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This can’t be fucking happening.
Every year, the Hamilton Foundation seeks out five—five total—individuals bound for law school and pairs them with a tenured professor at the school they’re applying to. It’s a mentorship on crack, and it pretty much guarantees you a spot at that school, not to mention employment afterwards.
Naturally, there are something like ten thousand students vying for those coveted five slots. The first round decimates it down to five hundred. The second cuts that number to fifty, and the third cuts it to fifteen…three candidates per slot.
I made it into the third round, and even had a video call with Dr. Shoshana Mendel, the brilliant civil rights attorney I’d be paired with if I made the final cut. She’s even at my dream school, Yale University.
Making that final cut depends on an in-person interview. It was going to be even easier for me given that Yale isn’t that far from the Knightsblood campus.
I made all the arrangements. I had my interview notecards memorized, and knew all the right things to say.
And then two days before that interview that would decide the course of my life, Alistair fucking Black snuck into my bathroom and put blue dye in my shower.
There wasn’t any way in this world or the next I was showing up to that interview looking like a fucking Smurfette. So I cancelled, and sent a long-winded, highly apologetic email alluding to a medical condition that was preventing me from attending, and asked about rescheduling.
That was two weeks ago. The letter in my hand right now is the first I’ve heard from either Yale or the Hamilton Foundation since.
Dear Ms. LeBlanc: We regret to inform you that we are unable to reschedule the final interview of your application process. The positions in our program are highly desired, and we regret to say that you have been eliminated from our selection process. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
That’s it. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
One of the reasons the Hamilton Foundation’s selection process is so cutthroat is because you only get one chance at it.
There’s no “we welcome you to apply again next year”. You take your shot, and if you miss, that’s it.
Fin.
The paper falls from my hand to the floor. My pulse thuds low and heavy in my chest. I want to cry, but no tears come. I want to scream, but I’m too stunned.
I’m going to fucking kill him.
I know it was Alistair. Days after the shower incident, having taken time off from my Knightsblood classes and about five thousand more showers, scrubbing a layer or six of skin from my body to get rid of the blue, I was finally back in public again.
My skin still had a slight blueish tint, and my blonde hair was still tinged green. But I was back in class. When I locked eyes with Alistair across the main quad, the fucker just smiled at me, raising a single, purposefully blue-colored middle finger.
My stomach drops further as the full weight of it hits me.
That fucker.
That fucking mother. FUCKER.
Anger boils in my blood like acid. This is beyond a prank now. He just destroyed an entire trajectory of my life.
I’m still sitting on the edge of my bed shaking with rage when Demi walks in with Giorgiana.
“Hey! We were—” Demi stops when she sees the deathly look on my face. “Oh, fuck, what happened?”
Slowly, I kick the letter under my bed with my heel. I turn to look at her.
“It was Alistair Black.”
Demi’s aware of the blue shower incident, obviously, being my roommate. And she guessed that it was somehow related to me being tapped for one of the four clubs. But I haven’t told her more than that. Not even after I saw the fuckhead flip me off and grin, virtually bragging that it was him.
I don’t know why I didn’t tell her before—maybe because I’ve always viewed this rivalry, this prank war between me and Alistair, as just a private battle.
But he crossed a fucking line.
He crossed way over a line.
