Tease(85)

November


“OH MY GOD, this one is about this guy who volunteered with sick kids in Sudan. I did not do that. I mean, I could do that . . . I think . . .”

“You have to stop.”

“But I just want to see what’s—here! Look at this one! She overcame an eating disorder and . . . crap, and then she saved her friend from drowning.”

“Maybe she could write your college essay for you too.”

I look up at Carmichael, my eyes wide. “That’s not funny. I am so dead. I mean—I didn’t mean that. I just don’t know how I’m going to compete with this!”

“You have to stop,” he says again. He reaches across the kitchen table and tries to pull the laptop away from me, but I hang on to it.

“This is crazy!” I insist. “I just wanted some examples, but it’s all, like—these people shouldn’t be applying to college, they should be, I dunno, running for president! Or at least going away to be in the Peace Corps or something.”

“I’m sure that’s where they’ll all go next. But I just don’t think everyone at UNL has gone on humanitarian trips and rescue missions, okay?”

I frown at him, but he frowns right back.

“And anyway,” he adds, “you’re freaking me out too. Now close the computer!”

Slowly, reluctantly, I lower the screen.

“What’s freaking you guys out?”

We both look up and see Tommy coming in, making a beeline for the bowl of chips beside us on the table. He pulls out a chair and plops down casually, but as always, his eyes are fixed on Carmichael. Now we’ll never get anything done, but that’s okay.

“College essays,” Carmichael tells him. “You’re supposed to write something really meaningful, something that tells them what an amazing person you are and what you’ve been doing your whole life. Your sister here keeps looking up these crazy, extreme examples online.”

Tommy chomps loudly on another chip and glances at the closed laptop in front of me. “Yeah? Like what?”

“Like there was this guy who BASE jumped into the Grand Canyon and got stranded and made a movie about it,” I say, but at the same time, Carmichael goes, “Like we need to think about our own essays!” and glares at me.

“So it’s like a test? Before you even go to school?” Tommy asks.

“Exactly,” I say.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Tommy says.

“Exactly,” I repeat.

“But it’s not really that big a deal,” Carmichael insists. “And see, they give you a couple of different topics and you can choose one . . .” He pushes the application form he printed out across the table and Tommy studies it.

“It’s a pretty big deal when you haven’t done anything,” I say. “I mean, I just went to school. I wasn’t even captain of the basketball team or something.”

Both of them give me this weird look. “Basketball?” Tommy says, and they crack up, like this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

“What? You know what I mean!” I lay my head down on the closed computer and moan.

“Here’s the one you should do,” Tommy says, pointing at the paper. “‘Write a letter to someone you can’t talk to about how he or she has changed your life.’”

I lean over to see where he’s pointing. “Why that one?” I ask.

“I don’t know, it sounds cool. You could do, like, Kurt Cobain or Darth Vader.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Those are your examples? What have you been reading?” I turn to Carmichael and say, “Is this your influence?”

He lifts his hands defensively and goes, “I don’t know what either of you are talking about.”

“I’m in seventh grade,” Tommy huffs. “I know who Kurt Cobain is, jeez.”

Carmichael lifts himself out of his seat, leaning over the table to read the question. “It says the person had to be alive at some point, though, so I think Darth Vader is out.”

“That’s too bad,” I say. “He had such an impact on my love of light sabers.”

Tommy shrugs, unoffended. “That’s the one I’d do,” he says.

“And you’d write to Kurt Cobain?” Carmichael asks.

“Maybe,” he says. “Or, like, maybe, I don’t know . . .” He gives me kind of a sideways glance and shrugs again. “Maybe, like, Emma Putnam.”

My stomach does a little flip. But just a little one. I stare at my little brother for a second, and I can see he’s holding his breath, a little scared of what I might say.

“Well,” I say, “I kind of already did write a letter to Emma.”

Tommy looks back at the table in front of him and shrugs. “I just mean, you know—”

“Wait,” I say. “That actually gives me an idea.”

He looks back up. “An idea for the essay?”

“Well, no—I mean, maybe, yeah, I think I have someone I could write to. But what if—” I pull the laptop back to my side of the table and open it, starting a new Google search. “I’ve just been thinking a lot about, like, what if there was something I could do that might actually help Emma? Or not Emma, exactly, but people—people in a similar situation?”