“No. I get it,” he said, looking defeated. “Are you two saying you would follow David somewhere else?”
“I think so,” Wolf said.
“Yeah. I want to play ball with David and Wolf. If they decide to go somewhere else, I’ll go with them. But I want to go on record that I hope Michigan can work this out,” Tim said.
“I admit that I’m also torn, but I’ve signed,” Ty said.
“I think we all agree that Michigan is our choice,” I said, and everyone nodded. “If they can convince Mike to go elsewhere, I wouldn’t look back. Just between us, I might still go if they convince me they can manage him. How they would do that, I have no idea.”
“Before we do anything, we need to tell them our position on this,” Wolf said.
“Would it be okay if I call and talk to them since I’ve already committed?” Ty asked.
“Ty, I don’t want this to affect your decision. I know you’ve wanted to go there from the beginning,” I said.
“I appreciate that, I really do. When I heard what Mike did, it made me have some doubts. To be honest, if Mike goes to Michigan, I’ll be disappointed, but I will go. They’ve been my dream school since I was little.”
“David’s right. We want you to do what’s best for you,” Wolf said.
“Now that the Mike-Michigan situation is somewhat settled, Wolf and I want to apologize for Tuesday night,” Tim said to me.
“Yeah. Hindsight being what it is, we didn’t use our best judgment. Tami has to be pissed because her original plan was to join us at Michigan, but now, probably not,” Wolf said.
This was news to me. Tami had never told me that she planned to join us at Michigan. That only highlighted how far apart we’d grown.
I hadn’t even thought to ask her; instead, I simply assumed she would be going somewhere like Johns Hopkins University for her undergraduate. I remembered having a discussion with her about doing what was best for her and not to tie her decision to mine like we’d originally discussed.
That’s when it struck me: Tami had planned to go to school where Tim did, not where I did. And Michigan was an excellent school for her to get her undergraduate degree. This was a reminder for me that even though the teenager in me thought I was the center of the universe, I wasn’t.
“Where’s she going?” I asked Tim.
Tim shook his head to indicate that she hadn’t shared that with him.
“Stanford,” Cassidy supplied. “She applied to a handful of schools, but if she’s accepted, that’s where she’s going. Everyone says she’s a shoo-in, she just needs to get the official notice.”
Cassidy saw our confusion as to how she would know and turned to me.
“Your mom told me.”
And there it was. Every time I considered myself past the feeling that my mom was closer to Tami than to me, something like this raised its head. I tapped that little upset back down since it wasn’t worth digging into any deeper. I’d come to understand that Tami and my mom would always be close, and there was nothing I could do about it. Frankly, I shouldn’t do anything about it if I didn’t want to cause even more hurt.
“Hey,” Cassidy said. “That girl you found in the dumpster … she ghosted Paul.”
That made me laugh.
To be honest, it made a certain amount of sense. She wasn’t looking for another guy, and she’d made it a point not to tell us her name. Dumpster Girl had told me she didn’t want to spend the night alone after she’d made her dramatic escape from her ex. I could see where following me around and watching everyone else’s relationship implode would be much more entertaining than going home to your own thoughts.
Besides, it served Paul right for stealing my dumpster find. I had always understood that possession was nine-tenths of the law.
◊◊◊
When I got to school, Dare was in a tizzy.
“What’s his problem?” Cassidy asked.
“We have a test in AP Calculus second period.”
“What are you learning in there?”
“We’re covering differential calculus right now. It’s about the rate of change of one quantity with respect to another. We’re also learning about using linear functions to approximate more complicated ones,” I explained.
Cassidy blinked at me.
“Most of the functions can be formed by starting with three basic functions …” I began.
“Go away. That makes my head hurt,” Cassidy said as she bailed.
I had to agree with her. What was giving Dare headaches was the whole ‘approximation’ part. The kid wanted to know the exact answer. I tried to explain to him that sometimes close was good enough, but he didn’t buy it.
Of course, I oversimplified my explanation, which caused Dare’s head to explode.
“I should go and fix what you told her,” Dare said.
