Chapters (43)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Ben Philippe
- Back Ad
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
I take a big inhale. We’re coming up to the Wyatt, and there’s still another shoe that needs to drop, and it feels like there won’t be a better time. Perhaps ever.
“New York’s a good city,” I say, coming back to what he said moments earlier. “But I think I’m ready to see something else.”
“Montreal, huh?” he says.
When I stare in confusion for a little too long, he snorts.
“Do you not realize just how many sneaker magazines are highlighted and dog-eared around that apartment? I recycle at least thirty of them a year. I kind of had a hunch you didn’t just pick McGill out of the blue.”
Oh.
“So, that’s that, huh?” He sighs, effortlessly slipping his arm around my neck and pulling me close like he did when I was younger. “Canada: the next frontier.”
“We’ll see if I get in after all this . . . ,” I say. “It’s a fucking disaster.”
“It’s going to be fucking amazing, kid,” he says, stunning me again, as I was fully expecting to be told to watch my language. “Weird year, huh?” Dad says, looking up at the building.
“Weird year,” I agree.
I have no idea what’s going to happen next—with college, with Corinne, with any of it—but I do know now that I’ll always have my dad in my corner. And that feels pretty good.
We cross the street and walk in, Dad’s arm still loose around my neck. Maybe we’re closer to the same height.
Thirty-Two
It’s been over a week since everything happened. In the end, Mr. Vu had been firm. What I’d done was unacceptable by FATE standards. The school saw this as a larger violation of its Moral Code than, say, being caught with a folded piece of paper in an empty water bottle during a closed-book exam. I was suspended for a week, leaving Ming to put out multiple fires about the rumors of my sudden disappearance. There was the sneaker heist gone wrong, the one where I had been arrested for drug trafficking and sent to a juvenile detention center (because no Black guy can commit a sin that’s not a Law & Order cliché, apparently), the one where I was bedridden because “Cori” shattered my heart, and the one where my parents had been caught trying to bribe the Ivy League into accepting me with $500,000 donations and photoshopped pictures of me in a rendition of Macbeth. Honestly, that one’s my favorite.