Betrayed by My Childhood Love novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Decline Received

Esme drives to Houston overnight and finds the rocketry lab and its sleeping captain, and the dean gives her until Monday.

I put my phone face up on the tablecloth, next to the gold cake.

"Is this true?"

Lyndon didn't even look at the screen.

He looked at my mother.

"Essie, come on. It's not a big deal. I did it for us."

"You logged into my email."

"You never change your passwords." He laughed a little, like that part was my fault. "I saw the Rice thing sitting there. You were going to throw your whole life away on a whim."

"It's an engineering scholarship."

"It's four hours away."

My father cleared his throat.

"Lyndon's family, sweetheart. He was looking out for you."

My mother dabbed the corner of her mouth with her napkin.

"Honestly, Esme, I'm glad someone did. Rice would have been one more way to embarrass us."

Annika reached across the table and squeezed my wrist.

"Don't be mad at him," she said. "He only did it because he loves you. We all do."

Then I stood up and walked out of the dining room.

Nobody followed me.

I heard my mother say, "Let her sulk," and the clink of the cake knife.

Upstairs, I put a toothbrush, a clean shirt and my phone charger in my school bag.

I took the folder with my transcript and my interview notes.

At 7:40 p.m. I was on I-45 heading south in the old Honda Gran had helped me buy.

The Rice admissions line went to voicemail.

Lyndon called nine times before Corsicana.

I let every one ring out.

Somewhere past Huntsville, it started to rain.

I got to Houston a little after midnight.

I slept four hours in the Rice visitor lot with my jacket over my face.

At ten to six, I walked across the campus in the dark.

The rocketry lab was in a low brick building behind the engineering quad.

I knew because I'd been there on Tuesday.

The side door was propped open with a fire extinguisher.

The shop smelled like epoxy and burnt coffee.

A rocket body lay across two sawhorses, ten feet long and painted Rice blue.

Beside it, on an army cot, a boy was asleep.

He was long enough that his boots hung off the end.

Black hair over his eyes. A hoodie with the sleeves cut off.

On the back of his right hand was a shiny pink burn scar.

I cleared my throat.

Nothing.

I cleared it again.

"If you're here to steal the oxidizer," he said without opening his eyes, "it's locked up, and I'm meaner than I look."

"I'm here to see the adviser."

"He comes in at seven-thirty." One eye opened. "It's six."

"I know what time it is."

He sat up slowly and looked at me.

Then he kept looking.

"You're the swirl injector," he said.

"What?"

"Tuesday. You drew a hybrid motor on his whiteboard from memory. He left it up. I've been staring at it for two days." He rubbed his face. "Your fill port's in the wrong place."

"It is not."

"It's an inch too far forward."

"It's exactly where it should be. You'd know if you'd ever balanced one."

He looked at me for a second longer.

Then something happened at the corner of his mouth.

It wasn't a smile. It was the place a smile would go if he ever let one out.

"Waylon," he said. "Propulsion. Why are you crying in my shop at six in the morning?"

"I'm not crying."

He handed me a shop rag anyway.

I told him the whole thing standing up, next to his rocket.

The kitchen. The croquettes. The state form. The gray banner on the portal, stamped 3:12 p.m.

He didn't say anything until I finished.

"So your boyfriend logged in as you and turned down Rice."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Good. He sounds like an idiot."

He got up, went to a coffee maker on a workbench and poured two cups of something black.

He handed me one.

"Sit. Don't touch anything blue."

At seven-thirty the adviser came in with a bagel and stopped dead.

"Miss Beaumont?"

I stood up so fast I spilled the coffee.

"Somebody declined my offer," I said. "It wasn't me. I want it back."

He looked at Waylon.

Waylon shrugged.

"She drove all night," he said. "Her fill port's wrong, but she's not."

The adviser put down his bagel and picked up his car keys.

The admissions office didn't open until eight.

He knocked on the glass until the dean let us in.

She pulled up my file and read for a long time.

"The decline came from your account," she said. "Your email. Your password."

"I know."

"Then you understand our problem. I can't take back a decision because an applicant changed her mind overnight."

"I didn't change my mind. I never made it."

She looked at me over the glasses.

The adviser leaned in.

"I've interviewed about four hundred kids for that lab," he said. "She's the one I'd fight for."

The dean was quiet for a while.

Then she turned her monitor so I could see it.

"Here's what I can do. If the person who sent this writes to us, in his own words, with his signature, saying he did it without your consent, I'll reinstate your offer."

My heart started pounding.

"By when?"

"Monday. Five p.m. After that, your seat goes to the waitlist."

Three days.

To make Lyndon Dellinger admit, in writing, that he'd done something wrong.

In five years, I had never once heard him do it out loud.

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