The Infinite Moment of Us (9 page)

unpack,” her dad said. “We’ll take two cars.”

“I pulled some big strings for you,” her mom said. “Most

freshmen won’t have cars. You’re going to be pretty popu-

lar, I imagine—not that you wouldn’t be anyway.”

“Wow,” Wren said.

Her dad leaned over the open door. “Hey. You lived

up to your end of the deal; we lived up to ours. And we

couldn’t very well give you a car and then make you leave

it here, could we?”

Wren’s mom took in Wren’s expression and frowned.

“Sweetheart, what on earth is wrong?”

Wren put the letter from Emory back inside the glove

compartment, climbed out of the car, and carefully shut

the door. “Can we go inside?” she asked her parents. “I sort

of need to tell you something.”

In the family room, Wren sat balled up on one side of the

corner sofa. Her parents sat across from her. They didn’t

yell. Her parents weren’t yellers. They didn’t respond the

way Charlie had, though.

He’d said she was wonderful.

Her parents said nothing about “wonderful.”

“You made a commitment,” her dad said. “You applied

for early admission. You got in. By agreeing to attend, you

took away a slot that could have gone to some other stu-

dent.”

“There’s a wait list,” Wren said. Her mouth was dry.

“The spot will go to someone.”

“But what about
your
spot?” her mom asked. “And what

will I tell everyone? I work with these people, Wren. I see

them every day!”

“Um, I asked if I could defer?”

“And?”

“And . . . they said it will probably work out.”

Her mom shook her head. “‘Probably’? You didn’t give

up your spot, did you? You would
never
do something that

foolish, Wren.”

But I did, Wren thought. “It just, um, feels like the right

thing for me.”

“For myself,” her dad said.

Wren looked at him.

His jaw was tense. “‘It feels like the right thing for

myself
.’”

“You’re correcting my grammar?”

“I’ll always correct your grammar, just as I’ll always love

you,” he said, managing to make it sound like a threat.

But
myself
, the way you used it, isn’t correct, Wren was tempted to say. She stuffed her hands under her legs.

“You’re being very selfish, Wren,” he went on. “You’re

showing extremely poor judgment.”

Wren pulled her hands from beneath her and drew her

shins toward her chest.

“Please be still and stop wriggling,” he said.

She lowered her legs.

“We put down a five-hundred-dollar deposit when you

accepted,” Wren’s mom said. She swiped beneath her eyes.

“Wren, sweetheart, you withdrew all your other applica-

tions because you knew what you wanted, and what you

wanted was to go to Emory.”

“I’ll pay back the money.”

Her mom held out her hands. “When we visited the

campus—when I brought you in to meet everyone—you loved it. What changed?”

I changed, she thought. But that wasn’t an acceptable

answer.

Selfish. Foolish. Bad judgment.

“Nothing changed,” Wren said to her knees. “I don’t

know. I don’t
know
.”

“Use your words,” her dad said.

She shook her head. “You took me to that TED Talk,

remember?”

“The talk Professor Tremblay told us about?” her dad

said. “Professor Tremblay, who wrote a letter of reference

for you?”

Yes, that Professor Tremblay, whom her mom knew

from her job at Emory, and, yes, Wren felt guilty. He’d

gone to so much trouble. Everyone had gone to so much

trouble. She was so much trouble.

Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, she thought, and miracu-

lously, it gave her strength.

“What talk?” her mom said.

“It was called ‘The Road Not Taken,’” Wren said. “All

these people talked about their lives, and how they chose

unconventional paths, and how that made all the differ-

ence. Like in the Robert Frost poem.”

“Yes? And?” her mom said. “You don’t even like that

poem.”

“Mom, I do,” Wren said. How in the world would her

mother know what poems she liked? “I guess it made me

think about things. Like, one woman was a lawyer, but

she gave up her job to go help people in developing coun-

tries have clean water. Another guy was in an accident and

ended up in a coma, and when he came out of it, he could

suddenly play the piano, and he became a concert pianist.”

“So your plan is to fall into a coma and wake up a musi-

cal prodigy,” her dad said. “Terrific.”

Wren pressed her lips together. She loved her dad, but

right now, she hated him.

Her mom cleared her throat. “I wonder, Wren, if maybe

you don’t know enough yet to make this decision. You can

always do . . . something like this . . . after you get your

college degree, can’t you? You don’t know what you’re

throwing away.”

Wren dug her fingernails into her palms.

“I’m sorry you’re upset,” she said. Her voice quavered.

“And maybe it wasn’t the talk, and even if it was, that

wasn’t the only thing. And you’re right that I don’t know

enough. I kind of think I need to rethink everything.”

“Like being a doctor?” her dad said. “Wren. You’ve

wanted to be a doctor since you were ten.”

No. When she was ten, Wren had wanted to work with

animals. She’d had a book about a hospital for cats, and

she’d carried it around everywhere until it mysteriously

disappeared. When Wren asked about it, her father had

said, “What book? Wren, I have no idea what you’re car-

rying on about, but for the record, you can do better than

becoming a veterinarian.”

But she didn’t go there. She said—and it was awful,

because disagreeing with him felt like saying she didn’t love

him—“I kind of think I need to figure out if being a doctor

is my plan or yours.”

“And I think you need to figure out why you made such

an impulsive decision without consulting us,” her dad said.

“I don’t just
kind of
think
it, either. I know it.”

Wren made herself smaller.

“This isn’t like you, Wren,” he went on. “Am I to under-

stand from the half answer you gave your mother that

Emory was unable to guarantee deferred admission?”

“They said it would most likely work out,” Wren whis-

pered. “But it will depend on next fall’s numbers.”

“So they were unable to guarantee deferred admission,”

he said.

“Yes, Dad. Yes! God!” She didn’t want to cry, but it was

happening anyway. She sniffled and dragged a hand under

her nose. “And maybe it
was
a mistake, but maybe I need to not be perfect for once!”

“We never needed you to be perfect!” her dad said in a

raised voice, while at the same time her mom cried, “But

you
are
perfect!”

The three of them fell silent. Wren gulped. She blinked

back her tears.

“Wren,” her mom said. “You know we love you.”

“And I love you.” She refused to make eye contact with

either of them. “But you need to know . . . I’m doing this.”

Her dad stood abruptly. He left the room.

Her mom stayed but didn’t speak. Wren wrapped her

arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees.

“I’m sad, Mom,” Wren said at last.

“I am, too,” her mom said.

But later, when Tessa beeped her horn from Wren’s drive-

way, Wren strode out of her house and didn’t look back.

She needed out, and she was getting out. She’d done the

horrible, awful thing, and yes, her parents were disap-

pointed in her, and yes, it was terrible. It was also terribly liberating, especially with dusk coming on and a party right

around the corner.

Thank goodness her parents had always approved

of Tessa, and thank goodness Wren had told them about

the party—with Tessa standing next to her—earlier in

the day. Her parents, and especially her mom, had always

thought it was important that Wren “be a part of things”

socially. If the other kids in her class were going to a party, then Wren’s mom wanted Wren to go, too.

“Whoa,” Tessa said when she saw Wren’s outfit. She let

out a wolf whistle.

“Don’t say a word,” Wren begged her, climbing into the

passenger seat. “I’m self-conscious enough already.”

“But—”

“No.”

“But, Wren, you look—”

“No! Shh!” Wren put her hands over her ears and

hummed.

For three blocks, Tessa kept her mouth shut, but she kept

sneaking appreciative peeks at Wren. It was absurd, since

Tessa, in her black skirt and silver tank top, was the one

who looked fancy. Wren had taken the opposite approach,

pairing a T-shirt with low-slung jeans as soft as butter. The

jeans came from Tessa; she’d given them to Wren a month

or so ago, claiming she’d found them on sale. “Just try them

on,” Tessa had pleaded, making praying hands.

Wren never did, because Wren was a “preppy J.Crew

girl,” according to Tessa. Wren wasn’t sure about the

“preppy” and “J.Crew” parts, but she’d never been much of

a jeans girl. Or maybe it was her mom who wasn’t much

of a jeans girl? In elementary school and halfway through

junior high, her mom had picked out Wren’s outfit each

morning. By eighth grade, Wren had convinced her mom

that she could actually pick out her own clothes, and her

mom had capitulated with surprisingly little resistance.

Maybe, in retrospect, because Wren’s own choices had so

closely mirrored her mother’s.

Tonight, she’d decided
not
to think. Not about her parents or Guatemala or her new car, and not about what kind

of girl she was, jeans-wearing or otherwise.

“Hey, Wren?” Tessa said. She tapped Wren’s shoulder.

“Can I say one teeny-tiny thing?” She tapped Wren’s shoul-

der again. “Please? Pretty please? Just one teensy-weensy

little thing?”

“What?” Wren said.

“You look really hot.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Wren wasn’t convinced, but she hoped so. “Well . . .

thanks. And
you
look amazing.”

“Why, thank you,” Tessa said with a happy grin.

“And, Tessa?”

“Yes, Wren?”

She started to tell Tessa about her afternoon, and how

she wept in her bedroom after the big talk with her par-

ents, and how she wasn’t positive her parents would ever

love her again.

Except of course they would. Of course they
did
. Didn’t they?

Why was Wren always trying to convince herself of

things? Her brain was like a gerbil on a wheel, spinning and

spinning in its ceaseless gerbil way. For a moment, every-

thing locked up and she felt paralyzed. Then she thought,

What the hell. Let it all go.

“Let’s do anything we want tonight,” she said to Tessa.

“What do you think?”

“Absolutely,” Tessa said.

She cranked up the music and sang along, and Wren,

catching her hair in a ponytail with her hand, turned

toward the open window and closed her eyes. She let her-

self be swept away.

c h a p t e r s i x

“Dude, can I grow up to be rich one day?”

Ammon said, finding Charlie by the open front door to

P.G.’s mansion. Neither boy had entered the house. It

looked like a movie set inside—the arched front door

opening into a well-lit foyer, the guests milling about,

smiles and laughter and the clink of ice against glass. Just

past the foyer, Charlie spotted caterers serving flutes of

what appeared to be either champagne or sparkling apple

juice. Charlie put his money on champagne.

“Just tell me where to sign, and I’ll do it,” Ammon said.

“I don’t think it works that way,” Charlie said.

“It might. It could. The Barbees could adopt me.”

Charlie’s mouth twitched. “You want to be P.G.’s little

brother?”

Ammon, in his oversize shirt, flung out his arms. “Twin

brother, yo. And it could happen. You know why? Because

this is a time of no rules. Everything’s changing, and no

one cares anymore about social standing, or who’s cool

and who’s not.” He stepped directly into Charlie’s line of

vision, his face half a foot away from Charlie’s. “The playing field’s been leveled, Charlie. Do you appreciate what I’m

saying?”

“Yeah, sure,” Charlie said, moving to one side. He con-

tinued to scan the party guests, and—
whoa
. There she was, just past the foyer, laughing with her friend Tessa. She was

gorgeous. When he’d seen Wren at school, he’d thought

she looked great in her never-wrinkled blouses and skirts.

He’d thought her style of dressing was better than the

other girls’ jeans and T-shirts.

Charlie now realized he’d missed out on one key factor.

A girl in jeans and a T-shirt looked amazing, if the girl was

Wren Gray. Even if the shirt said
Speedster!
across the front and sported a picture of a girl on a motorcycle.
Especially
if the shirt said
Speedster!
and sported a picture of a girl on a motorcycle.

Her curves made him hard.

“—even listening, Charlie?” Ammon said. He lightly