Chapter 1 #3
She took her seat with her classmates, and walked onto the stage when her turn came to accept her diploma, which was a symbolic one.
The real one would be sent in the mail. She shook hands with the dean of students, had her picture taken, and went back to her seat, beaming with pride as her name was read from the list of honors as magna cum laude.
The commencement speech was given by a senator.
Billie threw her mortarboard in the air with the others, after shifting the tassel once she was officially a graduate, and was filing out, still smiling with a feeling of victory, when a boy she knew from her physics class stopped her.
They weren’t close but had studied together a few times.
He was from Atlanta, and his parents and two sisters were standing near him when he stopped her.
“Congratulations, Billie,” he said.
“Thanks, you too, Ben. Good luck.” He had noticed that she was alone, and wasn’t looking for anyone in the crowd. The others were all joining up with their families.
“Do you want to come to lunch with us at Harvest?” he said, waving vaguely at his family. “My grandma got sick and couldn’t come. We have an extra seat at the table.” He was so nice about it that she was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say.
“I . . . uh . . . your family won’t mind?” She felt warm and friendly toward everyone. There was suddenly a feeling of camaraderie among them, as people hugged and said goodbye.
“They’d love it.” He smiled at her.
“Okay, thank you very much.” His name was Ben Hewitt, and he introduced her to his parents and his two older sisters, and all of them were pleasant and welcoming to her.
He had asked their permission first and they felt bad that she was alone, as Ben did, and they told him to ask her.
She followed them out to the parking area, enjoying being part of a family suddenly.
One of his sisters was asking about her major.
She was in med school at Georgetown, and his other sister was working in New York.
They made Billie feel at home on the drive to the restaurant, and by the time they got there, she felt at ease with all of them, and had a lovely time at lunch.
It was after three by the time they left the restaurant, and she thanked them, and said she had to get back to the dorm to move to the hotel.
She had to be out by five. The Hewitts had made it a special day for her.
She had planned to go back to her room after the ceremony and skip lunch, since she had no one to be with, and they had changed everything for her.
Ben’s mother hugged her when they said goodbye and wished her luck, and said to call and come visit if she ever came to Atlanta.
She had the accent of the Deep South and Billie was grateful for how kind they had been to her.
“Thanks, Ben,” she said, and he hugged her too. “That was really nice of you, and your family.”
“It’s a big day. What are you going to do now?” he asked her. “You heard the senator today, tomorrow is the first day of our adult lives.”
“I’m looking for a job. I want to try to stay here in Boston.” He had said he was going back to Atlanta for the summer, and then he was coming back to MIT for graduate studies in engineering.
“Maybe we can get together when I come back in the fall,” he said with a smile, wondering why he had never gone out with her.
She was very small and graceful, pretty and very smart.
He’d had a girlfriend until a few months before, and now he was free.
“I still have your number. I’ll call you when I get back in August,” he promised, and she wondered if he would.
“I hope I find a job so I can stay in Boston. I love it here,” she said.
“Me too. We’re going to Aspen in July. Are you going home?
” She shook her head and didn’t bother to explain.
There was nothing to go home to except her father, drunk at night, pretending she didn’t exist and making her feel weird, and a barn full of cows, in a town where she had lived all her life and never fit in.
MIT was home now, and hopefully Boston and a job.
“I’ll be working,” she said, hoping it would be true.
If not, she might have to go home. She had about a month’s worth of money saved up from her job at the bookstore.
It would run out pretty fast. Ben’s family looked as though they had money.
His mother and sisters were well dressed, his father was wearing a nice suit.
They owned fast-food franchises all over Georgia—McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, she had learned at lunch.
Ben had never mentioned it before. He was a nice boy, and she hoped she’d see him again.
She went back to her dorm room after they left, changed back into jeans and a sweater, folded her dress into her only suitcase and closed it, and looked around the room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.
She had a framed photograph of her mother in her suitcase, and none of her father or Mickie.
She knew how proud her mother would have been on that day. The Hewitts had been so nice to include her in their celebration of Ben, and he’d been kind to her too.
She carried her two boxes down the stairs one by one, took a last look around the room that had been home, and carried her suitcase down the stairs.
She saw familiar faces leaving the dorm, but no one she knew well.
Some of the girls were crying as they said goodbye to each other.
Billie’s Uber came a few minutes later, the driver loaded her boxes and suitcase into the trunk, and she gave him the address of the student hotel.
As they drove off the campus, she looked at the familiar sights that had been her home for four years, and felt half excited and half scared.
She remembered how terrified she had been when she arrived, afraid she wouldn’t measure up.
They had been the best four years of her life.
“Graduated today?” the driver asked her with a smile, and she nodded.
“Yes, I did,” she said, smiling, and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Congratulations! That’s a big day. It’s a great school.
” She nodded again, as they drove off the campus.
It felt like flying suddenly, and she realized when he said it that she hadn’t heard from her father or Mickie.
They probably didn’t even remember what day this was for her.
One day seemed like the next on the farm, and Mickie was probably having fun in L.A.
But Billie knew that she would remember this day for the rest of her life, every detail.
She was a grown-up now, and no longer a freak.
She was a graduate of MIT. She had done it, and no one could ever take this accomplishment away from her, or this day. It was the best day of her whole life.