Page 12 of Switching Graves

“Horrible. You?”

“Same.” I don’t bother to elaborate, nor do I ask what went wrong with her day. I know she’ll tell me either way.

“My parents invited me to lunch for another talk,” she begins bitterly, finally earning my full attention. Every time her parents—mostly her mother—arrange these family meetings, Poppy ends up in some new commitment she was adamantly against. “This time, it was to talk about Ravenshurst University.”

Shaking my head, I look back at the screen. “You already told them you aren’t going.”

It’s been a tired, running argument between them since her junior year in high school, when Aunt Divina found the wax-sealed envelope from her alma mater she had left on Poppy’s bed, discarded in the trash. Poppy has only dug her feet in further as the years passed, and I’ve sensed her parents nearing their wits end for a while now.

“Yeah, well you know Divina. Can’t ever lose an argument.”

“True.”

“They threatened to kick me out if I don’t. Which may not even be a bad thing, really. Moving out from under Divina and Graysen’s thumb sounds more like a reward than a punishment, if you ask me.”

She takes the remote from the coffee table and switches on our comfort show.

I want to argue that Uncle Graysen isn’t all that bad, but I know it would be a lie. He’s just as affected and controlled by Divina as anyone else. Worse, probably. He can pretend to be supportive all he wants behind her back, but the moment she expects him to take her side on something, he’s scampering back into her corner.

That’s how I ended up here.

“Believe me, it’s hardly rewarding to be on your own,” I deadpan.

“I envy you.”

Choosing to ignore her ignorance before I completely lose it on her, I shift the focus of our conversation. “Ravenshurst is an Ivy League university. It could be worse.”

Like, she could be homeless and jobless in a month with no place to go and no family safety net to save her.

“Sure, it could. But they don’t even consider the idea that maybe, I don’t want to go to school at all. I want to travel and experience things before I tie myself to a lifelong career I’m going to hate in ten years. And that’sifthey allow me to work outside of my grandpa’s business. At what point am I considered enough of an adult to make that decision for myself?”

“If you want to travel anyway, would it be so bad if they kicked you out and forced you to fly a little?”

“No, but you know she won’t accept that. She’ll take away access to all my accounts and starve me into submission.”

Divina would do exactly that. Even if it meant making Poppy suffer, she’d put her ego before her adult daughter’s wants or needs, just to prove that she could. Poppy could handle hard work, but I don’t think she’s as prepared for the real world as she thinks.

After a few moments of somber silence pass, Poppy sucks in a breath. “We should just pull a switch on them. You go to Ravenshurst under my name, and I’ll travel under yours. They don’t care what you do.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.” Her fingers fidget with a loose string on her shirt, the twirling and untwirling a clear tell that she’s upset. “You’re free! You can do anything you want and no one questions it.”

“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” I interject, rolling my eyes.

I love Poppy, but she’s always romanticized my isolation. Even my grandparents haven’t bothered with so much as a phone call in years. Uncle Graysen and Poppy are the only ones who keep tabs on me, and it’s not as freeing as she tries to make it out to be.

In fact, it’s incredibly lonely.

I suppose we’re each prisoners of our own circumstances.

“Youwantto go to school. If we let them think it was me going, I could be on the opposite side of the world as them, and they couldn’t do a thing about it.”

“Ravenshurst is legacy admission only. Neither of my parents are legacies. Even if we lied and told your parents you were going, the school would never accept me.”

“Your mom went there,” she points out.

“Yes, and she was expelled her senior year. I doubt that will get me anywhere.”

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