Free The Admissions by Meg Mitchell Moore Page B

was so much more to go in
Angela’s Ashes.
Five fifteen a.m. practice every Friday. Volunteer tutoring for National Honor Society: twenty-five hours required over the course of the year. She hadn’t even started thinking about that. The term paper for AP English. (Virginia Woolf?) The Harvard application…
    But she was so close. A little over a month, she was almost there. She just had to get through a little more. The first-quarter grades would be sent on to Harvard just as soon as they were ready. She didn’t want to work so hard and come in second,
geez.
Angela just had to
marshal
her forces and show some
tenacity.
Valedictorians were made, not born.
    When she’d turned seventeen Aunt Marianne had sent her,
wow,
a gift certificate for JetBlue for $500. Angela didn’t even know airlines did gift certificates.
I don’t know where you’ll land after your senior year,
the card said.
But I want you to be able to get home anytime.
    Sometimes Angela felt like taking that gift certificate and flying far, far away.
    (What did Aunt Marianne mean, though, that she didn’t know where Angela would land? Didn’t she think she could get into Harvard?)
    “Okay,” Angela said, sighing mightily, tearing at a cuticle with her teeth. “Friday night? I can’t stay out late, because of the meet Saturday. I want to be asleep by eleven. But I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER 11
CECILY
    Cecily could tell by the look on her mother’s face that this wasn’t the best idea in the world.
    Actually she thought Maddie was picking them up, and that would have made things easier. But now she remembered that Maddie was going away for the weekend so her mother was taking the afternoon off work. Maddie probably wouldn’t have noticed what Cecily had with her, literally. Maddie never noticed anything.
    Still, Cecily was in it now, so she kept on going.
Keep on keeping on
was what her father always said. Maya was already in her booster seat, looking out the window, wiping at her eyes.
    Her mother’s mouth was a straight line in her face. She definitely wasn’t smiling. She lowered the passenger window and stretched across the seat to lean out of it.
    “What’s wrong with Maya?”
    Maya swiped at her nose. “Stupid boys,” she said.
    “Nothing,” said her mother. “Some idiotic kids made fun of her for her reading. For her
not
reading.”
    “They called me dumb,” confirmed Maya. “I don’t care though.” But her eyes were wet and bright and she was blinking rapidly.
    “I am outraged,” said Cecily’s mom. “I might talk to their parents.”
    “No!” said Maya, horrified. “Don’t do that!”
    Cecily’s mom took a better look at Cecily and said, “Cecily. What is in that cage?”
    Cecily looked at the cage as though surprised to find it in her hands. She shifted and tried to open the door but she couldn’t do both so she set the cage down on the ground.
    Maya unbuckled and spilled herself out of the car and crouched on the ground and crowed, “It’s
Roland
! From the science lab! Hey, Roland, come here, you little cutie. Is he coming to
our house,
Cecily?”
    Now Cecily’s mom was out of the car too. Someone in the car behind her was starting to honk. You were supposed to keep moving in the turnaround line. Cecily’s mom shot that car a look and the honking stopped.
    “Cecily. Is that a
rat
?”
    “No! It’s Roland. He’s a
hamster.
I signed up to take him home for the weekend. He can’t stay alone. I mean, he can, but he’d rather be with people. He’s really social, he gets lonely on his own.”
    Her mother sighed and definitely did not crouch down to look at Roland. “Don’t you need permission from your parents for that? Isn’t there a form?”
    “I forgot it. But Mr. G. let me take him anyway.”
    “What do you mean, you forgot it? I never signed a form.”
    “That’s what I mean. I forgot to have you sign the form.”
    Her mother was frowning at the cage. Roland hopped on his wheel and showed off a little