The Kids Don't Stand A Chance

“Kylie! Kylie I got in!” I screamed over the phone, pressing the receiver closer to my ear as I held up the acceptance letter up to the light. It was almost too good to be true; after finding the letter in the mail two months ago that put my on their wait-list, I had absolutely no faith in myself that I could get in. Yet here I was, the key to my future held in between my thumb and forefinger.

Kylie squealed. “Congratulations! I knew you would get in! New England Culinary Institute – here comes Ava!” I jumped at the thought of finally being able to say I had been accepted into culinary school. My hobby and my passion were no longer going to be just that; cooking was going to be my career. Well, baking, more specifically, but so long as it involved me being in the kitchen, I lived for it.

Cooking and baking were more than just fun things for me to do in my spare time. To me, it was a science – no, an art form. I derived pleasure from seeing people eat my creations, and I perfected each individual recipe to such an extent that they barely looked anything like what they had originally started out as. I liked to experiment, to create. You couldn’t go wrong with food, because no matter which way to went there was always something you could do to improve it; one more spice that could be added; another half cup of sugar, a pinch of salt.

Food wasn’t subjective, because I knew good food. Food critics knew good food, too. Food was just as objective as a timed athletic event, as a math problem.

“Oh my gosh, there’s so much for me to do,” I began, setting the letter down and looking around frantically for a piece of paper and a pen to begin my to-do list. I had to de-enroll myself from Emory, I had to tell my parents, I had to tell my grandparents, I had to find the nearest mountain and shout it to the world. I had to –

“What’re you going to do about Zack?” Kylie questioned, making me freeze in my tracks.

I laughed, trying to push her question off as just Kylie being Kylie. “What do you mean, ‘what’re you going to do about Zack’? What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. He just expected you to go on tour with him and his band – you know that.”

I rolled my eyes as I reached into the bowl of fruit on the counter. “Zack doesn’t have the right to expect anything from me,” I shot back, my mouth full of apple.

“As a food snob, you might think that you’d know better than to talk and chew at the same time,” Kylie quipped, but I chose to ignore her.

“Besides, I made it clear to him that if I didn’t get into NECI, I’d go to Emory.” That part, at least, was true.

“Obviously you didn’t make it clear enough,” she retorted. I pulled out a chair to the kitchen table, sitting down with my apple in one hand and the phone in another. “Ever since you guys –“

“Kylie!” I exclaimed. The chair screeched back as I nearly leaped forward. “Stop! Don’t even go there!”

“We’ll I’m sorry,” responded my best friend, dragging out the ‘r’ in her apology. “But ever since Matt’s party, he thinks your ‘relationship’ – or whatever you want to call it – is going to last forever. I swear, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone change so drastically in just three months.”

“I know,” I mumbled, running my hand down my face. “And I tried not to give Zack that impression, but I don’t think it got anywhere with him.”

“It’s kind of cute, you know,” mused Kylie, and I sighed. “I’m serious, Ava. He’s like fucking in love with you, or something. I know we talked about it and stuff, but I never actually thought he’d fall in love with you.” Ouch.

“Yeah, well, I’m not in love with him,” I retorted harshly.

“And you have no one to blame for that but yourself.”

“What does that mean?” I snapped. A lot of the times, Kylie’s harsh comments and sarcasm were refreshing. But not when they were aimed at you.

“I’m just saying that if you had called the bets off –“

“You’re the one who put me up to all of them first –“

“Well I’m sorry you’re so damned competitive all the –“

“Excuse me for wanting to be the best at something for –“

“You should have know better than to toy with someone’s feelings and –“

“I didn’t think it would end up like this!” I finally yelled, ending the conversation that consisted solely of us just interrupting each other. The line was silent as I continued, “And I didn’t want it to end up like this, either. Because now I’m going to give him an explanation, and it’s going to kill him.”

“Well don’t tell him the complete truth, alright? I don’t want him going off and telling Jack that I’m a bitch or something.”

I rolled my eyes, unable to fathom how Kylie could care about some guy from another school that Zack had introduced her to, and how he managed to play a part in all of this. Wasn’t this supposed to be about Zack, and how I had no choice but to hurt him? Since when did our feelings come in to play here?

Since when did they deserve to?

“Look, I have to tell him what we did and all of the bets that we made about him, okay? Whatever he does afterwards, that’s not my fault. I thought that getting rid of my ‘nice girl’ image would be fun, but really Kylie, this has been the shittiest semester ever, and –“ Wait, did she hang up on me? Did she seriously just hang up on me because I refused to lie for her? Fantastic.

Fan-fucking-tastic.