One Moment in Time (2 page)

OKAY. THIS IS CRAZY. FIRST OF ALL, I SHOULD
not be having this kind of extreme reaction to not getting into Stanford. I mean, yes, it's all I've ever wanted. Yes, it's all I've been working toward for the past four years. Yes, my parents are going to have a complete fit and maybe disown me. But still. Having a panic attack over not getting into a school? People have real problems, like poverty and Alzheimer's and cancer and broken homes. Not getting into an Ivy League school is not that big of a deal.

In fact, it's not a big deal at all. Especially when I've already gotten into a bunch of other schools. (Well, three other schools. But they're really good schools, so they kind of count as a bunch.)

Plus, let's be honest. Those admissions decisions are never the be-all and end-all. There are wait lists. And . . . all kinds of other things you can do to get into colleges after
you've been rejected. You just need to know how to work the system. I'll bet if I call my dad, he can make a call and offer to donate some money and everything will be taken care of. Genevieve Peletier can't be the ultimate, final word in who gets to go to Stanford. If she's such a big deal, how did she find the time to email me? Someone with a lot of power doesn't email rejection letters, they make their assistant do it.

“Hello!” Paige yells, flashing her hand in front of my face. She's wearing a huge turquoise ring on her thumb, and it almost scrapes my nose. “Earth to Quinn! What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” I shake my head. “I'm fine.”

“You're being really weird,” Celia says. She's holding her phone above her, taking a selfie against the window of the bus. She smiles and snaps the picture, then starts uploading it to her Instagram.

“Ooh,” Paige says, giving me a knowing look. “Is this about Nathan?”

“Of course it's about Nathan!” Celia says. “She's freaking out because this is
the
trip.”

“What?” My head feels like it's stuffed with cotton. I can't concentrate on anything these two are saying. And why is Paige being allowed to lean over the back of her seat like that? Shouldn't the bus driver tell her to sit down? It's definitely a safety hazard.

“You know, the trip where you guys either move into the
friend zone or finally hook up.” Paige wiggles her eyebrows up and down.

“True,” I say, mostly just to shut them up. Even Nathan Duncan can't distract me from the Stanford disaster.

Here are the important things to know about Nathan:

1.
     
He has dark hair and dark eyes, and he's on the swim team and plays lacrosse. He has the body to prove it—broad shoulders, a really defined chest, and the kind of muscular arms you only get from hours and hours of playing sports.

2.
     
He's smart and in most of my AP classes.

3.
     
I've known him since I was in middle school, and we've always been friendly. But then a couple of weeks ago we were at a party, and we ended up talking for most of the night while we babysat our drunk friends (me with Celia and Paige, Nathan with Ryan Moynihan and Carson Decker), and he's been super flirty with me ever since. Celia and Paige keep telling me he likes me, but I'm not sure I really believe it.

I like Nathan. He's handsome and funny and he's an awesome dresser—preppy, but not too preppy. But seriously, who can think about Nathan Carson when I just found out I didn't get into Stanford? Even if Nathan's arms
are
all ripped up with muscle, and even if he is going to Georgetown in the
fall? God, maybe I should make more of an effort to find out if he really does like me. Then I can go to Georgetown, too, and when my parents throw parties, all their friends will look at me and be like, “Oh, wow, Georgetown is a great school!” and half of them will mean it, but half of them will feel sorry for me because they'll know that Gtown isn't Harvard or Yale or STANFORD.

“I heard he has a big dick,” Celia says. For someone who looks so proper, she has a very dirty mouth.

“Celia!” I gasp. “Keep your voice down!”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Tell me you're not excited by that.”

She giggles and then launches into a conversation about the boys in our class and who's the best in bed. Celia is much more experienced than Paige or me. She's slept with three guys so far, two of them in our class, one of them a guy she met when she went to visit her friend at college. A state school. That's what's considered slumming it in our group—having sex with a guy you met at a state school. It's actually really snobby and awful when you think about it.

I do my best to tune out their R-rated conversation until we get to the airport. As soon as I'm off the bus, I instantly start to feel better. The fresh air calms my heart and soothes my nerves.

Celia immediately grabs me and Paige by the hand and pulls us around the corner of the building, giggling the
whole time. Then she reaches into her bag and pulls out the carefully rolled joint she showed us on the bus. “Come on,” she says, waving it in front of my face. “You'll feel better after you take a hit. You seem really wound up. More than usual, even.”

“You know I don't smoke,” I say as she lights the joint and hands it to Paige. I watch as they pass it back and forth.

I wonder what will happen if we get caught. We'll probably be arrested. We definitely won't be able to go on the trip. They'll make us wait in the security office until our parents can come and bail us out. I imagine my mom, getting a call that I've been arrested for possession of marijuana. Actually, is marijuana even illegal anymore? I think it's legal if you have less than a certain amount.

But still.

We're underage.

At an airport.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone so I can read the email from Genevieve at Stanford again. Maybe I read it wrong. Maybe she didn't say I wasn't getting in, like for sure. Maybe she said I was going to be wait-listed. I could have hallucinated it. The brain is a very mysterious thing, especially when it comes to major life events like this.

But the email is exactly the same as I remember it.

“I'm so glad we did this,” Paige is saying. She giggles.
“We can't be getting on the plane without, like, some kind of relaxation.”

“Oh, totally,” Celia says.

“You guys are going to get caught,” I say as my phone buzzes with another email. Another email! Maybe it's from the Stanford people. Maybe there was some kind of mix-up and they realized they want me after all. Maybe they'll have to give me a scholarship or some kind of special treatment for what they've done to me. Undue mental stress and all that.

“We're not going to get caught.” Paige takes the last hit off the joint, then stabs it out on the pavement with her shoe.

“Eww,” Celia says. “You need to pick that up.”

Paige does as she's told.

Oh. The email isn't from the Stanford people after all. It's from myself. To myself. That same email again. My hand hovers over the button, ready to delete it and send it right to the trash. But for some reason I don't. I open it and read it again.

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

I think about that day four years ago—Lyla, Aven, and me all sending emails to ourselves, scheduling them to repeat throughout the day so we'd make sure to take them seriously. We didn't want our future selves to think the emails were stupid because we sent them when we were
only freshmen. If you'd told me that by the time the emails showed up, Lyla, Aven, and I wouldn't be friends anymore—that we wouldn't even be
speaking
to each other—I wouldn't have believed it. The thought makes me incredibly sad.

“You're being really spacey today, Quinn,” Celia says. “Seriously, it's starting to worry me.” She takes a bottle of Visine out of her bag and carefully squeezes a couple of drops into her eyes. She blinks and then gives me a smile. She looks so all-American it's kind of scary. Like, if this is what the youth of America is doing, we're all in trouble.

“I'm not being spacey,” I say, even though I totally am.

“Girls!” a voice calls. Our class adviser, Mr. Beals, peeks around the side of the building.

“Yes, Mr. Beals?” Celia asks, like she's really interested in what he wants and wasn't just smoking pot a second ago.

“Come on, we all need to get inside,” Mr. Beals says. He's already looking pretty harried, and the trip hasn't even started yet. It must be really awful to be a class adviser—you have tons of responsibility and you don't even get paid that much more. I googled it. Teachers' salaries are public record.

“Okay,” I say. “We're coming.”

As I pass by her, Celia pushes something into my hand. I look down. One of her Xanax, the ones she got from her doctor because she claimed to be having anxiety over her challenging course load and extracurricular activities. I shake my head at her, but she rolls her eyes.

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

I look down at the tiny pill in my hand.

Then I drop it onto the sidewalk, making sure to crush it into the pavement as I walk by. I'm pretty sure fourteen-year-old me wasn't talking about sharing Celia's Xanax prescription.

Once we're on the plane, Celia immediately starts in on me about Nathan.

“You need to let him know you're interested,” she says.

“But why?” The thought makes my stomach turn. I don't want to have to let Nathan know I'm interested. Whatever happened to playing hard to get? Plus, I don't know how to let a guy know I'm interested. I don't know how to flirt. I'm horrible at it.

Celia gapes at me, her blue eyes turning into saucers. “Are you hearing this?” she asks Paige.

“No,” Paige says. “What did she say?” She's trying to shove a bag that's way too big into the overhead compartment. A businessman who somehow got stuck on the flight with us sighs and pushes by her.

“She wants to know why she should flirt with Nathan and let him know she's interested.”

“Um, because he's hot?” Paige asks, like that's the only thing that matters in this world.

“No, not because he's hot!” Celia says. She shakes her head and looks exasperated. “Seriously, you two, how are the three of us even friends?”

My thoughts exactly.

“You have to let him know you're into him because men have very fragile egos. They're not going to try to hook up with you if they think there's a chance they're going to be rejected.”

I really doubt Nathan's worried about being rejected. But what do I know? I've only hooked up with one guy in my life. Richard Perkins, sophomore year. I spent so much time wondering whether I should hook up with him that by the time I did, he was pretty much over it. So maybe I should listen to Celia. Maybe she knows what she's talking about. “Okay,” I say slowly. I kind of want to ask her how I'm supposed to let Nathan know I'm interested without looking like a total fool, but I don't want her to think I'm that clueless.

“Thank you,” Celia says, like it's settled. “What are you going to do next year when you're at Stanford without me? I might have to Skype with you every night to make sure you don't become a social pariah.”

“Ha-ha,” I laugh, wondering what she would think if she knew I hadn't gotten into Stanford, if she knew I might be joining her at Yale next year after all. Probably she'd be pissed. It's rare for two people from one school to even get
into Yale, and Celia likes having people think she was the only one.

I've hardly told anyone at school I got accepted to Yale, because I'm not going there. Well,
wasn't
going there. God, if I have to go to Yale, my parents are going to freak out. They have this really weird competitive thing going with their friends the Spurlocks. The Spurlocks went to Yale, and my parents
loved
telling them that even though I got into Yale, I wasn't going there. It was, like, the highlight of their lives. They'd probably rather ship me off for a year of backpacking through Europe than have to tell the Spurlocks that I'm going to Yale.

“No, seriously,” Celia says. She looks me up and down. “Quinn, this is your chance. Nathan likes you.”

“How do you know?” I ask. I've heard this story a billion times, but it never gets old. I mean, Nathan is really hot. And I'm only human, after all.

“Because he told me! I've told you this story, like, eleventy million times. You don't listen to me.”

“You don't,” Paige agrees, finally finishing with her bag and sitting down in the row ahead of us. She leans over the back of her seat so she can hear what we're saying, just like she did on the bus. Sometimes I wonder if Paige even has her own thoughts. Like, on some level I know she must, because she's really smart. But then I see how she just parrots back everything Celia says, and I can't understand if she really
means what she's saying, or if she's just saying it because she wants to stay on Celia's good side.

“I
did
listen,” I say. It's true—I did listen to her story about Nathan. But what's the harm in hearing it again? Plus, I'm still a little wary. Celia tends to exaggerate, and how do I know she's not doing that now?

“We were in the library,” Celia says. “And he came up to me and was like, ‘What's the deal with Quinn, is she hanging out with anyone?' and I almost laughed, because it was like, ‘Um, no'—no offense, Quinn—and then he was like, ‘Cool,' and he got this wicked glint in his eye and was like, ‘I hope I get to hang out with her on the trip.'”

“That doesn't mean he likes me,” I say. I stretch my legs out into the aisle. I'm tall, and I have long legs, and they always get cramped up during plane rides. Beckett Cross goes walking by, bumping his bag right into me. God. What a jerk. “Watch it,” I say irritably.