And this boy—given everything—has no right to tell me otherwise.
“I do have what it takes,” I say evenly, swallowing my frustration. I take another step toward Pierce. I tilt my head back just the tiniest bit, the same way I did when his eyes went half-lidded. “More than any of them. More than you, even.”
Pierce lights up, eyes bright with a feverish enthusiasm. “You accept and you don’t get to back out. You get it, right?”
He sounds serious but I am too. Besides, my mother didn’t raise a quitter.
Before I can accept, the back door of the car swings open and Penthesilea finally slips out.
There’s a strange lull that falls over everything, dampening the tension in the air. Penthesilea is backlit by the light of the bonfire. The golden headband in her hair sparkles, and she’s wearing soft girl clothes, a white button-down tucked into sunflower-yellow corduroy shorts.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her voice lilting and measured. “Is there something wrong?”
No one says anything. Pierce’s good mood dips. He’s not looking at me anymore, and I know that I’m losing him. He walks up to her, hands reaching out, “Pen, hey, it’s just bullshit—”
Penthesilea looks at me directly. “Adina, are you all right?”
She knows my name.
Only then does a hot curl of liquid shame curdle in my belly.
I just hooked up with this girl’s boyfriend in the woods. I’m relying on the strange intimacy between me and him now to get an invitation to my own future. Pierce’s arm hooks around her waist and he drops his chin atop Penthesilea’s hair.
“I—” I start and stop. “I’m fine. Toni, please.”
Toni steps forward immediately, grabbing my hand even though I can’t look away from Penthesilea. I can still feel her boyfriend’s hands on my hips. I can still feel the sear of his lips on the curve of my neck.
Toni pulls me away, and we march through the Red Sea of students, right past Esme as she sneers, “Later, nobodies.”
I flip a middle finger at her because I can, because the Finish, a brief, beautiful life raft, has vanished back into smoke and mirrors and the glittering of Esme’s collar.
CHAPTER 4
YAWNING MYSELF INTO THE WORLD of the living, I squint down at Toni’s fist knotted into the front of my sleep shirt. Slowly, I untwist each knuckle until she releases me with a soft grunt.
I slump off the bed and shift from side to side, stretching my arms above my head until my back cracks. I don’t bother to tiptoe out of the room and downstairs. Nothing could wake Toni except for the smell of coffee beans; she sleeps like the dead.
Downstairs, Dad is already sitting at the table, and Mom is standing at the skillet.
“Budge over, she’s my guest,” I mutter, taking over the bacon.
“Can she be called a guest when she has a drawer?” Dad asks.
I snort. “I mean, assign her chores too, then. I bet she doesn’t know how to do laundry yet and she has to learn.”
Mom rolls her eyes. “How was the party?”
Pierce’s mouth. Charles’s horror. Esme’s vitriol. Penthesilea knowing me by name.
And nothing to show for it.
“Bad,” I say honestly. “Esme.” I flip the bacon onto the platter, letting the grease catch on the paper towel laid out for me.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” Mom says. I can tell she means it, but also wants to say I told you so. “I thought you said she’d calmed down a bit.”
I lied.
“She did. I guess she wanted to get in one last parting shot.” I sigh. “I’m not going to miss a single one of them.”
“Well, one of them might miss you,” Dad says. “You’ve got mail.” He gestures toward the front hall with his coffee cup.
I frown. “It’s a Sunday.” I pass the spatula to Mom and flip the switch on the coffee maker to wake Toni, the old thing rumbling to life as I walk out of the kitchen. I make my way toward the narrow table on which our keys sit, where I see a perfectly wrapped brown package with a crisp white envelope on top. I open it with the jagged edge of a house key.
Then I choke over air.
Maybe we’ll get that Harvard-Yale rivalry after all. Or maybe I’ll convince you that Harvard is the better option.
Affectionately,
Pierce Maxwell Remington IV
“？‘Affectionately’？”
I spin around, glaring at Toni, but Toni is still ogling the note.
“You’re up,” I accuse.
“You’re trying to distract me,” Toni retorts. “Is it… you know.”
She can’t even say it, too afraid to jinx it.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. I snatch up the box and march back into the kitchen, Toni on my heels.
“He said ‘affectionately,’？” Toni says again, stunned.
“Who said ‘affectionately’？” Dad calls. He looks wary already, like he can sense something coming that he doesn’t want to deal with.
“Pierce Maxwell Remington IV!” Toni crows.
Mom pauses by the stove. She’s looking right at me, and I can see hope there, in her eyes, where she’s tried to keep disappointment hidden. She knows what this could be, and I can tell she feels guilty for feeling so hopeful. She’s already done so well not blaming me, not asking me, not pushing me toward the Finish, but now that it’s being offered to me, she can’t hide her excitement very well. All she wants is for me to do better than she did. It’s all any parents want.
“Pierce is a good boy,” she says.
I grab the scissors off the table and slide them along the seam of the wrapping. I flip the package open to reveal a beautiful dark wooden box. It still smells like wood polish and gleams in the kitchen’s strange yellow morning light. I brush my fingers over another crisp, starch-white card, with graceful calligraphy swooping across the front to perfection.
Toni snatches it up and reads it, “？‘Adina Walker. Welcome to the Finish.’？”
For once in her entire life, she can’t find words. She looks up at me, eyes so wide that her pupils look like saucers.
I’m shaking so hard, I nearly drop the box.
I can smell the pancakes burning and Mom yelps when she realizes, flipping a pancake off the hot skillet and turning the flame down low.
“Adina, this is it,” Toni says.
Still, I don’t open the box. If I open it, there’s no turning back. This is the decision.
The promise of Yale, success, a job, a way out of Suburbia, this place that won’t let me be more.
Or nothing.
I open the box.
An envelope rests on the velvet lining, and the melody to Vivaldi’s “Storm” tingles out, tinny.
I break the wax seal with the Remington crest, expecting to find more of Pierce’s handwriting, but this is a far more elaborate script that I don’t recognize, on official paper, the heavy, sturdy kind I associate with letterhead. It reads:
Welcome to the Finish
For two centuries, the Remington Family has had a well-vested interest in the health and diversity of our region. Through the formation of Edgewater Academy, originally an all-boys school, we have shown a dedication to the youth and their future. But there came a time when we were reminded—by a Remington woman herself—that we had been neglecting a key demographic in Lenox and beyond. A demographic equally as poised and ambitious, striving to accomplish better in our world, despite an uneven playing field.