Page 1 of Built to Fall
CHAPTER ONE
LINA
“You’ve been back for a month, Lina.” The words ring through my mind like a distant sound. One I’m desperate to ignore.
But when I don’t answer, Aunt Carrie asks, “Are you sure you’re settling in well?” Her voice is hushed, as if she’s afraid the question is going to be what sets me off.
“If I needed more time, I would have taken it,” I quip, continuing to pace back and forth from my nightstand to my dresser, running my hands over my duvet as I pass my bed.
This phone call was supposed to be for her to check up on me. Not so she could try and pull at the strings of emotions I’ve desperately been trying to avoid.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
My head tips back involuntarily, looking at the ceiling for some kind of reassurance. There is none.
I know she’s trying to be here for me in any way she can. I know she’s struggling with losing her sister in the same way I’ve lost my mother.
But if I keep talking about it—keep rehashing it as if it will magically bring her back—the lump in my throat is never going to dissipate. All I’ve been trying to do is throw my grief out of thewindow. But I’ve dealt with it for too long, and it’s time to stop letting it consume my life.
“Look, Aunt Carrie, I know you are worried about me, but I’m going to have to get back to normal eventually.” It’s the harsh truth.Thisis my new normal. “I’m already a year behind from the time I had to take off.”
Whether I’m able to reconcile with it or not, it doesn’t matter. My mom died over a year ago. I took a year off when it happened.
I left Yale. Left my friends. Came back a sophomore while all my friends are now juniors.
All I want is to get back to the life that used tofitme. I can’t do that when it feels like I’m weighing fifteen pounds heavier—and no, not literally.
“No one would have faulted you for taking more time off, Evangelina.” It’s the first time I’ve heard the name Evangelina inmonths,considering she’s one of the few people who call me that anymore. It also tells me how serious she’s being.
“I didn’t need it.”
Even if no one else faulted me, I would have. It was entirely unnecessary for me to take more time off.
Most people don’t have the option to take a year off when something like this happens. It’s not realistic to think I could continue drowning in my sorrows as if I didn’t have a life to return to.
After my year off, I reapplied. Got accepted. Contemplated taking more time off.
Originally, I denied Yale’s readmission offer.
But when the director of Yale admissions came knocking on my door one morning—seriously, she was at my front door—she forced me to reconsider the offer.
My mom is well known among prestigious schools everywhere—waswell known.
She’s also the one who made me a legacy at Yale.
Yale. Columbia.Harvard.All of them had offered her jobs, and the moment I was born, not only did I inherit my mother’s brain, but also her invite list.
Every person on the board of each school knew who she was. I was even more positive of that when she died, and I realized I would never be able to go to college without escaping the lasting impression my mother left on every person she met.
When your mom—who was a professor at Harvard and a New York Times best-selling author—suddenly dies, the very large community of people who knew Dr. Eva Everhart does not take it lightly.
It’s the whole reason the director of Yale admissions gave me a second chance to“make a better decision with a clearer mindset,”as she put it.
As if clarity was something that could be delivered to my doorstep in the form of an Ivy League acceptance.
It worked, though. Her showing up and giving me a second chance at coming back was the exact kick in the ass I needed to return to school. To get my lifeback to normal.
I cover the speaker when I hear Eden yell something from the living room, listening for a moment before realizing it’s not directed at me.
