I Was Meant for More novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: Three Keychains

Erica lies her way out, tells her mother the portal was changed, and at two in the morning Trent gives himself away.

I stepped out from behind the hedge and held up my phone.

"About two seconds. Your mom's looking for you. The cake's melting."

Courtney's eyes went to Trent.

Trent's eyes went to the ground.

"The candles won't stay lit," I said. "She sent me to get you."

I made myself yawn.

"Also, where's the bathroom? This house is a maze."

Courtney's dimples came back slowly.

"Through the kitchen, second door on the left."

"Thanks."

I turned to go.

"Erica," she called.

I looked back.

She had her arm through Trent's now, easy and friendly.

"Trent was just helping me with a necklace. The clasp's broken."

"Sure," I said.

She wasn't wearing a necklace.

I went through the kitchen and locked myself in the second door on the left.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub and held my phone in both hands until they stopped shaking.

When I came out, everybody was singing.

It wasn't anyone's birthday.

The Fultons just liked a cake.

Trent found me by the dessert table.

He was holding a small paper bag.

"I got us something," he said.

He took out three keychains.

Little red enamel B's, the Bradford logo, with our initials stamped on the back.

E.H. T.F. C.F.

He pressed mine into my palm and closed my fingers over it.

"So you don't forget," he said.

"Forget what?"

"That we're a team. The three of us."

Courtney came up behind him and hooked her chin on his shoulder, laughing.

"Isn't he the sweetest? It was his idea."

I looked at the keychain.

"When did you order these?" I asked.

"A couple weeks ago."

"Before the portal closed."

"Well, yeah." He laughed. "We all put Bradford. Didn't we?"

"We all put Bradford," I said.

I put the keychain in my pocket.

It sat there all night, a hard little lump against my leg.

I left at ten.

Trent offered to drive me.

I said I wanted to walk.

My mother was at the kitchen table when I got home.

She was in her robe, with tea, her reading glasses on the cord around her neck.

Her night off.

"How was it?" she asked.

I sat down across from her.

I put the keychain on the table between us.

Then I told her.

Not about the video.

I didn't know how to say that part to anyone.

I told her I checked the portal at midnight, the way I always did.

That it said Cedar County Community College.

That the login history showed Courtney's phone at 11:41.

I showed her the screenshots.

I showed her the new choice. Defense Technology Institute.

I told her about the fountain.

My mother read every screenshot twice.

She took off her glasses.

She put them back on.

"Trent did this," she said.

"Trent and Courtney."

"Trent Fairbanks. Who I held when he was four hours old."

"Yes."

She stood up so fast her chair scraped.

She went for the phone on the wall.

"I'm calling Marianne right now."

"Mom, wait."

"She needs to know what her son did to you. Tonight."

"She'll say I made a mistake," I said. "She'll say I clicked the wrong school myself. Trent will cry, and she'll believe him."

My mother stood with the phone in her hand.

"They think I'm going to Cedar," I said. "They think I don't know."

"And?"

"And letters come out on the twentieth. Commitment Night's on the twenty-fifth."

In Millbrook, every senior crossed the stage in the high school gym in July.

They opened their acceptance letters in front of the whole town.

It was the biggest night of the summer.

My mother had cried at it for eighteen years running, and I wasn't even in it yet.

"Let them get up there," I said. "Let them say it first."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she hung the phone back on the wall.

"I don't like it," she said.

"I know."

"If they come near you, I'm calling Marianne."

"Okay."

She came around the table and hugged me hard, and I let her.

"Colorado," she said into my hair. "You finally picked Colorado."

"I finally picked Colorado."

I went to bed and didn't sleep.

At two in the morning, my phone lit up on the pillow.

Trent.

"Hey. Random question."

Then another.

"Why'd you change your portal password?"

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