Chapter 23: Four Guest Cards

On the first Monday of the semester, I sat in the third row of a lecture hall with a notebook that was entirely new.

Nobody in the room knew me.

For about four minutes, that felt like freedom.

Then the professor looked up from the roster and said, "Is Cassidy Hartwell here? The Presidential Scholar?"

I raised my hand.

Forty heads turned, and I waited for the whisper about the video.

It didn't come.

"Good," the professor said. "You wrote the best application essay I read this year. Come see me after class."

I said I would.

My hands were damp on the notebook.

After class, in the corridor, the girl with the lanyard fell into step beside me.

She was a sophomore, and she had been the first person on my floor to knock on my door.

"You were glowing," she said.

"I was terrified."

"It's the same face."

At the end of the hall, my roommate stood waiting with a paper bag in her hands.

She was a tall quiet girl from Oregon who rowed, and she had taken to bringing me food as if it were a hobby.

"Dinner," she said. "Come on. The dining hall's got a nut-free station now. I asked the manager myself."

I stopped.

"You asked?"

"You said you didn't eat there. So I asked." She shrugged. "He put up a sign. Come look."

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