He nods when our glances meet, and I can’t read anything in the eyes that have haunted me for days. It’s all I can do to keep it together.
He brings the check to my table—gives me a toothless smile, that pressing together of the lips reserved for strangers—and goes back behind the counter.
I put a few bills, plus a tip, under my cup and am trying to hightail it out of there. I’m almost at the door when I suddenly hear him speak.
“Hey, Addison,” Zach says, looking right at me. “Are you following me?”
BEFORE
November
“This is a conversation for when I have pants on,” Zach says groggily, burrowing his face into his pillow. I roll onto my side beside him and prop myself up on my elbow.
“I’m serious, Zach,” I say. “You couldtotallyget into NYU.”
Zach doesn’t respond, except to make a low, groaning sound into his pillow.
“They have a really good film program, and all you’d have to do is apply. I mean, I’m sure it’s competitive, but you’re good, and I bet you could get something together, an application package, before their early-decision deadline.”
Zach is out of bed now, wriggling into a pair of jeans that has previously on the floor of his room. I wrap the sheet around me and place my head on his pillow. It smells like the cucumber shampoo he’s just started using, and I close my eyes for a second.
“I doubt they’re going to be impressed by homemade parody films.”
“You never know,” I say, opening my eyes now.
Still shirtless, Zach brings a glass of water to his lips and sets it back down on his table.
“It doesn’t matter whether they like it or not if I’m not even sure I’m going to college,” Zach says, and I sit right up in bed. “And why would I go to NYU, of all places?”
Because that’s where I’ll be?
My hair must be crazy at this point, but I don’t even bother patting it down or anything.
“You won’t go to college at all?” I ask, shock in my voice. “Because you can’t afford it?”
“Because I might not want to go,” he says with a shrug, bending down to retrieve my jeans from the carpet and placing them on the foot of his bed.
“Zach,” I say.
“Addie,” he says.
“You’re going in with a defeatist attitude. College admissions committees can smell that a mile away,” I say, half joking.
“God, Addie,” Zach says suddenly, “could you drop it? It’s easy for you; you’re a fucking prodigy. You can get into whatever school you want.”
I blink at him, my face slowly heating up. “That’s not true.”
“Itistrue,” he says. “You could get into Juilliard but you won’t evenapplybecause you’re desperate to hang on to this anti-conformity thing. This idea that it’s expected of you or you can’t stand to be like allthe otherfucking prodigies.”
“That isnotit. At all,” I say, raising my voice now, too. I’m stunned by what Zach’s saying. He’s the only person I’ve ever told about why I chose New York, about wanting it to fill something in me. How can he say that? “It’s noteasyfor me. You know how hard I’ve worked to stand a chance of getting into NYU—how hard I work to make good grades. I was reading books for the next school year in thesummer.And even if any of what you’re saying is true, what’s your point? What does that have to do with you not wanting to go to college?”
“I didn’t say I don’twantto,” Zach says, more softly now.
“You did!” I exclaim, not reducing my volume. “You just said that!”
“I don’t know what I want,” Zach says. He pauses for a moment, as if he’s trying to figure it out right now, and then he goes back to picking stuff up from the ground. “Anyway, I’m pawning the CXX.”
“Are you serious?” I ask.
