by Stacey Kade
“What I’m saying is that growth and exploration are very important to your development, of course. But using those things to try to become someone else is a no-win scenario. Because even if you succeed at convincing others and gaining acceptance, it’s still not you.”
“But it could be,” I say. “If I’m better that way.”
He sighs. “Better as defined by whom?”
I shrug, the only answer I’m willing to give him.
“Caroline, you have to learn to be comfortable with who you are. Some people will like you and others won’t. You can’t control that. Even wider acceptance doesn’t make you rejection-proof.” He pauses. “Look at Felicity. You admire the character—idolize her, even. But part of what you admire is that she is herself: flawed, imperfect. ‘The queen of awkward,’ as I believe you phrased it. And yet she manages to find a place for herself, acceptance. Why do you think that approach won’t work for you?”
Because I can’t take that chance. And besides, that was TV and this is real life, and contrary to what everyone thinks, I do know the difference. You have to help real life along a little sometimes.
I yank a tissue out of the box on the coffee table and wipe under my eyes. “So that’s it—you’re going to tell my mom that I can’t go to Ashmore?” Why doesn’t anyone understand the idea of wanting more? What’s wrong with that?
“I’m afraid you’re missing my point,” he says.
I tense, waiting.
“I think you should go,” Dr. Wegman says, after a long moment.
I look up from the crumpled tissue in my fist, startled. “To Ashmore? Or . . . you want me to leave your—”
“To Ashmore,” he confirms, and relief washes over me, leaving me dizzy. “Though I have some conditions.”
Wariness sets in. “Conditions?”
He holds up a finger. “First, you have to stay there for at least one semester.”
A semester? I’m planning on staying forever.
“Second”—he lifts another finger—“we meet once a week until you leave for school, and then you agree to maintain regular sessions with me via Skype or phone.”
That shouldn’t be a problem. I could time it when Lexi, my roommate, isn’t around. Needing a psychiatrist on a regular basis is definitely not part of my plan to reinvent myself.
“Third, you do your best to avoid reverting to your former pattern.”
I frown, confused.
“Retreating to fantasy, inventing friends and situations. Creating a false life,” he clarifies.
Oh. That.
“I want you to work on living in the moment and accepting it for what it is, good or bad,” he says. “Making up stories about yourself or others is an understandable response to rejection or fear of rejection. But it’s getting in the way of you accepting yourself for who you are. And if you can’t do that, how can you expect others to?”
Well, obviously, because I plan to be someone better. A version of me that I can accept and others will too. Besides, I only started making stuff up because I didn’t have a choice; I wasn’t prepared. In my new life at Ashmore, it’ll be different. I won’t need Felicity, Elena, or Julie. Well, I’ll always need Felicity, but the TV version, not the one I made for myself.
Wegman lowers his hand, his requirements complete.
“That’s all?” I ask, to be sure.
“I need to speak to your mother, but assuming she agrees with my thoughts on the matter, yes.” And yet he doesn’t seem pleased about the pronouncement.
I want to be excited. But something about this is too easy. I should let it go and take the win, but suspicion is eating at me. “Why?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
“There are some things in life that you can’t tell someone else.” He folds his hands in his lap. “Some things, Caroline, you’ll have to experience for yourself, for better or worse.”
I don’t like the way that sounds. So fatalistic. Like somehow I’m already doomed and don’t realize it. What does Wegman know that I don’t?
I study him, searching for the answer in his face and finding nothing.
Then I realize how ridiculous I’m being. He doesn’t know me, only what I’ve told him. He’s making a guess based on what might happen to other people, not to me.
It’ll be fine. No, more than fine. It’ll be awesome. It has to be. I repeat the words over and over in my head until the clenched-tight knot in my gut eases.
“Caroline?” Dr. Wegman asks, startling me. His head is cocked to one side, his gaze evaluating.
“What . . . yes?” I’ve been quiet for too long. I can see the concern in the wrinkle between his eyes.
“Are we agreed?” Dr. Wegman asks.
Maybe it’s me, but I sense a challenge in those words, in the tone of his question. And that lights a fire in me.
Sticking my chin out in defiance, I scoot forward on the couch and offer my hand for him to shake. “Agreed.”
I’ll show him. Because I’ve got this. I’m going to reboot my life, and Ashmore Caroline is going to have everything I’ve ever wanted.
Chapter Four
Pulling at my seat belt in the backseat of the cab, I edge closer to the window for a better look. “It’s so green here,” I say, surprised. Four hours ago I was in the desert, and now . . . Iowa.
In my head the word sounds dreamy, exciting, full of potential. It’s a little out of sync with the stench of manure drifting through the vents and the very slow tractory thing on the road ahead of us, making the cabdriver curse under his breath, but even those things seem vaguely exotic.
“It’s corn, Caroline. Nothing to get excited about,” my mom says, sounding worried. Then she tugs on my sleeve to urge me back.
Except it is something to get excited about. It’s the first real sign that I’ve done it. Even with the acceptance letter, the various forms and e-mails from the university registrar and the housing office, a generic welcome e-mail from my freshman advisor, and the quick roommate-business messages with Lexi over the last few months, nothing felt real until this second when I looked out the window and saw corn.
Almost there. I made it this far, only a little more to go. According to the app on my phone, campus should only be fifteen minutes away now.
Flutters of excitement make me shift in my seat with impatience and eagerness.
“I want you to know, no matter what Dr. Wegman said, you can come home any time,” Mom says quietly, watching me with concern. “You don’t have to feel bad if this doesn’t end up being the place for you. If you’re not ready.”
“I know,” I say. It’s easier to agree with her than to try to explain why her worry is unnecessary.
I watch as Ashmore emerges from the cornfields slowly at first, a scattering of buildings on the highway that grow closer and closer together until it resembles a small college town. Not that different from Merriman, back at home.
As we turn at the end of a downtown strip of shops and restaurants, I catch my first glimpse of Ashmore University in real life. In the distance, the white-domed science building, Kleppe Hall and Observatory, hovers on the crest of a hill.
So close now.
I lean forward, straining against my seat belt for a first glimpse of Brekken, my dorm. The social dorm, where my life will likely change forever.
But the angle is weird, and I can’t see much more of campus with the trees in the way.
As the cab winds up the road, though—the oh-so-creatively named College Street—suddenly students are everywhere. Laughing and talking with one another, clustered in groups on the sidewalk, or striding with purpose across the quad with backpacks slung over their shoulders. They project an ease and sense of belonging to this community, and I envy them so strongly that my teeth ache with it.
That can be you. That will be you. Soon. Maybe even tomorrow.
“You want the student union or the dorms?” our cabdriver asks when he reaches a four-way stop.
“Brekken, definitely,” I say. I’
m ready to be there, living my new life.
“You got it.”
He turns right, and then, after a few seconds, I see it looming ahead: Brekken. The silver lettering attached to the outside wall has tarnished slightly, but it is still readable. The building is bigger than I expected and its brick darker, more like something out of the movie version of Gotham rather than bright and sunny Iowa. And now that I’m seeing it in person, it looks more run-down than I thought. The bike rack to the left of the doors is bent and mangled; the painted window frames are peeling at the corners.
The turnaround in front of the building is jammed with cars. People, many of them red-faced and sweating, in a variety of blue-and-gold T-shirts with either ADMISSIONS on the back or Greek letters on the front are weaving their way through, seemingly trying to help. Belongings are everywhere: boxes, plastic crates, pillows, and suitcases, all in teetering piles on the paved driveway. Like semiorganized wreckage from a very specific college-bound plane. Or the world’s largest yard sale—something I never experienced in any size until we moved to Arizona, because in New York you put stuff you don’t want out on the corner and someone takes it—only this has way more flat-screen TVs and Xboxes.
As our cab carefully noses into the drive, waved on by a guy in a blue shirt, my nerves kick in without warning.
We’re here. I’m here.
There are so many people. So many strangers.
Feeling slightly dizzy, I search the crowd, hoping to see a face—the face—I recognize. No luck.
I can feel myself pulling back, like my insides are retreating, abandoning my outer shell to make themselves smaller beneath my skin.
“Caroline?” My mom squeezes my shoulder. “Are you ready?” There’s a gentle, knowing tone in her voice, like she’s aware of what I’m thinking.
That’s enough to snap me to attention. I can do this. I need to do this. I just have to think about it the right way.
What would Felicity do?
Exactly what she did do. She got out of the cab at her dorm, with her bags and a smile, prepared to start her new life on the right foot.
I can do that.
• • •
The lobby area of the dorm is more of the chaos outside but jammed into a smaller space. It’s hot in here and smells of deodorant, body wash, and people who opted out of both. The furniture has been shoved back against the far wall, every inch of the place given over to luggage, boxes, and sweaty, frustrated, and overexcited humans, like a subway platform at five on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. Music, tinny and undefinable, plays from several sources—different songs, adding to the general din. Several guys are shouting at one another while throwing a football overhead.
Brekken, in addition to being the social dorm, might be the athlete dorm as well.
Mom flinches when the football veers a little too close to our heads before thudding into a meaty hand behind us. “Got it,” someone bellows.
“Do you see the check-in?” my mom asks, her mouth twisted in distaste. “Or the stairs?”
Even with my few additional inches of height, all I see are backs and elbows.
It reminds me so much of that scene at the beginning of Felicity, where she runs into Ben while getting her photo ID, that I push myself up to my tiptoes . . . looking.
“Any luck?” my mom asks.
“No.”
“Maybe we should ask someone,” she says.
That’s a great idea. But before either of us can move, a woman suddenly appears above the crowd. She must be standing on a chair.
“If I can have your attention,” the woman—Diane, according to her name tag—shouts, “the line for check-in starts over there.” She points to the other side of the crowded room.
Everyone around me groans, and we start shuffling that way. I keep an eye out the whole time.
After about twenty minutes, we reach the front. My mother puffs out a breath of exasperation—and possibly exhaustion—as she drops my duffel bag, a suitcase, and a spare backpack on the ground. I keep a sweaty grip on the rest of my stuff.
This is it. I can feel the return of my nervousness, closing off my throat. But I can do this. I’ve practiced this. I can’t get what I want by being who I was.
“Name?” a girl in a blue T-shirt with RA printed on the left side asks, her fingertips poised over an iPad. Her dark hair is cut short in a gorgeous glossy bob that I would never be able to attain, even with a truckload of product.
“Caroline,” I blurt, pitching my voice up in a cheery tone. My goal is a nicer version of Stella. She was, after all, the most popular girl at Merriman South . . . despite screaming at me once for getting in her way on the volleyball court during gym. Something was working for her.
I try again. “Caroline Sands. Oh my gosh, hi! I’m a freshman, so excited to be here!” Not as smooth as I practiced, but I got the words out there.
My mom makes a tiny distressed noise.
My face burns, but I ignore it and her.
The girl looks up from her iPad with a smile. “Caroline, yes, I’ve got you. You’re one of my residents. I’m Ayana, your RA. It’s nice to meet you.” Her words roll out in a melodic cadence that sounds warm and welcoming.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I say, with relief. It’s working. My script. My plan.
“So you’re on the fourth floor,” Ayana says, consulting her screen. “Room 412.”
“Okay, great! That’s awesome!” I lower my voice then, conscious of my mom next to me. “Um, is there a way to tell if someone else has already checked in?”
“No, sorry,” Ayana says. “We’ve already got a lot going on. But—”
“Heads up!” someone shouts, and then a large male body plows into the line behind us, scattering people like bowling pins.
Ayana grimaces. “Enough with the ball!” she calls. Then she turns her attention back to me. “You’ll have plenty of time to get to know everyone over the next couple of days. There are lots of fun meet-and-greet activities scheduled.”
“Great! Of course!” I can’t seem to shake the exclamation points from everything I say.
“Kiley has your orientation packet and your key.” Ayana gestures to a girl sitting at a small table behind her.
“Oh.” I struggle, readjusting my bags, switching my attention to Kiley, who is also wearing a name tag. “Hi, Kiley! I’m—”
“Welcome,” she says, handing me a folder and a tiny white envelope marked 412.
I lean forward to take it, one of my bags sliding off my shoulder to slam into the edge of the table. “Sorry!” I try to force a lighthearted giggle, but it comes out more like a gurgle.
Kiley steadies the table and immediately returns to sorting through a box full of identical little envelopes, like I’m not even there. I try not to feel hurt by that.
“She shipped boxes ahead of time,” my mom says to Kiley, consulting her phone and, presumably, the list of details assembled by Sophie. “Where do we pick those up?”
Without looking up, Kiley jerks her thumb toward the set of glass doors at the opposite end of the lobby. “The caf. Talk to Chris.”
Okay. It’s not like I was expecting anyone to throw their arms around me and squeal that we must become besties. Except, possibly, my roommate, Lexi, though she’s been hard to read in our limited text/chat interactions.
Still. I’m counting this as a win.
“Caroline?” my mother prompts, gathering the bags she dropped, with a grunt.
“You ladies look like you could use some help.” A guy in one of the blue shirts with Greek letters appears in front of us, as if from nowhere. He’s cute, with close-cropped hair, light brown skin, and gorgeous sea-colored eyes. And he’s smiling at me.
My voice immediately curls up and dies, words fleeing like a flock of startled birds.
His smile fades as he looks from me to my mom in confusion.
“Yes, please,” my mom says quickly, eyeing me sideways. “She has boxes to pick up.”
“Right this way,” he says, extending an arm to direct us as he takes some of my bags from my mom. “I’m Jordan.”
“I’m Caroline,” I manage.
“So it’s kind of overwhelming, I know, on the first day,” Jordan says as we shuffle through the crowd toward the cafeteria. “But you’ll get the hang of it.”
All I can do is nod. His niceness feels more like pity, which is exactly what I don’t want. Not here, not now.
I take a deep breath and try to recover. But everything feels too loud, and I can’t focus with all the noise. It’s like being jabbed by a hundred pins at once, while trying to solve a math problem. Dr. Wegman, during our conversations this summer, said that’s part of the whole highly sensitive–introvert thing. Too much stimulation at once and I feel the need to withdraw.
Jordan recruits one of his fraternity brothers to help with the boxes. Once we have everything, I follow the three of them up the jam-packed stairs to the fourth floor. It’s slightly quieter here, which helps. Jordan and my mom are chatting like old friends. He’s premed, and she’s telling him what she does for the foundation.
How does she do it? How is it so easy for her and everyone else? I don’t remember worrying about it when I was little, but somewhere along the line, talking to people became this . . . thing for me. Something I had to think about, something I worried about instead of just doing it the way everyone else seemed to.
My dad understood. Or, at least, I thought he did. When my mom was out at various fundraising functions, we used to sit in silence for hours, watching the Discovery Channel or those bizarre conspiracy-theory documentaries on Netflix.
“See?” he’d say to me, ruffling my hair as he got up to get us more ice cream. “Time-traveling assassins sent by Hitler. That explains everything.”
I had thought that silence was mutual, both of us drained and tired of talking to people. Now I think maybe it was my dad killing time until he could leave us, while I happened to be in the room.
At the entrance to the fourth floor, laughter echoes from girls already inside. Sweat trickles down my spine, dampening the waistband of my cute wool skirt. I have blisters on my heels and on the front of my shins from my new ankle boots.