I clicked the “Apply Now” tab, and a new page opened, sleek and bright, the University of Tennessee logo stamped across the top like it was waiting for me all along.
I started typing.
Name. Birthdate. GPA.
The same mechanical details I’d filled in a dozen times for schools I didn’t care about, schools that my parents preferred…what they would pay for. But here, those details took on weight. Like each keystroke was threading me to something I hadn’t realized I’d been looking for.
I pasted the essay I’d written for the local schools into the application, my eyes skimming the words without really reading them. And then, halfway through, I stopped.
The tone was all wrong. It was too passive and soft,notlike a girl they’d want to let in there.
And Ihadto be let in there. It felt like it was already a matter of life or death.
So I started editing.
I sharpened a sentence here. Reframed a paragraph there. Made myself sound clearer, bolder…like someone who had vision. Direction. Like someone who wasn’t just surviving day-to-day.
Like someone who might belong in Tennessee. Someone who might deserve…him.
That was when it hit me.
Hewas in Tennessee.
And I was in Pennsylvania.
Almost six hundred miles between us, and somehow it felt less like a problem and more like a promise.
It was perfect.
It was far enough to leave everything behind—the house I barely spoke in, the town that never forgot, the whispers that still followed me through the halls of my school.
Far enough to be able to start over.
Because I didn’t want to stay here. Icouldn’tstay here. Not in a place that only remembered who I used to be. Not in a place that reduced me to diagnoses and cautionary tales.
Tennessee felt like a clean slate. A new city, a new school, a version of me that wasn’t broken or sick or shadowed by everything I’d been through.
I didn’t know Mathew Adler, obviously.
But it didn’t matter.
Something inside me had already decided…he was the point. The anchor. The reason all this had started to make sense.
I kept going.
Phone number. Graduation date. Emergency contact.
My fingers hovered over the field, the cursor blinking like it was waiting for me to lie.
It should’ve been my mom. It always had been for any other forms I’d needed to turn in.
But the thought of her name on this form, tethered to something she’d never approve of, something she’d try to shut down before it even began…it made my stomach twist.
I typed a fake name instead.
Someone who didn’t exist and who wouldn’t try to stop me.
My heart thudded, steady and loud-sounding, like something inside me had finally started to wake up.
