Page 16 of You Had Me at Hello World
“Not winning isn’t stupid.”
“Not because I didn’t win. But I was delulu to ever think I could. I stalked the winner on Instagram. She goes to a bougie art academy in Chicago and her mother is this famous fashion designer whose clothes Billie Eilish wore to the Met Gala.”
“So she didn’t even need the scholarship money?” Like, I know this random girl has the right to apply for whatever scholarship she wants. But this makes me angrier than it should.
“The rich get richer. What else is new?”
She tries to smile, but the left corner of her mouth quivers, and then droops like it gave up on propping itself skyward.
God. I lean across the gearshift and envelope her into a hug.
As she cries, I think about Michael, who also grew up in this town. Mrs. Lombardi mentioned him. I’ve seen a photo of him at age seventeen, smiling at graduation. He has this awful mullet that looks like a roadkill squirrel, but otherwise, he could be any classmate of mine. Who would that seventeen-year-old have become if he hadn’t shipped off to Iraq? If he hadn’t watched his friends die in combat, if he hadn’t lost his leg in a convoy ambush?
Even now, he has nightmares, nightmares that he tries to drown with liquor. He has rage and shame and loss, all these different hues of pain. The war never left him, not really. It leaks out of my stepdad and the rest of us become collateral damage.
I don’t want Lola to return haunted, but I don’t know how to save her.
A few minutes later, she breaks away, leaving my shirt damp in the spot where her face pressed against my shoulder.
“Char, look at me.” Her voice is watery.
I meet her glistening eyes.
“You have to take this opportunity. You have to. You don’t get how lucky you are that somebody decided to give you a chance.”
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
She sniffles. “And you better not squander it the way Zach did. If you screw up, I’ll come back from boot camp just to kick your ass, I really will.”
Chapter Eight
May breezes in quietly. The first wave of summer tourists floats in, buoyed by the ocean wind. Meanwhile, Olive posts photos of her and Drew at prom. He’s in a rented tuxedo.
For Advanced Placement exams, thirty of us get bussed to a different school forty minutes away. Psych and English Lang are fine. Chemistry is a dumpster fire, which is entirely expected. Our original teacher got fired last December for cooking drugs, which, in my opinion, was at least proof that he was good at his subject. Since then, it’s been a string of substitutes who replygesundheitwhenever somebody utters the word “stoichiometry.”
I want to get in extra Lola time before she ships off, but that’s pretty much impossible between her mom’s doctor’s appointments and her online classes.
So instead I prep for camp. I teach myself mobile development on Swift, the programming language for iOS. I google all the instructors and study their lives—their professional accomplishments, their academic achievements. I even revisit CollegeConfidential for tips on how to win hackathons and avoid the posts from kids jerking off to their own SAT scores.
Meanwhile, I don’t mention Alpha Fellows to Mom. I know, I’m the freaking worst. I’m her only daughter. We’re supposed to be at the Lucky Panda together this summer. I’m about to dip for eight weeks. I could give her a heads-up.
But what if she says no? Worse, what if she rats me out to Michael? Let’s be real. After that mess with the money, I don’t really trust her anymore.
Every day, I think,Maybe I’ll tell her. And every single day, I say nothing.
Then suddenly, June catches me by surprise, and it’s too late.
Saturday. When my alarm vibrates, dawn is seeping through the window blinds. So this is it. It’s five a.m., and I’m jetting off to Boston today. It still doesn’t quite feel real.
Across the room, Olive is knocked out cold. Probably hammered from one of those end-of-year ragers that seniors throw. And Michael is off doing his usual casino nonsense, so he won’t be back until Sunday night or until his paycheck is gone. Whichever hits first.
So that means the only person I have to be careful about is Mom.
Maybe I should wake her up. Tell her that I’m dipping so we can do a proper goodbye moment. She’ll be happy for me. Ithink. Or mega pissed, which is valid. I think I forged her signature on the Alpha Fellows forms.
My phone flashes with a text from Lola. It says one word:Here!
Okay, so no time for Mom. Maybe a good thing, honestly. Even if she didn’t kill me for, you know, committing identity theft, it would’ve been a super-awkward conversation.
