My mouth falls open. “An attitude? I barely said a word to him. He’s the one who—”
Dean McKinnon stops me with a raised palm. “There are no excuses for disrespect to law enforcement. No excuses for back talk.”
“I didn’t—”
“If you’ll let me finish,” he says. I clench my teeth, and my fingers curl into fists on my thighs. Alice is passive and I’m disrespectful? White-hot fury rises in my gut, my chest, my jaw. “Fortunately, I explained to Deputy Norris that this is a difficult time for you, and a new environment that’s”—he offers a patronizing smile—“different from what you’re used to.”
What I’m used to? My mind spirals. First the racist cop, then the dean believing him without giving me a chance to explain, and now…?
“Your mother is—”
“Was,” I correct him, automatic even as my brain processes the hard turns in our conversation.
He inclines his head. “Was. Yes, of course. Your mother was an esteemed alumna in her department. She was an advanced student: patents for biochemical testing processes, leading-edge work in soil science. I didn’t know her personally, but our time as undergraduates here overlapped.”
I will my hands to stop shaking, and I inhale slowly. He caught me off guard, but I have my defenses. I close my eyes and imagine my wall stretching up, up, up.
“I just wanted to say that I am sorry for your—”
My eyes snap open. “She’s not lost.” The words erupt from my mouth.
Dean McKinnon purses his lips. “Alice Chen is an exemplary student. But you, Ms. Matthews? With your mother’s legacy and your test scores and transcripts, I’d say that you have the potential for brilliance.” I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know if I’m brilliant. I know that my mother was brilliant, and I know that I’m not my mother. His eyes flick toward the door behind me. “Your assigned mentor will contact you today. Dismissed.”
* * *
I slip out the door, dizzy with frustration and humiliation both. Alice, sitting stiffly on the bench at the end of the hallway, jumps to her feet. As I get closer, I can see her red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked face. Her trembling fingers hold a wrinkled white tissue that’s been twisted into a rope.
“Alice,” I begin, glancing back at the dean’s door, “you won’t believe what just happened in there. I’m pissed—”
“You’re pissed?!” Alice breathes. “How do you think I feel?”
I startle, confused by her rage. “We’re not getting kicked out. It’s okay.”
“It’s not ‘okay’!” She claps a hand over her mouth, covering a sob that erupts from deep in her chest.
I reach toward her shoulder, but Alice steps away, out of my reach.
“I—”
“Last night was not okay!” Her voice ricochets around the empty administrative building hallway, bounces around the cubicles and tile floors. “We almost got expelled. My parents would eviscerate me if that happened. It’s going to be bad enough after he calls them!” Fresh tears run down her face.
“I know, but—”
“Not everyone is good at school without even studying like you are, Bree. Some of us have to work hard. I had to work hard to get here. It’s been my dream since… since forever, and you knew that.”
I throw my hands up. “I apologize! We won’t go off campus again!”
“Good.”
I shake my head. “But, in a way, I’m glad we did, because there’s something really weird going on at this school. Last night there was this boy—”
“Are you seriously changing the subject right now?” Alice steps back. “To talk to me about a boy?”
“No!” I exclaim. “You’re not listening to me—”
“Is that why you’re acting this way? Boys? Is school just a big party to you now?” Her eyes grow wide, but her voice turns cold, like she’s just found me stealing or cheating on a test. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you registered for those classes.”
I blink. “What does—”
She laughs sourly. “English 105: Composition and Rhetoric? Come on, Matty! You write papers in your sleep, you’ve never prepared for a speech in your life, and you still get As. Bio 103: Intro to Plants of the Piedmont? Your mother was a botanist! I didn’t say anything about it before, but now it makes sense. You signed up for slacker classes, you barely paid attention to the campus tour, and now you’re getting us into trouble. You’re just screwing around here, aren’t you?”
Shame rises up inside my belly. Shame, and not a small amount of embarrassment. I didn’t think I’d picked slacker classes. Maybe they wouldn’t be as hard as others I could have chosen, but just being here at all is already hard. Keeping the wall up, keeping After-Bree hidden, and now magic. Anger chases right behind the shame, burning it away in a fiery rush. Alice doesn’t even know about After-Bree. Alice doesn’t know about any of it!
“You didn’t have to go to the Quarry,” I spit. “You could have said no.”
She groans. “You’ve been acting like this all summer. Like nothing matters. I couldn’t let you go off alone with Charlotte Simpson!”
“So, what, you’re my babysitter now too?”
“After last night, it’s pretty clear you need one! If you—” She stops herself and looks away, her jaw clenched tight around words she’s holding back.
I spread my hands wide. “Say what you want to say, Alice.”
She turns away. “We applied when your mom was still… I know things aren’t the same for you. I’m trying to understand, but if you don’t want to be here, if you’re not going to take this seriously, then maybe you should go home.”
It’s like she slapped me clean across the face. Hot tears press against the back of my eyes. “Go home? Home to what, exactly? Go back to being the Girl Whose Mom Died in that small, gossipy town?” Carolina had been our dream.
She stares back, and I can see it in her eyes: sometime in the last twenty-four hours she’d already imagined doing this alone. Without me.
The wall inside me grows. I let it stretch so tall and wide that I can’t see its top or its edges. The barrier slides into place so completely that all of the muscles in my face go still at once. I envision a surface that is flat and impenetrable, and I feel my eyes become flat and impenetrable too. “My turn. How ’bout you grow up and get a life instead of blaming me for your choices?”
Alice steps back, and the crack in her voice goes straight to my heart. “I don’t know who you are right now, Bree.” She stares at me for a moment longer and then bends to gather her things. I can’t move, or speak.
All I can do is watch her walk away.
5
ANGER CASCADES THROUGH me so entirely I can taste it.
I make it halfway back to Old East before I have to pause to catch my breath on the steps of a library. At the edge of Polk Place, it seems like all of Carolina’s almost thirty thousand students are rippling across the quad in a steady wave, heading to their first class of the semester.