Begin Again

When you’re a teenager and you tell people one day in the nearish future you’re going to write a book that’s part self-help, part memoir, you’re bound to get more than a few laughs. But that’s never made my vision of the book any less clear: Through Rose-Colored Glasses, it’ll be called. A little on the nose, given my last name and my reading glasses, but relentless optimism is kind of my brand, and I’ve never been one to apologize for it.

The thing is, though, if you’re going to sell a book on how to find happiness, you need to be an authority in it. You can’t just sell people on a happy ending based on your advice; you need to be the happy ending. You have to earn it.

And I intend to. I’m nowhere near the brightest person I know, but I am one of the hardest-working. I’ll get my bachelor’s and do whatever it takes to earn my way into a program for my master’s. I’ll find mentors in the field, and then strike out on my own, and become a mentor myself. And I’ll tie up all that success with the sweetest, most beautiful bow: the proof that love really can conquer all.

“Connor . . .”

“Yeah?”

I purse my lips, pressing the phone closer to my cheek. “I transferred to Blue Ridge.”

Shay’s wincing again, and I don’t blame her. I know what this sounds like: some lovesick girl who upended her whole life, Elle Woods–style, for the sake of some boy. But it isn’t like that. This school has been my plan since I was basically in utero. My mom always talked about this campus like there was magic in it. Other kids dreamed about Narnia or Middle Earth or mythical worlds, but I was staring at maps of Blue Ridge’s campus on my dad’s mug and curled up on the couch in my mom’s Blue Ridge scarf.

And even if it were like that—Connor isn’t just some boy. He’s the thread that has run through every part of my life. The kid who took me to the school nurse when I skinned my knee playing lava on the playground. The boy I swapped ghost stories with at the town’s annual s’mores cookout in Little Fells Park. The crush so in sync with mine that when we were fifteen, we both asked each other to Homecoming at the exact same time, in equally cheesy, public ways. The boyfriend who’s invited me and my grandmas to all of his family’s events, from birthdays to Thanksgivings to Christmases. After my mom died it felt like there was a strange distance separating me from a lot of our old friends, but Connor always made sure I was part of his world.

Even now, all these miles from him, I can see Connor closing his eyes and breathing the impossibility of this out like he’s two feet in front of me.

“You did?” Connor asks, his voice low.

I turn my back on Shay, just in case my eyes prick with tears. Usually I’ve got myself on lock, but this situation is a decidedly unprecedented one.

“Yeah,” I say miserably. “Are you . . .”

“There’s no way for you to transfer back?” he asks.

Something seizes in my stomach. “I . . .”

“No. Sorry. Of course not,” he says quickly, apologetically. “Plus—you probably just used all your savings, didn’t you?” He may not be paying his own tuition, but he knows from all the part-time jobs I saved money from that I am. “I don’t deserve you.”

I shake my head, the pit in my stomach still clenched. It wasn’t just for you, I want to say, but I’m too busy trying to blink myself out of this absurd dream to really latch on to the thought.

“I can’t believe—if I’d known you were . . .”

“Shh, Andie, don’t. If anything, it just shows how much we love each other.”

Love. That’s a word I haven’t heard from him in the past few months. I’m not proud of myself for knowing that, because I don’t believe that love is about keeping score. But there’s such an immediate relief at hearing him say it again that I can’t pretend it hasn’t worried me.

“Let me see what I can do on my end,” I say, holding on to the idea that we can fix this like it’s a lifeline.

“Yeah. Me too. It’s—it’ll be fine, okay?” he says. “We’ve both got classes starting today, so—let’s take it one step at a time. Go to class. Then figure it out.”

Like I can go to class now without acting like the guilt is eating me alive. If I’d just told him. If I hadn’t been so stubborn about wanting this to be a surprise. It’s the Homecoming mix-up all over again, except I sincerely doubt either of us will be laughing about this anytime soon.

“Worse comes to worst, we’re apart for one more semester,” says Connor. “We’ll figure this out. We always do.”

“We always do,” I echo.

After we hang up I take a beat. When I was in middle school I read an article on how to stop tears from coming out of your eyes. The first step was to breathe in four seconds, then breathe out two. I stare at the wall and take that breath.

“Shit,” says Shay. “Are you gonna cry?”

There’s something in her very frank but empathetic delivery that makes me laugh, and snaps me right out of it. I shove my phone into the pocket of my dress and turn back to her. I can tell from the steady way she’s looking at me that the laugh is exactly what she’d intended.

“No,” I say thickly. “At least, not if we take these Zebra Cakes to the face right now.”

Shay nods, holding hers up as she shifts off her bed. “Good. Because I’ve got to get to my ten-thirty shift.”

“Cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers.”

She takes this oddity in stride a lot faster than others have. “I appreciate the specificity.” She reaches for a plush gray beanie. “Do you have class?”

“Not until stats at eleven. But I need to get to the quad,” I say, helping myself to the mirror she propped up by the bookshelf. Somehow, impossibly, I look every bit as intact as I did five minutes ago—blond ponytail still immaculately styled and curled, eyeliner unsmudged, berry-pink lip stain still smiling tentatively back at me. Given the number of legacy Blue Ridge kids with trust funds and immaculate test scores, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got here, but I made sure to try to look the part.

“I have to cut through it to get to work.” Shay hauls a tote bag full of books approximately half her own size. It is safe to assume, based on the titles on the bindings poking out of it, that 90 percent of them are not part of Blue Ridge’s core course curriculum. “I can take you there.”

“Thanks,” I say, tightening my ponytail and grabbing my Zebra Cake for the road.

When we emerge into the January chill the campus is teeming with students, the sidewalks and little winding paths so full of them that it feels like they’ve shoved the entire population of Little Fells into a few square blocks. At first I’m so dumbstruck by the sheer number of kids. It feels like someone raptured all the authority figures. I can’t stop staring at everyone, accidentally making direct and aggressive eye contact enough times that people start to give us a wide berth.

“You look like you just got dropped into another country,” says Shay, who has been lightly steering me by tapping my arm every time we’re going to pivot in another direction.

I shake my head. “Little Fells is kind of tiny. I’m just not used to so many . . .”

“Hungover co-eds in pajamas?” Shay supplies.This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org: ©.

So much for me looking the part. I look more like someone about to teach a class than take one. But before I can answer, class lets out from a nearby building and a group of students nearly flattens us. Shay yanks me into the grass before we get caught in the maelstrom of elbows and bright blue coffee cups, and we watch them go by like Simba on the edge of a wildebeest herd.

“My life may have just flashed before my eyes,” I say after we’re in the clear.

“Was it pretty?” asks Shay.

“Honestly, there was a lot of scrolling through Instagram.”

Shay squints at the crowd we just dodged as they sharply pivot to the quad just ahead. “Oh, right. The Knights’ Tour. Is that what you’re headed to the quad for? You’re trying to get into one of the secret societies?”

I pick up the pace to keep up with the crowd in front of us, but slow when I notice Shay doesn’t change her stride. “Yeah. You aren’t?”

“Eh, probably not,” says Shay. “I’m busy enough as it is. And besides, whatever’s at the end of this ribbon hunt might just be a waste of time.”

I think of my mom’s ribbons, still tucked away safely with my things, and am suddenly glad I didn’t pull them out in front of her. “But you don’t know that.”

“And you do?” Shay asks, raising an amused eyebrow.

I open my mouth to defend it—the ribbon hunt, the secret societies, my compulsion to be a part of it all—but the truth is, I don’t know much at all. Only that it’s so much a part of my mom’s legacy that it all feels inextricably tied to me, too.

Off my look, Shay pivots and says, “Well, if you know about the kickoff event, I take it you’ve been listening to The Knights’ Watch.”

I nod, grateful for the change in subject. “Yeah.”

But “listening” is an understatement. “Living and breathing” might be a better one. I’ve been keeping up with The Knights’ Watch since I was a little girl, either on the livestream or the downloadable version that always pops up as a podcast after it plays.

“So what do you think?” Shay asks.

We’ve reached the edge of the quad now, and I’m half distracted by the small crowd of students gathering on the grass near the open concrete stage. “Of the show?”

When I look back over, Shay’s wearing a smirk I can’t read for the life of me. “Yeah. And of this year’s Knight,” she says.

I flush and hope against hope that she won’t notice. By “this year’s Knight” she means the anonymous student hosting The Knights’ Watch, who gets rotated out every time their predecessor graduates. They all usually have some kind of schtick, but their role is mostly to give updates on whatever is happening on campus, including every spring semester when they’re tasked with releasing the locations and times for the scavenger-hunt tasks—freshmen show up, complete some kind of task, and are given either a yellow, red, or blue ribbon. Each of the ribbons represents a different secret society, and if you have enough of one of the colors at the end of the semester, you have the option of joining the society of that color.

Trouble is, nobody’s sure just how many is enough to qualify. Hence the scramble to get as many ribbons as you can, and why anyone participating hangs on the Knight’s every word.

“I think he’s phenomenal,” I say quickly, willing my face to un-heat itself. “The one before him was great too, but the new guy is just hilarious. I can’t listen in public anymore because I keep laughing out loud.”

Shay tilts her head at me. “Wait, you were listening even when you didn’t go here?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “You might have caught on to the fact that I’m a little bit of an over-preparer.”

“Well, at least you’ll fit right in here,” says Shay, eyes sweeping over the campus. “Can’t take a step without running into a fellow nerd.”

I cling to the words like a lifeline. In that case, maybe connecting with people here will be easier than I think. Maybe I’ll even feel comfortable enough to launch some kind of advice column here without hiding behind a fake name to do it.

But while it’s true that I am an over-preparer in every sense of the word, that has nothing to do with my Knights’ Watch obsession. Or the fact that I not only know about the last Knight, but the one before that and the one before that, all the way back to the very first broadcast of the show, some thirty years ago.

See, my mom’s the one who started it all. The original Knight.