I Hid My Perfect Score novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Terms

"I didn't do anything," I said. "Weston called me."

"Because somebody told them to." Paisley picked up her suitcase and walked past me into the bay like she owned the building.

"It's thirty-five below out there, Joss. Are you going to make me stand in it?"

The whole crew came down the stairs behind me.

Paisley turned around in the middle of the bay, under the lights, with snow melting in her hair.

Her face did the thing it did at every family party.

It opened.

"Hi," she said softly. "I'm her twin. I'm so sorry to just show up. It's Christmas, and I didn't know where else to go."

Dodie looked at me.

Then at Paisley.

Then at me, like she was checking we were the same species.

The captain came out of his office last, in his slippers.

"Who's this?"

"My sister," I said.

He looked at her pink suitcase, then at the thermometer by the bay door.

"Nobody sleeps outside at minus thirty-five on my watch," he said. "Couch in the dayroom. When's your flight?"

"The twenty-eighth," Paisley said. "It was the only seat."

"Then the twenty-eighth."

Paisley smiled at me.

I made her sit at the kitchen table while everyone else went back to the tree.

I sat across from her.

"Why are you here?"

"You know why." "Weston froze my scholarship. I'm on academic probation until they hold a hearing in the spring."

"Mom's losing her mind. Dad won't talk. Cade won't pick up."

"So you flew four thousand miles to tell me."

"It's three thousand four hundred," she said. "I looked it up."

She leaned forward.

"I want you to email them. Say you were upset. Say you remember it differently now. Say the essay is my truth."

"It's my life."

"It's my essay."

"No," I said.

"You don't even have to lie. Just say you're not sure."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Hid My Perfect Score from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.