Thicker Than Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

doesn’t really make you better. It just delays the inevitable, allowing you to hang on for dear life. But it doesn’t make you stronger or brighter. It just buries your flame in something like ash. You might still smolder, but you will never flare again.
    On Monday, my friend Natalie was waiting for me next to the college tour bulletin board. It had been stripped of last year’s university pamphlets and it looked like a face—tan and pockmarked, with a few pushpin piercings. Our high school guidance office made a lot of promises—not the leastof which was that they’d guide us toward something. The bulletin board was a halfhearted attempt.
    â€œYou look at the list yet?” I asked her. Natalie shook her head.
    â€œI wanted to wait for you—that way we can sign up for the same ones.”
    I rolled my eyes, but smiled. I’d known Natalie since middle school and she’d never grown out of the bandwagon mentality. Case in point—when lacrosse became the sport du jour, she immediately began dating a series of varsity players. The most recent one, Jeremy, was actually sticking around.
    I looked at the sign-up sheet on the back of the office door. Our high school started the College Tour Crawl two years before—you could hitch a ride to different nearby universities every other Saturday. It was free and it meant you didn’t have to rely on your parents to take you on the weekday tours.
    There were ten schools on the fall list. I’d been accepted to three of them, but I started signing my name next to every one.
    â€œYou’re going to go to all of them?” Natalie sounded doubtful. “I thought you were, like, completely committed to Edenton.”
    â€œEdenton is expensive.” I shrugged. “I just figure I need to keep my options open. Have a backup plan—isn’t that what the counselors are always saying?”
    â€œI dunno. I usually zone out when I’m in those college prep assemblies.” She took the pen when I finished andjotted her name next to the first two schools. She paused with her hand hovered over the Edenton slot. “So—I mean, if you’re probably going to go there, is there any reason to take an informational tour? Can’t we just explore the campus in the fall when you’re actually enrolled?”
    I slung my book bag back on my shoulder and shook my head.
    â€œI want to go see it.”
    What I don’t say? That going on a college tour at my dream school might actually make my dreams still feel possible.
    â€œI gotta go to Chem. I’ll see you later.”
    Some classes seem fundamentally useless. Chemistry was the opposite. I liked the whole concept of substances interacting with one another, of creating something new when there was nothing there.
    Dr. Schafer was our only doctor-teacher. It made kids either listen to her or try to see if they could push her buttons. Fortunately, Organic Chem was for advanced students, not assholes who threw things covered in their own spit. I was halfway to my seat when Dr. S called my name.
    â€œCeCe? Could you come here?”
    I knew what she was going to say. I could see it in her down-turned mouth, her furrowed brow. I braced myself for impact.
    â€œCeCe,” she said, her voice lowered, “I still haven’t received your lab fee.”
    â€œI know. I’m sorry.”
    â€œI wouldn’t bring it up, except that we’re starting acidityand alkalinity at the end of this week and, in order to supply you with your materials, I have to have —”
    â€œMy dad must have forgotten to send in the check. I’ll say something to him tonight.”
    â€œRight. Okay. Well, listen”—voice even lower, eyes full of pity—“the guidance office runs a program for people who need some assistance with school fees. If you’d like, I can say something.”
    â€œNo, that’s okay.”
    â€œAre you sure?