Chapter One
“You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled more.”
I pushed the asparagus around my plate, ignoring him. Dinner parties with my parents’ colleagues were always painful, but nothing was more painful than having to spend time with the Robertsons.
Stevie Robertson cleared his throat and repeated himself because he was an idiot.
I dragged my eyes off my plate, leveling him with a glare. It wasn’t necessarily his fault that he was an idiot, but I didn’t imagine he’d enjoy my attention now that he had it.
I adjusted my glasses, evaluating him as if he were a specimen under a microscope. He shifted nervously, a brainless little collection of cells, wearing a formfitting jacket that he insisted on keeping on throughout the entire dinner. A little bead of sweat slid down the collection of baby fuzz he was attempting to grow on his upper lip.
He broke eye contact and gulped a few swallows of water. Spittle shot across the succulent centerpiece separating us, and the candlelight wavered as he violently coughed. I leaned away from the splash zone, moving a candlestick slightly to the left as he loosened his tie and sputtered into his napkin.
“Stevie! Stevie, sweetheart, are you okay?” He waved off his mother, clearly having gotten his taste for theatrics from her, before turning a delightful shade of purple.
Now I smiled.
With Stevie occupied with things like breathing, I tried to calculate how angry my parents would be if I excused myself to go to the bathroom and slipped up the stairs to my room. Dr. Horowitz was always saying I should attempt to interact with people more, and that I spent too much time inside my head. I wrinkled my nose as Stevie mopped his face with his napkin, harsh little sounds continuing to sputter out of his trachea. I imagined the good doctor would give me a pass on this particular situation, as I had more important things on my mind.
Things like, I don’t know, my entire future, success, and happiness.
I flushed under the candlelight, attempting to regulate my breathing. My mind was brimming with logical progressions and pathways, all trying to find the answer to this problem. A solution. A life raft. The appropriate way to handle the letter I got today. The very official-looking letter that was now carefully pressed, lovingly refolded, and hidden upstairs in my desk drawer until I was brave enough to announce it.
Dear Ms. Quinn, I am delighted to inform you that your application for admission into the University of Oxford as an undergraduate student in the Department of Statistics has been successful.
Tears pricked at my eyes, and my lungs complained as if there wasn’t enough air in this smothering room.
In this smothering city.
All that work, all those hopes stacked so perilously high, and I’d actually done it. I’d gotten into the university that I’d loved almost my entire life. This obsession that grew and grew alongside me, until it was so powerful it threatened to swallow me whole.
When I was a child, I was enchanted by the fact that Oxford University looked like a castle. As I got older, I became fixated on the idea that the entire city of Oxford, a place built by this paragon of learning, was likely filled with people who were similar to me. People who loved books more than people, and nobody thought that was weird.
Dr. Horowitz liked to claim that I didn’t actually love books more than people and that was simply a defense mechanism. We’ve agreed to disagree.
It all came to a head a few months ago. I was tirelessly plowing through my online community college courses at an alarming clip, and my finger just kind of slipped. Right over the submit-your-application button on Oxford’s website. Whoops.
Their statistical genetics program was unapologetically brilliant and unorthodox, and there were labs that approached curing cancer as if it were a simple math problem. I knew it would challenge me and change my entire life, and everything was finally within my grasp. I was going to do it. I was going to move to England.
Well, maybe.
I forced down another bite of oversalted asparagus as my pounding heart threatened to crack my ribs.
“Beatrice, are you enjoying the asparagus? I made it especially for you.” My mother smiled from the head of the table, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She spent most of her life laughing, dancing, and enjoying the little things. She did not, however, enjoy Mrs. Robertson. Unfortunately, they had similar areas of research; so, every few months they would force our families together to subtly stick it to each other from across a beautifully arranged table.
I nodded, trying to keep the pained expression off my face. I’d done the math already. I always did the math. I had a precise timeline estimating how long it would take to arrange student visas, housing, and books, and there was a very small window before I would be forced to tell them. Wasn’t getting into college supposed to be a happy occasion? A cause for celebration?
I slumped deeper into my chair. I’d announced that I was going to apply to Oxford, and my parents had chuckled and told me that we could maybe talk about it in a few years, picking their papers back up and dismissing it. Dismissing me. One of the things people forget about homeschooling is that even if you do graduate high school at fourteen, parents don’t typically let you move out any sooner. Now, at sixteen, I was still here—just moldering away like some middle-school science project. Some fungus that nobody wanted to touch until it had matured beyond a certain point.
I jerked as everyone clapped, and Stevie smirked across from me, straightening the lapels of his jacket. I looked to the other end of the table at my dad for context clues. He smiled, his bright blue eyes crinkling at my usual cry for help. “Stevie is going to Stanford, Beatrice. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Oh.” I nodded. “Congratulations.”
He preened despite my lukewarm praise. “Don’t worry, Beatrice. I won’t forget all the little people once I’m a university man.”
I considered stabbing him with my butter knife as his mother leaned over, her cloying perfume invading my personal space. “Stanford’s basically Ivy League,” she purred, patting my arm and violating my rules against casual physical contact.
“But it’s not actually? Right?” I looked to my dad for confirmation as he choked on his wine. He gave Mrs. Robertson an apologetic smile, his golden good looks softening my words.
Mom frowned at me. “Stanford is a wonderful accomplishment. You should be very proud of Stevie.”
“Oh, we are!” Mr. Robertson bellowed, with all the subtlety of a man who insisted people call him The Captain even when off the water. “He’s a brilliant boy, and anybody would be lucky to be in his position.” He raised his glass in his son’s direction and tossed the contents back before anyone else could join him.
“What are you up to these days, Beatrice? Still doing those little online classes from your bedroom?” Stevie grinned across from me, a greasy stain spreading across his striped teal tie.
“That’s right, Steven. I’m still doing my little online classes.” I took another bite of limp asparagus, forcing it down with his words.
“Should we really call advanced-level physics little?” Dad mumbled.
“Don’t worry, my dear!” Mr. Robertson yelled, although I was only a few feet from him. “You keep working hard, and studying, and you might get into a good school too!” He gave me a wink and slapped his son on the back. “I’m sure Stevie here can help if you need any tips on applying.”
Stevie laughed, and I stiffened, the sound crawling up my spine. “That’s not necessary.”
Mom stood up, refilling wineglasses. “Beatrice is right. She’s only sixteen. We have plenty of time.”
I flinched as Mrs. Robertson touched my arm again. “It’s best not to leave it to the last minute. You might think you have all the time in the world, but there’s a chance you might get wait-listed at your first-choice schools, and then you’re waiting another year before applications open up again.”
I wrenched my arm away from her, and the words slipped through my teeth before I even realized what happened. “I’m going to Oxford.”
She chuckled. “Well, if you want to go to Oxford, you’d better give yourself even more time.”
“No,” I said, correcting her, the words tangling on my tongue. “I got into Oxford. For the fall semester.”
“Wait,” Mom said, her fork clattering against her plate. “What did you say?”
I dug my fingers into the thick pleats of my skirt, eyes carefully fixed on my lap. “I applied to Oxford. I found out this afternoon that I got in.”
The clink of glasses, chewing, and ambient dinner sounds slowed to a crawl as the silence hung heavy in the air.
“You? You got into Oxford?” Stevie demanded as all eyes pinned me to my chair.
“You didn’t know she was applying?” Mrs. Robertson asked, her tone gleeful.
I cleared my throat, looking up from my plate. “I was curious to see if I could get in.” I folded my napkin next to me, my appetite gone. “Apparently, I could.”
“Beatrice Quinn, I would like a word with you.” Mom smiled at our guests, but it was all teeth. “We’ll be just a moment.”
Dad stood up and shrugged. “Teenagers, right?”
The Robertsons chuckled as my face flamed red. I resented the implication that I’d done something reckless or immature. I’d applied to college. I marched past my parents toward their office on the other side of the house where they ran their practice. I paused outside the double doors, their brass plaque winking in the light:
SOPHIA QUINN, PH.D., AND EDWIN QUINN, PH.D.MARITAL COUNSELING AND SEXUAL HEALTH
I rolled my eyes for what was probably the millionth time and once again reminded myself why I’d never really fit in here. Berkeley, California, where even the academia had an emotional component to it.
Sometimes I wondered if I had any emotional components at all.
Chapter Two
They barreled in after me, yelling over each other before the door had even closed. “You applied to Oxford?” Mom demanded, bangles flying as she tossed her arms over her head. “Were you even going to tell us?”
I frowned. “I’m telling you now.”
Dad massaged his temples. “Oxford, again? Honey, I haven’t heard you mention that place in months. I thought you’d lost interest. Don’t they require, I don’t know, an interview or something?”
I nodded, my stomach clenching at the thought of the Zoom call a few weeks ago, my legs trembling under the table, just out of sight.
Mom narrowed her eyes. “Is this why you’ve been acting so strangely over the past few weeks?”
I shifted in place as she sank into her overstuffed leather chair.
She laughed. “I thought … I don’t know what I thought. That maybe you were being so secretive because you’d made a friend?”
Heat blossomed across my cheeks. She always asked about dating, her and Nana Quinn both. You’d think that after sixteen years she’d know her daughter well enough to know that was probably never going to be a pressing issue. When it came to my nana, I’d typically make up some story about how that last guy I ran into—while attempting to read and follow my mother around the local co-op—had asked for my number.
People are supposed to be kind to the elderly.
I shook my head, trying to get back on track, when Dad sank into the matching chair next to Mom.
“Beatrice, you must understand this is a shock. You’re still so young, and the idea of you moving out of this house or out of the country is a lot to take in.”
I nodded, trying to understand their perspective as I sat primly on the couch across from them, which was usually reserved for their clients. My fingers dug into the buttery, worn leather. “I didn’t know if I was going to get in, so there wasn’t any point in making a big deal about it. I only found out today, so I thought we could start making plans.”
They sat with twin looks of disbelief aimed in my direction.
I sat up straighter, my glasses sliding sharply down my nose. “Okay, well, as I was saying, it is time to move beyond my current level of education. The decision to go to Oxford was threefold. First, I felt that—”
Mom leaned forward, her dark hair tumbling over a turquoise peasant top. “Sweetheart, I need you to hit pause on the speech and get real with us. I don’t think this is a good idea.”
I bit my bottom lip. I hated when she asked me to “get real” with her. It implied that she thought my actual personality was fake.
“All right,” I said, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. We were briskly moving toward the debate part of this conversation. That was fine; I was prepared. “Please, tell me your concerns.”
“For one, you’re only sixteen!”
Dad placed a hand on Mom’s knee, and she stilled. His sandy blond hair and tan implied he was more at home on the beach than in all the classrooms it took for him to obtain his doctorate.
“Sweetheart, it will be a lot of new experiences for you, which you don’t always enjoy or respond well to. You’ve been homeschooled or taken online classes your whole life, and now you will have actual classmates. It will be another country with new laws, foods, and customs. You will be living alone or, more likely, living with a stranger. Any one of these things would be a difficult transition, but all of them? It’s a much better idea to start small. Let’s sign up for a few in-person classes at Berkeley and see how that goes first. They have an amazing statistics department.”
“Yes, honey, the last time you took an in-person class, you refused to say a single word, even when called on. The teacher thought you were purposefully ignoring him,” Mom said, her knowing look scraping against every nerve I had.
I almost wavered, smoothing out the creases on my lumpy blouse, unable to hold their concerned stares as they outlined all my flaws. My difficulties with change. With people. With the world outside my bedroom. I knew it frustrated them and they didn’t get it, or get me. I was never going to be some picture-perfect social butterfly, but I just wished they’d remind me of that less often.
“Look, I’m older now, and I doubt that Oxford will be that much different than the online classes I’m currently doing. They give you a topic or assignment, you study it, and then you take a test or write a paper. What am I missing?”
“Everything else!” Mom blurted as she jerked out of her seat. Her features sagged as she walked over and sat next to me, gently taking my hand. “You are missing everything else! You’re a brilliant, incredible young woman, but everything is about your work. You barely come out of your room. We don’t want you to fall off the face of the earth and be found in a cramped apartment under a pile of books, like on one of those creepy Hoarders episodes.”
I pulled my hand out of her grip. “As lovely as that visual is, there’s nothing wrong with dedication. All those books are the reason I have an acceptance letter to Oxford.”
She sighed, and one of those long, unspoken looks stretched between her and Dad. My stomach cramped. Something about that look seemed final, and I hadn’t even outlined all my arguments.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I just don’t think you’re ready for it, and I’d be a lot more comfortable if you could defer a year. You’ll be seventeen then, and we’ll have some time to figure out the rest. We can take a look at some local programs, all right?”
My mind blanked, as if I had too many tabs open and the system just crashed. I stood up, pacing across their thick, shaggy rug, attempting to find the fluttering threads of my argument. That couldn’t be it. There was always another pathway, another solution. Another defense I hadn’t found yet. I spun toward Dad, knowing he was my only hope.
“You know what this means to me. When have I ever asked either of you for anything? Do you know how statistically impossible it is that I got in? Who knows if they would even let me defer!”
Copyright © 2022 by Serena Kaylor