Chapter 35
An all-consuming sensation of dread infiltrates my nervous system the moment I wake the next morning, a feeling that doesn’t ease after I’m showered and dressed.
My recent confrontations play on an anxiety-inducing loop.
Hearing hard truths from Jared. The fight with Analiese.
With Sumner. The distress is palpably uncomfortable, but I can’t avoid it.
Not when we have just nine days to try to fix everything.
I finish Mrs. Vidar-Tett’s gala checklist and spend half an hour researching the University of Michigan’s undergraduate physics program.
The excitement I’d felt in the lab grows tenfold.
I can imagine myself here, immersing myself in lectures and labs.
Before I realize what I’m doing, I pull up the online application. I’ll fill it out later, I decide.
I’m heading to breakfast when a notification chimes on my phone. I have a package to pick up in the mailroom. Grabbing my coat, I hustle to the administration building, shocked when I discover the box is from Mads.
I wait until I’ve returned to my room to open it.
Midnight blue is your color.
XO, Mads
I slide heavy material from a protective cloth.
It’s a dress. Not just a dress, but a floor-length gown made of silk as soft as water, a gradient of shimmering sparkles collecting near the bottom.
Almost a replica of a twinkling night sky.
It winks as it catches the light. I hold it up to myself.
I’ve been so busy I hadn’t considered I’d need one for the gala.
When I call, she answers.
“My package arrived?”
“It’s perfect.”
“I know.” I hear her grinning through the phone.
Now that she’s speaking to me, I venture to another topic. “How’s the competition?”
“Fine. I have two more today, then another tomorrow.” A pause. “I came in second yesterday.”
“Mads, really? That’s incredible.”
“Yeah. Well.” She clears her throat. “Would’ve been nice to get first.”
“Of course,” I say lightly. “Nothing short of outstanding—the Carmichael curse.”
She doesn’t laugh. “You and Jared make it look so easy.”
“I’m not even ranked first in my own class, Mads. Not even top ten. Or twenty.”
Silence. Then, “I’m going to switch to FaceTime.”
The screen connects after a few seconds. She’s in her hotel room flopped on her bed, her arm tucked behind her, a splay of ash-blond hair spread across the pillowcase.
“First of all, Mom’s in the lobby grabbing coffee. And secondly, Jared told me you’re rethinking premed.”
“Oh.” I blink. “Yeah, I am.”
She rolls over and sets her phone on the nightstand, propping it against something I can’t see. Then she launches herself onto her bed and begins giving me a standing ovation.
“Uh, what’s happening?”
“I didn’t think you had it in you.” She sits down, crisscrossing her legs. “You’ve never done your own thing. Like, when I was ten? I asked what you wanted to be when you grew up and you asked me what I thought. Like you couldn’t bear to let me down with your answer.”
I remove my headband and run my hand through my hair. “I don’t remember that.”
“Okay, well, do you remember every time we’d go out to eat for your birthday? Dad would go, Oh, Delaney loves Junior Burgers. And that’s where we’d eat, even though I could tell you didn’t love it. Year after year. It’s like…” She thinks. “You never wanted to disappoint anyone.”
I drop my headband in my lap and point at her through the screen. “Is that why you’ve been ignoring me for months?”
She scoots closer to the phone. “I’m on Zoloft. It’s an anti-depressant.”
Oh. This is not what I expected her to say.
“I mean, Dad died—and then you and Jared left when summer ended. All of it was hard. It felt real—you both got to escape this place while I stayed. I couldn’t stop seeing him in every room, every memory.”
My heart aches. I recall all the times I’d lingered in the astronomy lab or down by the lake. I understand how she feels. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“No one did.” She’s staring at her hands now. “But I’m working through it. With therapy, medication. I guess it seemed easy for you and Jared. Like, I have two brilliant older siblings who overshadow me all the time, so of course you knew how to handle your grief better than me.”
“That’s not true,” I protest. “You’re so fearless, Mads.
I’ve always felt like you overshadow me.
You just—you go after what you want. I wish I was more like you.
It’s admirable.” She looks up. “And I struggle, too. Every day. Over the summer it felt like—like if everyone was together and getting along then we’d be okay.
But I wasn’t. I kept going down these dark and existential thought spirals that followed me here. ”
“You never told me.”
She’s not wrong. There was only one person I wasn’t afraid to spill my thoughts to, and after our fight last night, I doubt we’ll ever speak again.
“I wasn’t used to disrupting what people expected from me,” I admit. “I didn’t know how to be sad.”
She looks somewhere offscreen, thoughts dancing behind her eyes. “You just…let yourself. Don’t overthink. Just, you know. Exist.”
A wave of emotion builds, messy and fragile.
“I got this email from him?” she goes on, a statement phrased like a question.
“A scheduled email on my first day of school. Maybe he knew I’d need it.
I wasn’t going to Ivernia like you and Jared and part of me still feels inferior because of that, even though it makes sense to stay here with the theater program. ”
“I got a scheduled email from him, too. On my birthday.”
Relief softens her features. “That makes me feel better.” She adjusts so she’s sitting in a kneeling position.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is—sometimes I need space to process my own shit.
If I want to shout and cry and feel my feelings, I’m going to do it.
That’s not something you can help me with.
That’s…” She thinks. “Part of life, I guess. Maybe one day the hole won’t feel as large. ”
I let this sink in. “You’re wise, you know that?”
“I know, but validating.” She smirks. “And listen, Mom’s been really great about my therapy appointments.
I’m sure you could find someone too, if you wanted.
Mine suggested writing to Dad after I told her about the email.
I’d never thought to do that, but in a strange way, it helped. Maybe you could try.”
“I will,” I say, and I mean it.
“And hey, I’m sorry Ivernia might close,” she adds. “But it’ll always be there, you know? It’ll still belong to us.”
I want to believe her, I do, but I’m not sure it will.
We hang up, and I slide the dress on a hanger and tuck it in my closet. Then I drag myself to the dining hall. My stomach twists like a wrung cloth as I scan the room, but Sumner isn’t here. All I feel is plummeting disappointment.
I’m at my usual table by the window slicing a banana into my oatmeal when William drops into the seat across from me, tray in hand.
“Good morning,” he says, going after one of the three bowls of cereal he’s brought with him. “Did you and Sumner have a row?”
I almost drop my knife. “He told you?”
“I sensed something amiss.”
“Not exactly uncharacteristic of us.”
And then William does something I’ve never witnessed in my time knowing him. He hesitates. Like he’s thinking before speaking.
This gets my attention. “What?”
“Well,” he says slowly, as if searching for the right words. “Perhaps the underlying problem is unreciprocated feelings. You have to understand he does deeply enjoy your company. Otherwise, why would he have asked for my assistance?”
I am so confused. “What do you mean, unreciprocated feelings? And assistance with what, exactly?”
They aren’t keeping secrets from me, are they?
A flicker of amusement lights in his eyes. “Between you and me, he sought to change his insufferable habits. Demonstrate common courtesies, if you will.”
This doesn’t clear anything up. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Delaney, have you not noticed a change in his appearance? Though it may be slight, he went to great lengths for outward improvement. Same goes for his mannerisms, which I daresay were quite appalling, but I digress.” A hint of a smile appears.
“My criticism probably encouraged faster progress. You can only go on living like a dungeon rat for so long.”
He brings a spoonful of cereal to his mouth and watches me while he chews.
Meanwhile, I let what he’s said percolate in my brain.
A change in appearance. Sumner’s haircut.
The new clothes, no more torn jeans and baggy sweaters.
Temporarily changing his glasses so he could get the broken frames properly fixed instead of using duct tape.
Is this what William means? It must be. He’d organized his room and started holding open doors and offering to walk with me and kept me company when I was in pain and desperately didn’t want to be alone.
All of this because he’d asked for William’s help.
Why would he do that?
William seems to find understanding in my expression. “He cares what you think,” he says encouragingly. “And I imagine he’d want to leave you with a good impression, considering he’s in love with you.”
Cross my heart, I will never get over the casual way William continues to routinely drop vital information.
“What?” The word comes out strangled. “Sumner is not in love with me.”
Because I was the one with the unreciprocated crush.
He was the one who’d flinched when Jared asked if I liked him in front of the entire common room.
And yet, I’d kissed him only to receive bitter rejection with a side of humiliation.
He left right after that, and I’ve carried a mix of hurt and anger for months, convincing myself he’d given me mixed signals throughout our entire friendship—if you could even call it that.
William’s brow furrows. “I believe he is.”
“I drive him crazy.”
“Delaney, I’ve known many jealous men. Look at me.”
He’s so dead serious. I wonder if he has experienced a single ounce of humility in his relatively short lifetime.
“I may not have wealth or status here, but I do find common courtesies go a long way. Perhaps it is something that has been lost in time, but it shouldn’t.
” He straightens. “Sumner’s improved habits are the direct result of a desire to gain your affections, which arose once he believed we were courting. He’s told me as much.”
He told William? My pulse trips inside my chest as I recall what he’d said last night. I wanted to impress you.
But if all this change was intentional, it only breaks my heart. Sumner’s spent his whole life jumping through hoops to try to be enough for people. I never thought that would include me.
I was so callous last night. Would anything I’d said change how he feels?
My thought spiral comes to a halt as my phone dings, a notification popping up on the screen. It’s an email from Mrs. Vidar-Tett.
Delaney,
Please forgive me for writing over break, but Salvon was eager to present his findings to you. I’ve attached them here. I’m also linking the University of Michigan’s online application in case you want to give the essay question a go. We can discuss more on Monday if you find it inspiring.
My best,
Mrs. Vidar-Tett
I open the attachment, adrenaline skating over my nerves. Tidy calculations decorate the page in neat rows alongside a handwritten note at the top: Don’t know if this helps, but I may have untangled a few things in regard to the internal acceleration limits.
Oh my god.
Heart in my throat, I leap to my feet. The motion rattles the table hard enough to make William stabilize two of his three cereal bowls. He glances at me through his lashes, eyes widening.
“You’re not going to believe this—”
“Try me, Carmichael, it’s been a hell of a year.”
I whirl toward the voice behind me, my gaze ensnaring on Sumner’s. He looks timid. Almost bashful, as if he’s not certain we’ve recalibrated to our regularly scheduled roasting after last night, but the tension wound around my ribs loosens as he passes me an apologetic smile.
He’s in love with you.
I’m flustered. I did not expect to feel this flustered the next time I saw him, but I regain a modicum of sense when my attention clings onto the calculations.
“We need to find Lionel,” I say, my excitement ringing clear. “I think we can finally finish this.”