And as for Hayes, he probably won’t even miss me.
Despite all his begging earlier, I doubt Hayes will notice I’m not there. With so many people around, he’ll be too busy playing host to care. Better for me to spend the night working on my NYU transfer application anyway. At least that feels like forward motion. Something real I can control.
I need to make sure everything is perfect. Every word. Every detail. I can’t afford to give them a single reason to say no this time.
When I walk into the apartment, it’s predictably quiet. My mom usually works late on the weekends, juggling back-to-back clients at her downtown studio. This town has no shortage of wealthy women looking for someone to read their chakras or decode their star charts, anything to distract them from their unhappy marriages and unsatisfying lives.
My mother wasn’t always like this, peddling New Age philosophies and alternative wellness to the wealthy and spiritually bored. Before she got pregnant with me, she was a fine arts major with an actual point of view.
She had vision.
Talent, too.
A few years ago, I found some of her old paintings stashed in the back of her closet. A handful of oil canvases filled with dark, visceral images of haunted worlds. Shadow-thin angels and bleeding red skies. Devils cloaked in smoke. They unsettled me, but in the best possible way. It was like she saw something the rest of us didn’t. Those paintings meant something.
But I guess meaning doesn’t pay the bills.
Amber’s bedroom door is wide open as I pass by, everything inside aggressively pink, like a cupcake factory exploded. Last year, she convinced Mom to let her paint the walls, and now her ruffled bedding matches the same high-octane, bubblegum hue. A glowing neon “A” hangs above her bed, and right beside it, a peppy poster chirps:Be So Happy That When Others Look At You, They Become Happy Too.I get a headache just looking at it.
Thankfully, she’s not inside.
Amber works weekends at Laguna Attire, a trendy boutique downtown, to fund her shopping addiction. They sell stuff I wouldn’t be caught dead in—bedazzled fringe jackets, low-cut neon bodysuits,glitter cowboy boots. Amber and her friends go absolutely feral for that crap.
Once I get to my own room, I shut the door and settle at my black lacquer desk, ready to dive into my transfer applications. Unbidden, my eyes drift to the corkboard hanging above, covered in photo memories of Hayes and me through the years.
There we are on the first day of fifth grade, holding chalkboard signs with our ages and heights—Mom’s idea. Then making s’mores on the beach the summer after sixth grade, both of us in matching Camp Crystal Lake hoodies, deep in ourFriday the 13thphase. There’s the flag football championship game in junior high. We won that night thanks to Hayes and his perfect spirals. And our first high school dance, the only one we went to together because he got lazy and couldn’t decide who to bring as his date that year.
In the center is my favorite photo of all.
It’s me and Hayes, of course, but Mom and Amber are there too. It’s from an old karate tournament, back when Amber was still halfway normal and took classes with us. I’m clutching a trophy the size of my torso, grinning like my face might split in half. Amber’s got her arm around my shoulder. I’d just won best all-around in the juniors’ division, one of the only times I ever beat Amber at anything. Everyone’s smiling for the camera—except Hayes.
He’s smiling at me.
Next to the corkboard is a shelf lined with my most prized possessions. Front and center is Hayes’sStranger ThingsDemogorgon Funko Pop, the one he gave me in sixth grade after I fell out of his treehouse and broke my wrist. Totally his fault. Pretty sure he cried more than I did that day.
Beside the Demogorgon sits the rainbow-hued Stephen King box set Mom got me for my last birthday. On the other end, my framed black-and-white print of David Bowie—theLabyrinthGoblin King himself. He looks unbothered and brilliant. I aspire to be both someday.
I grab my favorite chenille blanket and drape it over my legs, then open my clunky old MacBook. The thing weighs a hundred pounds and hums like a lawnmower as it boots up. It’s basically an ancient relic. One of Mom’s clients was going to donate it to Goodwill but gave it to us instead.
Once I’m on the now-familiar NYU admissions site, I pull up the two transfer applications required for Tisch. First is the Common App, the standard application everyone fills out: GPA, test scores, coursework. The easy stuff.
Second is the separate portfolio submission for the music school. That one’s trickier. It requires a song portfolio and performance résumé. Which would be fine, except I don’t have a single polished recording.
My résumé’s not much better.
Aside from high school choir and a few arts-heavy classes I squeezed into this semester at LHU, my so-called “musical career” mostly consists of singing in the shower.
I take a deep breath, trying to slow the panicrising in my chest, and decide to focus on the Common App first. Low-hanging fruit. No reason to have a heart attack just yet.
The academics section is a breeze. My high school GPA and test scores were well above the median when I applied last fall, even for a school as competitive as NYU. Grades have always come easy to me. It’s everything else that’s the problem.
I’m making decent progress, steadily moving through each section—until I reach “Parental Information.”
Damn.
It’s still blank.
I let out an annoyed sigh. I’d sent my mom the login weeks ago, and she’d promised she’d handle it. I know she’s not thrilled that I’m already looking to transfer, especially since my semester at LHU has barely started, but she’s going to have to get over it.
