I Let Him Choose Her This Time

I stole the love letter the prettiest girl in school had written to the boy next door, right before our last ACT, and the two of them never got together.

He hated me for the rest of his life. When he found out I was in love with him, he called me jealous and manipulative, and told me he would never feel the same.

Later we both died in a car crash. Before he went, he begged me: if we ever got to do it over, don't wreck what she and I could have had. So I gave him what he asked for.

The second time around, I left the letter where it was. And then, so he could go to the same school she was going to— the entire science section, not one question answered.

Chapter 1 Once the admissions decisions were all in, Theo and Viviana got together.

At the graduation party, the "romantic gesture" of giving up the whole science section for love had gotten around to everybody. They were calling him Romeo.

I sat in a dim corner holding a glass, watching the two of them at the center of the crowd, and took a small sip of the juice in it.

Beside me, my best friend Hannah couldn't make sense of it and was completely floored. "Has he lost his mind? He cut off his own future with his own two hands?" "For this?

For some future with Viviana that might not even happen?" Yes. This time around, when it came down to his future or Viviana, he picked Viviana.

In the life before, I quietly took that letter right before the last ACT of application season and made the choice for him. I chose the future.

What I got for it was a lifetime of his hatred.

And when he found out I was in love with him, the disgust in his voice was absolute. "Catherine, I'm not interested in people who are jealous and manipulative.

Your feelings make me sick." The truth is that I didn't keep the letter from him for good. I gave it back the same night, as soon as the test was over.

But when he brought it to Viviana, what he got was no. "Theo, our scores are so far apart. There's no way we end up at the same school. So how would this even work?

Four years longdistance?" "What I need is a boyfriend who can be there whenever I want him. Can you do that?" Theo came back hollowed out and gave me one cold look.

The next morning his parents were at my door in a panic, saying he meant to swap out every school on his list and asking me to talk him down. I wasn't especially surprised.

But when I found him, before I could get a word out, his eyes came to rest on me and he laughed once, low and ugly. "What, stealing the letter once wasn't enough?

You came back to wreck it a second time, Catherine?" We were standing at the top of the stairwell where the wind came through. It was a bright, sunny day, and it was cold anyway.

I looked down at him, wrung out and on edge, and I said one thing. "Theo.

It took you a full twelve years to get where you are today." In the end, it took his parents threatening to take their own lives before he let the list stand.

And he still didn't end up with Viviana.

After that I was the reason the two of them never happened, and every time the thought came back around and sat wrong in him, I was the one he took it out on.

He was still blaming me in the last minute of his life.

Inside a car that reeked of blood, his voice shredded down to nothing, he begged me. "If we ever get to do this over, Catherine, please don't decide you know best and wreck what she and I have." So when I came back, I gave him what he asked for.

I left the letter alone. Theo found it, the way he was meant to.

He read that Viviana liked him too, and that she'd only left him hanging because she was afraid the gap between them was too wide for the two of them to last.

Then he cut off his own retreat, all of it, nothing left to walk back to— the entire science section, not one question answered.

Nine points below what he'd scored in the life before. He did, in the end, "close" the gap between himself and Viviana. And he got the girl.

Chapter 2 A few rounds in, somebody suddenly brought me up, sounding a little wistful about it. "You know, back then I always figured Catherine was the one who'd end up with Theo.

I mean, they grew up together, and the two of them were always neck and neck." Theo shot it down himself, fast, probably worried Viviana would take it wrong.

There was nothing warm left in his voice at all. "Just a friend I grew up with." I smiled, no sound to it, and ran the phrase through my head once. Just a friend.

He wasn't wrong, though. We really had grown up together.

From elementary school through the end of high school we came up through the same district, and even our honors schedules lined up almost exactly.

Outside of my own parents, the person I'd spent the most hours of my life with was probably Theo. I'd seen him stay up all night to crack one problem.

He'd seen the state I was in at a hundred and four degrees, and I walked into that test anyway.

Nobody knew better than we did how much work went into those topthree finishes that everybody else described as effortless.

When we finished middle school, the two best students in the grade were Theo and me.

On our first day of high school, he pointed at the top two photos on the honor wall in the lobby and asked me, "Four years from now that's going to be us, Catherine.

You feel good about it?" Behind him the summer evening sky was burning red, thick and gaudy, and the cicadas were screaming themselves raw, restless and alive.

I turned my head, books against my chest, and looked at him. "Theo.

It's a deal." What we saw in each other back then was all of it: everything we wanted from what came next, everything we were reaching for, and the flat certainty that we were going to take it.

It didn't take long before there was a Viviana in his eyes too.

In those high school years, when most of us were unwashed and halfdead chasing something, Viviana alone was beautiful past reason.

At the fall talent show, not long after school started, she stood at the center of the stage in a white dress like a crescent moon come down out of the sky, the haze around her blurring everything else out.

Her, only her, landing in the eye of every single person in that room.

After that night Viviana's name went through the whole school, and she became the unreachable moon half the boys there were quietly in love with. Theo included.

The first time I noticed something was off was the day he carried a stack of graded papers down to the classroom at the other end of the hall for our math teacher.

He came back and sat down with the tips of his ears red, and the problem set stayed in front of him for the entire study hall, and he had done exactly one question.

On scratch paper packed edge to edge with equations, there was a name that had no business being there— Viviana Lockhart.

He'd struck it through, again and again, and it didn't cover a thing. Later I heard that while he was down there dropping off the papers, Viviana had "made a move" on him.

She'd been horsing around with a friend, lost her balance, and ended up against his chest with her arms around him.

Theo stood there with a girl hanging off him, blank for a second, then said, with his face locked down, "Careful." Viviana just looked up at him and smiled. "Sorry about that, genius." "Oh, and you're really goodlooking!" All at once the circle around them erupted in whooping.

Theo, who was steady and closed off and never let anything show, was not steady anymore.

He and I were alike up to a point, both of us rational, cleareyed, calm the way warm water is calm, and Viviana was all feeling and heat, an AlkaSeltzer tablet dropped into that warm water.

A beautiful tablet, at that. So it didn't surprise me at all that he was drawn to her. It's what every romance show and every novel runs on.

The leads are opposites, and the whole pitch is that people are pulled toward what they aren't. Chapter 3 There are so many of them.

The billionaire and the Cinderella, the honor student and the kid failing out, the grump and the ray of sunshine… Back then I thought that no matter how hard Theo fell, he'd still know what actually mattered.

But the boy who had always been calm, levelheaded, and sensible went ahead and broke the rules exactly once in his life, for Viviana.

I never really knew how the two of them got close.

I was buried under my own workload and could barely keep my head above it, and most of what he and I talked about was how to work this problem, the answer to that one, or whether he was ready for the next test.

By the time I noticed how close they'd gotten, Viviana was already calling him nerd and genius like she'd been doing it for years, and Theo, clearly, was used to it.

I started noticing that he disappeared for half an hour every day at lunch, which turned out to be him walking Viviana through problem sets.

And every Saturday morning something suddenly came up, which turned out to be a gettogether of Viviana's. I knew. Theo was in love with her.

That wasn't enough to make me stop and put my attention on whatever was developing between them. I kept my head down and kept working.

Until the national physics competition our junior year. The school ran round after round of cuts, and at the end of it there was one spot to represent us.

Five people were left in the final round, and one of them would go. Theo didn't come. Viviana had spiked a fever and passed out, and the school called an ambulance.

When she asked him to, Theo rode along to the emergency room and sat with her the whole afternoon. I don't know how to describe what I felt.

All I remember is that when I got to the hospital and found him, everything I had came out as one confused syllable. "Theo?" He was leaning against the wall of the ER hallway, his face giving away nothing, and he said one thing. "I've done everything by the book for years now.

I get to break the rules once, don't I?" So he threw away every bit of the preparation he'd ground out over all those months, and forgot every night he'd sat there working problems while he was sick.

Looking at that cleancut, careful boy in front of me, I didn't recognize him for a second, and out of nowhere something came up in my throat that felt like tears.

I didn't say any of it.

But I understood perfectly well that what he'd just done was not a good sign, so when the second multiplechoice question of his life came up in front of him, I filled in the answer for him ahead of time.

I took the letter Viviana left him the night before the test.

Before that, honestly, I had already made my peace with the idea that Theo would tell her how he felt once the test was over, and that the two of them would be together.

I'd gotten ready to wish them well, too. On my way to the honor roll awards assembly, I doubled back to the classroom for my notebook.

What I hadn't counted on was walking in on Viviana leaving that letter, start to finish. The room was empty except for her.

She was standing next to the physics textbook Theo had left on his desk, talking to a friend. The gist of what they were saying came down to this.

She had started getting close to Theo because of a bet with a friend: land the number one student in the grade. Somewhere in there she'd actually fallen for him.

But she thought the gap between them was too wide for the same school, and she didn't want four years apart, so even knowing he liked her, she kept insisting the two of them were only classmates.

The letter was her saying she hoped they could go to the same college. It was also her saying she wanted him.

Before that, I could have told you for a fact that Theo would never give up his future for anything or anyone. In that moment I wasn't sure anymore.

To head off that one percent, I waited until they left, went in, and slid the letter out of the book.

In the countless times I faced that sneer of his afterward, I went back over it again and again. Had I been wrong to do it?

Chapter 4 There was one time I tried to talk it through with him calmly. "Theo, even if you had seen it in time, what would it have changed?

You're telling me you'd actually have, just to be with her—" He laughed once, short and ugly, and cut me off without a flicker of doubt. "Catherine.

I would." I looked at him for a while without saying anything, and in the end I laughed a little, because that was the first time I understood that I had, in fact, been wrong.

Spectacularly wrong.

Near the end of the party, Viviana came over on Theo's arm, eyes bright and smiling, and raised her glass to me. "Catherine, you're the person who's walked eighteen years with Theo.

Whatever the two of you are, it's still different from what he has with anybody else, so… you'll wish us well too, won't you?" I looked at the boy next to her, black Tshirt, that open easy face, and I smiled and corrected her, politely. "I didn't walk eighteen years with Theo.

We happened to be on the same road, and we went the same direction for eighteen years.

From here on the roads are different." "Plenty of people have wished the two of you happiness tonight. You don't need one more from me.

What I'll wish you is…" "A bright future." And I meant it.

We all came out of ordinary families, and every one of us who ground through those years and fought our way out did it for a bright future.

In the life before, once Theo got to that top school, he became the favorite student of the most respected professor in the physics department. He met people who carried weight.

He made more friends who wanted the same things he did than he could count.

With the best resources in the country behind him, he moved through the research he loved with his head up, and the name Theodore Ingram kept turning up in the journals, and there he'd be at conferences, talking easily, holding the room.

His future was wide open. The one regret, probably, was Viviana, the unreachable moon of his teenage years. He never got over her, not for the rest of his life.

At the occasional class reunion, whenever her name came up it was who she was with now, who she'd broken up with, or which rich kid had thrown money at her to ask her out.

The last I heard of her was over winter break. She was getting married. That night Theo went drinking with friends and got obliterated, and afterward he came and knocked on my door.

My parents happened to be out.

The second the door opened he pushed past me, and there was nothing left in him but venom. "Catherine, you must be thrilled right now." "She's getting married. Satisfied?" I