“Jeez,” I hear through my headphones as I approach our doorstep. “What happened to you?”
Of course Corinne Troy is sitting outside my apartment. As if this day couldn’t get any worse.
“I’ve never seen you not smiling,” she notes, closing her binder and capping a yellow highlighter.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” Corinne says, gathering her study materials.
“Evening dog walks are extra.” I sigh, cracking my back. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be up to—”
“Palm Tree has been walked, peed out, fed, and is in a pillow fort on my bed right now, thank you very much.” She next pulls out a phone and swiftly begins to tap and swipe.
“You really shouldn’t let him sleep on your bed. It’s cute when they’re puppies, but that’s going to be seventy pounds of conditioned behavior you’ll have to undo sooner than you think.”
“Noted,” she says before turning her phone to face my way. It’s the Uptown Updogs home page on her mobile browser.
“That’s the Uptown Updogs website,” I state as blankly as possible.
“No it’s not,” she retorts. “That’s your website.”
I freeze and look to my door, a foot away. I can hear Dad’s soccer game on the TV.
“As I said . . . ,” she repeats in a lower tone before heading toward the lobby, expecting me to follow. “We need to talk.”
Oh, eff my freaking life to hell right now.
Five
I oblige and follow Corinne out of the building quietly. We begin to walk in complete silence. She’s either waiting for a confession on my part or, more likely, she’s read some book like The Art of War and learned speaking first is a sign of submission. An amateur.
The walk takes us down the street and onto Broadway, bustling with passersby, and back up on West End Avenue. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dog-less dog walk. Although considering I’m tired, confused, and kind of really need to pee, I might as well be a Yorkshire terrier right now.
We return to the front of the Wyatt. I look up at the building and back to her again, raising both eyebrows.
“I know there’s no Uptown Updogs!” she finally says just as we’re about to begin circling the building again. She’s visibly exasperated at having spoken first. “Or rather I know there’s no central office in Tribeca—it’s a sneaker store, according to Google Maps. No dozens of well-trained employees either. As far as I can tell, it’s just you.”
I quirk an eyebrow. I need to know all that she knows before actually commenting.
“And don’t try to gaslight me into ‘crazy talk’ either,” she preempts. “I looked up the domain, which is registered under your name. That’s just sloppy, frankly.”
Okay, so . . . everything. She knows everything. Fantastic.
“So what?” I finally say, sighing and sitting myself down on the building stoop. “Your mom sent you to fire me and reimburse the down payment, is that it?”
The key to being a decent liar is occasionally knowing when it’s best to come out clean and tell the truth. Corinne Troy looks at me with crossed arms, clearly enjoying the moment.
“No,” she eventually says. “I mean, I considered it. I don’t want a weird con-artist seventeen-year-old taking care of Palm Tree, but your online reviews themselves are real, as far as I can tell, and you do have dog-walking experience, fraudulent as it may be. Plus, there’s no arguing the proximity.”
She speaks in the same succinct intonation as her mother but with far less polish. As though she’s only hearing the words for the first time as she’s saying them. Must be nice to live life this unfiltered.
“Well, then, what do you want?” I finally ask.
She bats her eyelashes. “Are you not enjoying the neighborly chitchat?”
“This isn’t chitchat,” I state plainly. “You clearly want something, so can we get to that part?”
“What happened to all that Halti charm you’re always oozing around the school?”
“I had a long day, Troy.” I tuck my arms into my pits and tilt my chin, ready to return to complete silence.
“That word you called me at school this week,” she finally says. “Intense. Why did you choose that word?”
I can’t help but let out a spastic yell and flail out my arms. Are you kidding me? That’s my great sin here? That’s what got Dora the Nosy-Ass Little Explorer all up in my business? “This again? Why are you so obsessed with two syllables?!”
Corinne takes out a piece of paper from her bag, folded into a perfect square. She adjusts her glasses once, and then another time, and then finally begins to read out loud.
“‘Corinne is a gifted student and will make an excellent academic addition to the class of 2025. Corinne is smart, meticulous, and outspoken, and while her level of intensity may not serve her socially, her commitment to her academic pursuits is undeniable.’”
“What was that?” I ask.
“The recommendation letter I got from Mrs. Carroll.”
Dang. I made it out of her two history classes with an A– and a B+ respectively, but even I know that Mrs. Carroll is not to be trusted. She’s the kind of teacher who pulls quiz questions from optional readings and insists you print out papers in Arial 12. Not Times New Roman, not Calibri. Arial. Failure to comply will result in an entire half grade being docked on papers. The woman would excel in a dystopian world where teachers can electrocute students.
“It’s not that bad of a recommendation,” I lie.
“Are you kidding me? This is for Princeton! She might as well have put a red ‘Do not admit: Social Pariah’ sticker on my forehead.”
“I’m sorry,” I say after a beat. And I am, actually. Donielle’s You’ll end up exactly where you’re supposed to be is burning a fresh hole in my lower cortex. Corinne seems taken aback by the apology, but I just shrug. “I get it,” I tell her.
She looks at the letter again, shaking her head. “She looked me right in the eyes and said she’d be happy to write the recommendation. ‘Happy to do it’: those were her words.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Really?”
“I mean, first she ‘strongly suggested’ that I consider taking a year off and traveling like some Instagram influencer or child of screenwriters, but I insisted. Maybe the fourth handwritten request was too much, but still . . . this is just mean.” Corinne sits down a few steps higher than me on the stoop.
“I had a hunch too,” she adds. “That’s why I requested an extra sealed copy for a college I wasn’t applying to, just to see what she wrote about me.”
That’s brilliant, I think but don’t say. For a moment there Corinne Troy, of all people, looks truly lost. As if the letter simply doesn’t compute.
“It’s exhausting,” I offer. “I thought the whole point of a school like FATE was to spit us into Ivy Leagues and corner offices.”
Corinne doesn’t say anything, still staring at the letter. I feel a thoroughly weird compulsion to comfort her.
“A single letter can’t keep you out of college,” I continue. “You know that, right? You’re always on the Dean’s List at school.”