Parallel

manicured hands covered in cornbread crumbs.
    “Your mother forgot the sage,” she tells me, leaning over to let me kiss her cheek. I do, glancing over at my mom in the process. Mom just shakes her head. Don’t ask.
    “Want me to run get some?” I ask cheerily, setting my phone down on the counter and heading for the coffeepot. “Whole Foods is open till two. Fresh, not dried, right?”
    “That would be lovely, dear,” Grandma says. “And could you get some scotch? Your mother forgot that, too.”
    “No, Rose, she cannot buy you scotch,” my mom answers before I have a chance to. “She’s seventeen. And since when do you drink scotch? There’s a bottle of Jack Daniels in the cabinet.”
    “Scotch has fewer carbs,” my grandmother retorts. “But bourbon will do.”
    “Okay, so fresh sage.” I dump vanilla creamer into my coffee, then dig around the Tupperware drawer for the lid to my travel mug. “Anything else?”
    “Who’s Josh?” I hear my grandfather ask. “And why will he ‘miss you today’?” Grandpa has my phone in his hands, the screen lit up with a new text.
    “Josh is my boyfriend,” I reply. “And he’ll miss me because I told him I’d be hanging out with a nosy old man all day.” Grandpa swats me on the butt with my phone, then hands it to me.
    “Do we get to meet this boyfriend?” my grandmother asks.
    “Eventually,” I tell her. “Before I marry him, for sure.” I blow her a kiss, then dart up the back stairs with my coffee before the inquisition can continue.
    “Is it really that serious?” I hear my grandmother ask.
    I return to my room just long enough to put on jeans and throw my hair into a ponytail. As I’m passing my desk on my way back out, I hit the space bar on my laptop, illuminating my screen. With my grandparents’ unexpected arrival yesterday, I forgot to check my email when I got home from the picnic last night. My acceptance email could be in my in-box right now. Heart pounding, I click on my mailbox icon, and a pop-up box appears:
Server error. Your message was not sent.
    What message?
    I click on my out-box, and an email opens.
    No.
    I stare at my screen, dumbfounded. It’s an email to the Yale admissions office with a document attached. There’s only one person other than me who uses my laptop.
    She didn’t.
    With shaking hands, I click on the attachment. It’s the file I dragged to the trash yesterday morning. The Yale application I never intended to send.
    Oh, yes. She did.
    Fury rips through me. So searingly hot that it burns everything else out. I yank the power cord out of my laptop and storm down the back stairs into the kitchen.
    Mom doesn’t look up from the mixing bowl she’s washing. “Would you mind also getting so—”
    “How could you?” I demand, cutting her off. She looks up in surprise. Her face falls when she sees my computer.
    “Abby, I just—”
    “You just what, Mom? You just needed to know whether I could get in? Whether your precious daughter was good enough for an Ivy?” My voice is shaking and my eye sockets are radiating heat. The edges of things are starting to blur.
    “No! It wasn’t about that. I—”
    I don’t let her finish. “You went through my files? Who does that?” I slam my computer down on the counter, not caring whether it breaks. My grandparents gape at me, stunned into silence. I don’t behave like this. I’m not careless with expensive electronics. I don’t scream at my mother.
    I am screaming at her now.
    “I didn’t go through anything,” she says quietly. “I needed to send an email yesterday, and I’d left my computer at the museum. Your trash file was open on your screen.”
    “My trash file. TRASH. What were you planning to do if I’d gotten in?”
    “What’s going on in here?” My dad enters the kitchen, hair still wet from the shower. “What’s all the shouting about?”
    “Did you know about this?” I demand, pointing at my laptop. “Did you know that Mom fished my Yale application out of the trash and sent it in without telling me?” From the look on my dad’s face, it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t.
    “She filled the entire thing out,” my mom tells him, immediately defensive. “When I saw it in the trash, I thought maybe she’d gotten cold feet at the last minute, and I didn’t want her to miss out on a life-changing opportunity out of fear that she wouldn’t get in. She’s worked so hard, I just thought—”
    “But that wasn’t your