Chapter Three Keely
Chapter Three
Keely
Four hours and seventeen minutes: the final amount of sleep Keely’s phone told her she’d got last night.
Zero hours and two minutes: the amount Keely felt like she’d had.
Forty-two minutes: how long she waited for Dr. Goff to show up at her office this morning.
Keely had been to the career counselor’s office once a month for the past three and a half years, since she was a baby freshman with the world at her feet, not knowing whether a concentration in general chemistry provided more opportunities, or if she should declare a specific track.
Because Ash Mountain University was so small, students were assigned counselors based on last name.
Dr. Goff had students S through Z. It meant she was a little less versed in the inner workings of the biochemistry department than Keely would have liked, but beggars and choosers and all that.
The first time they talked, Dr. Goff hadn’t even known the biochem graduation rates compared to the national average and had only stared blankly at Keely.
Dr. Goff wore that same wary look now, her navy blazer wrinkle-free over her white button down and jeans. An enamel pin winked from the collar—Abe the emerald ash borer, the school’s mascot. Why a school would use an invasive species as the mascot, Keely would never know.
“Good morning, Keely.” Dr. Goff checked her watch as she unlocked her office door. “I didn’t have you down on my schedule for another week and a half.”
Once inside, Keely handed over one of the two coffees she was holding. “I know, but I’m having a bit of a crisis.”
Dr. Goff hung her coat on a rack by the window before getting settled behind her desk.
She took a long swallow of coffee, eyes closing.
When they opened, she looked considerably more chipper, which gave Keely hope, especially when the next words out of her mouth were, “I’m assuming this is about your loan application getting rejected. ”
“Oh, good. You got my email.”
“The one you sent me at ten o’clock last night with the subject line ‘URGENT REQUEST, PLEASE READ IMMEDIATELY’?” Dr. Goff’s chin dipped, her mouth quirking to the side. “Yes, I got it.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Keely continued. She crossed her ankles, though her winter boots didn’t facilitate much grace. She ended up tipping sideways. “Something you can do, Dr. Goff. Linda, if I may.”
Dr. Goff spluttered, her silver-blonde pixie cut bobbing as she covered her mouth with her hand. “Well, if you have—”
“Because otherwise everything we’ve been working toward for three years is ruined.” Keely blinked, hard, then cleared her throat and took a dainty sip of her own beverage. “Basically.”
Dr. Goff nodded slowly, eyeing Keely’s cup. She turned to her computer and logged on. “I don’t know the specifics of this particular loan program, but you can always appeal the rejection.”
“Yes. Great. Let’s do that immediately.” Keely had known the loan committee was wrong, anyway. She’d appeal, they’d see the error of their ways, and she’d be back on track in no time.
“You can definitely get it started.” Dr. Goff’s voice slipped into something conciliatory, and Keely didn’t like that very much. “But it will take a while, and there’s still no guarantee they’ll accept it the second time around.”
No certain success, Keely heard. She bit her lip. “Are there other loans?”
“Yes, but I think this late in the day you’d run into the same problem anywhere.
” Emails pinged as the computer connected to the internet, splicing through the sirens going off in Keely’s head.
“Unless you had someone who co-signed the loan. Most students use their parents, but it can be any adult with established credit history.”
Dread snaked through Keely’s veins and turned oily.
She could hear the conversation between her parents now.
Or the shouting, rather, as they inevitably placed the blame at each other’s door.
Her mom would be too worried about her ever-rising divorce debt, something she wouldn’t need to take on at all if dad were a “half decent person.” Her dad would undoubtedly find a way to bring it back to the proposed division of their assets and why, as “the breadwinner,” he deserved more, and Mom would say something like “there’s more to life than money, Jason,” and he’d say, “then why do you want so much of mine?” and Keely couldn’t very well ask for money then, could she?
All of it would leave Keely torn down the middle again, feeling like a burden to them both.
Keely stared at her hands, clutching her coffee like a life raft. “That’s not an option.”
Dr. Goff leaned back in her chair, a noise catching in her throat. “I see.”
Over her shoulder, Keely studied the pictures lined up on the windowsill: Dr. Goff standing arm in arm with a woman under the Eiffel Tower.
Dr Goff and that same woman in ski suits, the Northern Lights visible in the background.
More photos sat behind them, in locations Keely didn’t recognize.
The frames hung off the ledge, there were so many.
An unfamiliar pang struck Keely’s chest. She chalked it up to sleep deprivation and lingering disappointment over last night’s failed experiment.
If she had time left when she was done with today’s to-dos—she nearly snorted; when did that ever happen—she’d dig into the data and figure out what went wrong, aside from missing the dye window.
“You could always wait a year to start grad school,” Dr. Goff offered. “This fall’s scholarships may be full, but next fall’s haven’t opened yet. You’d almost certainly be able to nab a slot with the next cohort.”
Dr. Goff may as well have slapped her across the cheek. “I can’t wait for grad school,” Keely said. The computer dinged with an incoming email, distracting Dr. Goff from the pure horror pinching Keely’s face.
She needed to go to grad school next year, in order to graduate four years after that.
She had different tracks for if she chose academia or went on to pursue her doctorate, but either way she’d still be in her forever job by twenty-nine at the latest, married by thirty-one, and well on her way to taking similar pictures to the ones on the windowsill.
A perfect life for the perfect daughter, who made things as easy as possible for her parents.
“I have a five-year plan, so it’s imperative that—”
She cut herself off, because it sounded sort of lame, when she said it like that.
She sat forward in her chair, hands pushing into the mess of papers scattered across the desk. “There has to be something, Dr. Goff.” Keely was not above begging. “Maybe I could—”
Dr. Goff held a finger up. “Hold, please.”
Keely’s mouth snapped shut.
The five seconds it took for Dr. Goff to look at Keely again may as well have been a millennium.
“Sorry.” Dr. Goff smiled, and Keely forced herself to return it; it wasn’t Dr. Goff’s fault she was teetering on the edge of catastrophe. “I needed to make sure I was reading my email correctly. We just had a student drop out.”
Keely really was tired. Tired enough to imagine joy driving Dr. Goff’s words. “And that helps me. . . how?”
The smile on Dr. Goff’s face grew. Keely didn’t add frivolous things like make my guidance counselor smile to her to-do lists, but she checked it off mentally anyway.
“It helps you because that student was a recipient of the Pursue Your Passions Scholarship, and their absence means there is exactly one extra slot.”
I want it.
Across the desk, Dr. Goff’s graying eyebrow tipped upward. Keely must have said that aloud. She pursed her lips. Placed her coffee on the desk and sat on her hands for good measure.
“Do you want to know what it’s about?” Dr. Goff prompted.
“If it will help me get into grad school, I’ll learn the Phoenician alphabet,” Keely said, and Dr. Goff laughed but it wasn’t a joke. Keely nodded. “Yes, please.”
A few more clicks on the outdated computer, and Dr. Goff swiveled the screen.
The page was decorated in AMU’s signature emerald and gold, Pursue Your Passions scrawled across the top.
Keely was sure she knew of—and had applied for—every possible scholarship, so she wasn’t sure how she’d missed this one.
Until Dr. Goff said, “It’s dedicated to helping students bridge the gap post-graduation. Aimed at supporting them through the first steps after school, whatever that looks like.”
No wonder Keely hadn’t applied. She already knew what her next steps were.
Or she did, until last night. That dirty word—denied—filled her brain again, and she had to blink a few times to clear it away.
“I’ll take it,” Keely breathed.
Dr. Goff chuckled, a hint of bemusement behind it. “It’s not quite that simple, unfortunately. You still need to apply, and it’s a more robust application than you’re used to. Grades and extracurriculars, of course, which shouldn’t be a problem for you—”
Keely tried not to smile. She’d founded her region’s Science Olympiad. She was president of AMU’s Women in Science Society, too, and that position was elected. Popularity had to count for something.
“—but also volunteerism outside of your area of study, and a written essay to show why you, above others, should win,” Dr. Goff finished.
So this wasn’t as in-the-bag as she’d hoped. Keely’s heart fell again, then picked up, faster than before. She probably should switch to decaf after this. Maybe forever.
The essay part was fine—she’d managed two required semesters of English essays with little problem, and she wrote peer reviews and research abstracts all the time.
Her brain was already pulling items over from her resumé, drawing parallels between the work she’d done on campus and her plans for grad school, the specialization that would someday help others become more fully functioning members of society, ones who could still sleep at night.
It was the volunteerism part that might cause issues.
Keely grabbed her laptop from her bag and propped it on the corner of the desk, throwing the lid open to find her running to-do list. She’d make time.
Her Friday nights were still free, and Saturdays, plus Sunday afternoons.
And that forty-minute window between class and lab on Wednesday nights where she usually scarfed down a turkey wrap.
She could totally pick up garbage and eat at the same time.
The biologist in her shuddered at that.
Dr. Goff took a noisy sip of coffee, then shuddered too. “Is there an extra shot in this?”
Keely shrugged, but nodded. “I got two of my usual.”
“That explains it,” Dr. Goff murmured.
Keely bit her lip. She should definitely cut back on the caffeine.
“The deadline to apply is May first. Right before finals week starts, so you’ll have plenty of time to get things sorted. And remember, the key word here is p. . .”
Keely tuned her out, because she already had it all sorted.
Here, with her color-coordinated calendar, her brain calmed from the state of buzzing it had been in since last night.
She could do this. This scholarship was hers.
If she left right now, she had an hour before her first class.
She would rearrange the little boxes of her life until everything fit just so.
She rose, not bothering to slide her laptop in the designated pocket of her backpack. She was half-typing as she zipped it shut. “Thank you, Dr. Goff!” Scooping her coffee off the desk, she walked backward out the door.
Which is why she didn’t see the jock with an invasive, bright-green cartoon bug on his chest until it was too late. She threw up a hand to stop the collision but knocked against something cold and wet instead.
The smoothie in his hands exploded all over them.