The Goal (Off-Campus #4)(2)

“Hi, Mr. Gibson. I’m so sorry I’m late,” I tell the bespectacled man at the door.

Professor Gibson’s husband gives me a soft smile. “Don’t worry about it, Sabrina. The weather is terrible. Let me take your coat.” He holds out a hand and waits patiently while I struggle out of my wool jacket.

Professor Gibson arrives as her husband is hanging my cheap coat amongst all the expensive ones in the closet. It looks as out of place as I do. I shove aside the feelings of inadequacy and summon up a bright smile.

“Sabrina!” Professor Gibson calls out gaily. Her commanding presence jerks me to attention. “I’m so glad you arrived in one piece. Is it snowing yet?”

“No, just rain.”

She grimaces and takes my arm. “Even worse. I hope you don’t plan on driving back to the city tonight. The roads will be one sheet of ice.”

Since I have to work in the morning, I’ll be making that trek regardless of the road conditions, but I don’t want Prof to worry, so I smile reassuringly. “I’ll be fine. Is she still here?”

The professor squeezes my forearm. “She is, and she’s dying to meet you.”

Awesome. I take my first full breath since I got here and allow myself to be led across the room toward a short, gray-haired woman dressed in a boxy pastel suitcoat over a pair of black pants. The outfit is rather blah, but the diamonds sparkling in her ears are larger than my thumb. Also? She seems too genial for a professor of the law. I always envisioned them as dour, serious creatures. Like me.

“Amelia, let me introduce you to Sabrina James. She’s the student I’ve been telling you about. At the top of her class, holds down two jobs, and managed a one seventy-seven on her LSATs.” Professor Gibson turns to me. “Sabrina, Amelia Fromm, constitutional scholar extraordinaire.”

“So nice to meet you,” I say, holding out my hand and praying to God it feels dry and not damp. I practiced shaking my own hand for an hour leading up to this.

Amelia grips me lightly before stepping back. “Italian mother, Jewish grandfather, hence the odd combination of names. James is Scottish—is that where your family is from?” Her bright eyes sweep over me, and I resist the urge to fidget with my cheap Target clothing.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am.” My family comes from the gutter. Scotland seems far too nice and regal to be our homeland.

She waves a hand. “It’s not important. I dabble in genealogy on the side. So, you’ve applied to Harvard? That’s what Kelly has told me.”

Kelly? Do I know a Kelly?

“She means me, dear,” Professor Gibson says with a gentle laugh.

I blush. “Yes, sorry. I think of you as Prof.”

“So formal, Kelly!” Professor Fromm accuses. “Sabrina, where else have you applied?”

“Boston College, Suffolk, and Yale, but Harvard is my dream.”

Amelia raises an eyebrow at my list of tier two and three Boston schools.

Professor Gibson jumps to my defense. “She wants to stay close to home. And obviously she belongs at someplace better than Yale.”

The two professors share a contemptuous sniff. Prof was a Harvard grad, and apparently once a Harvard grad, always an anti-Yale person.

“From all that Kelly has shared, it sounds like Harvard would be honored to have you.”

“It would be my honor to be a Harvard student, ma’am.”

“Acceptance letters are being mailed out soon.” Her eyes twinkle with mischief. “I’ll be sure to put in a good word.”

Amelia bestows another smile, and I nearly faint in happy relief. I wasn’t just blowing smoke up her ass. Harvard really is my dream.

“Thank you,” I manage to croak out.

Professor Gibson points me toward the food. “Why don’t you get something to eat? Amelia, I want to talk to you about that position paper I heard was coming out of Brown. Did you have a chance to look at it?”

The two turn away, diving deep into a discussion about intersectionality of Black feminism and race theory, a topic that Professor Gibson is an expert in.

I wander over to the refreshment table, which is draped in white and loaded with cheese, crackers, and fruit. Two of my closest friends—Hope Matthews and Carin Thompson—are already standing there. One dark and one light, they’re the two most beautiful, smartest angels in the world.

I rush over to them and nearly collapse in their arms.

“So? How’d it go?” Hope asks impatiently.

“Good, I think. She said that it sounded like Harvard would be honored to have me and that the first wave of acceptance letters is going out soon.”

I grab a plate and start loading it up, wishing the pieces of cheese were bigger. I’m so hungry I could eat an entire block. All day I’d been sick with anticipation because of this meeting, and now that it’s over, I want to fall face-first into the food table.

“Oh, you are so in,” declares Carin.

The three of us are advisees of Professor Gibson, who’s a big believer in helping young women along. There are other networking organizations on campus, but her influence is solely geared toward the advancement of women, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Tonight’s cocktail party is designed for her students to meet with faculty members of the most competitive graduate programs in the nation. Hope is angling for a place at Harvard Med while Carin is headed for MIT.