“I didn’t want to tell you until I had everything finalized, until I knew it was going to work out.”

Now I got it. He didn’t tell me until he could say it was going to be great.

“Why does it matter when I told you?”

I stood up. I couldn’t look at his smiling face one more second.

How could he not get it? I didn’t need another story from him about how everything was great. I didn’t need a story about how he figured it all out. Those stories were never going to help me. What I needed was a story about how he messed up so bad, he had no idea how to make it right or even which direction he had to go to get to right.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I…” I couldn’t tell him what was wrong. He didn’t want to know. He wanted me to believe his stories about rainbows and unicorns. He wanted me to say school was a ten; he wanted me to write articles for his paper; he wanted me to believe that I could win a Solve-a-Thon if I tried. “I gotta go. I can’t be late.”

He looked at his watch. “You won’t be. You still have time.”

I backed away. “Yeah, but I need…I need some time, you know, just by myself before, to focus.”

“Oh, okay. That sounds smart.” He started rolling up his plans. “We can talk more about this later.”

“Sure. I’ll catch up with you guys at the parents’ lounge after,” I said, still moving away.

“Hey, Tris, hold on a sec.” He came closer. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look—”

“Yeah, sure. I’m…great.”

Then I turned and walked away.

I heard him call something after me but I didn’t stop. I think it was “good luck.”

Chapter 23

Zooming up in the elevator, I tried to shut Dad, all sycamore-syrup smiley, out of my head.

As much as I wanted to run out of The Food Connection building right then and forget about Can You Cut It? forever, there was something I needed more.

I needed to prove I deserved to be in the finals. I needed to prove that I’d deserved to be there all along.

It wouldn’t erase what I’d done, or make it okay, but maybe it would help me figure out how to face up to it.

Just outside the greenroom, my phone buzzed with a text from Josh: “Concentrate! Create! Crush the Competition! Concentrate! Create! Crush the Competition!”

Me: Jeanine?

Jeanine: I borrowed Josh’s phone

Me: What happened to believe and achieve

Jeanine: Time to step it up

Me: She’s never going to let me win. U know that right?

Jeanine: U don’t need her to say it to know if u won. B THE SHARK.

My throat went tight. Jeanine had been cheering from the beginning for all kinds of reasons, for Petersville, for herself for coming up with the idea in the first place, but this time felt like it wasn’t for anything but me.