Her eyes scanned down me, looking at me like I was insane as she pushed me into the empty hall. The door shut behind us.
I mean, I must’ve looked a little wild from my flushed face to the Barnett football jersey sliding off my shoulder. I stared down at the number nine for a long moment before turning my attention back to Vadika in her sleek black dress and cream blazer.
“How did your presentation go?” I found myself asking.
“It went fine. Lu, why are you here?”
“I, uh—”
“You need to go.”
I paused, looking around. There weren’t that many people left inside, and she had said the presentation went well.
“But you said you were done. And please, you know you’ve already been let into the school of your choice. You already knew that last year when they basically offered you more than I’ll ever make my entire lifetime, just to go and continue the work you started here anyway. You don’t need to worry.”
“I’m not worried about that.” Again, she looked me over, her eyes scanning so quickly that I almost didn’t catch it.
I had been getting a lot of those looks lately. Brow furrowed, I just hadn’t expected the same appraisal from Vadika.
No matter, because I had bigger things to worry about, so I ignored it. “I just need you for a minute or a few.”
“I can’t just—”
“Please. I know it’s a lot, and I know we’ve been distracted, but I just need you for fifteen minutes, max. It’s important. I need someone to tell me—” Tell me that I was being crazy and needed to screw my head back on because I was pretty sure I’d just ruined everything and I didn’t know how to properly put anything back together.
Not when, for all my life, I was always surrounded by things falling apart.
“I still have to stay, Lu.”
“But I need you. For once, I need you,” I nearly begged.
Still, Vadika hesitated, looking back and forth from me to the door, leading back inside to her fancy alumni friends and people she didn’t want me around.
“You need to go,” she said once more, as if I wasn’t already starting to understand her meaning.
Had I been blind to her as well all this time?
“Why?”
“Lu.”
“I don’t even understand you anymore.”
“This means a lot to me, Lu,” Vadika said, a crease forming on her forehead.
“No, it doesn’t.”
Not like this. She was already locked in. She had the graduate and PhD program in her pocket from the Ivy Leagues of the world. This wasn’t about that.
“It does.”
“You mean, those people in there?”
She didn’t answer.
“Why?” I finally asked. “Because your parents want it to?”
Vadika jolted back a step, as if I’d physically pushed her. “No. Why would you say that?”
