by Tracy Deonn
I scramble for my phone, find Charlotte’s late-night group text.
OMFGGGG holy hsit I’m SO sorry!! cops have NEVER shown up to the Quarry party text me when you get this!!!!
Ignore.
Next, a missed call and voicemail from a number I don’t recognize with an Orange County area code and a university prefix. My own call from the dean’s office.
I dash around the room looking for clean clothes. A few minutes later I’m out the door, down the hallway, and taking the dorm stairs two at a time. I hit the crash bar on the exit door and stumble down the stone steps at the side of the brick building.
To my right, students stand in a long line on the red bricks surrounding the Old Well. Waiting for a sip, and good luck, on the first day of classes. Beyond them, the grounds are dotted with old-growth trees, low bushes, and a Confederate statue facing north.
I cross the street and trot between the South building and the old Playmakers Theatre. As soon as I clear both, I’ve got a picturesque view of Polk Place, the university’s main quad. Then, it feels like the seven-hundred-acre campus stares back at me all at once.
Academic buildings hold the border on all four sides of the rectangular lawn, connected via a sprawling network of walkways that stretch long over the grass and cross one another like red brick latticework. A hundred yawning, groggy students drift across the quad like birds in scattered migration. Some navigate the campus by memory, heads bent over their phones. Others move in pairs or groups, cutting across the grounds toward the dining hall for breakfast before their eight a.m.’s. Late summer’s early morning clouds cast the sky in muted grays and turn leaves to rich greens.
This is probably only a tenth of the grounds, but it’s still more school than I’ve ever walked. It takes a minute to get oriented. I thumb through the campus map on my phone and take off at a jog through the low-hanging mist and dew-drenched grass for the Student and Academic Services Building.
My mind tosses up images from last night like dark, confusing confetti. I want to tell Alice what I witnessed, but would she believe I saw a golden-eyed boy who uses magic to hypnotize students and a girl who carries a bow and arrow in her back pocket? And what about the deputy—maybe even the entire Sheriff’s department—who almost definitely knows the truth and helps keep it quiet? Alice didn’t see the isel, but she saw Selwyn dismiss Deputy Norris. She might agree that that hadn’t been a typical encounter between a police officer and a teenage boy, but would she leap with me from the shores of not normal to the wide, unknown ocean of absolutely terrifying?
* * *
“Ms. Matthews, Ms. Chen, please, sit down.”
Dean McKinnon has a former-football-player look about him: broad shoulders stretch the seams of his blue-striped button-down. I’m grateful that he’s offered us a seat and sit quickly. I have at least an inch in height on him, even in flats and not counting my hair, tall in its bun. It tends to make older men uncomfortable when I meet their gaze equally.
Sometimes I wish I could shrink into someone more convenient.
He strides around the desk to take his own seat. The sun sends a wide band of light in through his office window, and it bounces white, blue, and gold off the silver nameplate that sits crooked on the front edge of his mahogany desk. He pulls up a file on his computer and starts to scroll through it while we wait. His hair is shorn close to his temples and graying, but the color looks premature. Like working with thousands of students has aged him exponentially. Probably has. I’m probably one of them.
Beside me, Alice sits ramrod straight and still, but my knee bounces in anticipation. I’d been mentally composing my Don’t Kick Us Out speech since the elevator ride up to the second floor of the SASB. I’m not going back to Bentonville. Especially not after what I saw last night.
The dean opens his mouth to speak, but I’m faster. “Mr. McKinnon—”
“Dr. McKinnon, Ms. Matthews.” His voice is so stern I temporarily forget my rehearsed speech. He steeples his fingers. “Or Dean McKinnon. I have earned my titles.” Alice shifts uncomfortably in her chair, and her lips press into a thin line.
“Yes, of course.” I hear my voice slide into the tone and accent that matches the dean’s. “Dean McKinnon. First of all, I’d like you to know that it was my idea to go off campus last night, not Alice’s—”
Dean McKinnon’s blue eyes flash between us, and he smoothly cuts me off again. “Did you handcuff Ms. Chen to you, thus forcing her to follow you?”
I exchange a glance with Alice. She tilts her head as if to say, Shut up, Bree! “No.”
“Good.” He clicks into another file, and my transcript and student ID appear on the screen. He scrolls without looking up. “Because we aren’t in the business of educating students who can’t think on their own. While Ms. Chen’s academic records are stellar—practically perfect, in fact—if she is indeed so passive as to follow someone into her own expulsion, I’d have doubts about her being here in the first place.”
Alice inhales sharply. I could kick this man.
Dean McKinnon leans back in his chair and releases a long sigh. “You’re exceptional students or else you wouldn’t be one of the thirty high school participants admitted to the Early College Program. It’s common for students your age, upon experiencing unsupervised residential life, to make mistakes. Fortunately, the Durham County Sheriff’s office has graced you both with a warning rather than a citation. Likewise, I don’t intend to expel you. Consider this your first and only strike.”
Oh, thank God. We both release a breath.
“However”—something sharp flashes through Dean McKinnon’s eyes—“there are consequences for your blatant disrespect for program policies and the disregard for your own written agreement to follow them.” I open my mouth, but he silences me with a look. “I will be placing phone calls to both of your parents after this meeting, and you will both report to a peer mentor the rest of the semester. A second-year Early College student who has excelled in the program by making better choices.”
I gape, heat creeping up the back of my neck. “We don’t need babysitters.”
“Apparently,” Dean McKinnon says with a raised brow, “you do.”
“Thank you, Dean McKinnon,” Alice says evenly.
“You’re dismissed, Ms. Chen.” We both stand, but he gestures for me to stay. “Ms. Matthews, a moment.”
My stomach sinks like a dropped anchor. Why would he want to speak to me alone? Alice hesitates for a moment and our eyes lock; then she exits and the door clicks softly behind her.
The dean studies me and drills his fingers on the desk in the ensuing silence. Tadum-tadum-tadum. My heart races while I wait for him to speak. Does he know what I saw? Does he know about the Legendborn?
“Deputy Norris reported that you… got an attitude with him last night.”
My mouth falls open. “An attitude? I barely said a word to him. He’s the one who—”
Dean McKinnon stops me with a raised palm. “There are no excuses for disrespect to law enforcement. No excuses for back talk.”
“I didn’t—”
“If you’ll let me finish,” he says. I clench my teeth, and my fingers curl into fists on my thighs. Alice is passive and I’m disrespectful? White-hot fury rises in my gut, my chest, my jaw. “Fortunately, I explained to Deputy Norris that this is a difficult time for you, and a new environment that’s”—he offers a patronizing smile—“different from what you’re used to.”
What I’m used to? My mind spirals. First the racist cop, then the dean believing him without giving me a chance to explain, and now…?
“Your mother is—”
“Was,” I correct him, automatic even as my brain processes the hard turns in our conversation.
He inclines his head. “Was. Yes, of course. Your mother was an esteemed alumna in her department. She was an advanced student: patents for biochemical testing processes, leading-edge work in soil science. I didn’t know her personally, but our time as
undergraduates here overlapped.”
I will my hands to stop shaking, and I inhale slowly. He caught me off guard, but I have my defenses. I close my eyes and imagine my wall stretching up, up, up.
“I just wanted to say that I am sorry for your—”
My eyes snap open. “She’s not lost.” The words erupt from my mouth.
Dean McKinnon purses his lips. “Alice Chen is an exemplary student. But you, Ms. Matthews? With your mother’s legacy and your test scores and transcripts, I’d say that you have the potential for brilliance.” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know if I’m brilliant. I know that my mother was brilliant, and I know that I’m not my mother. His eyes flick toward the door behind me. “Your assigned mentor will contact you today. Dismissed.”
* * *
I slip out the door, dizzy with frustration and humiliation both. Alice, sitting stiffly on the bench at the end of the hallway, jumps to her feet. As I get closer, I can see her red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked face. Her trembling fingers hold a wrinkled white tissue that’s been twisted into a rope.
“Alice,” I begin, glancing back at the dean’s door, “you won’t believe what just happened in there. I’m pissed—”
“You’re pissed?!” Alice breathes. “How do you think I feel?”
I startle, confused by her rage. “We’re not getting kicked out. It’s okay.”
“It’s not ‘okay’!” She claps a hand over her mouth, covering a sob that erupts from deep in her chest.
I reach toward her shoulder, but Alice steps away, out of my reach.
“I—”
“Last night was not okay!” Her voice ricochets around the empty administrative building hallway, bounces around the cubicles and tile floors. “We almost got expelled. My parents would eviscerate me if that happened. It’s going to be bad enough after he calls them!” Fresh tears run down her face.
“I know, but—”
“Not everyone is good at school without even studying like you are, Bree. Some of us have to work hard. I had to work hard to get here. It’s been my dream since… since forever, and you knew that.”
I throw my hands up. “I apologize! We won’t go off campus again!”
“Good.”
I shake my head. “But, in a way, I’m glad we did, because there’s something really weird going on at this school. Last night there was this boy—”
“Are you seriously changing the subject right now?” Alice steps back. “To talk to me about a boy?”
“No!” I exclaim. “You’re not listening to me—”
“Is that why you’re acting this way? Boys? Is school just a big party to you now?” Her eyes grow wide, but her voice turns cold, like she’s just found me stealing or cheating on a test. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you registered for those classes.”
I blink. “What does—”
She laughs sourly. “English 105: Composition and Rhetoric? Come on, Matty! You write papers in your sleep, you’ve never prepared for a speech in your life, and you still get As. Bio 103: Intro to Plants of the Piedmont? Your mother was a botanist! I didn’t say anything about it before, but now it makes sense. You signed up for slacker classes, you barely paid attention to the campus tour, and now you’re getting us into trouble. You’re just screwing around here, aren’t you?”
Shame rises up inside my belly. Shame, and not a small amount of embarrassment. I didn’t think I’d picked slacker classes. Maybe they wouldn’t be as hard as others I could have chosen, but just being here at all is already hard. Keeping the wall up, keeping After-Bree hidden, and now magic. Anger chases right behind the shame, burning it away in a fiery rush. Alice doesn’t even know about After-Bree. Alice doesn’t know about any of it!
“You didn’t have to go to the Quarry,” I spit. “You could have said no.”
She groans. “You’ve been acting like this all summer. Like nothing matters. I couldn’t let you go off alone with Charlotte Simpson!”
“So, what, you’re my babysitter now too?”
“After last night, it’s pretty clear you need one! If you—” She stops herself and looks away, her jaw clenched tight around words she’s holding back.
I spread my hands wide. “Say what you want to say, Alice.”
She turns away. “We applied when your mom was still… I know things aren’t the same for you. I’m trying to understand, but if you don’t want to be here, if you’re not going to take this seriously, then maybe you should go home.”
It’s like she slapped me clean across the face. Hot tears press against the back of my eyes. “Go home? Home to what, exactly? Go back to being the Girl Whose Mom Died in that small, gossipy town?” Carolina had been our dream.
She stares back, and I can see it in her eyes: sometime in the last twenty-four hours she’d already imagined doing this alone. Without me.
The wall inside me grows. I let it stretch so tall and wide that I can’t see its top or its edges. The barrier slides into place so completely that all of the muscles in my face go still at once. I envision a surface that is flat and impenetrable, and I feel my eyes become flat and impenetrable too. “My turn. How ’bout you grow up and get a life instead of blaming me for your choices?”
Alice steps back, and the crack in her voice goes straight to my heart. “I don’t know who you are right now, Bree.” She stares at me for a moment longer and then bends to gather her things. I can’t move, or speak.
All I can do is watch her walk away.
5
ANGER CASCADES THROUGH me so entirely I can taste it.
I make it halfway back to Old East before I have to pause to catch my breath on the steps of a library. At the edge of Polk Place, it seems like all of Carolina’s almost thirty thousand students are rippling across the quad in a steady wave, heading to their first class of the semester.
Before, Alice and I’d talked about EC like a grand adventure we would conquer together. Now, watching all the other students walk to their classes with purpose, it feels like I’m here on my own. A sly, bitter voice appears from a dark corner: Maybe that’s how it should be. One less memory of Before-Bree to live up to. I swallow against the quiet, raw satisfaction that surfaces, but it doesn’t go away. Right now, alone feels… good.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A text from a number I don’t recognize.
Hi, Briana! This is Nick Davis. Dean McKinnon gave me your number so we could get started today. Want to meet up after classes?
The babysitter already. I swipe it away. Then my phone buzzes again. A call. The name on the screen makes my throat go tight, but I answer it anyway.
“Hey, Dad.”
“There’s my college kid.” My father’s voice is warm and familiar, but my pulse quickens. Did the dean call him already?
“It’s not real college, Dad.” I sit on the stone veranda behind one of the library’s massive columns, tucking myself away from the eyes of passersby.
“It’s a real college campus,” he retorts. “They take my real college money.”
Damn. No comeback there. What I said to Norris was true: I did earn a merit award. My parents weren’t rich, but they’d been good about saving. Even still, the small pot of money they’d saved for my college tuition wouldn’t be enough to pay for a four-year bachelor’s degree without loans. The only reason Dad could afford the two years of EC was because that partial academic award cut the price in half. He doesn’t say as much, but I know he’s gambling that the investment in EC now will help me get into colleges later, and maybe earn scholarships, too. I wince, still smarting from Alice’s comment about my class choices. “S’pose that’s right,” I mumble.
“Mm-hmm.” He chuckles. “How was your first night in a real college dorm?”
My dad doesn’t traffic in subtext. With him, what you see and hear is what you get. If he’d gotten a call from the dean, he’d have let me know by now. Loud and clear. I release a quiet sigh.
“First night here? Quiet,” I l
ie. It doesn’t feel great, but I don’t feel great right now.
I expect the next question, and it’s right on time. “Met any Black kids yet?”
The only other Black kids in my high school had been a year older than me. A quiet boy named Eric Rollins and a girl named Stephanie Henderson. Whenever we spent time together, the white kids got nervous or, like, weirdly excited? All the other Black folks I know are relatives or from our church two towns over. Carolina’s got a larger Black population than Bentonville High does, that I know for sure. It’s one of the reasons I applied.
“Not yet. I haven’t even gone to my first class.”
“Well, you need a community. When’s your first class?”
“Ten a.m.”
“Had breakfast yet?”
“Not hungry.” I realize I haven’t eaten since before the Quarry.
Dad makes an mmph sound. I imagine his expression as he does it: mouth curled downward, bushy dark brows furrowed, all the lines in his deep brown face frowning at me all at once. “Appetite still comin’ and goin’?” I don’t reply, not ready to lie again just yet. He sighs. His voice is slow, careful, and his Richmond drawl drops away. “The book says that not feeling hungry, not eating, is a physical symptom of grief.”
I knew he’d bring up that book. I can see the title now: Letting Go: Bereavement, Love, and Loss. I squeeze my eyes shut and scramble around for my wall. “I eat. I’m just not hungry right now.”
“Kiddo, while you’re away, I need you to take care of yourself. Meals, rest, grades, make some new friends. If you shut down, you come home. That was the deal, right?” I make my own mmph sound, and his voice gets sharp around the edges. “Excuse me? I’m not sure I heard you. That was the deal. Correct?”
“Correct,” I murmur. That had been the deal. He knew I was miserable at home, and so he let me go, but he’d had reservations. “Dad, I appreciate you asking. I really do. I’m okay, though. Being here is…” Scary. Lonely. Messy. “Good for me.”