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“Um, I don’t know. Maybe that I’m not going to get in. That I’ve also applied to ten other schools as backups.”
“Ten?” I shouted, causing people to look over at us.
“Yes, ten. That’s totally normal, Lake. You’re the only one who applied to one.”
That was because I could only go to one. I wasn’t going to jinx myself by even considering other schools. I looked at Val, surprised that I hadn’t ever asked her how many schools she’d applied to. “What about you?”
She twisted her lips. “Five or six,” she said. “I lost count.”
“Which ones?” I asked them.
As we headed out to the parking lot, they listed off fifteen schools they’d applied to between the two of them. The thing was, while I’d been sick over applications, they actually sounded excited. They had options. Their futures were wide open. As of now, neither of them had any idea which city they’d be moving to at the end of summer. There was nothing mysterious about my plan. None of this process had made me giddy. It’d felt about the same as having an elephant sit on my chest, getting heavier and heavier the longer I didn’t hear anything.
While they argued over the differences between University of San Diego, San Diego State University, and University of California San Diego, I thought back to the similar conversations I’d had with Corbin about NYU. All this time, I’d thought he’d just wanted me to be where he was. I hadn’t seriously considered picking up and moving to a completely different place.
“Lake?” Val asked, lowering her sunglasses to squint at me.
“What?”
“We asked where else you would apply.”
“Where else?” Could I see myself as anything other than a Trojan? USC football or basketball or baseball had been playing on TV since I could remember. We had flags we hung outside the house during big games. My dad hated that Tiffany hadn’t gone there, and I suspected he even resented my mom for not attending USC, which made no sense because they hadn’t met until after she’d graduated college. My chest constricted at just the thought of asking about other schools.
Val’s eyebrows gathered as she inspected my face. “Are you okay?”
“Her dad would never go for it,” Vickie explained. “He puts her under a lot of pressure.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Val said. “I have eyes and ears.”
“USC is all he’s talked about for months,” I said, my voice sounding far off. “For my life.” This had happened a few times lately, this rise of panic in my chest. I thought about USC a lot, but when I began to really think hard about the details, all the ways it could go wrong, my breathing became shallow. What if it wasn’t enough? All the volunteering, studying, rigorous SAT prep and near-perfect score. What if my letter never came? What if it did, and the classes were so hard that I flunked out my first semester? Would Dad begin to look at me the way he did Tiffany, distantly, as if she’d wound up in his presence by mistake somehow?
“He doesn’t have to know about it,” Val said. “You could always apply without telling him.”
“You can use my address,” Vickie said excitedly.
“She’d use Tiffany’s obviously,” Val said. “She’s her sister.”
Oddly, their bickering calmed me a little. It wasn’t like giving myself options, adding a little unknown to my life, was a crime. Surely, my dad would see that . . . but what if he didn’t? If I asked to apply somewhere else and he said no, pursuing it would be defying him. But if I never gave him the chance to say no . . .?
There were other things he didn’t know about the past few months—like how I’d stopped showing up to piano because I hated piano, and it was already on my application so who cared? Or that I’d spent the night at Val’s a few times when her mom wasn’t home so Val and I could stay out on the boardwalk until midnight or drink wine coolers on her couch and watch Party of Five.
I hadn’t wanted to lie to my parents, but Val had made a valid argument. “You’re going to be on your own soon anyway,” she’d said. “If you don’t start slowly, you’ll go crazy when college starts and eventually have to drop out because you can’t control yourself.”
It’d made sense to me, but I knew it wouldn’t to my dad, so I’d done it behind his back.
I supposed this was kind of the same thing. I’d gotten a job before the holidays serving yogurt and smoothies at a country club, so I had a little money saved I could use for applications.
“I think we lost her,” Val said.
I blinked a few times. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You need a ride?”
Vickie blanched. “I already said I’d give her one.”
