I Was Meant for More novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Last Minute
Seven minutes before the portal closes, Erica gets a video from her older self, finds her application switched, fixes it at 11:59, and then reads a message from Trent that was meant for someone else.
At 11:53 p.m., seven minutes before the college portal closed for good, my phone buzzed with a video.
The sender was my own number.
I was on the couch in my pajamas, eating dry cereal out of the box.
I almost deleted it.
Then I saw the thumbnail.
It was me.
Not me now. Me with short hair and lines around my mouth.
I pressed play.
The woman sat at a small kitchen table under a bad yellow light.
She wore a gray sweatshirt and a lanyard that said Tri-County Logistics.
She looked straight into the camera, and her eyes were my eyes, only tired.
"Erica. You're eighteen. It's June thirtieth, and you've got a few minutes. So listen."
Her voice was mine, but lower.
"Trent changed your college application. It says Cedar County Community College now."
I stopped chewing.
"He and Courtney Fulton have been together for a long time. Since sophomore year."
"He did it because she told him she didn't want you hanging around him anymore."
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
"You'll work hard anyway. You'll get into grad school anyway. And you'll still never get near aerospace. Not once."
She leaned closer to the lens.
"But you could have gone up there. You were meant to go up there."
The video ended on her face.
I tapped the screen to play it again.
The message was gone.
The whole thread was empty.
I dropped the cereal box and ran down the hall to my room.
My laptop was still open on the desk from that afternoon.
I logged into the state admissions portal with shaking fingers.
The page loaded slowly.
First choice: Cedar County Community College, Millbrook, Ohio.
I read it twice.
Three hours ago it had said Bradford University.
I knew, because I had checked it three hours ago, the way I checked it every night.
Trent and I had picked Bradford together in ninth grade.
He'd grabbed my hand in the lunch line and said, "Bradford. Both of us. Promise."
I had promised.
I'd wanted the Defense Technology Institute in Colorado since I was nine years old.
I'd wanted to build things that went into orbit.
But Trent was going to Bradford, and then Courtney was going to Bradford, and I didn't want to be the one left out.
The clock in the corner of the screen said 11:58.
I clicked the dropdown.
I scrolled past every school in the country.
My hands were so cold I missed it once.
Defense Technology Institute. Aerospace Engineering.
I clicked it.
I hit submit.
The little wheel spun.
"Modification successful."
11:59.
I sat back in my chair and stared at those two words until the screen blurred.
My phone rang on the desk.
Trent Fairbanks.
The same face I'd seen every day of my life, grinning on my lock screen from a summer at the lake.
Our mothers had been college roommates.
We were born eleven days apart in the same hospital.
I answered.
"Hey, Sunny!"
He sounded happy. Warm. The way he always sounded.
"You finished your application, right? I can't wait for us to go to college together."
I looked at the screen. Defense Technology Institute.
"Are you really looking forward to it?" I asked.
"Of course I am." He laughed. "We've been planning this since we were kids. Me, you, Courtney. The Three Musketeers, right?"
In the background I heard a girl giggle.
Then a TV turned up loud.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Home. Why?"
"No reason."
"You sound weird. You okay?"
"Tired," I said. "Goodnight, Trent."
I hung up before he could say anything else.
The portal was still open.
I clicked on my account settings.
At the bottom, in small gray letters, was a link I had never clicked before.
Recent sign-ins.
The list loaded.
Today, 3:12 p.m. MacBook Air. Millbrook, OH.
That was me, at this desk.
Today, 11:41 p.m. Courtney's iPhone. Millbrook, OH.
I didn't breathe for a second.
Trent had set up this account for me in the school library when we were fourteen.
He had typed the password himself, because I'd been too slow.
He had never needed to ask for it.
I took a screenshot.
I took three more, just to be sure.
Then I changed my password to a string of letters I had never said out loud.
At 12:01 a.m. my phone lit up again.
Two WhatsApp messages from Trent.
The first one said, "Done. Her app says Cedar. She'll never check before midnight."
I read it with the phone six inches from my face.
The second one said, "Love you. Tell your dad thanks for the pizza."
Courtney's dad.
It wasn't meant for me.
I sat very still and watched the typing bubble appear and disappear.
Then the first message changed.
"This message was deleted."
The second one went too.
A new one popped up underneath.
"lol wrong chat. Party at Courtney's tomorrow at 7!! Don't be late, Sunny."
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