Full Ride (10 page)

She seems to be shifting into some guidance-counselor spiel that she gives so often, she doesn't even have to think. She's glancing toward the printouts as if she's already mentally sent me on my way.

“I
do
need to start thinking about scholarships now,” I interrupt, with an edge to my voice that I don't usually have with grown-ups. Or with anyone, really, except Stuart yesterday. That was dangerous—I lost control. But I have to make Ms. Stela see how important this is.

I try again.

“I . . . might have a problem applying for financial aid,” I say. “I may not be able to do that. So I'll
have
to get scholarships. I need to know what's possible.”

Ms. Stela stops gazing toward the computer printouts. She studies my face in a way that makes me think she may be a more observant guidance counselor than I ever suspected.

It makes me nervous.

“Why, Becca Jones,” she says, emphasizing my last name oddly. She looks puzzled. “Are you an illegal immigrant? I mean, an undocumented alien?” She jerks her hands up like a traffic cop signaling “Stop!” Or, as if she's trying to take back her own words. “No, no, don't answer that. I don't need to know.”

“I'm not an illegal immigrant!” I say. Though a split second later I wish I'd let Ms. Stela believe that. It would be easier. “There are just some . . . issues with my family's finances.”

“Right,” Ms. Stela says, nodding sagely. “Lots of families have . . . issues.”

I don't like the way she says that. Or the fact that she steps past me to pull her door shut, making our conversation private. If any of the guidance secretaries were listening outside, this probably convinces them that I am an illegal immigrant.

From where?
I think.
From the land of kids with imprisoned parents?

I tell myself I'm being paranoid, and push on.

“Anyhow, that's why scholarships are so important,” I say. “And why I need to know how much scholarship money I'll get so I'll know if I need to . . . to fill out the financial aid forms or not. You know.”

What I really mean is,
Will I need to fight with Mom and Mr. Trumbull to get to fill out financial aid forms? Is that a fight I can run away from, like everything else? Or is my choice fight that fight or don't have a future?

Ms. Stela turns into some version of a deeply concerned guidance counselor I've never seen before. She clears off the stack of paper from her least cluttered visitor's chair and gestures for me to sit down. She waits until I obey. Then she eases into her own desk chair.

“Becca,” she says gently, and I imagine her using that same tone of voice with girls with unplanned pregnancies. Or maybe with actual illegal immigrants. “The timing isn't on your side for deadlines and announcement dates. For pretty much any college application you'd turn in, you need to check a box about whether you're applying for financial aid. Those applications are almost all going to be due by the end of December. The FAFSA—the federal financial aid form—that's due in mid February. Depending on where you apply, you may not know about certain school-related merit aid until well after that. And the local scholarships, the ones that are for Deskins students only—the ones that are easiest to get—we don't announce those until the senior awards assembly in May.”

I knew that last part. As a National Honor Society member, I'd handed out the programs to proud parents at the senior awards
assembly last May. I'd glanced at the lineup of scholarships and prizes during lulls between families coming in.

The information just hadn't seemed so devastating last May.

“So you're saying, if I don't fill out the FAFSA, I may not even be able to go to college?” I nearly wail to Ms. Stela.

I must look and sound thoroughly shell-shocked. Ms. Stela starts patting my knee.

“No, no, that is
not
what I'm saying,” she assures me, shaking her head for emphasis. “But if you really can't fill out the financial aid forms—and your family doesn't have the money to pay full freight, which, who does these days?—then you're going to have to be strategic about where you apply. You're a good student. The University of Toledo has really started offering a lot of merit aid to attract top students. So has the University of Kentucky. Depending on what you want to study, there are other schools, too, which may not be terribly well known or prestigious, but you would be pretty much guaranteed—”

“I don't want to go to Kentucky or Toledo or some school nobody's ever heard of,” I say. “I want to go to Vanderbilt.”

I sound like a spoiled toddler about to cry because she doesn't want the small, plain-vanilla ice cream cone; she wants three scoops of rainbow sherbet in the chocolate-dipped waffle cone with the fudge sauce and sprinkles on top. And I must have waved my arms almost like a tantrum-throwing toddler, because suddenly coffee is sloshing from the cup I'd forgotten I was still holding for Ms. Stela.

She takes the coffee cup from me and puts it on one of the few uncluttered spaces on her desk, right at the edge.

“I'm not saying give up your dreams,” she says, and her voice is as cautious as someone trying to reason with a small, irrational child. “I'm not saying, don't even try. But you need to have a backup plan. Just in case. The rules have changed recently so more people can get financial aid, but if you really don't think
you can, you'll need to apply widely to lots of colleges and—oh!”

She jumps as if she's just thought of something amazing. But at the same time she jolts her knee against the desk, which sends her coffee cup tumbling off the edge. The cup hits the floor and the lid bursts off, sending liquid gushing across the carpet. I grab Kleenexes from a box on her desk and dive down to try to soak it up. Ms. Stela scrambles after me.

“This is why the custodians hate me,” she says.

I realize there are already several rings of coffee stains on the off-white carpet.

“I don't know,” I say. “I think it's kind of an improvement on the original design.”

Ms. Stela laughs and says, “Remind me to give you the comedy-writing scholarship application come January.”

She stands up and walks to a filing cabinet.

“This is what I just remembered,” she says, pulling out the drawer. “This is what I know you'll want to see . . . now, where is it?”

She's rifling through folders. She sounds so excited, I stand up and walk over close enough to see the labels on some of the folders: “The Scott Prescott Memorial Scholarship,” “The Amanda DeVries Memorial Swim Scholarship,” “The Ronald Higgins Memorial Technology Scholarship . . .”

“Are all scholarships named for dead people?” I ask.

“On the local level, yeah, most of them are,” Ms. Stela says. “It's a way for parents who lose children to make sure that their kid's memory lives on and that something positive comes out of what might otherwise seem like a senseless death.”

She sounds so clinical that I'm surprised when she sniffs and swipes a hand at her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says. “One of my best friends was killed in a car crash my junior year. Her parents set up a scholarship fund, and we had all sorts of fundraisers for it . . . and then I ended up
getting one of those scholarships. Still not the same as having my friend around, you know?”

“That's too bad,” I say. But Ms. Stela has already moved on. She's at the back of the drawer now, pulling out a folder labeled “Whitney Court Scholarship.” It figures she wouldn't have the files in alphabetical order. And that she'd leave out a vital word like “Memorial.”

“Okay, this is what I was looking for,” Ms. Stela says, opening the folder and holding it out for me to see. “This is a fairly new scholarship, and its deadlines are earlier than the other local ones. I have it marked on my Google calendar to send out this information to all the seniors next week, but that's so close, I'll give this to you now and bump it up for everyone else, too.”

I bend down and read the first lines of the paper on the top of the folder:

Whitney Court spent her entire childhood in Deskins and graduated from Deskins High School fourteen years ago. . . .

“This is last year's handout,” Ms. Stela says, reaching around me with a pen to cross out the “fourteen” and make it “fifteen.” “I'll have to update it before I hand it out to all the seniors. Let's see, are there any other changes?”

She reads over my shoulder as I go on:

Whitney was very involved in DHS activities and thoroughly enjoyed her time here. It would not be an exaggeration to say that she loved each and every one of her classmates, and they loved her. In her honor, her family has begun awarding a scholarship each year to one graduating DHS senior. Scholarship amounts vary but can be for up to a full-ride scholarship at a private university, renewable for up to four years . . .

I have to back up, make myself reread the magical words a second time.

“Full ride?” I say. My voice squeaks with amazement. “This is for a full ride?”

“It's
up to
a full ride,” Ms. Stela corrects.

I barely notice.

“So, if I get this, it could pay for everything at Vanderbilt, or some other school like that . . . any school, really.” I laugh, almost giddy with the news.

“Well, maybe.
If
you get it, and
if
they give the full amount,” Ms. Stela reminds me. “But the deadlines are good for you too, since the application is due in mid-October and they announce the winner by the end of December. It's totally weird but, hey, if someone wants to donate money to DHS students, they can set it up practically any way they want.”

“This is exactly what I need,” I say. “I'll do anything to get this.”

I remember Stuart's questions from yesterday: “What would you do, if you had to, to go to your dream college? What laws would you break? What moral dictates would you toss aside?” Then I push that out of my mind. Some scholarship administered through the school is not going to require breaking the law.

Ms. Stela shakes her head and rolls her eyes at the reverence in my voice. But she's grinning, too.

“The requirements for this are unusual,” she says. “Not as strange as some of the scholarships you'll find online, where kids can win money for playing marbles or making prom clothes out of duct tape or taking tests about fire sprinklers. But, still. Most scholarships require a personal essay—about volunteer work or your plans for the future or what DHS has meant to you . . . stuff like that. The Court scholarship requires an essay about some student who graduated in Whitney's class.”

I do a double take.

“You mean,
any
student who graduated then?” I say. “I could just pick somebody at random? And then write about what they've done since high school?”

I'm just as glad not to have to write about myself. But this seems cruel, like Whitney's parents are gluttons for punishment. The little summary of her life doesn't say anything about her death, but she must have died late enough in senior year that she still got a diploma. Or maybe right after graduation. She couldn't have lived long after that, if they're still so fixated on her high school years. So why would her family want to hear again and again about all the glorious accomplishments her classmates went on to achieve without her?

“You can pick anyone from that class at random, yes,” Ms. Stela says. “But you don't write about their lives since high school. You write about their high school years.”

This I understand. If I'd lost Daddy simply because he'd died, I'd probably want to dwell constantly on our happy memories. I would have welcomed people reminiscing with me. That's pretty much what the Court family is doing, right?

“I get it,” I say. “This is great.”

I beam. Ms. Stela's office is still coffee stained and cluttered. But it suddenly feels like a holy site for me. I feel as though a ray of sunlight has broken through three years' worth of clouds around me. I feel as though there might as well be an angelic choir in the filing cabinet belting out the Hallelujah Chorus. I feel . . . hope.

“Becca?” Ms. Stela says, an edge of worry to her voice. “Remember, this isn't guaranteed—”

“I know,” I say.

But I want so much to believe that it is.

I sit through my morning classes in a daze. At lunchtime I don't go to the cafeteria. I go to the yearbook office. It's too early in the year for anyone to be hard at work on it yet, so the office is deserted except for Mrs. Iverson, the advisor, straightening her desk after her last class.

“Can I look through some old yearbooks?” I ask. “I won't take them out of the room.”

She glances up, jolted.

“Oh, is
that
starting already?” she asks. “For the Whitney Court Scholarship?”

I nod, and she sighs. She points toward a row of books lined up against the wall.

“Over in the corner. Her senior year is the purple one,” she tells me. “And if anyone else comes in, you have to share, all right? I am
not
spending my lunch period policing this.”

I guess my idea of looking through old yearbooks to find out about Whitney's class isn't as original as I thought. I guess seniors do it every year. But thanks to Ms. Stela, at least I have a head start. If I'm lucky, she'll forget to give the information
to the other seniors until the last minute, and I'll have a huge advantage.

But would that be fair?
I wonder.
Or is that like Stuart-style cheating?

I push the questions aside. I'm just glad that, once Mrs. Iverson leaves for lunch, I have the room to myself.