Private (Private 1)

had argued about my coming to Easton, my father was the only per-myself. Plus there was the fact that I wasn’t interested in the things son in my entire family who had never expressed a moment of

most girls seemed to be interested in—clothes and gossip and Us doubt. Even Scott, whose idea it had been for me to follow Felicia Weekly.

here in the first place—she had come for her junior and senior

Back home I was always more comfortable around guys. Guys

years, finishing up last spring before heading off to Dartmouth and, didn’t feel the need to ask questions, to check out your room and undoubtedly, glory—had balked when he saw the tremendous

your house and know all the intimate details of your life. So I mostly tuition. But my dad had been on board fully from day one. He had hung out with Scott and his friends, especially Adam Robinson,

sent in my lacrosse and soccer tapes. He had spent hours on the whom I had dated all summer and who would be a senior at Croton phone with the financial aid department. And all the while he had High this year. I guess the fact that I had broken up with him and constantly reassured me that I was going to “knock ’em dead.”

come here, thereby not being the first sophomore girl ever to have I looked into my dad’s eyes, exactly the same blue as my own,

6

K A T E B R I A N

and I knew he didn’t doubt whether I could make it here. He doubted whether he could make it back home. Images of pill vials flashed in my mind. Little white and blue tablets spilled across a water ring stained night table. A bin full of empty liquor bottles and crumpled INTIMIDATION

tissues. My mother, wiry and pale, grousing about her pain, about how everything bad happened to her and none of us cared, tearing me down, tearing Scott down, telling us all we were worthless just to make us feel as miserable as she did. Scott had already made his escape—he had packed up and gone off to Penn State last week. Now it would be just Dad and my mother in that tiny little house. The

“Easton Academy is one of the top-ranked schools in the country.

thought depressed me.

Which is, I assume, the reason you sought out a place here. But

“I don’t have to go here,” I said, even though the very idea that many students who matriculate in from public schools find it to be he might agree with me made me physically ill. To see this place, a . . . difficult adjustment. I trust, of course, that you will not be feel what it was all about, and then have it all taken away within the one of those students, am I right, Miss Brennan?”

span of five minutes would be painful enough to kill me, I was sure.

My advisor, Ms. Naylor, had gray hair and jowls. Actual jowls.

“We can go home right now. Just say the word.”

They shook when she spoke, and when she spoke it was mostly

My dad’s face softened into a smile. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Like about how I never should have applied to Easton in the first place as I would really do that. But I appreciate the offer.”

I was completely out of my league and teetering on the brink of fail-I grinned sadly. “No problem.”

ure before I had even entered my first class.

“I love you, kiddo,” he said. I already knew that. Getting me into At least that was what she implied.

this school and out of that hellhole was about the most obvious dis-

“Right,” I echoed, going for a confident smile. Ms. Naylor made play of love any parent could have produced. He was pretty much an equally feeble attempt in return. I got the idea that she didn’t my hero.

smile much as a rule.

“Love you too, Dad.”

Her basement office was dark, the walls made of stone and lined And then he hugged me and I cried and before I knew it, we were by shelves full of dusty leather-bound books. It was lit only by two saying good-bye.

windows set high in the wall. Her round body wedged so perfectly