Always and Forever, Lara Jean
Page 3

But if I had the choice, I would still pick UVA every time. I’ve never wanted to be far from home. I’m not like my big sister. Going far away, that was her dream. She’s always wanted the world. I just want home, and for me, UVA is home, which is why it’s the college I’ve measured all other colleges against. The perfect storybook campus, the perfect everything. And, of course, Peter.
We stay a bit longer, me telling Peter more facts about UVA and Peter making fun of me for knowing so many facts about UVA. Then he drives me home. It’s nearly one a.m. when we pull up in front of my house. The downstairs lights are all off, but my dad’s bedroom light is on. He never goes to bed until I’m home. I’m about to hop out when Peter reaches across me and stops me from opening the door. “Give me my good-night kiss,” he says.
I laugh. “Peter! I have to go.”
Stubbornly he closes his eyes and waits, and I lean forward and plant a quick kiss on his lips. “There. Satisfied?”
“No.” He kisses me again like we have all the time in the world and says, “What would happen if I came back after everyone went to sleep, and I spent the night, and left really early in the morning? Like, before dawn?”
Smiling, I say, “You can’t, so we’ll never know.”
“But what if?”
“My dad would kill me.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“He’d kill you.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” I agree. “But he’d be pretty disappointed in me. And he’d be mad at you.”
“Only if we got caught,” Peter says, but it’s halfhearted. He won’t risk it either. He’s too careful about staying in my dad’s good graces. “You know what I’m really looking forward to the most?” He gives my braid a tug before saying, “Not having to say good night. I hate saying good night.”
“Me too,” I say.
“I can’t wait until we’re at college.”
“Me too,” I say, and I kiss him one more time before jumping out of the car and running toward my house. On the way, I look up at the moon, at all the stars that cover the night sky like a blanket, and I make a wish. Dear God, please, please let me get into UVA.
 
 
2

“SHOULD I DUST MARIE’S WIG with pink glitter or gold glitter?” I hold up an Easter egg to my computer screen for Margot’s inspection. I’ve dyed the shell pale turquoise blue and decoupaged it with a cameo of Marie Antoinette. “Hold it up closer,” Margot says, squinting into the camera. She’s in her pajamas; a sheet mask clings to her face. Her hair has grown just past her shoulders, which means she’ll probably cut it soon. I have a feeling she’ll always keep her hair short now. It really suits her.
It’s night in Scotland, and still afternoon here. We are five hours and 3,500 miles apart. She’s in her dorm room; I’m sitting at our kitchen table, surrounded by Easter eggs and bowls of dye and rhinestones and stickers and fluffy white feathers that I saved from when I made Christmas ornaments a few years ago. I’ve got my laptop propped up on a stack of cookbooks. Margot’s keeping me company while I finish decorating my eggs. “I think I’m going to do a pearl border around her, if that helps inform your decision,” I tell her.
“Then I say go with the pink,” she says, adjusting her sheet mask. “Pink will pop more.”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” I say, and I get to work dusting glitter with an old eye-shadow brush. Last night I spent hours blowing the yolks out of the shells. This was supposed to be a fun thing for Kitty and me to do together like the old days, but she bailed when she was invited over to Madeline Klinger’s house. An invitation from Madeline Klinger is a rare and momentous occasion, so of course I couldn’t begrudge Kitty that.
“Only a little while longer before you find out, right?”
“Sometime this month.” I start lining up pearls in a row. Part of me wishes I could just get this over with, but another part of me is glad to have this time of not knowing, of still hoping.
“You’ll get in,” Margot says, and it’s like a proclamation. Everyone around me seems to think that my getting into UVA is a foregone conclusion. Peter, Kitty, Margot, my dad. My guidance counselor, Mrs. Duvall. I’d never dare say it out loud, for fear of jinxing anything, but maybe I think so too. I’ve worked hard: I got my SAT scores up by two hundred points. My grades are almost as good as Margot’s were, and Margot got in. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, but will it be enough? At this point, all I can do is wait, and hope. And hope and hope.
I’m in the middle of hot-gluing a little white bow to the top of my egg when I stop to cast a suspicious look at my sister. “Wait a minute. If I get in, are you going to try to convince me to go somewhere else, just so I can spread my wings?”
Margot laughs, and her sheet mask slips down her face. Readjusting it, she says, “No. I trust you to know what’s best.” She means it, I can tell. Just like that, her words make it so. I trust me too. I trust that when the time comes, I will know what’s best. And for me, UVA is best. I know it. “The only thing I’ll say is, make your own friends. Peter will be making tons of friends because of lacrosse, and the people he’ll be friends with aren’t necessarily the kinds of people you’d pick to be friends with. So make your own friends. Find your people. UVA is big.”
“I will,” I promise.
“And make sure you join the Asian association. The one thing I feel like I’ve missed out on by going to school in a different country is an Asian-American group. It’s definitely a thing, you know, going to college and finding your racial identity. Like Tim.”
“Tim who?”
“Tim Monahan, from my class.”
“Oh, Tim,” I say. Tim Monahan is Korean, and he was adopted. There aren’t all that many Asian people at our school, so we all know who each other are, at least tangentially.
“He never hung out with Asians in high school, and then he went to Tech and met a ton of Korean people, and now I think he’s the president of an Asian fraternity.”
“Wow!”
“I’m glad Greek life isn’t a thing in the UK. You’re not going to join a sorority, are you?” She is quick to add, “No judgment if so!”