Free One Moment in Time by Lauren Barnholdt

the phone before I completely lose my dignity and any chance I have of working with her in the future. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say. “But if something comes up, please do keep me in mind.”
    â€œOf course.”
    We hang up and I just stand there for a moment, stunned. My phone buzzes and I look down at it, but it feels weird, like the hand holding my phone isn’t even connected to my body.
    One new email. I pull it up.
    From Genevieve.
    In the Stanford admissions office.
    Dear Quinn,
    Thank you so much for your email. Unfortunately, all decisions of the Stanford Admissions Committee are final and binding. We have a very strict process that ensures the merit of every applicant is taken into consideration. Since everything is done by committee, there is no appeals process as you inquired about.
    Thank you so much for your interest in Stanford University.
    ~Genevieve Peletier
    Wow. She definitely doesn’t sound as nice as she did before. Probably she thinks I’m psycho. Am I psycho? I feel a little bit psycho. My heart is beating fast in my chest, and suddenly I can’t breathe.
    I try to calm myself down, but the hallway suddenly feels unbearably hot. Even though my face feels like it’s burning, goose bumps break out on my arms. The floor starts to spinunder my feet, and I know I need to get out of there.
    I walk quickly through the lobby and out the double doors, then just keep walking until I get to the end of the cobblestone path. I push my way out onto the sand, onto the beach, and keep going until I reach the ocean. The cold water floods up onto my legs, and it must shock my system or something, because I immediately start to feel a little better.
    I gulp in the salty air and try to get my heart rate to slow to normal, but it’s not really working. It’s pounding so hard I’m afraid that people around me are going to hear it, or at least notice that I’m freaking out.
    I decide that maybe I need to sit down on the beach.
    And that’s when I see him.
    Nathan Carson.
    Lying on the sand a few feet away from me.
    Making out with Gracie Noble. Their legs are tangled together, and his hands are in her hair. I just stand there for a second, watching them. And then I laugh, because it really is pretty comical. It’s not even that I liked Nathan that much, not even that I wanted to hook up with him that badly.
    It’s just that in the span of a few hours, everything I had that was even a possibility is gone from my life. Stanford. Gone. My internship. Gone. Kissing Nathan. Gone. My parents being proud of me. Gone.
    Gone, gone, gone, gone.
    I want to scream out loud and kick the sand, which is strange, because I’ve never had anger issues. In fact, I’ve always thought anger was kind of a wasted emotion. Why waste time being angry about something when there’s always something you can do to fix the situation?
    But how am I supposed to fix this one? I didn’t get into Stanford. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve worked really hard for something and had it not pan out. Four whole years I worked for it. More, if you count all the time in middle school I put toward getting good grades so that I could qualify for all the advanced classes I took in high school.
    It’s making me really angry, thinking about it. Celia’s upstairs, drunk and throwing up on the floor, and she gets to go to the school she’s always wanted to go to. She gets everything she wants, pretty much, including any guy she wants. All she does is break rules and get rewarded for it! All I do is follow them, and everything goes to complete and total shit!
    My phone buzzes then, and I look down at it, ready to take my rage out on whoever it was who would be stupid enough to call me at this exact moment. I’m almost halfway hoping that it’s my mom. I’m in just the right mood to talk to her.
    But it’s not a phone call.
    It’s an