The doorbell jolted Nathaniel out of his thoughts. He was standing in the corner, holding his beer, trying to figure out how to get himself out of the mess he’d gotten into. The beer was warm. The party was loud. Nathaniel was pissed off.
He told himself it was at Will, for luring him over with the promise of studying, then throwing a party instead. But really it was at himself, mostly:
For not having the guts to say no.
For not turning in his application on time.
For not trying to salvage his life by studying for the SATs like he knew he should.
But no time seemed like the right time to leave. And there was part of Nathaniel—a secret part that made him totally ashamed—that was having fun. And part of him that thought if he stayed, if he enjoyed his beer and forgot about the application and the test and had some fun, then maybe he and Will could be friends again. Real friends, not the kind of friends who ignored each other at school and then sometimes needed help studying when no one else was around to care.
Nathaniel had been studying for the SATs for months. He’d even gotten a tutor, paying for it with the bar mitzvah money he’d never spent and that had been languishing in some bond his grandfather had set up for him when he was thirteen. Tobias had gotten a perfect score. He’d won the Anders Almquist Scholarship. He’d gotten into MIT EAPS early admission. Nathaniel couldn’t settle for anything less.
His brother had always been smarter. Cooler. And knew exactly what he wanted. Ever since Nathaniel was old enough to have memories, Tobias was the one calling the shots and Nathaniel followed along like some of his brother’s magic might rub off on him.
Girls, especially, were really into him. One girl in particular. The only one who mattered.
Tobias’s magic had never rubbed off on that particular area of Nathaniel’s life.
Nathaniel wanted to be a geophysicist. He wanted to study energy and the way it moved through the earth. He wanted to one day stand at the tops of mountains, the sky expanding above him and the wind blowing through his hair, and conduct lightning through lightning rods and feel the phantom movement of ancient lava beneath his feet. He wanted to experience something bigger than himself. Energy was the biggest thing there was. Energy was everywhere.
But the Anders Almquist Earth Science Scholarship felt like a mountain he couldn’t climb. And Daybrook had a reputation for producing winners, like his brother. He’d been working on his project for months, but even up until the night before it was due, something just didn’t feel right. Something was missing. That magic zing. That spark. And he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
He wished he didn’t care so much. Life would be easier if he didn’t care about everything so intensely. If he could just be like Will, who didn’t seem to care at all. Half the senior class was here now, and no one seemed to care about anything except getting drunk.
When they were little, he and Tiny and Will and Lu used to play Science Club together. They performed experiments with magnets and grew potatoes in soil and mixed solutions in beakers.
Sometimes Nathaniel still felt like a kid playing at science.
Tobias had made it look easy.
Then the doorbell snapped him out of it.
What was he doing here?
He had worked so hard. He couldn’t just throw everything away now. Being at this party was not going to get him any closer to being the best he could be. He was only wasting time. He should leave.
Nathaniel put the beer down on a table and slung his backpack full of SAT workbooks over his shoulder. Will was taking his turn at beer pong; Nathaniel wouldn’t even bother saying good-bye. He made his way through the crowd. He opened the door—
And came face-to-face with Tiny and Lu. His two childhood friends.
“Nathaniel,” Tiny said, surprised.
“Uh, hi,” Nathaniel said, the tips of his ears turning an involuntary shade of red.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.
What was he supposed to say? Will had asked if they could study together, then had thrown a party instead? How pathetic would that make him look?
“Um, what are you doing here?”
Maybe this, though—maybe it was a good thing. He had just been thinking about them, and there they were. His last link to the past. To that last summer he was really happy. His former fellow Science Club members. Right as he was about to leave.
Nathaniel didn’t believe in signs. They weren’t based in anything scientific. Signs had to do with faith and belief and the unknown. They weren’t rooted in fact.
“See?” said Lu, turning to Tiny. “If this isn’t a sign that we should be at this party, I don’t know what is. Nathaniel.” Lu grinned. “Lead us to the alcohol.”
And so he put his backpack down. And he did.