Page 2 of Choosing Her

saylor

I walked out of the stables, holding my riding helmet in one hand and using the other to undo my tight French braids.

My scalp was aching, my muscles were sore, and all I could think about was taking a hot shower to get all this sweat and grime off of me.

The sun was going down, casting an orangey hue over the campus and making it almost impossible to see, but I could walk the downhill path from the stables to my dorm room in my sleep.

“Heads!” Someone yelled as I walked by the outdoor basketball court behind the two large dorm houses.

I immediately ducked, even though I saw the ball go soaring the opposite way, toward the boys’ dorm.

It bounced along the path a couple times, before coming to a stop at the foot of a brown-haired boy sitting in the grass.

Without meaning to, I came to a stop and watched as he grabbed the ball.

With his head tilted down and the sun behind him, it was impossible to see his face, but that didn’t stop me from watching—certain that it was him .

Ever since school started up again, it was like Caleb Cross was everywhere.

In that month after our kiss—before he’d apparently left on a semester-long exchange to London—I hadn’t run into him once.

If Naomi hadn’t later told me he went to our school, I never would have guessed it.

But then the new school year started and suddenly, I couldn’t get away from him.

If I lined up in the cafeteria, he was two spots ahead of me.

If I went to the beach, he was there with his friends.

I thought we’d have no classes together and then he switched into my English Literature class two weeks into term.

It was like he was my very unwanted shadow, never too far away.

The boy took a step forward to throw the ball back to the group on the court, which let me see his face clearly, and I realized he wasn’t who I thought at all.

He had to be a freshman with how young he looked, and now that I could see clearer, I realized his hair didn’t look anything like Crossy’s anyway.

Great—not only did I have to see the spawn of satan all over the place, I was also starting to imagine him everywhere too.

I rolled my eyes and kept walking toward the dorm.

I started to run my hands through my hair now that the braids were completely undone and wondered if any of the showers would be free.

Unfortunately, most of the girls on my floor preferred showering in the evenings since nobody wanted to get up early enough to wash and dry their hair in the morning, so getting a shower in before curfew was sometimes near impossible.

“Saylor!” A girl called, just as my foot hit the first concrete step leading up to the dorms. I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to answer them or if I could get away with pretending I didn’t hear.

But the hesitation was obviously enough for them to realize that I heard, because it was followed up by, “Come over here! I have something for you.”

I let out a sigh and dropped my foot back to the ground again and turned to see who was calling me.

The voice came from the opposite direction than the sun, so at least I could see.

The girl waving a hand to catch my attention was Julia, my dorm advisor, who was sitting in the Muskoka chairs by the lake with some of the other dorm advisors.

My muscles screamed in protest as I started toward them.

“What’s up?” I asked as I reached them. The dorm advisors were all about twenty and more often than not could be found sitting in these chairs, which were set up in a semicircle around a little fire pit.

Julia was sitting sideways in her chair, with her feet resting on the arm of the chair, and was dressed in a Hartwell sweater with her curly hair thrown in a bun.

If I didn’t know better, I would have assumed she was a senior, rather than someone who worked here.

“Your sister dropped this off for you,” Julia said.

She pulled something out of her pocket and passed it over to me.

I wasn’t surprised to see it was a postcard, though I wasn’t sure why Naomi gave it to Julia instead of sliding it under my door like she usually did.

“Looks like it’s from Greece. Your parents there? ”

I felt a flash of annoyance that she’d looked at it long enough to know that it was from Greece, even though I knew the photo on the front was pretty obvious about it. But still, it wasn’t her letter. Not that it was really for me, either, even if Naomi passed it along like it was. She always did.

“I guess,” I said, turning it over in my hands a couple times. Truthfully, I had no idea what country my parents were in right now.

“You must go on such amazing trips with them,” she said wistfully.

“Mh-hm,” I said noncommittally. It was the same assumption everyone had when I told them about how my parents had taken a year off to travel the world. The part that I never told anyone was that I rarely went on trips with them. “Anyway, I should go start on my homework. See you later.”

They all mumbled some half-hearted goodbyes and by the time I was two steps away, were back to gossiping. I read the back of the postcard as I walked, my eyes running easily over my mom’s perfect calligraphy.

Dear Naomi,

Greece has been so wonderful. Travelling just the two of us is certainly ideal. Of course, I’m sure you’re having just as much fun at school—as long as you’re keeping your grades up! Say hi to Rebecca for us.

Love,

Mom & Dad

I held onto the postcard as I walked into the dorms, then slipped it into the first trash can I passed. I wasn’t sure what Naomi thought I did with the postcards after she handed them off, but she’d never asked for one back, so I figured it was fair game for me to throw them out.

I walked into my room, ready to face-plant on my bed and not get up until it was time for dinner, but stopped short when I found two girls sprawled on my rug, doing homework.

“You know,” I said, as the door silently closed behind me, “you two do have your own room to hang out in.”

I probably should have been more surprised to see them in here than I was, but Poppy and Lilah preferred to hang out in my room whenever they had the chance.

I’d stopped bothering to lock my door whenever I left, because every time I did, they ended up texting me to come by and unlock it.

I was supposed to have a roommate, but she’d decided not to come to Hartwell Academy this year at the last second and another girl hadn’t taken her spot, so I was left with a two-person room by myself.

Apparently, that meant my room automatically became a common room for my friends.

“But then we wouldn’t get to see you,” Poppy said, grinning up at me.

Her wavy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was still wearing her uniform, like she’d come straight from class.

Lilah was the total opposite, dressed in a pair of Hartwell branded sweatpants and a graphic tee, with her blonde hair falling loose around her face.

“I haven’t been here for hours. You haven’t seen me.

” I started pulling off my riding clothes, not caring in the slightest about whether they would see me in my bra and underwear.

After spending my whole life bouncing between boarding schools and summer camps, where I routinely shared rooms with other girls, I’d lost all sense of modesty.

I peered over her shoulder at the textbook she had propped up on the ground. “Math?”

“We’re both going to fail this test,” Lilah groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead. Poppy looked like she was silently laughing at her roommate as she looked at me. I held back my laugh at Lilah’s dramatics as well and finished pulling on some pajamas, before dropping between them.

“What’s the problem?” I asked. “I took this class last year. I bet I can help.”

Lilah looked at me with big eyes. “You already took this class? Why? ”

She sounded so bewildered that it made me laugh. “I wanted to get ahead of my math courses so I have time to take all the courses I want next year.”

It was less that I wanted to and more that this was one of the few areas of my life my parents cared about whatsoever.

They chose the exact courses I was going to take through all of high school and contacted the guidance office for me to make sure that I could fit all the courses into my schedule.

Since Hartwell Academy prided itself on the academic success of its students, they were happy to accommodate anything my parents asked for.

Not to mention, the generous and “entirely unrelated” donation my parents offered the school at the end of every semester that went well for Naomi and me.

Since they knew next to nothing about either of us, our grades were the only way for them to judge whether our lives were going well, so keeping them high was the biggest priority.

“None of it makes any sense,” Lilah complained. She turned the textbook so I could read it better and waved a hand over the whole thing. “None of it. I don’t understand.”

“Okay, well maybe we should start a little earlier,” I said. “I mean, at what point did you stop understanding what the teacher was talking about?”

She just stared at me helplessly, so I slid her notebook over to myself and started flipping back through the pages, hoping to find the beginning of the unit.

Instead, I found about two pages of notes—concerning, given that we were a month into the school year—and a page titled HOW TO MAKE LEVI BARRETT FALL IN LOVE WITH POPPY.

“Lilah, no wonder you don’t understand,” I said, pushing the notebook back toward her. “You don’t take any notes.”

“Well, who needs math when I’m going to become a matchmaker?” Lilah asked. “The two have nothing to do with each other!”