This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,85

that it is my job. Teams work the most effectively when everyone works as a unit, with specialized tasks.”

“Not bad.” I think about other likely questions. “Okay. How will a UUJBP scholarship fit in your future plans?”

Jocelyn rolls her eyes at first, then gets a mischievous look. “Well, sir,” she says, honest to God batting her eyes. “It’ll allow me to fulfill my potential by dating this really cute, sweet guy, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just sign me up.”

I’m so flustered that I fumble the plasticware I’m wrapping into a napkin. When I bend down to pick it up I can feel my face heat up as my mouth pulls into a smile I can’t suppress.

“Xiao Jia! How many times I say, no flirt!” Mr. Wu complains from the propped-open storeroom.

“I’m not flirting, I’m practicing for my interview!” Jocelyn yells.

This Is My Brain on Blank

JOCELYN

The first time I step onto the University of Utica grounds, I’m pleasantly underwhelmed. It’s an urban campus, so it doesn’t have a lush, manicured college green. It’s basically a bunch of loosely affiliated parking lots and high rises. It looks almost unassuming, I think.

My dad drops me off and I find my way into one of the taller buildings. My borrowed shoes are the right size, but slightly too wide, so I have to scrunch my toes a little to keep them from slipping when I walk. A receptionist gives me a name tag with a UU lanyard and points me to some couches in the atrium, where two pasty-white guys and one slightly darker-skinned girl sit.

The other three are ignoring one another, which is fine by me. I open the leather folio that Will lent me and skim through the key talking points Grace had me write down.

“Once they start asking questions, remember to make like a politician on Fox News, and be ready to pivot, pivot, pivot!” Grace told me.

“Won’t they be mad if I don’t actually stay on topic, though?”

“Nah, they don’t really have an agenda other than wanting to know more about you. So it’s okay for you to be proactive and dictate what they discover.”

She gave me a bunch of pivot phrases, like: “That reminds me of _____” or “My personal experience of _____ led me to _____” or “It’s important for me to always remember _____.”

I whisper the words under my breath and try not to feel like a tool.

Eventually the other girl tries to start a conversation with me. “Excuse me,” she asks, “are you here to interview for the JBP, too?”

She’s wearing an adorable navy skirt suit that makes me feel like a classless ogre, even in Grace’s jacket, and her dark brown hair is up in a high ponytail that’s so perky I can’t help but be irked by it.

“Yeah,” I say cautiously, not able to figure out if she’s being genuinely friendly or just sizing up the competition.

“Oh, cool, me too. I’m Laura. This is such an amazing program. My older sister did it a few years ago. She’s at Syracuse now, and this summer she got an internship at Bain. Can you believe it?”

I smile as appreciatively as I can, as if I could tell Bain from Adam. “That’s great. She must be a rock star.”

“What school are you from? Are you going to be a junior or a senior?” she asks, her eyes flicking over my ensemble. Sizing me up, then.

“I’m from Perry High, just about to start junior year. How about you?” I ask.

“St. Agnes. And I’m going to be a junior, too!”

Will’s school, I realize with a jolt. They must know each other—I remember Will saying once that St. Agnes is small, only about one hundred kids in each grade, so it’s like a family. “A really incestuous family,” he said once. “I think the coeditor of our paper has dated literally every girl in the school at some point. Some of them twice.” When I asked Will how many he had dated, he’d gotten squirrely and said that he’d mostly had crushes. Now, of course, I can’t help but wonder if Laura was one of them.

She’s got that look of someone crushable, wearing just enough eyeliner to make her hazel eyes pop while still looking professional and expertly applied lip gloss that make me just want to stare at her mouth when she talks. And she’s likable, too?

Thankfully, before I can obsess for too long, a middle-aged woman with a clipboard walks over and leads us to a