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I swallow hard so my words don’t turn into a sob. “No thank you.”

It’s one of my lowest moments since I arrived. And yet, even now, my gaze only wants to return to Ford.

11

Bright Covenant doesn’t believe in glorifying Halloween, but Penhallow sure does.

I’m not supposed to like them, but as the bus rolls past our neighbors’ elaborate Halloween displays—a massive skeleton pushing out of a roof, a six-foot inflated witch stirring her cauldron—I can hardly look away.

It’s still early in the month, but two girls walk down the hall in witch costumes selling candy and the drink Kappy shows up with in English smells like pumpkin pie. I decide October is a delightful month—until Mrs. Onorato asks me to stay after class.

I’m in trouble for something. Maybe she knows I was reading Outlander. Maybe she told my dad I read Beloved.

“I’d like you to dig a little deeper with your college essays,” she says instead, and my body sags with relief. I haven’t put maximum effort into my essays, but why would I? Unlike all my friends, who speak a lingo I barely understand— early action and early decision and the Common App—they have a reason to try their hardest. I really don’t.

“I know senior year is full of things that seem more important than college,” she continues, “but I can’t emphasize how much this matters. A decade from now, you’re not going to remember a party on Friday night, but you’re going to remember where you went to school.”

I laugh miserably. She thinks my essays are uninspiring because I’m too busy having fun? “I’m not going to parties,” I say quietly. “The thing is...I have to go on this church mission for two years, and if I go to college after that, it’s all predetermined. We go to this small school near our community. I don’t even know if I have to apply, and I probably won’t get to use my degree anyway.”

Most of the women in the church don’t work and those who do—as teachers or administrative assistants—only do so because they couldn’t find a husband. I’ve always gotten the feeling people feel sorry for them.

“I’m sure your church is very important to you, and I’m certainly not going to suggest you go against them or your family. But Grace—you’re a very bright girl. It would pain me to see all that brilliance wasted and...” She gnaws at her lip. “Look, all I’m going to say is that you are legally an adult. And this choice belongs to no one but you.”

I meet her eye. It was a brave thing to say—an act of kindness. She must be aware that my father, her boss, would be incredibly unhappy with her for the suggestion. I would never tell him, of course, and though I know I can’t act on any of it...I can’t deny that some part of me feels sprung free at the thought. Like a prisoner given a single hour outside of her cell.

What would it be like to be this free all the time?

At lunch, talk of college dominates the conversation. Zoe wants to double major in engineering and finance but worries that it might hurt, rather than help, the admissions process. Lauren is stuck with an older brother who got a perfect score on the ACT and laments the fact that no matter how well she does, he will always have beaten her. She jokingly asks Kappy to take the test on her behalf.

“You’re so lucky,” Zoe says to Kappy. “Perfect scores, and your mom isn’t on your back.”

“My issue with Karla,” says Kappy, “is that I really want to be a geneticist, but she keeps pushing me to go into dermatology so she can get free filler and Botox. I also want to apply to Oxford and she’s freaking out about me not using my ED1.”

“Karla?” I ask. I’m barely following this conversation as it is—I only learned that ED1 is early decision a few days ago—without introducing new characters.

“My mother, but she’s Karla when she’s annoying me. I mean, first of all, she can afford to pay for her own fucking filler. That’s ridiculous. But also, how amazing would it be to go to Oxford? Oh my God. Have you read A Discovery of Witches? You’ve got to. I’m telling you, the second you’ve read it, you’ll be applying to Oxford too.”

Lauren laughs. “Just so we’re clear, Kappy, you do realize that the professors at Oxford are not super-hot vampires, right?”

Kappy grins. “Shut up, Lauren. You’re not the Oxford expert.”

I laugh along with everyone else. I’ve never known anyone like Kappy—so certain of herself, so glib about important things, so comfortable with her place in the world. There’s nothing about her that my church would approve of—they’d hate her goals, they’d hate her foul mouth and disrespectful attitude toward authority—yet there’s no one I’d rather be.

“Anyway,” Kappy continues, “the campus is amazing, but God, you can do anything from there. You could go to London or Paris for the weekend. Hell, you could go to Greece for the weekend. You could ski at Chamonix⁠—”

“Since when do you ski?” Zoe pours dressing over her salad, places the lid back on and shakes the bowl rapidly.

“Not the point,” says Kappy. “Anyway, we were only there for a day, and then we had to leave for, like, the most boring tour ever of the Cotswolds.”

“You thought the Cotswolds were boring?” Lauren demands. “I thought they were so cute.”

“I guess,” Kappy says. “I was just annoyed because I wanted to shop and Karla’s all ‘Shakespeare’s house! Oooh, let’s have tea in this little inn!’”

The subject returns to college and I remain as I’ve been—sitting in silence. These girls have no idea how lucky they are. I don’t know what the Cotswolds are. To be honest, going to the United Kingdom has never even occurred to me, and it’s sort of crazy that it hasn’t, right? It just seemed impossible. No one in my community has gone anywhere aside from their mission trip. I’m pretty sure that my mother has only left Florida that one time.

It seemed normal before, these quiet lives we all lead in New Hope. Peaceful, dutiful, enough. Now I’m getting the sense that I am missing out on something. Missing out on a lot of things actually.

I’m missing out on football games and dances and bonfire parties. I’m missing out on the senior beach trip to Miami that they’ll take after we graduate in June. It’s as if I’ve been living in a cave all of my life, some Neanderthal who didn’t think much beyond where her next meal was coming from, and now I’ve been thrust into this entirely different and magical world where the biggest issues are about double majoring or going to Oxford.