Parallel

Jeans.”
    “Yeah, I heard you. But that’s okay,” I tell her. “I already have an outfit in mind.”
    It’s amazing what a hot shower and some caffeine will do. By the time seven forty-five rolls around, I’ve relaxed into something resembling normal. Marissa sent me a text about an hour ago telling me that she and “B & M” would meet us at the restaurant, so I have the suite to myself. The pajama top looks even better than it did last night, probably because it hasn’t spent the past four months wadded up in a suitcase. I add a pair of black tights and a boyfriend blazer to the ensemble (my attempt to make the outfit East Coast–friendly) and slip into my cowboy boots. The look on Caitlin’s face when I step outside is priceless.
    “Whoa! You look amazing! Where did you get that dress?”
    “I got a crash course in wardrobe versatility from Bret Woodward last night. Where I saw a pajama top, he saw a dress.” I shrug. “So I went with it.”
    Caitlin looks impressed. “It totally works.”
    We set off for the restaurant, which Caitlin tells me is only a couple of blocks away. Now that I’m not in MacGyver mode, I notice things I didn’t this morning, like the Old Campus architecture and how distinctly urban the city of New Haven feels. There’s an audible energy on the sidewalk—students talking animatedly as they walk, music blaring from inside cars and dorm rooms, the hum of a crowd inside a nearby sports bar. This is what college sounds like. Something in me rises and swells.
    “So,” Caitlin says, linking her arm through mine, “I’m thinking there’s probably a good chance this is going to be our reality for a while.”
    “Don’t get my hopes up.”
    “Think about it,” she says. “My parallel certainly isn’t going to change her mind about Yale, and yours won’t decide definitively about colleges until she gets her acceptance letters in the spring.”
    “Yeah, but she could decide not to apply here at all,” I point out.
    “She won’t,” Caitlin replies, sounding very certain.
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I’m the one who filled out the application.”
    I stop walking. “You did not.”
    “With your permission!” she says quickly. “Your mom was bugging you to apply, and I knew the only reason you weren’t was because you thought she’d be disappointed if you didn’t get in. So I convinced you to let me fill out the application for you, and we submitted it without telling anyone. That way, if you didn’t get in, no one would have to know.”
    “But how did I get in? My grades were good, but it’s not like I had a genius-level SAT score or anything.” It wasn’t you who got in, the voice in my head reminds me. It was the parallel you.
    Caitlin rolls her eyes. “Abby, you spent the entirety of high school crafting the perfect college application. You scream well-rounded.”
    “So what about the essays? Did you write them?”
    “Of course not. I wanted you to get in, remember?” Her expression darkens for a split second, so quickly I wonder whether I imagined it. Caitlin’s always been self-conscious about her writing, and predictably self-deprecating. But the look I just saw was more like annoyance. “I used an editorial you wrote for the Oracle as your personal statement,” she tells me, “and an email you sent me as the five-hundred-word supplemental essay. All your words. Or, your parallel’s words,” she says, correcting herself. “Not that the distinction matters at this point.”
    Says who?
    “Well, thank you,” I say. “Or, thank her. If I’d woken up at Northwestern this morning, I’d be catatonic by now.”
    “I doubt that.”
    “I’m serious, Caitlin. I couldn’t do this without you.”
    “You’d never have to,” she says. “Even if you were at Northwestern. You’d still have me.” She points to a small, dimly lit restaurant with Japanese lanterns hanging out front. “We’re here.”
    The place is crowded, but Marissa is easy to spot (largely because she starts waving like a maniac when she sees us). The guy sitting next to her is cute(ish) in a skinny-jeans-and-horn-rimmed-glasses sort of way and has his arm around the back of her chair. “M” has his back to the door, so at first, all I see is a green shirt collar and a dark-haired head. “Keep it moving,” Caitlin whispers from behind me, nudging me forward. Just then, M turns his head toward us. Our eyes meet, and we both smile.
    M for Michael. And he’s