Breathless (30 page)

We sit on the bottom bunk. “I can’t open it,” I say to Mazzie, handing her the envelope. “Here.”

“Katie, don’t be stupid. You know you got in. Just
open
it already.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. Will you please do it?”

“Oh, fine.” She rips open the envelope, scanning the letter. There is a prolonged silence. And then she says, “Oh . . . my God.”

“What?” My eyes are closed. “What is it? Did I get a full scholarship? Please tell me I got some good money.”

Her voice is flat. “Katie. You didn’t get in.”

“Shut up. Come on—what did I get? I got a full scholarship, didn’t I?”

But her tone doesn’t change. I feel her press the letter into my hands. “Here. See for yourself.” I’ve never seen Mazzie look so embarrassed or sorry.

When I tell Solinger, he takes a deep breath, leaning back in his chair to stare at me as I sit there crying.

“You knew this could happen, Katie.”

“You told me I shouldn’t worry! You told me everything would be fine!”

“And it will,” he says. He shrugs. “So you didn’t get into Yale. Big deal. Where else did you get in?”

I try to take deep breaths to calm myself down, just like the Ghost always taught me.

“Everywhere else,” I tell him.

“And you got some scholarships?”

I nod, sniffing the air. Since his office is adjacent to the pool, it smells strongly of chlorine in here.

“Everything feels like it’s ending,” I say, “and I don’t want it to. I’m not ready yet.”

He shakes his head. “What’s ending?”

“A
lot.
OVACs are over—I screwed those up—swimming season is almost over, and pretty soon you’ll make me turn in my key to the pool. Then what do I have?” I pull my knees to my chest, still crying despite the deep breaths. I feel close to hyperventilating. “
Nothing.
I don’t have anything.”

“Oh, for godsakes, Katie. You’re still going to an Ivy League school on a great scholarship. You’ve got your entire life ahead of you.” He pauses, considering his next words carefully. “There are kids in this school for whom high school will be the high point of their whole lives. Trust me, Katie. You do not want to be one of those kids.” He reaches across the desk to pat me on the knee. “I know it feels like everything is ending, but it’s not. Things are just beginning for you, kiddo. You can have everything you want. All you have to do is go out and take it.”

I don’t say anything. I want to get in the water and let the rest of the world disappear.

“Feel any better?” Solinger asks.

I shrug. “I’m gonna go for a swim.”

“Hey, I can do you one better than that.” He reaches into a desk drawer, pulls out a tattered three-ring binder, and slides it across the desk. “Aquatic freshman intramurals. We’ve got the final, uh,
competitions
coming up next week. I’ll be honest with you, Katie—I don’t want to go it alone. Fifty fourteen-year-olds playing water polo, water volleyball, and”—he rolls his eyes—“Marco Polo.”

I flip through the pages. “So? What do you want me to do?”

“Want to be my assistant coach?”

“Really?”

He nods. “Absolutely. And Katie, nobody’s going to make you hand in your key. You keep it as long as you want.”

I jump up, run around the desk, and give him a hug. “You’re my favorite coach,” I say.

“I’d better be. Okay, now—that’s enough. We wouldn’t want anyone to walk in on this love-fest, would we?”

I take the binder in my arms and hold it close to my chest. “I’m going to organize this tonight.”

“Good for you. I’m sure as hell not gonna do it.”

He rifles through his desk drawer, pulls out a bottle of Wite-Out. “I’m off, then.”

“Where are you going?”

He shrugs. “I have to go Wite-Out ‘Yale’ from the list of college acceptances in the cafeteria. Never had to do that before for
anyone
.”

When he sees me start to frown, he holds up a hand. “Katie, I told you—it’s just the beginning. Especially for someone like you.”

Even though I’ve got intramurals, and Solinger managed to cheer me up a little bit, I don’t want to call my parents and tell them I didn’t get into Yale; not yet. They’re already happy that I’ve gotten into all my other schools, so it won’t be as big of a letdown for them as it is for me. They won’t understand how embarrassed I am. All I can think about is getting drunk and forgetting about everything that’s happened today: my brother, Yale’s rejection—and as much as I hate to admit it, the fact that I’ll probably never see Eddie again.

Despite how tired I’m getting of parties, I’m grateful that Estella is planning a get-together at her house tonight. Estella’s house has been the same for as long as I’ve known her: perfect. Even the mess we’re making seems lovely against the colorful background of her living room, the wallpaper matched perfectly to the upholstery on the sofa, the curtains crafted from hand-woven silk. And tonight has been the same as any other weekend night in high school. By midnight, our group is one barrel of drunk monkeys.

Drew is always the last to show up, especially at Estella’s house. He’s told me he doesn’t want to risk getting stuck alone with her. When he walks through the front door, keys still in hand, he makes a beeline toward me on the sofa.

“Where the hell have you been? I couldn’t get you on the phone, you weren’t at the pool . . .” He shakes his head. “Are you avoiding me? I don’t understand how you make it impossible to track you down sometimes.”

Mazzie leans over the back of the sofa, resting her elbows on my shoulders. “We were studying all day,” she tells him.

Drew doesn’t even look at her. “I called and called, Mazzie. Nobody answered.”

“We had the ringer turned off, genius.”

Drew scowls. “Didn’t you think to call me? Didn’t you think I’d be worried when I couldn’t get through to you?”

I nod, looking at him, right into his blue eyes, which are so desperate and sad that I’ve forgotten about him all day. I put my hands on his shoulders, trying to find some sense of affection for him—
there.
He feels warm, his neck in need of a shave.

Looking around the room—at Estella, Lindsey, Mazzie, Drew—what do we all have in common that brings us together? I don’t know any of them, not entirely, and maybe even they can’t tell me the whole truth about themselves. Even while I watch it happening, I know I’ll remember these evenings forever—the chance to be a part of something that matters, not just in one room to a few people, but to everyone. We are the ones who matter. We are going places. I am part of them. Things are happening for us.

Well, mostly. “I didn’t get into Yale,” I blurt, louder than I’d meant to.

Prior to my announcement, Estella and Lindsey had been playing a game of pool. Drew was drawing a gentle figure eight on my bare thigh. Mazzie was, as usual, eating from a bag of Cheetos, her lips and fingertips stained neon orange. Everyone stops what they’re doing except Mazzie.

“You didn’t get in? But I thought there was no question. I mean, you already
went,
and you did great,” Drew says.

I nod. “Plus I had letters of recommendation from two of my professors
at
Yale. I’m a National Merit Scholar. I get all As here. I’m a prefect.”

“And you didn’t get in,” Lindsey says, awed.

“Nope.”

“I got in.” Estella leans against her pool stick, giving me a special look of contempt. “I got my letter today too.”

“That’s nice,” Drew says, refusing to look at her, his voice flat.

“Yeah, nice timing,” Lindsey adds.

“Katie,” Estella begins, “have you thought about why you didn’t get in? I mean, can you come up with any conceivable reason why they would reject you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I lie.

She licks her lips. “I have an idea. You know my mom’s second husband is an attorney. He’s licensed to practice law in Ohio and Pennsylvania, too, because it’s such a small area, and because he used to live outside Pittsburgh with his old family. He’s still friends with lots of judges around there.”

I feel a heavy coolness spreading throughout my insides. “And he heard about a case a few months ago,” Estella continues. “Well, normally he would have just forgotten, but there was something about the last name that seemed familiar to him.”

This can’t be happening. Not now, not so close to graduation when I’ve almost made it. Not here in front of everybody who matters to me.
I give her a pleading look, but I know it’s too late; she decided she was going to
get me
the night she caught me in the bathroom with Stetson. We’ve barely spoken since then, and I knew it might be stupid for me to come here tonight. She’s probably been planning this for weeks, waiting for exactly the right moment to drop her bomb.

The whole room is quiet. I can tell Estella is loving every minute.

“We all know about Katie’s dead brother, right? The one who died in a terrible accident a few years ago?”

“Estella. You’re a bitch,” Mazzie pronounces.

“Well, as it turns out, he isn’t dead at all! He’s just
crazy.
He’s been in and out of jail and mental hospitals his whole life. And it gets better—a few months ago, he actually
murdered
someone. So, the whole time Katie has been here, pretending to be one of us and having a good old time, her brother has been institutionalized, pretty much constantly, losing his mind while his sister parties and cheats on her boyfriend and . . . sleeps in the same bed as her roommate.”

I’m crying. Drew still has his arm around me, but I think I can feel his grip loosening. The room is still silent, aside from my sobs. My head is down; I can’t bear to look at anyone.

“Let me ask you something, Katie,” Estella continues. “Why do you
really
think you didn’t get into Yale? You got into all your other schools. I mean, Harvard is even better than Yale, isn’t it? So what is it about Yale? Why don’t they want you?”

She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s because you were
there.
I think that they saw—just like I can see—something defective deep inside your core. You can swim as fast as you want and you can pretend to be classy and get good grades and date the right boy, but deep down you know you’ll always be poor white trash, no matter how dressed up you get. I think they saw that, when you were there, and they knew they didn’t want you. And I think you know the same thing. It’s true, isn’t it? You know I’m right. Come on! You know it’s true—”

“Shut up!”

I look up just in time to see Mazzie shoving Estella—
hard
—against a wall. “You don’t have any right to say that to her. Who knows why Katie didn’t get into Yale? Maybe it was because she partied too much her second summer there. Maybe they’d already filled their quota for West Virginia boarding school kids. But it’s not because she’s trash. Estella, a person can have more money than God, and they can know all the right people, and they can be beautiful and ambitious. But if they don’t have any human
decency,
then I don’t care who they are or what they have. They’re trash.”

Mazzie looks like she might punch Estella. I consider stepping in, pulling them apart. But I don’t. “You might be beautiful now, Estella,” Mazzie continues, “but it’s only because you’re eighteen. You might be rich, but it’s only because you’ve got your stepdaddy’s money. In a few years, you won’t be pretty anymore, and you won’t be rich—hell, your mother will probably be on her fourth marriage by then—and you were
never
that smart—and you’ll just be the kind of person who goes around talking about how high school was the best time of your life because you ruled the school. And those are the most boring kind of people.”

Estella glowers at Mazzie and me for what feels like forever. Finally, forcing the word out with such vile fervor that she almost spits on us, she says, “Dykes.”

Drew stands up. “Come on. I’m taking you two home. Linds, you want a ride?”

Lindsey looks hesitant. She glances back and forth between Estella and Drew.

“Don’t even think about it. You’re staying here,” Estella snaps.

Lindsey makes up her mind. “No. I’m going.”

The three of us pile into Drew’s Land Rover. I sit in the front seat beside him, holding his hand as we drive back to the dorm, squeezing it tightly because I know it might be for the last time. Nobody utters a word the whole way home.

That night in bed, I lie beside Mazzie with my eyes open, unable to stop thinking. A thousand memories, all at once. There are the events of the afternoon, which I’m still reeling from, not quite out of shock, but I’m thinking about Will, too, and the rest of my family. There’s a picture that my parents keep on our living room coffee table: me and Will, ages three and eight. We were still poor. Will had helped me to get dressed that morning, in clothes my mother had gotten from the consignment shop, and I’m wearing two mismatched socks, one of the Ghost’s undershirts, and a pair of Will’s long underwear. Will doesn’t look much better. He’s holding my hand, and I’m staring up at him, one finger stuck up my nose. It’s always been my favorite picture of the two of us.

Once it becomes clear I can’t fall asleep, I lie in bed for a long time, rubbing a corner of my sheet between my thumb and index finger on one hand. Other memories—when I was a little girl, I had a habit of rubbing the corner of my blanket between my fingers the same way. I called it “silking the silky.” I’d snuggle up between my parents and beg them to follow my lead. “Here, Mom. Silk the silky.”

As I silk the silky now, I look around the room I share with Mazzie, trying to make things out in the semidark. Several tennis rackets are stacked in the corner. Pleated school skirts are tossed over both of our desk chairs. Mazzie’s desk is neat; mine is a mess. Bathing suits and swimming caps litter the floor and hang from the corners of all the furniture. The room stinks of chlorine, cigarette smoke (which we blame on the cleaning ladies), and Ben-Gay. Books are arranged in short piles on the bookshelves and the floor—hundreds of books—everything that’s been assigned to us over the past three years, everything we’ve read on our own and dog-eared and shared, making notes in the margins.