One Minute Before Early Decision, My Future Self Called

"You did get into Vanderbilt. Beckett never planned on going there." One minute before the Early Decision deadline, I picked up a call from myself. Ten years older.

She told me the boy I grew up with had never planned on going south with me. He knew my best friend sat exactly one rank behind me.

He was afraid I would take the only fullride nomination our school had for Columbia, so the two of them talked me into Vanderbilt.

Later they became the golden couple everybody envied. The me on the other end of that line only had time for three things. "Callie's Early Decision is Columbia, computer science.

Apply there too. You're the only person in our class ranked above her, so the nomination lands on you automatically. You knock her straight out.

Their whole seeyouatthetop thing turns into a joke." "Monday, before the close, put every dollar in your account into Helvane Bio. All twelve thousand.

Don't hold back a single share. The FDA decision comes down on the fourteenth of next month.

You'll know when to sell." "Movein day, a guy named Julian Ashford collapses outside the gates. His blood sugar. He's the one everybody in computer science calls a genius.

Keep a candy in your pocket. He's going to change your life." Then the line cut out. Sixty seconds left to submit. Chapter 1 My palms were slick against the desk.

I pulled up the form I hadn't sent yet and ran my eyes over the field at the top. Columbia University. Computer Science.

I typed the name in one letter at a time, then checked the box under the binding agreement. My fingers wouldn't hold still. I rushed and got a letter wrong. Deleted it. Breathed.

Typed it again. Then the green box came up. Your Early Decision application has been submitted. The clock in the corner hit the deadline that same second.

I sagged back into the chair and let the air out of my chest. My phone lit up. Beckett. He had timed it almost to the minute. [Wren, the portal's closed.

You submitted Vanderbilt, right?] I looked at that line and I could hear her again. Me, ten years out, worn down to the bone and done arguing with it.

Beckett never planned on going to Vanderbilt. He knows Callie sits exactly one rank behind you. He was afraid you'd take the nomination, so he talked you into Vanderbilt.

So that was the whole thing. All of it, right over my head. The boy I had been in love with for years. The best friend I told everything to.

They had been standing on the same side the entire time. I was the one they were hiding it from. I was the one they were lying to. And I was the only one they were leaving behind.

I pulled in a breath, forced my fingers steady, and answered him. [Yeah. Submitted Vanderbilt.] He wrote back before I could set the phone down. [Good. We said we'd go together.

I'll help you haul your stuff up.] My eyes stung reading it. My mouth pulled into something that was not a smile. He couldn't even tell me he had applied to Columbia.

But he could sit behind a screen and play the boy walking the same road as me. What was in his head while he typed that? Relief that the obstacle was finally cleared?

Or was he laughing at how stupid I am? I didn't write back. I closed the chat and tossed the phone onto the desk. It buzzed again a minute later. Callie this time.

Chapter 2 [Wren, did you really submit Vanderbilt?] The same careful little check as his. Almost word for word. I looked at her profile picture. It was the two of us.

My eyes burned and wouldn't stop. When Beckett betrayed me I felt anger, and something close to a laugh. But Callie. I pushed it down and typed back. [Yeah.

You?] She took a while. [Of course I submitted Vanderbilt too.

The three of us said we'd be at the same school, didn't we?] Then another one, right behind it. [You're so good at everything, you'd shine anywhere. Not like me.

I only get this one shot.] Two lines, and I couldn't see the screen anymore. A tear hit the glass and blurred her words out of shape.

Callie and I had been in the same class since kindergarten. We split the same cake. We wore the same jacket. We got our periods within a few days of each other.

Every secret I had, she had. Including the one about Beckett. I remember the night we finished our last AP exam. It was pouring outside.

Callie came over and insisted on squeezing into my bed. We left the light off. The streetlamp outside was the only thing coming through the window.

We lay side by side and looked at the ceiling. She rolled toward me and took my hand. "Wren, we've been in the same class since kindergarten.

Elementary, middle school, high school, all of it." She held my eyes, serious about it, almost solemn. "College too. Same school.

I want to be your best friend for the rest of my life." "And if you and Beckett start dating, I'm going to be the world's biggest third wheel.

You take me to the dining hall with you. You take me to the library with you." Back then I really believed we would be best friends for life.

Reality knocked that straight out of me. When did the two of them start working this out behind my back? The time I asked her to bring Beckett my notes?

Or the time we were studying in the library and he came by with boba, like it was on his way? I sat up and breathed in. Did it hurt? Of course it hurt. But what comes after hurt?

The woman I am going to be did not claw her way through ten years to make that call so I could sit here crying. She called to save me.

I looked at the Submitted page on my screen, and the wet in my eyes dried up a little at a time. What took its place was the clearest I had ever felt. They want Columbia that badly.

Then I'll see them at Columbia. Callie was right. There is only one shot. This time I'm not handing it to anybody.

I opened the trading app and put the whole twelve thousand dollars in my account into Helvane Bio. Because I decided to trust her once, no conditions. The person I am going to be.

The next day. Beckett floated a Thanksgiving break trip in our group chat. The old me would have been the first one cheering. Now it only made me tired.

I typed: [I don't want to go.] Callie was right behind me. [Wren, if you're not going, I'm not going.] [You know I hate being alone with people.] [Especially a gross boy like Beckett.] She stuck a disgusted sticker on the end of it.

I looked at that sticker for a long time. Ten years from now, she said, the two of them are the golden couple everybody envies. So "gross boy" is a prop too.

Same as "I hate being alone with people." All of it rehearsed. I typed a line into the box. [I changed my application.

I submitted Columbia.] Then I deleted it, one character at a time. No rush. December fifteenth. The day the results come out, I want to be standing in front of both of them.

I want to watch their faces. Beckett came back swinging. Chapter 3 [Callie, who are you calling gross? Say it to my face.] Callie fired back an eyeroll sticker. [You.

Nyahnyah.] The two of them went at each other in the chat, line for line. I looked at my screen and pulled my mouth to one side. [Fine.

I'll go.] The second it sent, the fighting stopped. Callie answered in a heartbeat: [I knew you were the best, Wren!

Love you!] Beckett came in right after: [Coffee shop, Saturday afternoon. I'll put the itinerary together.] Saturday afternoon.

I pushed through the glass door and the heat hit me in the face. They were already at the corner table by the window.

Afternoon light came through the tall glass and laid a soft gold edge along both of them. Beckett in a plain white Tshirt. Clean features, the kind people look at twice.

Callie with her hair up in a high ponytail, smiling like the day was good. Sitting together, heads low over something. They looked like they belonged in a photograph.

I slowed down and stopped a few feet short. Beckett had his head tipped toward her, talking low, and there was a softness in it I had never gotten from him. An ease.

Like they had done this a hundred times. "You're on your period. Quit ordering everything iced." Callie laughed and used her straw to nudge his cup. "Okay, okay.

When did you get naggier than Wren?" He didn't correct her. He reached over and slid her milk toward the middle of the table. That was when Callie looked up and saw me.

Her smile locked for half a second. Then it came back on, smooth as anything, and she waved hard. "Wren, you made it! We were just talking about you!" I pulled out a chair and sat.

Beckett slid a printed itinerary across to me. Thick stack, key parts marked in different colored pens. Somebody had put real work into it. "Take a look. I roughed out the route.

If you want anything changed, now's the time." My eyes went straight to the lodging line. Two rooms. One king. One single.

Something dropped in my chest. "Who's in the king?" Callie hooked her arm through mine and dropped her head onto my shoulder. "You and me, obviously.

We've shared a bed since we were little." I lowered my eyes and kept reading. There was not one thing on that itinerary I liked. I don't like hiking. My stamina has always been bad.

The mile run in gym took a year off my life every single time. Beckett had scheduled two full days of trail. I have a shellfish allergy. One bite and I break out in welts.

Bad enough and it's an EpiPen and the ER. Callie had picked a seafood restaurant for our first night. "I'm allergic to shellfish." Her eyes opened wide.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, all remorse. "Oh no. Wren, I'm so sorry, I forgot. It went right out of my head.

But this place is impossible to get into, I've been on the list almost a month…" Apologizing and explaining in the same breath, and somehow she was the one in a tough spot.

Beckett's brows pulled in. There was disapproval in it. "Wren, Callie went through a lot to get that reservation. Your allergy isn't that serious. Take two Benadryl.

Don't ruin it for everybody." I looked at how reasonable he thought he was being, and my throat closed. The ER hallway. The EpiPen going into my thigh.

The form my mom signed with her hand shaking. He knows all of it. And he just said take two pills. Nobody had canceled anything.

Chapter 4 He knew about the ER my freshman year, and he was still telling me to medicate myself around what Callie wanted.

Before I could open my mouth, Callie grabbed his arm and cut him off. "Don't talk to Wren like that! Her health comes first." She turned and took both my hands.

Her eyes were rimmed red. Every ounce of blame in her voice was aimed at herself. "Wren, I'm sorry. That was careless of me. We're not going. I'll call and cancel right now.

The whole point of a trip is that everybody's happy. If something happened to you I'd never forgive myself." Callie had always covered for me like this.

When somebody came after me, she got in front of me first. When I bombed a test, she stayed up crying with me until two in the morning.

Was more than a decade of that really worth nothing? I watched her dig for her phone to cancel. And for a second I wavered. I pulled my mouth into something like a smile.

My voice came out dry. "I'm going to the restroom." "Go, go." Callie already had my bag in her hands. "Want me to come?" "I'm good." I stood and walked fast.

I ran cold water over my face, looked at how pale I was in the mirror, and made myself steady. Ten minutes in there. Then I straightened my clothes and started back the way I came.

At the stairwell turn on the first floor, behind a fire door somebody had left half open, there were voices. "Why did you snap at her like that?

You almost blew it." Callie, pitched low, with a curl in it she couldn't hide. My feet stopped. Everything in me stopped. A lighter clicked.

Then Beckett, careless, a little bored with it. "She stared at that itinerary forever. I thought she'd figured out we were cutting her out.

She's so highmaintenance, gets winded walking to class, and she sees two days of hiking and doesn't say a word. That's new." Callie laughed under her breath. "Would she dare?

She's crazy about you. If you put it on the list, she'll crawl it if she has to." "Honestly, though, I almost couldn't hold it in back there.

Playing the perfect best friend every single day, pretending I don't know she's in love with you.

It's exhausting." "Hang on a little longer." His voice softened, and there was the small friction of fabric, like he had pulled her in. "Results come out December fifteenth.

That day, all of it's over." "She confirmed Vanderbilt that night. She wasn't lying to us, was she?" "That brain of hers.

She believes whatever anybody tells her. "I looked on her computer.

The last page her application was sitting on was Vanderbilt." Beckett made a sound in his throat. "If she actually came to Columbia with us, tagging along as a third wheel every day, I couldn't take it.

Vanderbilt's great. Far enough from New York." Relief in Callie's voice now. Something pleased underneath it. "Okay, I do feel a little guilty.

But whose fault is it that her grades are that good? If we hadn't steered her south and she took that nomination, then what? The school gets one slot. It goes by rank.

She's valedictorian, I'm salutatorian. Without the full ride I can't afford Columbia at all." "Look out for number one. You're smarter than she is.

You know how to plan for your own future." I couldn't hear the rest of it