Chapter 21: A Year to Think

Hallie didn't come toward me.

She stayed under the streetlight with her hood up and her hands in her pockets, and let me walk the whole length of Birch Street.

I stopped six feet from her.

"I'm not here to beg," she said.

"Good."

"I'm not here to explain, either. I've done that. It didn't help."

She looked thinner than she had in January.

Her curls had been cut short, to the jaw, and she had no makeup on.

"Emory called my mother this morning," she said. "The offer's rescinded. Vanderbilt too. The other two wrote last week."

I had known it was coming.

It still felt strange to hear it from her mouth.

"I'm sorry about your family," I said, and meant it.

"My dad got on at a warehouse in the end. Nights." She almost smiled. "So you don't have to feel bad about that part."

"I didn't ask to feel bad."

"No. You never did. That was always your thing."

I waited.

She took a folded paper out of her coat pocket and held it up.

"Ashgrove Community College," she said. "Orientation list for the fall. Alphabetical."

I looked at the paper without taking it.

"Coldwell, Hallie," she said, and ran her finger down. "And further down, Larkin, Tate."

"Same room. Same Tuesday."

A door opened up the street.

Tate came down his front steps in a sweatshirt, with his hands in the pouch pocket.

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