refrigerator before I could even respond. She seemed a little disappointed by the slim choices there. “I guess I’ll take a Snapple,” she said, and grabbed a bottle. She turned around. “So is there, like, a big music studio in the house?”
“There’s a small one out back,” I said.
“Can we see it?”
“No,” I said, a little more curtly than I probably should have. I softened it: “It’s kind of Luke’s private place. I don’t go in without him.”
“Are you musical, too?” she asked. “He must have taught you how to play the guitar and stuff, right?”
“He tried once, but it didn’t take.” I was totally tone-deaf, and even though I learned to strum a few chords, I never practiced and got fidgety when Luke sat down with me, so we both lost interest in the attempt. For Luke’s sake, I hoped Jacob would be more into the music thing; he certainly liked to sing along to Disney songs—always in his own language, but he nailed the tunes.
While Ben and I were working on the letter, Arianna leapt up to explore the kitchen. She kept opening cabinets and drawers, checking inside, and then closing them again.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“A snack, I guess. I haven’t eaten dinner yet. But don’t mind me.”
I got up, went to the pantry, and pulled out a bag of crackers. “Will this do?” I dropped it on the table and sat back down.
But a few minutes later, she was back on the prowl, glancing into everything she could open.
“Do you need something else?” I asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.
“Uh . . . silverware?”
“Why?” We were eating the crackers with our hands. I mean, obviously.
She just shrugged and came back to the table, where she looked over our shoulders and agreed with everything either of us said, but then she must have drifted away again without my even noticing because the next time I looked up, she was over at the opposite side of the room flipping through our mail, which was stacked up on the counter for Mom and Luke to sort when they came home.
“Hey!” I said.
“What?” She turned around, after quickly dropping whatever she was holding back onto the pile.
“Are you looking through our mail?”
“Not really.” She gave a little laugh. “Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m just sort of wandering around. . . . Short attention span, I guess. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
I minded that a lot less than her pawing through our private correspondence. “It’s down the hallway, take a left, and then another left.”
“Thanks.” She disappeared.
“That was weird,” I said to Ben in a low voice.
“What?” He looked up from his laptop.
“She was going through our mail.”
“Arianna? Why would she do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t.” He pointed to the screen. “Shouldn’t this be a period instead of a comma?”
I let it drop and just focused on finishing the work as quickly as possible so I could get Arianna out of my house.
Later that night, after they’d gone, Grandma and I were watching TV together when she said, “Which friend of yours is that blond girl?”
“Blond girl? You mean Heather?”
“No, I know Heather. I mean the one who was wandering around upstairs earlier tonight—I heard a noise in your mother’s room and there she was. She said she was working on a school project with you and you’d sent her up to find something?”
“Oh. That’s Arianna. We were working on a project, but I didn’t send her upstairs.”
“Hmm,” Grandma said. “She had her phone out. I think she may have been taking some photos.”
I swore and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I didn’t follow Arianna, but I was able to find her Instagram account pretty quickly. And see her most recent photos.
Luke Weston’s driveway! Luke Weston’s living room! Luke Weston’s closet—and shoes!! Luke Weston’s drawer full of T-shirts! Luke Weston’s bed (squee!)!!!!!!!!
There was even a photo of me working on my laptop at the kitchen table, completely oblivious to the fact that my picture was being taken. She had posted it with the caption “Luv ya, gorgeous gurl!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I said.
“What?”
I showed Grandma the photos.
“The curse of fame,” she said cheerfully. She’d already had a cocktail or two. “But no harm done.”
“I guess not.” I felt violated though.
I complained to Heather a little while later, when we were video chatting. I made her check out the photos on her phone.
“Ugh,” she said. “People are jerks.”
“Right?” That was more the response I was going for. Grandma’s “live and let live” attitude was a little too easygoing for my current feelings about Arianna.
Heather said, “Did you see how Riley commented on every photo? About how much she loved your house, too, and how you’re both so gorgeous? It’s a little much.”
I checked to see and she was right: Riley was almost as annoying as Arianna. To be fair, she’d been over a bunch of times and never taken any photos—or snuck upstairs without telling me—so she wasn’t in Arianna’s league or anything, but the fact that she wanted everyone on this stupid Instagram feed to know that she’d also been to Luke Weston’s house was a little nauseating.
“Do you see why I need you to come to Elton College with me?” I said. “What if everyone there is like them? What if there aren’t any Heathers?”
“There are Heathers everywhere,” she said. “There’s nothing special about me.”
“Stop it,” I said. “You’re special to me. You’re the only friend I trust. Well, you and Aaron.”
“It’s good he moved here,” she said.
“Yeah, I know you think so,” I said with a grin.
She shrugged with an embarrassed smile and swiftly changed the subject. “Applications are due tomorrow at midnight East Coast time, right? I was thinking it
would be fun to click submit together. Is George coming that night?”
“Yeah. I just need to go over my essay with him one last time. Why don’t you come at eight? That’ll give us an hour to check everything before hitting send.”
“Can I? I’d love that—if I stay home, my parents will be standing over me, worrying about every sentence. If I tell them your tutor will read it over for me, they’ll back off.”
“For a good girl, you can be very devious.”
“You taught me everything I know.”
twenty-four
Before George came on Wednesday, I reread my two essays and decided I hated them both. One was too insincere, the other too negative.
I felt anxious and unsettled, so when Grandma came down to make a cup of tea, I snapped at her that she needed to stay out of the kitchen, because George was coming soon and we had to get a lot of work done.
She said calmly, “I’ll clear out as soon as he gets here. Do you want some mushroom tea?”
“Words cannot express how much I don’t.”
“Don’t be narrow minded. Why is it okay to drink brewed leaves and not brewed mushrooms? Think outside the box.”
“I love when you use clichés to encourage me to be original. If I promise to defy convention in all other ways, will you please not make me drink mushroom tea?”
“Your loss,” she said. “So George is coming back tonight?”
“What do you mean ‘coming back’?”
“He was here earlier—working on your mom’s office. He came yesterday, too. He wants to finish it before they get back.”
“I didn’t know he came by.”
“Well, you were at school.”
“He could have stuck around and said hi.”
“He probably had plans.”
Did he, though? Or was he just sick of me?
When he arrived, I opened the door for him but hung back a bit, feeling awkward now that he was there. I could still remember his disappointed expression when we parted the last time we’d talked, and it made it hard for me to look him in the eyes. Plus he’d since read my essay and that was embarrassing in its own way—I’d acknowledged some pretty ugly truths about myself. I felt exposed.
He probably thought it was stupid, anyway.
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound normal and not succeeding.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Come on in.”
“Thank you.”
This was going great.
We headed toward the kitchen.
“Heather coming?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I wanted to have time to talk about my essay first.”
“Sounds good,” he said without any real enthusiasm.
Grandma looked up as we entered the kitchen. She was sticking two slices of gluten-free bread into the toaster. “Oh, I’m sorry. I promised Ellie I’d clear out of here by the time you came, George, but I’m so slow. . . . Just let me finish making toast and I’ll disappear, I promise.”
I caught George’s expression and realized how bad that sounded—like I was still determined to make my grandmother feel unwanted in my home. “It’s fine,” I said quickly. “I don’t mind if you’re here; I’m just stressed about how much work I need to get done.”
“I completely understand,” she said. “George, would you like a cup of mushroom tea before I do my disappearing act?”
“Mushroom tea?” he repeated uncertainly.
“Trust me, you don’t want it,” I said.
“I would love some,” he said immediately.
“Excellent!” She beamed, delighted, then turned to me with sudden concern. “Don’t get mad at me, Ellie. It will only take one more minute.”
“I’m not mad at you. I don’t know why you always think I am.”
“I’m annoying,” she said. “I know it.”
I couldn’t take it. She was going to make George think I was mean and uncaring. Not that he needed much encouragement in that direction. “Tell George about the movie we saw on Sunday,” I blurted out suddenly, and felt my face turn hot as soon as I had—it was so obvious what I was doing. So pathetic.
“Oh,” George said with a sudden sharp look at me. “You went to the movies together?”
“We did,” Grandma said, bustling around, pouring steaming water from the teakettle into a mug she had filled with bits of something shriveled and ugly. “And we had so much fun. The movie itself was a little violent for my taste, but the popcorn was wonderful. And we all went out for frozen yogurt afterward.”
“Yes, we did,” I said, raising my chin defiantly and looking directly at George for the first time that day.
“Okay, here’s your tea.” Grandma handed him the mug. “Let it steep a few more minutes, then drink the top part. Don’t worry about what’s left in the mug. Just enjoy the liquid and throw the rest out.”
“Thank you.” He peered down at the mug’s contents. “It looks interesting.”
“Don’t worry if you swallow something solid. Even the dirt is organic. Ah—my toast is done!” She put it on a plate, and carefully spread butter on each slice. George and I watched her in silence. “I’ll take everything upstairs so I’m not a distraction. Work hard, you two.” She left, carefully clutching her mug in one hand and her plate in the other.
There was a pause. Then I said, “You don’t actually have to drink that.”
“Oh, thank God.” He dumped his mug into the sink. He turned to me. “You invited her to go with you to the movies.”
I nodded, still embarrassed that I had felt the need to blurt it out, but glad he knew. “Someone told me I should.”
“I’d have thought that might have the opposite effect.”
“I’m not that big a jerk.”
“I never thought you were.” There was another short silence and then he cleared his throat and said, “So let’s talk about your essay.”
“First tell me what you think of it. Do you hate it?”
“Hate it?” He sat down at the table. “I think it’s great.”
He liked it? My relief lasted about half a second before it turned into annoyance that he hadn’t bothered to tell me before. “Your five-word email didn’t give me a lot to go on.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t at my most communicative that night.”
“Three or four more words would have gone a long way.”
“I loved it. It was honest and unique and it made me want to know the girl who wrote it.”
“You do know me.”
He ignored that. “But, all that being said . . . it’s definitely a riskier choice. The right admissions person will love you for being honest. The wrong one might wonder if you’re incapable of accomplishing anything. You just don’t know how it’s going to be received.”
“So I should use the other one?”
“It’s totally your call.”
“Don’t do that to me!” I came over to the table and dropped into a chair next to him. “Personally, I like this one better.”
“Me too.”
I thought for another moment or two, then said slowly, “Maybe this is nuts, but I feel like I might not belong anyway at a school that would reject me for writing this. Does that make sense?”
“Totally,” he said.
“I’d rather be appreciated for being honest than for being glib.”
“I’m sorry I called you that. That wasn’t fair.”
“It’s fine. Let’s work on this one. I’ve decided.”
We read through the essay together and he helped me find ways to strengthen it. “I’d add at least another sentence about the future and how you feel like you’re figuring yourself out,” he said. “I think schools care more about growth and potential than past achievement.”
“Does this mean you think I have potential to grow?” I asked, half-joking, half-wistful.
“Yeah,” he said. “You invited your grandmother to go to the movies with you, didn’t you?”
“Because you told me to.”
“Did I?” he said, and then shrugged and redirected me back to the essay. But when I glanced up, his eyes were on me, not the screen. He quickly looked away again.
twenty-five
Heather showed up too soon. George and I had worked steadily the whole time—I mean really steadily; no texting, even though I’d heard my phone buzz a few times—but I wanted more time alone with him.
I kind of wished I hadn’t invited her at all—come to think of it, she’d pretty much invited herself—but when I let her in the house, she hugged me so warmly that I felt bad for having thought that.
“Let’s do this thing!” she said. “Let’s submit it and be done.”
“Well, not really done,” I said.
“We’re both going to get in early, right? That’s what you keep saying.” Big blue eyes begged for reassurance.
“Right,” I said. “Of course.” For the first time, I felt uneasy about my optimism. There would be no going back once we clicked send. She’d have used up her early decision shot.
It didn’t matter—Luke would call, and they would let her in.
But would she even like it there? It had become my first choice after I’d visited and loved everything about it. But Heather had never actually toured the campus; she’d chosen it because I had. Because I told her to.
“George is in the kitchen,” I said, forcing a smile.
But she was already ahead of me. “George!” she sang out, bounding through the foyer and running to greet him. She was wearing a flippy little black skirt and a tight pink sweater, and her hair had been plaited into a bunch of tiny braids and then twisted and pinned into a loose, low knot. In the brighter light of the kitchen, I could see that she was wearing more makeup than usual—lots of eyeliner and mascara.
“Hey there!” George said. “I hear you’re just about ready to hit the send button.”