Mother Knows Best: Escaping the Valedictorian

"Apply to Harvard and I'll report you for cheating." That was my own mother. Our whole school shipped me and Miles Sharpe. He was the valedictorian.

I was the girl one spot behind him. He wanted me to put Harvard at the top of my list, right next to his.

My mother cried until her voice gave out. "Leave with that boy and I'll move in across from your school and watch you every single day." "Ignore me and I'll lock myself in the kitchen and turn on the gas." So I folded.

I changed my list to Los Angeles. Five years later, at our class reunion, somebody asked why Miles never showed.

Harper, our class president, sat there a long time before she answered. "Don't bring him up. He's been locked up over three years." That night I went home and texted my mother.

Me: [Mom. Listening to you was the best decision I ever made.] Chapter 1 My mother wouldn't let me go to Harvard with the valedictorian. Five years later, I understood.

His 4.97 landed on my screen one second after my own 4.96 did. He'd screenshotted it and sent it to me. I was the girl who always came in second.

One hundredth of a point behind him. He said, "Come on. I'll wait for you." Our whole school shipped us.

Only my mother sat there holding my college list, crying until her voice gave out. "Apply to Harvard and I'll report you for cheating." "Leave with that boy and I'll move in across from your school and watch you every single day." "Ignore me and I'll lock myself in the kitchen and turn on the gas." So I folded.

I changed my list to Los Angeles. Five years later, at our class reunion, somebody asked why Miles never showed.

Harper sat there a long time before she answered. "Don't bring him up." That night I went home and texted my mother. Me: [Mom.

Listening to you was the best decision I ever made.] Four point nine six. I stared at the number on my screen. My fingers shook too hard to hit screenshot.

The class group chat went off first. [Miles pulled a 4.97!] [Nora's got to be right up there too, right?] [Golden pair. Harvard.

Locked in.] A second later his text dropped in over the top of it. Him: [Come on. I'll wait for you.] He typed it the way he handed back a math problem he'd already solved. Certain.

Clean. No room in it for anybody to say no. I sent back one word. Me: [Okay.] My thumb barely left the screen before a bowl broke in the kitchen.

A piece of it skidded all the way to the doorway. My mother stood at the sink with a red split opening across the back of her hand. She left the blood alone.

Her eyes went straight to my phone. "Who was that?" I killed the screen. "Just somebody from school." She came toward me.

Water ran off her apron onto the floor, and her eyes were red enough to stop me where I stood. "Miles?" That was when it landed. She already knew.

Knew he walked me to the front gate of our complex every day after school. Knew he loaned me his problemset notebook.

Knew what he said to me after the last unit test of senior year. Quit leaving that hundredth of a point between us. Chapter 2 I held out my report card. "Mom.

I got a 4.96." She didn't look at it. "Where's your college list?" She dumped my backpack out on the table and went through it. The draft list was folded inside my physics packet.

First line, Harvard. Second line, English.

Her nail dragged across the paper and left a groove in it. "Who told you to write this?" "I did." She laughed once, like somebody had just slapped her. "You did." "You decided to move across the country." "You decided to put down the same school as Miles Sharpe." Down the hall, a neighbor's door shut.

I dropped my voice. "Mom. It's my list." Her hand came up. I didn't duck. The slap landed across my face. She almost never hit me that year.

She just kept me home after dark, kept me out of dresses, kept me off the phone in the apartment, kept his name from ever coming through the door.

That day, right after she hit me, she pulled me in against her with her hands still shaking. "Nora.

I'm begging you." Her tears came down on my shoulder. "Don't go to Boston." I stood there and didn't move. "Why?" She wouldn't say.

She just pressed the list flat against her chest and cried until she couldn't get a breath in. "Apply to Harvard and I'll report you for cheating." "Leave with that boy and I'll move in across from your school and watch you every single day." "Ignore me and I'll lock myself in the kitchen and turn on the gas." That last one went through me cold.

The burner knob on the stove was already turned partway open. No blue flame. The smell had already crawled out as far as the table.

I got across that kitchen and cranked the knob shut. My fingertips banged the metal edge and went numb. My mother slid down onto the floor with the list still in her arms.

My phone buzzed again. Him: [Enrollment forms tomorrow at school. I'll be out front waiting.] The paper in her hands had gone soft and crumpled at the edges.

I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened to her say it over and over. "Nora. I am begging you." The next morning, the honor board was up by the front doors. His name sat first.

Mine sat second. One hundredth of a point. A label somebody had stuck to my forehead sophomore year and never peeled off. It used to eat at me.

Then Miles said, "You don't have to beat me. Just stay with me." The whole class hollered. I laughed too. Thinking about it now put a pin straight through something in my chest.

He was waiting under the oak by the front steps. White shirt, clean, two cold waters in his hand.

He looked at my face before he looked at anything else. "Your mom hit you." I pulled my hair down over the marks. "It's nothing." He handed me a bottle.

His voice dropped. "I've told you. Don't be scared of her." By the security desk, a few kids had stopped to watch us.

Miles stepped forward and put himself between me and all of it. "You bring your enrollment form?" "I have it." Chapter 3 "Give it here." I stopped. "Why would I give it to you?" Something in his face caught for a second.

Like the question itself hadn't occurred to him. "I'll look it over." "No thanks." Two words, and the line between his eyebrows pulled tight.

Then the smile came back. "Nora, you didn't sleep last night, did you? Don't get worked up." He took the water bottle out of my hand. Twisted the cap off. Handed it back.

He'd done that for me more times than I could count. It used to read as sweet. Wind came across the field. My chest wouldn't take a full breath.

Our homeroom teacher was waiting for us in his office. "Miles. Nora.

With numbers like yours, you can take a real swing at Harvard, Yale, either one." He spread the college brochures across the desk. "Nora especially.

English there is a lock for you." Miles sat down beside me and set the tip of his pen on the Harvard line. "She's putting this one." The teacher laughed. "So you two already talked it through?" Under the desk, my nails went into my palm.

Miles answered for me. "We settled it a long time ago." Somebody called our teacher out into the hall. Then it was the two of us in that office. Miles pulled my draft list over.

The top line was still creased where my mother had crushed it, and his eyes went flat. "Your mom lose it again last night?" I looked up. "Don't talk about her like that." He put the pen down. "That's not normal parenting, Nora.

She's ruining you." That word sat too heavy. Heavy enough that I stood up without deciding to. The chair leg scraped the floor with a sound that went through my teeth.

Miles watched me. When he spoke, he took his time with it. "If you back down this once, you'll back down for the rest of your life." My phone went off in my pocket.

A dozen messages from my mother.

Mom: [Where are you?] Mom: [Did you fill out the form?] Mom: [Put Boston on that paper and I'm coming to the school right now.] The last one was only a photo.

The kitchen door, locked from the inside. Her driver's license and my birth certificate laid out next to the stove. The room went black at the edges.

Miles reached for my phone. "Give it to me. I'll talk to her." I stepped back. "No." His hand stayed there in the air between us. Our teacher came back through the doorway. "Nora.

You made up your mind?" The pen touched down and the ink bled out into the paper. In the first line, I crossed out Harvard.

While I wrote UCLA, Miles stood behind my chair, and his breathing changed. The last stroke closed. He asked it quietly. "Nora.

You're done with me?" The classroom was hot that afternoon. The fan squealed on every turn, like somebody sharpening a blade over our heads.

Kids crowded in around my desk, got a look at my enrollment form, and every one of them stalled out. "Nora, you're going to UCLA?" "You and Miles had Harvard locked, didn't you?" Chapter 4 "You're not even going to the same school anymore?" Somebody tried to make a joke of it. "Long distance is fine.

Makes the whole thing more tragic and romantic." Miles didn't laugh. He folded his own enrollment form in half and pushed it down into his bag.

Harper stepped in to smooth it over. "UCLA is a great school. Nora's wanted LA forever anyway." I gave her a look that said thank you. Miles turned and walked out of the classroom.

It took about a minute for the hallway to start up. "Bet her family wouldn't let her." "Her mom's strict, right? Like really strict." "Poor Miles.

He waited on her for three years." Three years. It came down over my head like a bucket of dirty water. Sophomore year, Miles was the first person in that room who talked to me.

I'd come in as the kid who finished top of her middle school class, and everybody stared. He slid a competition packet across my desk. "Last problem. Can you do it?" I did it.

He looked at my work a while before he said anything. "Not bad." After that we were a set. Lab partners, competition partners, speech partners.

Even on the awards stage, him and then me. Him first. Me second. Every single time. Teachers said we made each other better. Kids said we'd end up together eventually.

My mother watched him walk me home, and her face went colder than river ice. Our senior dinner was at the barbecue joint by the school gate. Miles never came.

Two glasses of iced tea got pushed on me, and my screen lit up and died, lit up and died. Nothing from him. When it broke up, Harper pulled me over to the curb. "Nora.

He's in the back alley." The alley was stacked with beer crates. Fryer grease hung in the air thick enough to taste.

Miles leaned against the wall with a piece of paper pinched in his hand. A copy of my enrollment form. I never found out where he got it.

He looked up at me, and his eyes were red all the way through. "UCLA. English." "You actually did it." "Yeah," I said.

He almost smiled. "One sentence out of your mother's mouth and you threw me away." My hand closed around my bag strap. "I didn't throw you away.

Something's going on at home." "Something like what?" He came a step closer. "Like she'll kill herself in front of you?" The blood went out of my face.

Whatever he saw in my face, he took it as the answer.

He tore the copy in two. "Your mom holds a gun to her own head and I'm the one who pays for it?" Somebody walked past the mouth of the alley. The footsteps slowed, then kept going.

He pressed the torn pieces into my palm and closed my fingers over them. "Come back with me today and change it." "Decision day hasn't passed.

There's still time." "There isn't." My voice came out low. "Miles. I can't change it." He stared at me. A long moment went by before he reached out and set his hand on my shoulder.

He held on hard enough to hurt. "Nora. Don't push me." It was the first time I'd ever heard him say my name that way