Burn Before Reading(14)

But he doesn’t post anything. Not today, anyway. But I’ll be watching. I get off the computer and strip off my uniform blazer and shirt, collapsing on my bed. Every muscle in my body is sore. Coach is running us ragged during swim practice. I’m not on the swim team to compete – on the contrary, I’m there for the stress relief. It’s just a happy coincidence I’m good at the breaststroke.

My hand wanders to my bedside table, where I keep a certain essay. I asked Fitz to grab it from Dad’s computer, not knowing how deeply it would suck me in. The theme was ‘hope’. I’ve read it so many times the edges of the pages are a little worn. Writing doesn’t usually get me like this. It doesn’t hit my core hard, make me stop and think. But as much as I hate to admit it, Beatrix’s essay did. It struck a chord with me I haven’t been able to shake since.

I glance down to a paragraph.

I originally wanted to go to college for writing. Not journalism stuff, but creative writing. It’s stupid, I know. There’s no money in it, I’d be an artist living a starving artist’s life. I know all those things. But there’s nothing I enjoy more than writing. Than reading. Books are my world, and I want to live in that world forever. I want to create worlds I can live in forever.

But that’s not reality. The reality is Dad’s sick, and writing isn’t going to help him. Books with pretty covers aren’t going to magically make him feel better. No – psychology is. Real and true science, therapy and time and effort. Those are the only things I can do to help him. And creative writing is definitely nothing like clinical psychology. I can’t do both at once.

So I had to make a choice.

Maybe when I’m old I can go back to writing. Maybe I can learn to write when Dad’s better. But for now, I have to help. Helping is more important than art. Family is more important than what I want.

My chest compacts painfully. This was the part of the essay that made me feel the worst – she was giving up her dreams for her parents. It’s wrong – her reasons for being at Lakecrest are just wrong. I had half the urge to ask Dad to reject her scholarship a few months ago, but I never worked up the courage. It wasn’t that Dad wouldn’t do it – he would. He always does what I ask if it regards Lakecrest, mostly because he likes nothing more than to assert his power over the school. It was just that, if I revoked her scholarship, I’d never meet her.

So I didn’t ask. It was selfish, on my part. Stupid and selfish. And look how well it panned out – I hadn’t been able to talk to her until recently, and that’d been awkward as hell.

I shake my head and keep reading, until I get to the last paragraph.

No matter what happens, whether I get into Lakecrest or not, giving up will never be an option for me. I think that’s what hope is – not a fancy light, or a bright, positive feeling like they make it out to be in the Disney movies. It’s not some noble trait only heroes and Good People? have. I think it’s just moving forward when all hope is lost. Hope isn’t some grand and mysterious motivation like love; it’s just never giving up in the face of hopelessness. When everything is lost, when you can’t physically go on one step further, but you choose to keep moving forward anyway? That’s hope. Hope isn’t a thing. It’s something you do when you can’t do anything else.

So I’ll keep on hoping.

The words are so simple. Sure, she uses some fancier ones much earlier in the essay, but her words aren’t pretentious, like so many other essays by McCaroll scholarship hopefuls I’d read. I read them all, of course, trying to get a sense of who these people were, if they ever made it into Lakecrest. I’d read dozens. Maybe even hundreds. But this one? This one didn’t simper, or flatter. This one didn’t brag or boast. This one was straight and true, like an arrow, a sunbeam – undeniable and strong. I was in awe. I read it over and over again, dissecting and memorizing my favorite parts.

And then I met her.

Well, saw her. For the first time. It was the first day of school, everyone primped and perfumed and Prada’d to their last hair, and then there was her. Beatrix Cruz walked into the front doors, her two brown braids slightly ruffled by the autumn wind. She carried a backpack that looked older than she – threads trailing from the frayed corners and a zipper that didn’t close all the way around the mass of school supplies she’d brought. Her uniform was carefully ironed, and from the essay I knew she had to have done it herself – her mother was rarely home. It wasn’t tailored like everyone else’s; it simply hung on her shoulders, wrinkle-free but far too baggy. Her stormy gray eyes never once shied away from someone’s gaze. She looked straight ahead, the sunlight illuminating her from behind.

I knew in that moment it was her. There were always a few new students on the first day, but she was unmistakable. The unflinching gaze could only belong to the same person who’d written that essay.

And now she hated me.

I’d forgotten what it was like, to be hated. Well, the students I kicked out hated me, but they were scumbags who needed to be taught a lesson. I could care less what they thought of me. But someone who wrote such honest things? Someone who poured her heart out on paper and made it look easy? Someone who knew what hope was? I wanted someone like that to like me. Someone like that was rare and priceless. The last thing I wanted was for her to hate me.

But she did.