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Appointments she often had to break because she was dating—again.
Dating and not telling me about it. I got it. Mom did not have the best track record. But at least she got dates… Putting a pin in that snarky comment, I finished my second slice.
“So, we still need to decide on our target schools,” Archie said drawing us full circle back to where they’d begun.Thatwas the part I’d missed. “Even getting into schools in the same city would be better than being across the country from each other, right?”
The denial glued to the tip of my tongue. The snarky comment hot on its heels collided with it and then bounced back unspoken. It was more than the weight of Archie’s stare keeping me silent. It was the silent request in his eyes. It was the same look he’d had when he walked into homeroom three years before.Don’t leave me out here alone…it seemed to request.
Angry or not, I couldn’t abandon him. And I wasn’t angry anymore. I’d made that decision.
Maybe it was time to start acting like it. “Harvard,” I told him, not looking away and a slow smile eased the hint of panic edging his eyes.
“MIT,” he countered, and I nodded slowly.
“NYU,” Coop suggested. “If we’re spitballing in the dark.”
Jake shoved him. “Should they all be in New England? What about USC or UCLA?”
Bubba snorted. “Do they have good engineering departments?”
“Maybe, we’re making calls for the list. I say UCLA.” Jake shrugged.
He wanted to go to California? They didn’t have seasons anymore than we did, at least not in the southern part of the state.Ugh.
“Don’t look like that,” Coop teased. “We all get to pick.”
“I know. Five of us. Five schools. Harvard, MIT, NYU and UCLA?” I checked the last with Jake.
One nod. “I reserve the right to change it to USC after I Google it later.”
A laugh worked its way around the table, and something loosened in my chest. First the coffee this morning and now the pizza—in a way, life normalized again. I’d really missed these idiots over the summer.
“Yeah, yeah,” Archie waved him off. “Bubba, that leaves you. Where to?”
“Stanford,” Bubba said slowly. “I’ll throw Stanford on the list.”
Northern California. Okay. Different.
“Great. Homework time kids,” Archie said, rubbing his hands together. “Take your school, research admission requirements, degrees, housing, and anything else you can think of. Take a glance at the other schools and see which ones fit your area of study.”
“And if they don’t have a good program for what we want to study?” Coop asked. “It’s an automatic discard, right?”
“We bring it up,” Jake said before Archie could answer. “We want a school that fits all of us, but we may have to make some concessions.”
Reasonable.
We didn’t all want to study the same things. There was a chance that the best school for me wouldn’t be the best fit for them.
My stomach kind of bottomed out at the idea. “One thing at a time,” I said before they could begin debating it. “Research first.” Archie’s eyes grew brighter when his gaze fixed on mine. “We do the homework.” I glanced at Coop. “Then we discuss it.” Then Jake. “Figure out the pros and the cons.” And finally to Bubba. “Then we can makeinformeddecisions on what to do next.”
“This is why you’re the smart one,” Bubba said, his sleepy-eyed expression lighting up for the first time. “We’re doing what she said…can I come over later and you can help me pull up the stats on Stanford?”
I groaned even if he didn’t sound altogether serious. “Sure, just bring coffee if you want me to do your homework and mine.”
“I’ll help,” he said, grinning even as Coop glared at him. Though when I frowned, his scowl disappeared, and he slumped back in his seat.
We only had a couple more minutes before we had to head back to school, but none of us rushed. None of us brought up the fact it was our last first day of high school ever.
This time next year? We might very well be at one of those colleges.
