‘Of course you did!’ I said. Because, I mean,of courseshe did. We knew she would – she had the grades and the test scores,andshe’d impressed the shit out of the head of the bioengineering department, who’d promptly written a letter of recommendation to the admissions board.
‘Get out of the car.’ I opened her door. ‘We need to have a celebration dance.’
‘No, Tommy, wait—’
But it was too late. I was already switching to my party-hype playlist, and I turned up the music and jumped out. I knew Ava hated dancing, but I didn’t care – this was a celebratory moment she would remember for the rest of her life.
I tried to pull her to her feet, but she was still buckled in.
‘Tommy, stop. Just listen to me a second.’
‘Dance and listen,’ I said, dancing in place. ‘I can do two things at once.’
Ava reached over and turned off the music. Then she got out and put her hands on both of my upper arms, trying to hold me still. ‘No dance. Only listen.’
I stopped moving. ‘Oh no. You prepared a speech.’
She laughed. ‘I really did not.’
I didn’t know what this was, why we weren’t celebrating her win when this was something she had always wanted. Her parents had met at Johns Hopkins, and Ava had known since kindergarten that she was going to go there. Though she didn’t figure out what for until seventh grade, when she entered the science fair with a project explaining an engineered E. coli that created reusable plastic. She got second place because the judges couldn’t understand all of it.
But now there was something wrong, and I didn’t know what. It scared me because I always knew what she was thinking, just like she always knew what I was thinking.
‘I … don’t think I want to go.’
I stood there in silence for a moment, my mouth hanging open. What was she talking about, she didn’t want to go? Johns Hopkins had always been her plan. Johns Hopkins was basically in Ava’s future from birth. She had always said she wanted to go, even before her parents died.
‘Sorry.’ I finally blinked. ‘You … don’t think youwantto go to Johns Hopkins?’
‘Correct.’
‘Your dream school.’
‘Yes.’
‘The one you’ve said you wanted to go to for as long as I’ve known you?’
She took an annoyed breath. ‘I feel like you need to choose an exit and get out of this roundabout, sweetie.’
‘Are you insane?’
‘Oh, that’s the one we’re choosing, huh? No, I’m not insane. I just – I don’t know. The last couple of months I’ve been thinking about my future a lot more. It was like, the moment I peed on that pregnancy test – when I thought that I’d go get an abortion and how all this wasn’t part of my plan – it was the first time life seemed to slow down enough for me to actually rethink everything.’
That was months ago. This was all coming out of nowhere. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She laughed, but it seemed joyless. ‘I really didn’t know until I read the acceptance email.’ She looked again at her phone, locking it and tossing it onto the passenger seat of my car. ‘I had been thinking about it – not going, that is – and it all seemed crazy, but then I realized maybe it isn’t. Maybe just me thinking it’s crazy is all the evidence I needed.’
‘So what are you going to do? Apply somewhere else?’ Applying early decision was a binding agreement, though. They couldn’tforceher to go, but if they found out Ava applied anywhere else, they would contact the school’s admissions office.
She bit her lip and started to pace back and forth. ‘I don’t know. I think I want to … just … take a gap year.’
‘Agapyear?’
‘Or two. Figure out what I really want to do.’
I shook my head. ‘You’ve known what you wanted to do foryears! How has all that changed in the last minute?’
She glared at me. ‘If you’ve been listening, you’ll recall it’s been more than a minute.’
