When I first arrived on campus, I thought that’s what I’d do, envisioning the experience would be like the middle chapters in the Harry Potter books when all sorts of fun and mischief took place as Harry and the gang stayed at Hogwarts over the holidays. In fact, I blame Harry Potter for many of my woeful misperceptions about what it would be like to be a student at Barrington Academy. Not that I expected magic or epic battles with fantastical creatures that could decide the Fate of the World. It was more like a subtle yearning for the extraordinary. In hindsight, I probably should’ve read more Salinger.

At first things had gone fairly well.

I’d enrolled in summer school with the idea of getting my bearings with a few classes before the real work of the fall semester began in earnest. I’d even had my dorm room to myself until Thea’s arrival in mid-August.

The whole experience was so different from my life back in Oklahoma I might as well have landed on Venus. I thought it was cool.

Then fall classes started and I quickly realized things were going to be a whole different level of difficult. Which I’d anticipated. In theory. But the reality?

Yeah, it was a lot.

I’d always been smart. That wasn’t bragging, it was the truth. Even as a baby I’d been what the doctors my parents took me to called “advanced for her age.” A source of great pride for Mom and Dad, but especially Mom, who had always possessed a deep yearning to be extraordinary. Much like a stage mother shoving her child into the spotlight whether they wanted it or not, she decided I would be the one to fulfill that dream.

I would be extraordinary.

For the first fifteen and a half years, I did my part. I met and exceeded every milestone early and my grades reflected that sense of “special.” Which was why I could skip fourth grade and apply to a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut when I was fifteen. I hadn’t gotten in right away and that had been a blow. But a few days after learning I was first on the waitlist, Barrington Academy notified me that a space had opened up, and was I still interested?

Why, yes. Yes, I was.

Mom had run around the house, jumping up and down. Dad looked puzzled by her, but proud of me. Over the years, Mom had kept shelf after shelf in the den filled with my academic honors in a kind of shrine that I found embarrassing, but also secretly pleasing. Because that was who I was: Finley Brown, Brainiac.

And then I arrived at Barrington and I wasn’t special anymore.

I was average.

Average.

It was a shock! I’d never been average before. The first time I saw “C” on my paper I was convinced the teacher had been mistaken.