I GOT TO WORK RIGHT AWAY, COMPOSING AN ACCEPTANCE letter to myself from Stanford. I sent it from Juno’s email account, changed the home address, and printed it out. To the untrained eye, it looked official and legit.
Juno booked a flight for me from Minneapolis to San Francisco early Saturday morning. She reserved a hotel room at the Marriott in Menlo Park. Then she handed her credit card over. “You need to show this when you check in,” she said. “If you have a problem, call me and I’ll vouch for you. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I put her card in my wallet. “You are the most amazing friend I’ve ever had.”
As if she hadn’t already done enough for me, Juno said she’d take care of telling the Hogans about my sudden change of plans. But of course it was up to me to tell my dad. I was nearly shaking with anxiety when I approached him on Sunday. He was sitting at his desk in the living room.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. He looked up from the book he was reading and pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I have something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
“It’s nothing bad. It’s just . . . you know how I’d wanted to go to that writing program at Hamline in August?”
Dr. Lee was teaching a writers’ workshop at Hamline University in Saint Paul at the end of the summer, and I really wanted to go. I’d talked to Dad about applying. He hadn’t exactly endorsed the idea. Tuition would eat up a good chunk of the money I’d be making from babysitting the Hogans, and he wanted me to put it away for college—real college, not a week-long summer program.
I had asked Dr. Lee about applying anyway. She said Hamline wasn’t considering applications from students still in high school. You had to at least be a rising college freshman to take the class, so it was a moot point anyway.
“I remember the program,” Dad told me.
“Okay,” I said. “So, the thing is . . . I was thinking about how I still wanted to do something like that. It turned out I’m too young for Hamline, plus that’s not till August anyway, and I don’t want to wait that long. I looked online to see if there was anything else, and there’s a writing program at Stanford University.”
“Stanford? As in California?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Someone dropped out at the last minute, so I sent in the application. I know I should’ve told you first. I didn’t think I’d get in. But I did. Plus, I got a full scholarship. Room, board, airfare, the works. It won’t cost a thing for me to go. Look, here’s the acceptance letter.”
I handed him the fake email and watched his pupils move quickly back and forth across the page.
“Juno said she can handle the Hogan triplets on her own for a week,” I said. “It’d be good for me to go. I haven’t been focused on my writing, since Talley . . .” My voice trailed off. “The change of scene is probably exactly what I need right now. What do you think?”
He lowered the letter to his lap. I held my breath. “I think this is absolutely wonderful,” Dad said.
“Really?”
“Really wonderful,” he said. “You’re putting yourself and your future first. I know that is the hardest thing in the world to do when you’re grieving. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you,” I said. The relief was enormous and I leaned down to hug him. He wasn’t the huggiest of fathers, and I didn’t usually initiate them with him, either. It hadn’t been that way with Talley. Practically every time I walked through a room, we’d reach our arms out to each other. It was so natural, the way we fit with each other, almost like we’d been two halves of the same person. Hugging my dad felt awkward, like when you’re clasping your hands together and you put the wrong thumb over the other. We didn’t go together quite right.
“Speaking of my future,” I said, “I have finals for the next three days. I better go study.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “You let me know if you need any help.”
“I will,” I said.
I went into my room and opened my statistics textbook. For the first time since Talley had died, I was actually able to concentrate on the words and figures on the page, I think because I had the ticket to California. I’d be going there in just six days, and visiting the actual places she’d written down on her list. I could relax and attend to my schoolwork. I doubt any of my friends thought studying was relaxing, but that’s how it felt to me.