You Should See Me in a Crown(4)

And now, two months after that audition, I learn it was all for nothing. All that time, that work, and I failed. And I don’t know where to go from here.

“Liz. Liz?” Mr. K waves his hand in front of my face with a smile. “Are you okay?”

My chest feels like it’s starting to constrict, and the feeling is familiar. I’m on the verge of a panic attack, and I know I have to get out of there fast before I completely fall apart in front of Mr. K. Before I have to tell him that all his help, all the time he spent working with me, has been for nothing. That I failed him and all the other people who were counting on me to make this work.

I open and close my mouth again, trying to find the words. But nothing comes out. I shrug my back up on my shoulder and head for the door.

“Hey, you don’t look so great.” His eyebrows knit together in concern. “Do you need to sit down? Get some water maybe?”

I shake my head.

I don’t need any of that, I can’t tell him. What I needed was Pennington.

And it’s gone forever.





It’s been three days since I got the email, and the only solution I’ve come up with is to sell one of my nonessential organs to pay for school in the fall. That, or take a gap year and work with my granny at the nursing home where she’s a CNA. I can earn some money to help cover expenses around the house, reaudition for the spot and the scholarship that comes with it, and maybe next fall will be my time. I’ll be a year behind all my friends, a year delayed on all my dreams, but it’s the best—the only—option I have.

My brother, Robbie, throwing a sock still warm from the dryer at me is the only thing that keeps me from full-on anxiety spiraling like I’ve done every other day this week when I’ve thought too hard about next year.

“What?” I shake my head, trying to clear it. “Did you say something?”

He bumps his hip into mine gently. We’re folding laundry while Granny’s at work and Grandad dozes in his rocker on the front porch, and the monotony of the chore is almost soothing to me. Or at least it was soothing, you know, before I started thinking about how my life has been completely derailed.

“I said you’re being mad spacy.” He folds a pair of dress pants he wears when he has a debate meet and drops it into the basket. “You gonna tell me about the scholarship, or do I have to keep pretending like I didn’t see you reading the rejection email over breakfast two days ago?”

“Ro.” I flop down on the couch and put my face in my hands. Of course Robbie knows. “I was going to tell you. I just needed … time.”

“Liz. Lizzie.” His bare foot nudges at my bunny slippers until I look at him. I wrap my arms around my stomach, the sleeves of my mom’s old Pennington Penguins crewneck warm and extra soft from years of wear. “Look, we can fix this. Money has never stopped us before. You know Granny and Grandad will—”

Sell the house, is what I don’t let him say. I know what this looks like if I tell Granny and Grandad the truth. They’ll sell the house, move into an even smaller space, and use all the money to make sure I get to go to my dream school for four years. I won’t let that happen.

We’ve lived in the same boxy brick house on the edge of town for as long as I can remember. And it used to be pretty tight, three bedrooms for five people. The five of us have always been the “small and mighty Lightys,” my granny used to say. My mom busted her butt to raise us practically on her own after my dad left, and my grandparents did the same to raise us after she got really sick. We work hard, harder than the people around us, and we make it work. We succeed in spite of, or maybe even because of, the odds against us. That’s just the Lighty Way.

So whether or not I was going to attend college has never really been a question for me. Neither was where I was going to go and what I was going to study. I was going to attend my mom’s alma mater, Pennington College, and take the premed track while playing for the Penguins orchestra. I was going to become a hematologist and work with sickle-cell patients like my mom and my little brother, and it was all going to be possible because I grinded hard, kept my head down, and survived growing up poor and black in Campbell County—a place that’s anything but. Because that’s the Lighty Way too.

But I didn’t account for my mom not being around to see me graduate high school. I didn’t factor in not getting the scholarship it would take to go to college. I didn’t consider that, despite everything, my hard work might not ever be enough.

“They can’t know.” I shake my head. “Granny and Grandad can’t know about this. I’ll come up with something; there’s gotta be another way.”

Robbie moves the clean-clothes basket to the floor and plops down next to me. Our old couch dips as he sits.

This house is the last place we ever heard our mom’s voice, the last place she was ever loud and vibrant and irrepressibly alive. Her touch still lingers on the couch in the living room, even though it’s bursting at the seams, because my grandparents can’t stand to get rid of it. Even the smell of her perfume still clings to the living room wallpaper if you try hard enough to smell it.

If they sell the house, we forfeit the only thing that’s left of our mother. And the thought terrifies me. It’s either take the money and lose Mom again, or skip college and abandon one of the last wishes she ever had for me: that I attend her alma mater. Either way, I lose.