Now that Mr. B is going to be looking over it, I suddenly realize that my application is nowhere near as good as it should be. In fact, it might be the worst one anybody has ever put together. If I’m going to deal with the guilt from getting help from Mr. B, I should be sending in the best possible version of my application for him to look at. Right? Right.

On Tuesday, after I’ve spent every spare moment for the last twenty-four hours putzing around with my essays, Mr. B pulls me backstage while Brittany is helping other people with choreography. He leads me over by a stack of miniaturized set pieces, grabs me by the shoulder, and leans in toward me. His body looms over mine in a way that I find a little menacing even though he’s smiling. “Don’t forget to send me your application.”

The anxiety hits me so hard that I can literally feel sweat coming out of the pores on my palms. “Yeah, I will. It’s just not done yet,” I say. My eyes dart past him to the ensemble members dancing onstage. We’re barely out of earshot here in the wings. “I kind of freaked out about it not being good enough and decided to redo a bunch of it.”

“Don’t worry about it so much,” he says, releasing me. “Send it to me, and we can figure out what needs to change together.” I nod, and he walks away, slipping around the black curtain at the side of the stage to head into the audience.

Okay, I might have been stalling a little because I felt guilty about this whole thing. But I need to get over myself. It’s not that big of a deal. Mr. B was right—I need to take opportunities when they appear.

That night, I put some quick finishing touches on my application draft and attach it to an email to Mr. B. Just as I’m about to send the email, a text from Lex comes through.

LEX: got another college rejection today

LEX: which brings the grand total up to 15 rejections, 1 waitlist, and 0 acceptances

SHAY: where’d you get waitlisted???

LEX: Bremen State

I’ve never heard of it, so I assume it’s a non-licensing college. A quick Google search confirms that.

SHAY: how many more licensing colleges are you waiting to hear from?

LEX: one. so this probably isn’t my year either. maybe I’ll never get out of here lol

Oof. The surest sign that someone is upset is when they put lol after something incredibly sad, as if the lol makes their misery less obvious. It takes the message from regular sad to downright depressing.

LEX: I kind of regret not trying harder with terraball. I know my parents thought it wasn’t worth wasting that much effort on, but if I had trained harder I could have maybe been recruited