far longer, but she had consistently been telling them to sit down and shut up for over a year. Somehow, in the last five minutes, bravery or insanity had taken over.
“Ugh. Join the club,” Greg said, walking next to her.
“No,” Taylor said more forcefully. “I mean, I really hate Chemistry. I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It’s boring and stupid and pointless and frustrating. It feels like death to me.”
Greg lifted an eyebrow before frowning as they walked to the student union in the bright sunshine. “Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”
“Okay,” she said, letting whatever this new feeling was take over. “I don’t think I want to be a doctor.”
That stopped him completely, and he spun toward her, wide-eyed. “Say what now?”
Not willing to back down even though the sirens were almost literally going off in her head and heart to sound the alarm to get her to stop, Taylor turned to him. “I’m being serious.”
“I…” His eyes went wider still as he fought for words. “Uhhh…? Where is this coming from?”
She lifted her chin. “From me. From Taylor Renee Grayson. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I just see that this is not working for me. This whole thing.” She put out her arms as if to indicate the entire campus. “None of it.”
Like he’d been sucker punched, Greg stood there gaping at her. “And you’re deciding this… now?”
“Yes. I’m deciding this now. Right now.” She crossed her arms, heedless of the other students streaming past them on either side. The look of confused horror on his face made her want to back down, say she was just kidding about all of it and go back into hiding, but she didn’t although it was starting to feel like a five ton block of solid concrete pressing down on her chest.
“Wow. Okay,” he said as if he was trying to figure out how to talk her out of this. “So what does that even mean?”
“I’m not sure,” she said honestly but still not backing down an inch. “I just know that when I think about being a doctor like that, like Meg Ryan in the City of Angels movie, I so see that’s not me. That’s not what I want to do with my life, and I’m not sure it ever was.”
“Ho… Whoa. Uh… Uhm… O…kay.” He corkscrewed his face and stared at her until Taylor’s what-am-I-doing-here alarm started blaring again.
She crossed her arms. “Okay. Can you give me something other than Uh and Uhm?”
“Wh... Huh… What do you want me to say?” Worry cris-crossed his face and etched into his eyes.
“I want you to say that you want what’s best for me,” she said, suddenly wondering if that was even in his thoughts. She had thought he was part of her team, but maybe she’d misjudged it.
“I… do. Of course, I do. I want what’s best for you. I just… I always thought that was the whole doctoring thing, that’s all.”
Taylor’s hard shell act cracked a bit at that. “I know. I did too. I mean, I used to. I thought that doctoring was ‘it,’ you know? The thing that would make me… something, somebody. But the more I think about it, the more I think I made that decision for everybody else more than for me.”
Greg let out a small breath. “Okay? How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Oh, a million little things really. Listening to Yoli and Lily and Merel and Professor Peters today. I think I’m just finally… I don’t know. Do you think I’m crazy?”
He started three syllables that never found the air.
“You do,” she said, deflating. “You think I’ve lost it.”
He was still stumbling for words and not finding many of them. “No. Not… not like that. Not like you’re dumb or anything. Heck, Tay,” he said, putting his hands on his hips, “you and I both know, you’re smart enough to do anything you put your mind to.”
That made her feel a touch better. “But…?” she asked, sensing there was more.
“I mean, this is a big decision,” he said with a heavy emphasis on the word big. “You’re a junior pre-med student. Are you seriously thinking about starting all back over?”
Taylor let out a breath. “I don’t know.” Turning, she let her arms drop as she stuck her hands in the denim jacket he had lent her. She kicked her way down the sidewalk three steps until he came back up beside her. His glances at her