Begin Again(9)

All this time I’ve been so eager to get here that I didn’t think much past beyond doing it. Now it feels like there’s an entire new world to consider. I’m so giddy from the potential of it that I want to break into a run, swallow this entire place whole.

For now I take a steadying breath, pressing my grin into a close-lipped smile as I tuck my white ribbon into my bag. It’s the qualifying ribbon—the one you can only get at the kickoff event and sign with your name, the same way my mom did all those years ago. All the other events will take place on weekends, giving people multiple opportunities to get each color—January for the blue ribbon, February for the red, and March for the yellow—but you only get one shot at the qualifying ribbon, and you can’t play without it.

Which is to say, I’m ready to guard it with my life.

The only trouble is that given the nature of it, I could only get one. I doubt there will be a way to get a second one for Connor, but I owe it to him to try. I square my shoulders with resolve and reach for the door to the lecture hall.

The extremely locked door to the lecture hall.

I take a step back. Open up the class schedule I have saved to my phone, to my computer, even printed out somewhere in my bag. I’m definitely in the right place.

I try the door again, just to see if it’s jammed, and when it doesn’t open I tentatively knock. I hear some murmuring on the other end and step back, certain it’s a student in one of the back rows getting up to let me in, but instead I find myself face-to-face with an older woman in a floral button-down tucked into no-nonsense slacks who can only be Professor Hutchison.

“You’re late.”

The words echo through the lecture hall. One quick glance behind her is all the confirmation I need that a hundred pairs of eyes have turned around to stare at me.

Just like that, I’m only half here. The other half of me is twelve years old again, my face an inch from a microphone at a school assembly with just as many eyes on me, my chest suddenly so tight I don’t know how to breathe. I blink the memory away, forcing myself to look Professor Hutchison in her very impatient eyes.

“Um—sorry, I was—”

“With that noisy group on the quad?” she says disdainfully.

I follow her gaze to the incriminating white ribbon poking out of my bag.

“Yes,” I say.

My phone lights up and informs me that it is, in fact, several minutes past eleven. I was so swept up in the excitement of my new-found freedom that for the first time in possibly my entire memory, I lost track of time.

“On the first day of class, which you well know from my copious emails is the day of your placement exam?”

“I—I didn’t.” My brain sidesteps the words “placement exam” only so I don’t end up choking on my own spit. “I’m a transfer. My email didn’t get set up until yesterday.”

My heart is racing fast enough in my chest that it feels like there are two of them. I can’t fail this class. Not if I want to graduate in this major. Not if I want to keep my entire life plan from crashing into the ground.

She narrows her eyes at me, but steps aside, holding the door open. “You get one pass. But first, hand that over.” She’s staring at the ribbon.

“But I—”

“Now, young lady.”

My hand grazes the ribbon, but stops there. I keep waiting for some kind of punch line, but as I feel the weight of several dozen eyes and the sound of muffled laughter, it’s clear the joke is me.

I hand over the ribbon. “I’m, uh—really sorry,” I say, and now it’s my voice echoing into eternity, like I’ve thrown a boomerang and had it come back and knock me on my butt.

She doesn’t acknowledge the apology, just takes the ribbon from me and puts it in her pocket. My soul separates from my body just enough that I’m able to find a seat in the back row and plant myself in it. Professor Hutchison sets a fresh exam down in front of me. I take a breath. Four seconds in, two seconds out. I’ll reason with her later. I’ll get the ribbon back. I’ve got this.

Then I look down at the page and realize it might as well be gibberish. Our high school didn’t offer statistics, only algebra and pre-calc, and I didn’t take either first semester at the community college because I knew the credit wouldn’t transfer here.

I glance up to see if anyone else is having a silent near-breakdown at their desk, and see every single person with a calculator propped next to their exam. I close my eyes and can see mine very clearly, stashed deep in my duffel bag back at the dorms, which is precisely the least helpful place it could be.

Ten minutes pass. Ten minutes of me staring down at the exam and wondering whether I should try to fake it or ask for a calculator or just write “SORRY” in all caps over the front page and run for my life.

Okay. Deep breath. I square my shoulders, preparing myself for whatever embarrassment is on the other end of me fessing up that I need to borrow a calculator, but then my eyes catch a scrawled letter on the desk—a neat little “A” with a distinctive swirl at the end of it.

Before the thought even connects, I’m touching the charm on my necklace. It has that exact swirl. I’m certain if I unclasped it right now and set the charm down on the scrawl, the “A” would fit into its exact dimensions—it was my mom’s way of signing everything. Checks to pay the power bill. Autographs to fans of her show. Her white ribbon. My dad got the necklace specially made for her sometime before I was born, and she’s wearing it in just about every picture I have of her.