When he sits down across from me, his face is serious. “I’m sorry,” he says. “About today. And about our grade.”
I nod. It’s a relief to hear him say it—and even more than that, to know that he means it. “Thank you,” I tell him, and I mean that too. “It’ll be fine. I can’t imagine they’ll pull my acceptances on account of some soggy cardboard.”
He nods. “I really am sorry for leaving like that. I just needed to get out of there.”
“I know.”
“It was a lot, with my dad and the guys, then the boat too….It sort of felt like the whole place was laughing at me.”
“Atus,” I correct, but he shakes his head.
“No, it was definitely me.” He puts his head in his hands and rakes his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what’s happening. It felt like more than just razzing. It felt like they really hated me.” He looks lost right now, like all it took was a single afternoon to rattle so much of what he knows to be true. “How can they already hate me? I haven’t even done anything yet except give them stuff.”
I press my lips together, not sure what to say. Teddy’s always been insecure about money, and it’s obvious he assumed this windfall would change all that. But having too much money comes with its own set of problems.
“I didn’t ask for this,” he says, lowering his chin. “It just happened to me. So how could they possibly—”
“It’s because you’re different now.”
“What? No, I’m not.”
“You are,” I say. “Or you will be.”
“But nothing’s changed,” Teddy insists, his voice breaking on the last word. “Nothing important, anyway.”
“What happened to you…it makes you separate from them in a way.” I pause, chewing on my lip. “It happened to me after my mom died too, when we were still out in San Francisco.”
Teddy looks up sharply, surprised to be invited into this part of my life.
“One day I was like all my friends,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “And the next I was the girl with the dead mother. Everyone tiptoed around me for a while, then they just kind of stopped playing with me. I’d come home crying every day and my dad thought it was because of my mom, which is it was, partly, but it was also because of what was happening at school, and I couldn’t tell him that, because it seemed so small in comparison, you know?”
He nods.
“But I kind of get it now. Everything was different, and they didn’t know how to act around me anymore.”
“That’s awful,” Teddy says darkly.
“Maybe. But that’s just how people are. It’s not really about you. It’s about them. So don’t let it get to you, okay?”
Teddy clears his throat. “I’m sorry your friends did that to you.”
“I was in third grade,” I say, waving this away. “I barely remember their names.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But still.”
After a moment I nod. “Still.”
He leans back in the chair, suddenly looking very tired. “I didn’t think it would be like this. I thought it would be more…”
“Fun?”
He nods.
“It was,” I say. “For a while. But there were always gonna be hard parts too.”
“See, I wish someone had told me that earlier,” he says with a wry smile. “Here I was thinking it was just gonna be bags of money and dreams coming true.”
“Money doesn’t fix everything.”
