Ever so lightly, Hailey ran her hand across Holly’s name, smiling as she remembered the hours they’d spent at the kitchen table, writing wild scholarship essays for Bear Towne.
Very carefully, she tore an opening along the edge of the silver paper and with trembling hands, pulled out a letter.
Hailey turned the letter over then shook the silver envelope. A note fell out, and that note, which was scribbled on engineering paper and folded asymmetrically, advised her to bring no more than one piece of luggage—purse size.
Not much of a packing list.
“How am I supposed to fit everything I need into one small bag?” she wondered out loud, deciding on the spot that she was going to Alaska in the fall,without panicking, and by way of Luftzeug, whatever that was. And she’d pay her initiation fees at the kiosk, personally. Done.
Why not? She hadn’t received any other offers of scholarship or even admission from anywhere else, and there was no way she’d spend another year waitressing at the pub.
“Did you say something, dear?” Uncle Pix asked from the kitchen, and everyone turned their attention to Hailey.
“We got accepted to a college in Alaska.”
“Alaska?” said Wimp, his voice full of foreboding, and Hailey looked at her letter again, her chin poked out in a half frown.
“Yeah, Bear Towne University. Full scholarship.”
The brothers exchanged worried expressions.
“Holly won a full scholarship too,” she said, smiling sadly.
“Let me see that letter.” Uncle Pix strode across the floor and snatched it out of her hand. He skimmed the page, showing it to Dale, and they both squinted at the signature on the bottom.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Her uncles chatter-answered at once—the same message but in vastly different tones, some sad, some proud, and one very anxious, which rang through the others:
“We’re worried about you going to Bear Towne,” Wimp said with a frown, and she looked up at him in confusion.
“You’ve heard of Bear Towne University?”
“Sure, that’s a feckin mad place.”
“What does that mean? Is a ‘feckin mad place’…is that good or bad?” She looked from Wimp to Pix and then to Dale, who had suddenly found a hangnail on his thumb which was very conspicuously demanding his full attention. Hailey honed in on him.
“Uncle Dale,” she said. He grimaced before he looked at her. “Have you been to Bear Towne?”
He shook his head, sighing heavily. “I have.”
“…and?”
“Well, you’ll be safe there,” he said with a strong, conclusive nod.
“Safe from what?”
“Everything,” Pix answered her, very clearly indicating that would be the end of the conversation.
Hailey shook her head. She was getting tired of these riddles, half-answers, and cryptic talk.
“You guys and your secrets are killing me.”
Leaving the table in a huff, she turned her back on them and plopped on the couch with her arms folded.
From the kitchen came a flurry of whispers and hisses, which culminated in a hushed, but very defined, “FINE!” and the sound of many feet scurrying down the hall and up the stairs.
Pix joined Hailey on the couch.
