CONFESSIONS

“So we’re agreed?” Tiffany said as we walked toward the dining hall for breakfast on Thursday morning. “No more putting yourself in mortal peril? At least until after graduation?”

I glanced around at her, Portia, Rose, and Ivy and forced a laugh, thinking of MT’s latest text and wondering for the millionth time whether I should, in fact, trust him. “I’ll try.”

Ivy gave the others a wry smile, her dark hair falling forward over her sunglasses. “Unfortunately, I think that’s the best we’re going to get out of her.”

The others rolled their eyes collectively. “Fine,” Portia said, shrugging her tweed cropped jacket off and hooking it over her arm. It was a warm morning, and everyone on the quad looked like they were already dressing for summer. “But honestly? I think you should have tried to graduate early. You need to get the HOOHFG.”

“Whatever that means,” Rose joked, nudging Portia with her hip.

We were still laughing when Josh jogged up next to me and joined us. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy he was still alive or irritated he hadn’t called all night last night.

“Hey,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Can I talk to you?”

Finally! I wanted to scream. “Sure.” My friends paused in a semicircle for a moment. “I’ll catch up to you guys.”

“Fine. But Josh, you keep an eye on her,” Tiffany warned, raising a finger and waggling it between us.

Josh’s brow knit in confusion, but he nodded. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

My friends traipsed off and Josh took my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you last night. Tiff told me they were taking you out to distract you and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh. Well, you could have texted me to tell me that, at least,” I said, feeling relieved nonetheless.

“Sorry.” Two almost-perfect circles of pink appeared high on his cheeks. “Come on. We need to talk.”

“We so do.”

He tugged me toward the nearest oak tree and tossed his canvas jacket down beneath it for me to sit on. I chuckled at his chivalry, but accepted it. This was one of those rare days when I’d chosen to wear a skirt and I didn’t love the idea of twigs and rocks jabbing into my bare skin. I sat down and cradled my cast against my chest, feeling warm and nervous, wondering where this was all going.

Josh sat down next to me and bent his knees, resting his forearms atop them and lacing his fingers together. He blew out a sigh, looked at me sheepishly, and began.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” he said, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He closed his eyes for a second, like he was building up his confidence. “I wasn’t exactly accepted at Cornell.”

I blinked. Whatever I had imagined was coming, that wasn’t even close. “Wait, you were rejected?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?” I asked, baffled. Josh had told me back in March that he’d gotten his acceptance letter.

“I was wait-listed,” he admitted, ducking his chin. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Do you hate me?”

“Hate you? Are you kidding? No!” My voice had gone shrill out of relief. This was so much less bad than anything I had conjured up in my mind. All I wanted to do was get up and do a happy dance. But Josh was not looking quite so elated. “I guess I’m just . . . confused,” I told him. “I thought you got in weeks ago.”

“I know. I lied,” he said, turning slightly toward me. “I’m so sorry, Reed, I was just so embarrassed. My entire family went to Cornell. I mean, everyone except Lynn, but he did get in. I’m the first ever to not get in.”

“But you didn’t not get in,” I said. “You got . . . maybe-ed.”

“I know. It was just so humiliating. And even worse because . . .”

When he trailed off, my heart thumped fretfully. There was more?

“Because I didn’t apply anywhere else.”

My jaw dropped.

“I know! I’m such an idiot!” He covered his face with his hands, one of which was peppered with purple paint spots. “I thought it was a lock and I didn’t really want to go anywhere else anyway, so—”

“So what you’re saying is, as of right now, you don’t have a school to go to next year,” I clarified slowly. A light breeze rustled the green canopy of leaves over our heads, and I leaned back against the tree’s rough bark.

“That’s what I’m saying,” he replied. “And that’s why I’ve been so stressed. My dad has this friend on the admissions board who basically told him that if I want to get in, I need to get straight As this semester.”

Suddenly I felt like the worst girlfriend ever to call herself a girlfriend. Here I was, coming up with all of these disturbing theories, all these scenarios in which Josh was a real villain, while he was fretting about his future and studying his ass off to secure it.

“So that night that I said I was out with Trey, I was actually working with a calc tutor,” Josh told me. “And whenever I’m not around, I’m studying.”

“Wow,” I said.

“And that whole thing with Graham at the library that night?” he said.

My skin prickled with curiosity. “What about it?”

“He and a couple of the other guys found out about the wait-list thing a couple of weeks ago—I don’t know how. At first he was just being a dick about it, mocking me for it and crap like that, but that night . . . he actually said that if I didn’t break up with you, he was going to tell you about it. Can you believe that?”

“What?” I blurted.

“Yeah. I guess he, like, really wants you and Sawyer to get together. Like, badly.” He slumped back against the tree as well, tearing up a big chunk of grass and tossing it down in the dirt.

So this was why Graham had called Josh a liar. He knew that he’d lied about getting into Cornell. But why had he made it sound like it was such a huge deal? And what was with the major jones for me to date his brother? Never in my life had I ever heard of a brother who cared that much about getting his brother a girl.

“That boy has issues,” I concluded quietly.

“Tell me about it,” Josh said. “Anyway, that’s why I kind of freaked when I saw you with Sawyer that day. After what Graham said . . . I think it just threw me.”

“I understand,” I told him, reaching for his hand and holding it in my lap. “I just wish you’d told me about all this sooner. I could’ve helped you study or at least been more understanding about everything.”

“I know. I’m an idiot. I was embarrassed,” Josh said, tilting his head and giving me a small smile. “Didn’t want you to think you were going out with a deadbeat or something.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Like I could ever think that.”

Josh turned my hand over so my palm was facing up. Gently, he traced the lines of my hand with his fingertip. “So, what’s going on with you? It sounded like you wanted to talk about something too.”

Josh knew about my latest brush with death, of course, but I’d yet to tell him about MT and the potential connection between the accidents. As he looked into my eyes now, part of me wanted to keep it a secret. Clearly the last thing he needed right now was more stress. But nothing good had ever come of the two of us keeping secrets before. I pressed my lips together and turned toward him fully.

“Promise not to freak out,” I said.

“Uh-oh. No good conversation ever started that way,” he joked. “What’s up?”

So I told him. I told him the whole story of the mystery texter, all the way up to the message I’d received last night to avoid the awards banquet. Josh listened the whole time, his expression growing more and more tense with each passing second. Finally, his knee started to bounce up and down and I had to place my heavy cast on top of it to stop him.

“So? What do you think? Do I trust this person or not?” I asked, really hoping for a definitive answer. For some sort of direction. “Do I say screw it and go to the awards banquet, or do I stay home?”

“First, let me just ask you this,” he said. “How could you not tell me about this?”

I balked, leaning back. “Okay, pot, go ahead and call me black.”

Josh blushed. “Okay, fine, but my secret wasn’t potentially life-threatening,” he said. He shook his head and looked out across campus. “God, I can’t wait to get the eff out of this freaking place. I don’t even care where I’m going, I just want to get out.” Then he looked at me seriously and took both my hands. “I just wish you were coming with me.”

“Me too,” I said, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly sad.

Josh looked at me for a long moment, as if trying to see inside, as if gauging exactly what I could handle and what I couldn’t. Finally he squeezed my fingers.

“You know what? Screw it,” he said with a devil-may-care smile. “We’re going to the banquet. You’re getting two huge awards and you should be there to accept them. Don’t let this latest freak scare you off.”

My chest instantly felt ten times lighter, and just like that I knew this was what I’d wanted to hear. “But what if something happens?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” he assured me, looking me in the eye. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t. I’ll get a bunch of the guys together and we’ll all be on high alert. No one will be letting you out of their sight.”

“Yeah?” I said, raising my eyebrows hopefully.

“I swear,” he said, looping his arm around me and pulling me to his side. He kissed the top of my head and held me close. “I won’t think about school and you won’t think about Billings or this MT nutbag and we’ll just have fun.”

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to look up at him. “Is that even possible around here?”

Josh smirked. “Well, we can at least try.”