_OceanofPDF

in the fence from my window, so I grabbed Byron and went over there. My
brother backed me up, but he wasn’t happy about it. I made him a liar too.”
“Logan,” I said, “you were a kid.”
“If I hadn’t seen her from the third floor, we would have gone home and
left her on the bottom of that pool. She was two, for Chrissakes, and man, I
loved that baby. Mom brought her home and I swaddled her and played
with her and held her all the time. Then I almost killed her and lied about it
because I thought…” He rubbed his eyes. “God, this is so ridiculous.” He
dropped his hands onto the arms of the chair. “I’ve never told anyone this,
and now that it’s about to come out of my mouth, I want to laugh at
myself.”
I drank a bit of water to hide my surprise, and he paused. Maybe to
collect his thoughts, or to change his mind. He barely knew me, yet he
trusted me with a story he’d kept to himself all these years. I wouldn’t dare
break the spell to ask what this had to do with which school he wound up at.
“It was Christmas break,” he said. “Sixth grade. I don’t know what that
was like for you, applying to middle school?”
“I was at Wildwood from first grade.”
“Right. So you skipped it. It’s essays, interviews, events. Like college.
A lot of pressure, but not a problem. I had it under control. Harvard-
Westlake and one backup. I forget which because it didn’t matter. But when
Dad asked what happened with Lyric, I just… all I could think was that if
Harvard-Westlake knew I almost killed my sister, I was sunk. I’d lose
control of the whole thing. So I lied. And it was fine. Right? Byron had my
back. Lyric was okay. Nothing to see here.”
He shifted to the edge of his seat and put his elbows on the table. I
leaned into him, because here was the crux of the story.
“But it was all a lie. My essay was about ethical business practice and I
was a liar. I couldn’t do it. I rewrote it about some generic bullshit and
fucked up my applications so bad they didn’t even waitlist me. I wouldn’t
let my parents step in and write a check. Nothing. Exactly what a liar
deserves.” He leaned back again. “My matriculation counselor found out
Wildwood was under-enrolled. Didn’t get enough qualifying applicants. So
I applied to make Mom happy. Tried to fuck that up too. I wrote the essay in
iambic pentameter and they loved it.” He spread his arms, facing his palms
up to the sky. “Here we are.”