Burn Before Reading(94)
“It’s weird,” I whisper to no one. “How much I used to hate this school. I mean, I don’t like it or anything. But at least now I don’t resent it so much.”
The trees and pale-peach sky don’t answer me. Why would they? They have much better things to do than contemplate my life choices with me. I close my eyes and lean back and breathe out. One last time. And I pray someday, someone will find this little oasis of calm and quiet, and love it as much as I did.
The librarian is at her desk as I leave, and she shoots me a sad smile.
“I heard about your scholarship.”
“Yeah,” I nod. “It’s okay.”
“That’s just how private schools are. Fickle, blind, and a little stupid, if you ask me.”
She winks. All I have the energy to do is crook one corner of my lips in a half-grin.
“You’ll do just fine, Beatrix.” She continues. “Lakecrest, in my opinion, is an idiot for letting you go. You’ll go on to bigger and better things in no time, and they’ll be sorry, then.”
“I don’t know. But thanks for the sentiment.”
“It’s not sentiment! It’s fact. Where do you want to go college, anyway?”
Sarah Lawrence, my heart says.
“NYU. But that’s over. Without Lakecrest it’s pointless. The acceptance rate is so low -”
She ponders this for a moment. “You know, I have a sister that went to NYU.”
“Really?”
“Mhm. And she didn’t go to Lakecrest. She was from a tiny, backwater public high school in West Virginia, but she worked her behind off. And let me tell you – the amount of effort she put into studying was maybe half of what you do.”
“You can’t know that,” I say, willing my stuttering heart to stop clinging to hope.
“Of course I do. I’ve seen you upstairs every day, checking out book after book. You stay here reading long after every other student has gone home. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that someone who loves reading as much as you do can never be stopped. No matter where you go, you’ll have whole worlds in your head. No matter how hard life gets, you’ll have whole people’s lives worth of experience tucked away inside you. No matter how hard the world tries to silence you, there are millions and millions of words just waiting to burst from you.”
She pauses. “Well. I flubbed that metaphor, maybe. It sounds like I was talking about zits.”
I laugh. “No, I – I think I get what you’re saying. I get it. Maybe. Or maybe it’ll take me time to really understand it.”
“That’s a start.” She smiles. “The school might not have you, but if you ever manage to sneak back onto campus, my library is open.”
I thank her, turn one last time and look at the sunny spot of my sanctuary, and leave.
This is it.
This is how my world ends.
Not with a bang, but with a library.
Everything I’ve done up until this moment seals itself away inside those glass doors.
I left my old school for nothing. I came here every day and poured myself into every test and lecture for nothing. I abandoned my old friends for nothing. I stayed up so many sleepless nights studying for nothing. I made Mom and Dad proud for nothing.
My perfect plan dies here, the flawless one, the one that would save what was left of our family.
No - it was stupid of me to think a school could help Dad. It’s not the school that can help him. It’s me. Lakecrest was the fast-track, and now I have to lower myself onto the slow track. That’s all. I can work twice as hard in public school and make it to NYU just the same. Nothing has changed. I go home, I make dinner for Dad, I start the laundry and sweep the house. I make sure his pills are down two from yesterday. I search the internet for Algebra II practice so I don’t fall behind. I look up part-time jobs to see if there isn’t something I can do after school to help pay for Dad’s therapy fund, now that I won’t have as much crushing Lakecrest homework. It’s better now that the Blackthorn brothers hate me. Now I don’t have to shirk my duties to go to parties, or hang out with them. No friends. No distractions.
I am, and always will be, the only one who can do something. I’m the only one who can help my family.
It’s better this way.
Chapter 16
WOLF
Rumors always follow me. That’s what being a Blackthorn means.
I’ve spent my entire high school career carefully curating those rumors – making sure the right ones got out, and the wrong ones got shut down. Fitz helped with that immensely; being able to spread rumors was his entire reason for living, some days.
Or it used to be.
It’s been two weeks since Beatrix stopped coming to Lakecrest. Two weeks since we heard her admission that she’d been working for Dad all along. Two weeks since I heard words from her own mouth admitting she became friends with us just to keep her scholarship.
Nothing’s changed.
“I swear to you guys, I didn’t do it, okay? That bastard is lying!”
The girl’s voice is high pitched. Vanessa, I think her name was. Fitz would know – he’d hacked her Facebook to confirm she’d been catfishing her ex. If it was just harmless catfishing, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at it. But she’d been trying to get him to come to a secluded location for weeks. And then she’d contacted five other guys from South Portland High School, promising sexual favors and drugs if they’d meet him there instead and beat him to a pulp for her.