“You got in somewhere?” Cesar asks when I walk into the Reading and Resource Center with a big gummy smile. He knows that over the last two weeks, I’ve been rejected from ten different schools. One by one, I’ve logged on to an admissions page, hopeful and expectant, and I’ve been met with a variation on the theme We regret to inform you…Each time, instead of marinating in my parents’ disappointment, I’ve gotten into my car and driven to hang out with Cesar. He always greets me with the handshake we made up, which he treats as a matter of utmost importance—a complicated slap, fist-bump, foot-tap routine that ends with a tweak of each other’s noses. Afterward, though it’s not part of our choreography, Cesar rests his forehead in my elbow, a gesture that reminds me of Fluffernutter in its unconditional affection.

With Cesar, I don’t feel like a reject.

“I did! AIU, baby!” I say. Honestly, I know very little about AIU—it wasn’t on our college tour last summer—but that doesn’t seem to matter so much. It’s likely my only option. The only other school left to hear from is SCC, which was a long shot to begin with and now, in the wake of so many nos, seems like an impossibility. Mrs. Oh told me that Dr. Wilson’s application strategy was too risky: You can’t only reach up. You need at least one safety unless you’re okay with the possibility of a gap year, which come to think of it might be a great idea for you. Since, unsurprisingly, my parents are not on team gap year—“No way,” my dad said—I threw in the extra application she recommended just in case.

“Too bad you can’t go to Hogwarts,” Cesar says, thrusting this next volume of Harry Potter in my hand even before I have time to shrug off my backpack. “Then again, I mean, what’s the point of anything if you’re a Hufflepuff.”

“Dude, Hufflepuffs rock.” I grin at him. He’s too young to take the Pottermore Sorting Hat test online, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to bend J. K. Rowling’s rules, not even for Cesar. As a result, he’s been able to nurture the fantasy of children everywhere that he’s a Gryffindor, just like Harry. Today he’s wearing the Gryffindor Quidditch T-shirt I bought him.

“Where’s AIU?” A shyness creeps into his voice. Like every other part of my life, my impending departure seems to sit heavy in the air, like a chore I’ve been putting off.

“Arizona.” I get up to circle it on the dry-erase map of the United States that hangs on one wall of our favorite reading corner. We like the overstuffed chairs on this side best, because as Cesar says, they have more oomph.