Chapter 51: The End Of The Line

I think it was after eleven when I got up, but my parents weren’t up much earlier than I, since the coffee hadn’t yet finished perking. My mother asked what the party was like, and I told her that they were all Karen’s friends whom I was meeting for the first time, but they were okay once I got to know them. We played party games and ate and sang karaoke until all hours. She didn’t question it.

We had a couple of days off before school started again, so I relaxed. I filled out the subscription forms for the foreign language papers that Karen had bought for me and stamped them, ready to be mailed tomorrow.

Jeff invited me over to play video games, so I went and what he really wanted to do was talk about his New Year’s party with Kate, who apparently was going through her ‘Let’s have sex in places where we could be discovered’ phase. She got Jeff into a bathroom and had him finger-fuck her, then gave him a blowjob with swallowing. Throughout the rest of the party she teased him until he was hard again, then found they could lock the laundry room door and he fucked her bent over the washer.

“Respect to Kate. She sounds like she knows what she wants. What are her plans after graduation?”

“She’ll do college, but she’s smarter than me so she’s likely to get into better schools. But she has applied to a couple on my list, too, as safety schools, so it’s possible we might wind up at the same place. I doubt it, though.”

“Yeah, like Karen and me. I won’t see her for months at a time, and even then she’ll be spending time with family and other friends. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to us. I really love her and I’d hate to lose her.”

All of a sudden I was feeling sorry for myself again. I needed to get away from this topic pretty quick.

“Let’s play something. Whaddya got? Something with aliens?”

Fall term grades finally arrived in the mail. Again I got all A’s. Since I wasn’t taking Physical Education this term, it wasn’t dragging down my GPA. I didn’t have my grade from the community college psych course yet, but I was pretty sure I had aced that, too.

I made a phone call to the high school and found that, once again, Karen was number one in the class ranking, and I was number two. But we were only separated by a couple of points. Take that, Sunderland.

She’d still get to be valedictorian, since that was awarded based on your four year GPA, and she was scholastically much better than I as a freshman. I really didn’t care, but it would mean a lot to her to be elected so I was happy to cede it to her.

I’ll skip some fairly uninteresting months here, since nothing much of significance happened. I was surprised to find myself feeling nervous, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I couldn’t figure it out for awhile, until I realized it was that all of us, all the seniors who had applied to college, were on the edge of our seats waiting for the news that would determine our next four years.

I recalled observing this from a distance when I was a freshman and sophomore, seeing the seniors walking the halls looking worried, tense. I wondered then what they were worried about since they were almost done with high school and it was probably constant partying until graduation. Well, I was young and naive then.

So we all started going home in late March and first thing, checking the mail. Nothing. Maybe tomorrow. Then tomorrow would come and nothing. Did my application get lost? What if they never got it?

And then sometime around the beginning of April you’d walk the halls and find a grinning student here or there surrounded by his or her friends congratulating them. They’d gotten The Word. But not you.

Karen called in early April and said she’d gotten another acceptance to one of her choices, this one with a larger scholarship. She was still waiting to hear from her first choice school.

And then, like the floodgates opening, the letters came, all arriving within a couple of days of each other. I’ll spare you the details. I got into all the places I had applied. Some of them offered me scholarships, and a couple offered smaller scholarships along with a part-time job.

But the best news was that -------, my first choice, the Ivy League school that I had liked so much, admitted me and offered me a partial scholarship, large enough that it would be doable without my parents having to get a second mortgage on the house.

I remember looking at my father as he read the letter himself and seeing the sense of relief on his face, relief that I’d been accepted at my first choice, and especially that it wouldn’t bankrupt him to do it. My mother got really emotional and threw her arms around me, telling me how proud they were. Even Mindy was happy for me.

I went to the phone and called Karen. When she picked up, I said without preamble, “I got in.”

“Got in where?”

“All of them, some with scholarships, too. Karen, I got into --------, and they offered me a large enough scholarship that my parents can afford it. I’m going there. And, Karen? I realize I couldn’t have done this without your help with the application process. Thank you.”

“Tom, you would have done fine on your own. I was happy to help, but I don’t think that had anything to do with you being accepted. Anyway, I was just picking up the phone to tell you. I got in, too. ------- said they want me and they offered me nearly a full ride to make sure I come.”

“So you’re on the West Coast, Karen, and I’m on the East Coast. I’m really happy for you, but we’ll be as far apart from each other as we can be, and that makes me a little sad. We’ve got to figure out a way to talk that isn’t going to break the bank. Long distance calls are expensive, and letters are nice but they’re too slow.”

“We’ll work it out. Enjoy your victory, Tom. Hell, enjoy my victory, too. Our lives are going to be different and challenging and fun, and we’ll have to figure out how to make it work. Listen, I want to tell my parents about your news, and I’ve got to tell some of my friends, too. We’ll talk later, okay?”

She hung up. I was proud of her, and very happy for her, and still sad because I knew that it wouldn’t be long until we would be separated for long periods. And there was a very real chance that she might find someone she liked better than me. And that someone would have four years to become an essential part of her life.

I had to consciously stop myself from starting down this road again. If I traveled too far, it would be hard to find my way back. I took a deep breath and forced myself to put it out of my mind. Then I called Jeff to let him know about the acceptances.

“Tom, my man, how are you this fine day?”

“Well, you sound pretty chipper. Win the lottery?”

“In a way. I got into State, and I was a little worried about it. So now I know what I’m doing in the fall. Oh, and Frankie got in there, too, so we’ll have at least some of the gang wreaking havoc there for the next four years.”

I had had my doubts about Frankie’s chances, since he was not what one would call an intellectual light, but I was happy for him and I thought it would do him some good if he could open a book every so often. And Jeff would provide him some moral support and encouragement.

“I got into -------, Jeff. And they gave me some scholarship money, too, so it looks like I’m going to be there in the fall.”

“Awesome, Carter, my brainiac friend. What about your other schools?”

“I got in to those, too, but ------- was my first choice. Did Kate hear yet?”

“Yeah, that’s the only downside to this day. She made it into her first choice, and it’s not State, so we’re going to be apart after the summer. I’m a little bummed about that.”