I turn to her and give her the full Prince Charming Smile that she’s effectively immune to at this point, and she expectedly rolls her eyes.

“That has to be exhausting,” she notes before giving me a light shove. “Also cut that out. It’s so creepy!”

“You don’t talk a lot about Princeton,” I say in maybe the least smooth topic change in recorded history, leaning toward her to return the shoulder bump. “If I’m freaking out about Columbia, I would imagine you would be thinking about Princeton twenty-four/seven.”

Corinne picks at her nail, and her perfect pretzel posture wobbles a bit. “I’m trying very hard not to think about it too much, to be honest. I can’t control what happens now,” she finally says. “I gave myself an ulcer, an actual medical ulcer, during the SATs. I got seven recommendation letters and opened all of them. I blackmailed someone because of a bad recommendation letter,” she adds, giving me a pointed look and shaking her head. “I’m putting it out to the universe now. There’s nothing more I can do. I did my best. And if it’s not enough, then Princeton wasn’t for me, y’know?”

Did you do your best? I hear, in Dad’s voice. I shake the thought away.

“Or I’m just waiting for the actual rejection letter before burning this city to the ground with the fire of a thousand dragons. We’ll see,” she continues.

I snort. That seems like a very plausible course of action.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“You know those intolerable kids who get into, like, every Ivy League college? And then someone interviews them, and they trend online and are always so obnoxiously smug and earnest at the same time?”

Her eye roll confirms that she does. Anyone who has ever even Googled the requirements for a top college has come across those smug little bastards laying out their admission letters on the kitchen table for the local news anchor while their parents beam in the corner.

“I really thought I was going to be one of them,” I say.

The thing with being good at lying to others is that you end up being pretty great at lying to yourself too.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Haltiwanger. Like I said, it’s the great promise of the O-Generation,” Corinne says. “Either you’re exceptional or a nobody. No permission to be anything in between. It’s bullshit.”

It may be the first time I’ve heard Corinne Troy curse out loud. It’s pretty hot.

“It’s getting late,” she says as she begins to gather her things. “I’m meeting my mom at the IFC Center for this retrospective.”

We’ve been at it for close to a full hour already, I realize. Time tends to dissipate with Corinne.