THEN CAME YOU

Chapter Twelve: And so it is

Suze

I don't exactly know what made me change my mind. I had been real clear about moving back to New York from the moment we had moved to Carmel… but when my parents – Andy and Mom that is – began to ask where they should send my tuition money I began to doubt. I gave them half answers and avoided the topic as much as possible; I kept saying I would tell them when I was ready to mail in all my forms.

I began to hesitate.

I sat with the NYU class catalogue on my lap for hours but I never did as much as leaf through it.

And then Jesse got his acceptance letter from Stanford and a letter from the admission's office, they were giving him a full scholarship for the fall semester. He had been over the moon, happy that he wouldn't have to ask his father for money (though as part of the divorce settlement, Mr. de Silva was supposed to pay for the schooling of all the de Silva children).

Mrs. de Silva made him a special dinner at his house – I was in charge of the dessert, by the way, and everyone loved Andy's chocolate-orange surprise – and then Jesse and I had a more private celebration alone at the beach.

Jesse was happy and I was happy for him but we were carefully avoiding the topic that come august I would be packing up and leaving all the way to the other side of the country.

And to make everything worse, we were all finally getting along.

I guess we all had finally reached an age where we got over ourselves. Jake was happy to play big brother as usual, but he and Brad seemed to be able to talk with David now – especially when David discovered girls (or, well, one girl: Shannon). Hailey and I stopped arguing all the time. She went steady with Alan and I was pretty happy for her though I was careful not to intervene at all with them.

With all these changes, suddenly, NYU wasn't so appealing at all. So I finally got the nerve and talking to Mom and Andy, and I told them to send the check to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

They tried to look like they didn't care but I knew they were happy about it.

And I was happy about it too… and the fact that Jesse was going there was just an added bonus.

It was funny how I spent so much time trying to break away from my family, and in the end, I realized that being free could mean a lot of things; it meant that I was free to go, but it also meant I was free to stay.

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO READ THIS STORY!

That's all I have to say.

I bid you adieu!

Love,

Clavie