Betrayed by My Childhood Love novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Croquettes
Lyndon asks Esme to give her college spot to the girl her parents raised and she agrees, because Rice already said yes, until Annika tells her at dinner that Lyndon declined Rice for her.
I'd spent five years waiting to follow Lyndon Dellinger to college.
He spent one afternoon making sure I wouldn't.
"Essie, just turn down Thornbury," he said. "Let Annika have your spot."
We were in his mother's kitchen, the one next door to mine, with the granite island where we'd done homework since I was thirteen.
He had flour on his hands. He was rolling croquettes.
"She worked so hard," he said. "She missed by one point. One. You're her big sister. You should want this for her, right?"
I just looked at him.
He smiled and reached over and patted my head.
"Come on. You already took her parents. Giving her your spot is only fair."
I felt my eyes burn.
He didn't notice. He was shaping another croquette.
Annika Beaumont was the girl my parents brought home from the hospital by mistake.
We were born the same night in Galveston, two doors apart in the nursery.
Somebody switched the bracelets.
My parents raised her for eighteen years, in this neighborhood, with tutors that cost more every year than most houses.
I grew up an hour from that hospital, in a little blue house by the shrimp docks, with a woman who fixed boat engines and called me sugar.
At thirteen a DNA kit found my real family.
They came to Galveston in a black SUV and took me home to Dallas.
They kept Annika too.
Everyone said that was the kind thing.
Annika scored 1550 on the SAT with three tutors.
I scored 1560 with a library book and Gran's kitchen table.
I have never once been forgiven for those ten points.
"Here's the thing," Lyndon said, wiping his hands on a towel. "I already sorted it out. I put the community college down as your first choice on the state form. When we did the applications together."
"You did what?"
"They've got a great teaching program. It's twenty minutes from Thornbury. You'd be close to me."
He said it like a present.
"My mom loves teachers. It'll make things easier when we get married. We don't need a wife with some fancy engineering degree, Essie."
I thought about all the nights in Gran's garage, drawing rocket engines in spiral notebooks.
I thought about how he'd laughed when I told him I wanted to work at NASA.
"That's adorable," he'd said.
I looked at the boy I'd loved since I was thirteen.
And I laughed.
It came out short and mean, and I didn't care.
He took it for a yes.
He didn't know that two days ago I'd skipped school, driven to Houston, and sat across from a professor in the Rice University rocketry lab for an hour and a half.
He didn't know the email was already in my inbox.
Congratulations. Full scholarship. Mechanical engineering.
"Okay," I said.
Lyndon's whole face lit up.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Annika can have Thornbury."
He was already pulling out his phone.
He called her on speaker, right there in front of me.
"Told you she'd say yes," he said. "You were so worried. I handled it. So how are you going to thank me?"
He held his breath, waiting for her answer.
I'd seen him look like that before.
I'd just always thought he looked like that for me.
Annika's voice came out of the phone, bright and sweet.
"Getting to be at the same school as you is already the best thank-you, isn't it? Oh, and I made your favorite croquettes too. So hurry up and bring Essie over. I want to thank her properly!"
Lyndon looked down at the tray of croquettes he'd been rolling.
He'd made them for her.
Not for me.
That was when I finally understood why he'd insisted we submit our applications together, at this island, with him typing in my passwords.
I'd thought it was sweet. I'd thought he was scared I wouldn't pick his school.
He'd been scared I would.
From today, we were going in opposite directions.
He just didn't know it yet.
Dinner at my parents' house was at seven.
My mother had set the long table with the good china and a cake from the French bakery.
It said "Congratulations Annika" in gold icing.
Lyndon came over with the croquettes.
His parents came too.
My father stood and tapped his glass.
"To Annika, our Thornbury girl."
Everyone drank.
Annika ducked her head and blushed and looked at me across the table.
"And to Essie," she said softly. "For being so generous."
My mother smiled at me for the first time in a week.
"We're proud of you, sweetheart. Family comes first."
I set my glass down and stood up.
"I'm going to Rice," I said.
The table went quiet.
"Mechanical engineering. Full scholarship. They told me on Tuesday." I looked at my father. "I leave in August. You won't have to pay for anything."
Lyndon went white.
My mother put her fork down very slowly.
"Rice is in Houston," she said, as if I'd said the moon.
"An hour from Gran."
That landed.
It always did.
Then Annika laughed, a little silver laugh, and touched Lyndon's arm.
"Essie, you're so funny. You can't go to Rice."
"Why not?"
She tilted her head, all sympathy.
"Because Lyndon declined it for you this afternoon. He said you'd never really want to leave us."
I pulled out my phone under the table.
My hands were steady. I don't know how.
I opened the Rice portal.
Under my name, Esme Beaumont, a gray banner sat across the page.
We have received your decision to decline our offer of admission.
It was stamped 3:12 p.m.
Right about when Lyndon was rolling croquettes.
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