His Jealousy Sent Me Straight to the Ivy League novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Post
At 11:50 on deadline night an anonymous DM brags that someone swapped her college list for three Ivies; the portals close on her, so Delaney posts his confession exactly as he asked, and Tate answers in the comments.
At 11:50 on the last night of college deadlines, a stranger sent a message to Ashgrove Confessions.
I was the only person who could read it.
I had run the page for three years, and nobody at my school knew it was me.
I had posted cheating rings, a teacher who sold exam answers, and a boy who filmed the girls' locker room door.
Tonight I was going to post one last update and shut the page down for good.
The message came from an account with no photo and no posts.
"Hi, admin. Sorry it's so late. Could you post a confession for me?"
"There's a girl on my street I've known since we were eight."
"She's been in love with me for three years and thinks nobody can tell."
"She's also been smug about her grades that whole time. She tutors me and the girl I actually want."
"This year they both applied to Emory, and Emory takes only one student from our school for the full ride."
"So an hour ago I took the southern schools off her list and put three others on."
"She won't get into any of them. Then it's a year at community college to think about it. That's fair, right?"
I read it twice.
Another message came in.
"Post it by 11:55. If she sees it in time, she can fix it and come south with me. If she doesn't, that's just bad luck."
I started typing: I'm not posting that.
Before I could send it, he sent a picture.
An ugly gray cat throwing a punch.
I had drawn that cat myself in sophomore year, and I had sent it to exactly two people.
One was Tate Larkin, who lived three doors down from me on Birch Street and shoveled my mom's driveway every snow day without being asked.
The other was Hallie Coldwell, my best friend since seventh grade.
It wasn't Hallie.
So the girl he had known since he was eight, the girl who tutored him every week, was me.
And the girl he actually wanted was Hallie.
I opened the application portal.
It still greeted me: Welcome back, Delaney Frost.
My list was gone. Emory, gone. Vanderbilt, gone. Duke, gone.
In their place were Harvard, Yale and Princeton, all marked submitted at 10:58 p.m.
Tate knew my numbers. A 4.0 and a 1520.
Those numbers made Emory a sure thing.
Harvard, Yale and Princeton turned down nearly everyone with my numbers.
I clicked the first-choice slot, deleted Princeton, and typed Emory back in.
A box popped up: Enter the code we texted you.
I hit send and waited.
Nothing. I hit send again.
This phone number has reached today's verification limit.
I grabbed my phone and opened my messages.
There was a column of codes, every one sent between 10:41 and 10:58.
I had never heard a single one arrive.
My phone was on Do Not Disturb.
Hallie had switched it on at 10:30, sitting on my bed while I did a last check of the Emory form.
"So you'll stop refreshing the portal," she had said, handing it back. "Go to sleep, Dee. You're done."
I had thanked her.
At 11:53 I found the appeal page.
It wanted a photo ID, a photo of me holding it, and twenty-four hours to review.
The anonymous account kept writing.
"Forget it. You don't have to post it."
"It doesn't matter if she sees it. I was only giving her a chance."
"It's been ten years. I didn't want things to get ugly."
He actually thought he was being fair.
I called the admissions emergency line.
Busy signal.
At midnight on New Year's Day, nobody was going to pick up.
One more message came in at 11:57.
"Last question. A girl likes a guy for three years and never says a word. She just hangs around helping with his homework."
"Do you think she's pathetic?"
I didn't answer.
I searched for Emory's phone number and got ads for four-hundred-dollar college consultants.
I went back to the appeal page and refreshed it.
12:00.
Every portal I had closed.
I put my face in my hands and cried until my breathing came back.
Then I wiped my eyes and looked at his messages again.
Four thousand students from three schools followed the page.
Eliot Hendricks, who sat behind me in AP Lit, had followed it since the first week and never sent a single confession.
Tate had asked me to post his.
He had even given me a deadline.
So I posted all of it, his messages in order, with his account name covered.
Under it I wrote one line: Confession posted exactly as requested. Sorry it's late.
I hit share at 12:04.
At 12:06 the first comment came in, from a real account with a real face.
tate.larkin: Fake. Whoever runs this page is lying.
He was awake. He had been watching the page the whole time.
A minute later a second comment appeared.
hallie.cole: Admin, please take this down. This is awful.
I understood why she wanted it gone. The post practically had her name on it.
Tate wasn't going to apologize.
He was going to fight.
I put my phone face up on my pillow, and I left the post where it was.
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