Begin Again(87)

“I don’t know,” she says after a few moments. “I can’t reach him either. But come on, Andie. After a whole year of keeping his identity under wraps . . .”

I basically put Milo’s big secret up in neon lights.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, the magnitude of it hitting me in waves.

“It’s not just that. It’s . . .” Shay glances past me toward the journalism building, as if she’s expecting to see Connor trailing behind me. Given my luck today, she just might. “You let us all think you broke up with him.”

It’d be easy to make excuses, but it wouldn’t change the truth. Shay doesn’t ask for an explanation, which somehow makes the whole thing worse. She doesn’t need one. She already knows why I did it, because apparently not only am I a sucker, but I’m a predictable one at that.

“I’m sorry,” is all I can say, is all I’ll be saying until the end of time.

“I know you are.” Shay presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “But now we’ve got a whole other host of problems to deal with, starting with the show.”

I hate to say it, because most of me is still hoping it’s not true. “He might be leaving anyway.”

“Oh, he’s definitely leaving.” Shay says it with this finality that somehow manages to jar me despite everything that’s happened today. “The sister he was meeting up with earlier? She works in admissions. I’m sure he was just . . . settling everything here before he left.” Her scowl deepens. “But even if there were a chance he was going to stay for our school’s program, I guess that’s out the window now.”

Then the full extent of Shay’s worry hits home. Now the Blue Ridge State broadcast program will know who was behind the mic of the infamous pirate radio show, and they might take none too kindly to it. Even if they still let him in, the other students will undoubtedly resent him for snapping up the best broadcast experience someone can get out of the school without actually majoring in it. I might as well have just bought Milo a one-way ticket to California.

My eyes flood too quickly to hide. Shay’s own eyes flit to the cement, unwilling to meet mine.

“I just don’t want things to change.” Shay sounds close to crying herself. “Before this semester it was like—my old roommate didn’t want to be here. People in our hall barely talked to each other. It felt really lonely, but we’re like a weird little family now. And I really like what we have.”

My throat is thick with a new kind of regret. When I crash-landed here in the middle of the year I was so worried about fitting in that at first I couldn’t see past it. I didn’t understand that I may have felt out of place with my weird upbringing and the loss that shaped it, with my shaky grades and my old fears, but I wasn’t the only one who felt like the odd one out. I wasn’t the only one looking for a place to belong.

Only now do I understand that we never found one. We worked together to build one. And now, thanks to me, it might just come crashing down.

“Me too,” I say softly.

Shay reaches out then to hug me. A quiet forgiveness. One that I don’t feel like I deserve.

“I hope it’s not too late to fix it,” she says.

It can’t be. It won’t be. I may not have the ability to do anything right now, but just as soon as I’m out of this exam, I will figure it out.

Shay lets me go, hustling me into the psychology building. I make it there with a minute to spare, the other students already seated and ready to go. There’s only one seat left—the very same seat I had on my first day. The one with the iconic “A” scratched into it. After a grim moment of acceptance, I start walking over, hoping nobody will comment on my near lateness.

That is, until I end up face-to-face with Professor Hutchison walking up the aisle, blinking at me as if she’s looking at a ghost.

“You’re here,” she says.

A hundred pairs of eyes turn to look at me. It’s that nightmarish first day all over again.

“Yes,” I say warily, sliding my bag off my shoulder.

She shakes her head, rattling herself out of some thought. “After what just happened on the radio show, I thought . . .”

My stomach drops. The hundred pairs of eyes all lean in a little closer, hanging on her every word, watching me for my reaction. And then somehow it gets worse—a low mumbling ripples through the room.

I can’t hear much, but I hear plenty. “Squire.” “Radio show.” “Fucked up.”

I’ve been so terrified about outing Milo that it never occurred to me that I might have outed my own self. Connor said my name out loud. If a professor immediately made the connection that I was the Andie he was with, who’s to say other people didn’t, too?

I’m on autopilot, stepping closer to her. “Is this the exam?” I ask too loudly, trying to drown the class out.

“Yes. Yes, here,” she says, handing me one of the stapled sets of papers and a Scantron.

“Thanks,” I say as cheerfully as I can manage. I try to whip out the syndicated-talk-show smile, but it turns into something else—steelier, and more defiant. It’s aimed at all the students trying to get a better look at what’s going on in the back of the room, but to my surprise, Professor Hutchison’s eyes widen at it in something that looks almost like recognition.