featuring the very monster movie she’d wanted to see earlier tonight. He must have searched it while she was talking. Colby was actually really good at computer stuff—he’d taught himself how to use some complicated design software, and he’d just mentioned it like it was no big deal, but when she’d Googled it she’d realized it was what actual architects used. “This is totally against the law, isn’t it?”
“Oh my God.” Colby snorted. “Do you want to watch it or not?”
“Do you want to watch it with me?” she asked, and held her breath until he answered.
“Sure,” Colby said. “Why not?”
“Guess who got into Colgate!” Emily announced when Meg showed up in the senior lounge on Monday morning. She and Mason were sitting on one of the big couches, Adrienne perched on the arm with a giant iced coffee from Wawa in her hand. “Fancy Mason Lee, that’s who.”
“Mase!” Meg grinned. “Yeah, you did!” She hugged him before she could think better of it, both of them breaking apart a little awkwardly. Still, she was happy for him, she realized, in a way she probably wouldn’t have been able to muster up even a couple of weeks ago. “Seriously, that’s great.”
“You’re going to be right down the road from us,” Emily said, breaking a KIND bar in half and taking a delicate bite. “We can all meet up on the weekends, drive home together at Thanksgiving.” She leaned back and flicked at Adrienne’s coffee cup, the ice rattling. “Ade, you can come up from Skidmore all the time.”
“You realize I still haven’t heard from Cornell,” Meg lied, shifting her weight on the terrazzo. Even as she said it, she felt like a cowardly idiot—after all, she wasn’t exactly going to be able to kick this can down the road forever—but still she couldn’t make herself tell them the truth. “It’s entirely possible I won’t get in and you guys will have to go have your western New York state liberal arts adventures without me.”
“Are you kidding me?” Emily shook her curly head, all confidence. “You worry too much.” She nudged Mason in the shoulder. “Tell her she worries too much.”
“You worry too much,” Mason parroted obediently.
Meg huffed a laugh. “Thanks.” She had assumed it would make things weird in their friend group, her and Mason breaking up, but if anything, Emily and Mason seemed to be getting along better lately. Meg wasn’t actually sure if she was okay with that or not.
“So are you definitely going to go?” Adrienne asked Mason, boosting herself up off the arm of the sofa and tossing her cup into the recycling bin in the corner. Adrienne had transferred in from St. Catherine’s two years ago after all that creepy stuff had come out about their monsignor. She spoke three languages, wore her white-blond hair in an immaculate French braid every single day, and had the dirtiest sense of humor Meg had ever heard.
“I still have to hear from Fairfield,” Mason said, “but yeah, probably. Honestly, I’m just glad to be getting in anywhere. When Colgate first put me on the wait list, I started to get worried I’d get rejected from all the schools I applied to and have to, like, go work as a picker in one of those Amazon facilities where they don’t give you any breaks, so you have to pee in a soda bottle and leave it in a corner.”
Meg winced. She knew what Mason meant—of course she knew what Mason meant, even if in reality there had never been even the tiniest possibility of him not getting into college, on top of which his parents had the kind of money that pretty much guaranteed he was never going to have to work any job he didn’t like—but she couldn’t help thinking of Colby. What would he say if he heard that the most horrifying future Meg’s friends could imagine didn’t look that different from his? Not the peeing-in-a-bottle part—she hoped not, in any case—but still. “There are worse things than working in an Amazon warehouse,” she chided gently.
“Working in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, for instance,” Emily joked. “Now, what are we going to do to celebrate?”
Meg tugged at her lip, wanting to contradict them. She thought she would have contradicted them, once upon a time: back before her parents split up, before fighting—of any kind, but especially the public variety—started to feel so deeply dangerous. She didn’t like this version of herself, the one who was too afraid to