One Moment in Time

FOR AARON, ALWAYS

From: Quinn Reynolds ([email protected])

To: Quinn Reynolds ([email protected])

Before graduation, I promise to . . .
do something crazy
.

I've thought about that email once in a while, but it's not like I'm obsessed with it or anything. How could I be?
Before graduation, I promise to do something crazy?
What does that even mean? It's the kind of stupid thing you write when you're fourteen and have no idea what it is you're supposed to put in an email to your future self.

Besides, the whole idea of sending the emails in the first place was ridiculously childish. (I can't remember whose plan it was exactly, but it must have been Aven's, because there's no way it was mine or Lyla's—that kind of thing has Aven written all over it.)

Anyway, when the email arrives in my in-box on the morning of our senior trip to Florida, I read it, sigh, and then send it to my trash. I don't feel the need to do something crazy, now or ever. The craziest thing I've ever done is put blond highlights in my hair, and even then they were the kind that washed out in sixteen to eighteen shampoos. I didn't even go out and buy some cheap drugstore hair dye—I got them done properly, at the salon.

“This is so lame,” my friend Celia says from where she's sitting next to me. We're on the bus that's going to take us from the school to the airport so we can catch our flight to Florida. She wrinkles her tiny, adorably freckled nose. “I hate school buses. They smell like vomit and old leather.”

“They should have let us drive our own cars,” my friend Paige says. She's sitting in the seat ahead of us, her back against the window, leaning forward just a little bit so that her shiny blond hair doesn't hit the glass. “Everyone knows school buses are, like, super dangerous.” She picks at a piece of duct tape that's coming loose from the top of the seat. “And this one is falling apart.”

Celia sighs, then taps her fingers against her purse impatiently. “I can't wait until we're relaxing on the beach.” She motions me toward her, then puts a finger to her lips, like she's about to let me in on a secret. She opens her purse and gives me a peek at what's inside.

“Jesus, Celia,” I say, pushing it away from me. “Are you
insane? You can't bring that on the plane.”

“I'm not going to bring it on the
plane,”
she says, rolling her eyes at me like I'm a complete idiot. “We'll smoke it in the bathroom before we board.”

“That's a horrible idea,” I say. “A completely horrible idea.” I wonder why she's even telling me this. She knows I don't smoke pot. I don't like the feeling of being out of control. (Not that I know pot would make me feel out of control, since I've never smoked it. But I don't really want to find out.)

“She's right,” Paige says. She reaches into her Louis Vuitton classic printed clutch and pulls out a pair of Gucci sunglasses, which she puts on even though we're still in Connecticut and the sun isn't even out. “We'll smoke it in the parking lot and then ditch it.”

I take in a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth, wondering how it is that I'm even friends with these girls when the three of us are so different.

Things I have in common with Celia and Paige:

1.
     
We are smart. Like, very smart. We take all AP classes and are still ranked one (me), two (Paige), and four (Celia) in our class. Viet Cho is number three, which has really put a crimp in our plans, since Celia got it in her head that if he wasn't, we could do something really fun, like wear T-shirts to graduation that say 1, 2, 3 on them or make
up songs with one, two, three in the lyrics. Which actually really wouldn't have worked, since everyone knows you wear a cap and gown to graduation. Although I guess some people wear crazy outfits underneath—like last year Duke Marrone wore a bikini under his cap and gown and everyone thought it was hilarious. Our parents would never let us do something like that, though. It would ruin their graduation-day pictures, the ones where they'll be standing there looking like perfect parents with their perfect daughters. Besides, if Celia is so concerned about us being numbers one, two, and three, then she should just work harder. She's naturally smart, but she doesn't really study that much. She could have easily been number three with just a little more effort.

2.
     
We're all going to Ivy League colleges. Celia's going to Yale, Paige to Harvard, and me to Stanford. At least, I will be once I get in. You'd think I'd be upset we're all going to be in different cities, but I honestly don't really care. Paige and Celia are my high school friends, the kind of friends you're close with during high school and then end up sort of forgetting about after graduation. I'll hunt them down on Facebook in ten years and see pictures of them hanging out at the Yale Club with their lawyer husbands. (Although lawyers really don't make as much money as they used to, so I'm not sure if Celia and Paige will end up marrying lawyers. Maybe they'll
be married to investment bankers—by then the economy will hopefully be in another boom and investment bankers will be the hot thing again.)

3.
     
We're all rich. I know it's awful to just blurt that out, but it's true. We're rich. Well, our parents are rich. Which I guess means that technically we're not rich, we just come from rich families.

The three of us pretend to be best friends, but really . . . there's always been kind of a distance between us. It's not anything to do with Paige and Celia. At least, I don't think it is. The distance between us is the same distance I feel between me and anyone, really. So maybe the problem isn't Celia and Paige—maybe it's me.

“Show me your tattoo,” Paige says to Celia, leaning farther over the seat.

Celia grins and reaches down, pushing the top of her jeans over her hip bone. A tattoo of a tiny black butterfly appears, the skin around the outline still raw.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“Not anymore,” Celia says. “But it hurt like a bitch while I was getting it done.” She keeps the top of her jeans held down, showing off her tattoo. I have to admit it is kind of pretty. But what's it going to look like when she's seventy? And seriously, a butterfly? It's so . . . I don't know, pedestrian. They probably have assistant tattoo artists giving
everyone butterflies, like how when you go to the doctor they have a physician's assistant to take care of run-of-the-mill concerns.

I really shouldn't be so judge-y.

I lean back in my seat and pull out my phone to check the time. 7:59 a.m. One minute until we head out. The informational packet they gave us made it very clear that the bus to the airport was going to leave at eight a.m., and not a minute after. It said no latecomers would be allowed, and that if you missed the bus, you were out of luck. Not that anyone was going to miss the bus. I mean, what kind of idiot is late for their senior trip?

I sigh and scroll through my emails, looking for anything important I may have missed. I applied for a summer internship in Palo Alto this summer, at a biotech company that specializes in doing research on gene-specific diseases. If I get the position, I know I'm not
really
going to be doing research—no one's going to let some seventeen-year-old kid near anything important. It's going to be a lot of getting people coffee and filing reports. But it's still pretty amazing.

My mom's friend knew someone who knew someone, and she was able to get me an interview. Actually, that's not completely true—she put me in touch with her contact person, but I set up the interview on my own. Biogene has offices in Palo Alto, Sarasota, Columbus, and Seattle. The
woman in charge of the Palo Alto office hooked me up with her colleague in the Sarasota office, and so I've been playing email tag with her, trying to figure out a time for me to come down and meet her while I'm in Florida. Technically an in-person interview isn't required, but I figure a little face time can't hurt. It will give me an edge over the other candidates. I actually present very well in person. I think it's because I look so wholesome.

“Get off your phone,” Celia demands, sounding annoyed. She snaps her jeans back into place and gathers her long hair into a ponytail. “We need to make plans for our trip.”

“I'm just making sure I don't have an email from the Biogene woman,” I say, still scrolling. No email. Wow. I replied to Margot's last email, like, yesterday morning. Either I'm at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to things she has to think about, or that place is really not well run.

“You know you're going to get the internship,” Paige says. “So who cares if you meet up with them?”

“Yeah,” Celia says. “Cancel that shit. It's going to cut into our tanning time.”

“I don't need any tanning time,” I say. “I burn.”

“You just need to wear sunscreen,” Celia says, continuing her pattern of trying to insist she knows more about me than I know about myself. “I'll give you some. I have coconut-scented.”

“Thanks,” I say, because I don't want to get into it.

And that's when I see it.

The email.

To me.

From STANFORD ADMISSIONS.

My heart leapfrogs into my throat.

Stanford is the very last school I've been waiting to hear from. They've actually been late with their decision, because even though I double- and triple-checked my application like a million billion trillion times before sending it in, somehow it didn't end up arriving. One of those fluke things with servers and cyberspace, I guess. Luckily, my mom knew someone who knew someone in admissions (yeah, I know, my mom knows everyone—she's a doctor and my dad works in medical research, so they're pretty well connected), and they were able to figure out a way to let me send my application in after the deadline. But because of the delay, they've been late in getting back to me.

The only other schools I applied to were Georgetown, Brown, and Yale. I got into all three. But I have no interest in any of them. Not that they're not great schools, because they are. But Stanford is where I want to be. It's the only place I've
ever
wanted to be. It's where my parents went, it's where my brother goes, it's in California, where people are innovative and laid-back, where they eat wheatgrass shots and wear flip-flips to their jobs at hip-sounding new
start-up companies. I'm going to be premed. And then I'm going to Stanford's medical school. You know, where Cristina Yang went. And yes, it's lame to want to go somewhere just because a fictional TV character went there, but come on—it's Cristina Yang. Stanford is the hub of gene research, where everyone is doing exciting things, where the sun is shining and . . . I just really, really want to go there.

I wait a moment before opening the email. It's this thing that I do sometimes, when something really good is about to happen. I take a second to enjoy the feeling. The brain is constantly making new neurons, constantly creating new connections, and the longer you savor certain feelings and moments, the stronger those connections become. You can actually become a happier person just by training your brain to make new pathways when you're happy.

I'm going to remember this moment forever. I'll tell my children all about it when
they
get into Stanford. I'll show them my college yearbook pictures, and they'll laugh at how ridiculous I look. But of course they'll still want to go to Stanford—they'll be smart enough to be able to look past my out-of-date fashion choices and see how amazing it is.

I take in a deep breath and open the email.

At that exact moment, the bus lurches into motion, and the words on the screen blur for a second before coming back into focus.

Dear Quinn,

Thank you so much for your interest in Stanford University, and I apologize for the mix-up with your application and the delay in getting back to you. Unfortunately, we are not able to offer you admission for our fall semester. The pool of applicants was ultracompetitive this year, and although you are extremely well qualified, we are being extra selective about our new admissions.

Your mom tells me you've been accepted to Yale and Georgetown, and I'm sure one of those schools will be extremely happy to have you.

I have sent a copy of this letter to your mailing address but wanted to make sure you had an email from me personally.

Thank you again for your interest in Stanford.

Good luck and all the best in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Genevieve Peletier, Admissions

I stare at the email incredulously, sure it has to be some kind of joke. Ivy League admissions humor or something? Or a prank? From Celia and Paige perhaps? I scroll back to the top of the screen and check the email address. [email protected].

I can't breathe. My face feels hot and my skin feels
prickly. There's a weird lump in my throat, and when I try to swallow it away, it feels ragged and sharp.

I take in another deep breath, but this one doesn't go that far before catching in my lungs. I think I'm having a panic attack.

“Are you okay?” Celia asks, which kind of snaps me out of it.

“Yeah,” I say. “I'm fine.”

But it's not true.

It's not true at all.