His Jealousy Sent Me Straight to the Ivy League novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hallie at the Door

Her best friend climbs through the window at 12:40, helps draft the emails, and owns up to silencing her phone; Delaney's night-shift mom learns the whole story, and Yale's email arrives with the wrong essay in it.

Hallie knocked on my window at 12:40, because she knew the front door stuck.

She had a gray wool coat over her pajamas and snow packed into the tops of her boots.

"I cut through the backyards," she said, climbing in. "I couldn't wait for the road."

I hadn't told her I was the admin.

I hadn't told her anything. I had only texted: Come over, it's about Tate.

She sat down on my bed and read the whole post on my phone, her lips moving.

When she looked up, her eyes were already wet.

"The girl he actually wants," she said. "Dee, that's me."

"I know," I said.

"I never said a word to him. I swear I didn't know he felt that way."

"I know you didn't," I said.

She put her face against my shoulder and shook.

I held her and stared at the wall.

I had spent three years wanting Tate Larkin to notice me, and the first time he said my name in public it was to call me smug.

"He took your whole list," Hallie whispered. "He took Emory."

"He took the Beacon too. Without Emory on file, the counselor's nomination is dead."

Hallie went very still. Then she sat up and wiped her face with both hands.

"Okay. So we fix it. Who do we email?"

I loved her for that.

We opened my laptop and wrote to the admissions offices at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and the three schools I had lost.

I attached the screenshots.

Hallie read each draft over my arm.

"Don't open with Tate's name," she said. "It sounds personal. Open with the facts."

That was good advice. I took it.

Then I opened my inbox to find the proof of what had been done to my account.

Two emails from the application system sat unread.

New sign-in from an unrecognized device. 10:41 p.m.

New sign-in from an unrecognized device. 10:44 p.m.

I had never heard them arrive either.

"This is my fault," Hallie said quietly. "I silenced your phone. I wanted you to sleep."

"You were trying to help."

"I'm going to think about that forever."

"Don't." I pushed the laptop aside. "Nobody could have known he'd do this."

She lay down next to me with her coat still on.

By two she was asleep, one hand curled in my sleeve.

I lay awake and watched the post climb past two thousand views.

Nobody was writing anything under it anymore.

Everyone was just looking.

At ten to seven I heard my mom's key in the front door.

She came into the kitchen in her scrubs with her badge still clipped on, rubbing her eyes.

Her twelve hours in the emergency room had left her hair half out of its clip.

"Why are you up? Why is Hallie's coat on the chair? Delaney."

"Sit down, Mom."

I told her everything, in order, with my phone on the table between us.

She read the post twice.

Then she set the phone down on the table, very gently.

"Tate Larkin," she said.

"Mom."

"I put a Band-Aid on that child's knee when he was nine," she said. "I let him eat all my good cereal."

"Mom, listen."

"I'm listening. I'm also going to be on Birch Street in a minute with a very loud voice."

"You can't," I said. "He'll say I made it up."

"Let him say it." She laughed, one hard breath. "You didn't change a word, and I read every one."

I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry.

"Mom, the Beacon is gone. Emory is gone. The only schools left are the three he picked."

She leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a while.

"What do those three cost?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Mom."

"I do know." She sat forward. "When you were twelve, I ran all of their calculators at this table. You were asleep. Harvard said we'd pay nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Zero. I laughed so hard I cried, because it was a joke. You were never going to go there." She took my hand. "He may have just done you the biggest favor of your life, and I want to wring his neck."

At two minutes past seven, my phone buzzed against the table.

It was an email from Yale.

Thank you for submitting your application. Your file is now complete.

Below it, the admissions office had pasted the essay in my application.

It was my Emory essay, word for word, in the box that said Why Yale.

The first line read: Atlanta has felt like home since I was twelve.

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