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If Robert Parrish ever lowered himself to stop his blue Toyota pickup at the slouching bank of mailboxes at the end of Antietam Lane, his son would have raced home on his bike every afternoon, leg muscles aching and burning as he pedaled to beat his father home from work. But Robert Parrish never did. Fetching the mail was a chore for his wife, or — more likely — his son, and it was a chore Adam Parrish didn’t mind adding to the list of tasks he was responsible for in and around the Parrishs’ double-wide. Because Adam retrieving the mail meant being the first to see any envelopes addressed to him.
Report cards.
Birthday cards.
An acceptance — or rejection — from Aglionby Academy.
Adam had delivered his application and its accompanying $100 fee in person, and the woman in the private high school's administrative office did a poor job of hiding her surprise when he handed her a postal money order instead of a personal check. Try as he might, Adam hadn’t been able to stop heat from crawling toward the tips of his ears, but he bore his embarrassment as best he could as the administrator scheduled him for an interview with an admissions officer, and he had to bear his embarrassment again when he stepped onto Aglionby’s campus a few days later in secondhand khakis and a secondhand collared shirt for an interview that would make or break his chances of getting out of Henrietta.
The admissions officer had been cordial. And honest. She hadn't hidden the school’s high expectations, its low admission rate, its high tuition.
“Aglionby is a privilege,” she told him. “We pride ourselves in our academic excellence, and the bar is set correspondingly high.”
As if Adam hadn't known. As if he hadn't spent every spare minute he had in a scratchy, upholstered computer chair at the public library, researching everything he could about Aglionby, its student body, the successes of its graduates. As if he hadn't killed himself all school year to earn top grades in every honors class Mountain View High School offered freshmen. As if he hadn't found a job unpacking shipments at one of the warehouses at the edge of town — a job he wasn't legally old enough to have yet — so he could begin putting away money for tuition.
Because maybe Aglionby Academy didn't need Adam Parrish, but Adam Parrish needed Aglionby Academy, and since the afternoon he'd seen a shaved-headed, school-uniformed boy breeze through the checkout line at the supermarket while Adam couldn't pay for toothpaste and four cans of store brand ravioli, Adam had been determined to attend. He'd die on the vine if he had to spend three more years at Mountain View. No one would care about a valedictorian from a rural Virginian public high school that offered AP History and AP Biology because teachers wanted to teach them rather than because of student demand.
“I understand, ma'am,” was Adam's polite reply. “I know the classes will be harder than I'm used to,” he said, coaching himself away from saying I reckon, “but I'm ready for the challenge.”
Whether she believed him or not, he couldn't tell. The admissions officer had the kind of composure Adam dreamed of, a face so calm and impassive it gave nothing away. Her lips had never grimaced with pain because her father grabbed her arm too hard. Her eyes had never watered with shame because she couldn't afford groceries. She'd never shown up to an interview that could change her life in a shirt with too-short sleeves and pants with too-short legs because she'd grown an inch in the three months since she bought them at Goodwill.
What Adam did know was her eyes flickered to his too-short sleeves and his self-cut hair when she asked if he would need scholarships to cover tuition, and he knew warmth crept up his ears again when he nodded and answered he would.
He had still been gracious when they finished. Thanked her for her time and the opportunity. Acknowledged he should expect a response in the mail in four to six weeks. Then Adam had walked to the metal rack where he'd locked his bike, passing a parking lot full of exquisite cars and bricked walking paths full of exquisite students, and not for the first time in his life, Adam Parrish wished he could fade into nonexistence. The bruised cheeks and split lips he often sported made him stand out no matter what he wore, but even without them — he’d been so careful the past two weeks, tiptoeing around his father’s constantly shifting ideas about the qualities of a good son — in his thrifted clothes he looked like a lightning-struck tree in a forest full of thriving elms.
Every boy he passed wore their Aglionby uniform — tan chinos and a white collared shirt along with tie and a raven-crested navy sweater — but their spring break-golden skins, polished leather-soled shoes, and perfectly swooped and styled hair all sang of money. A pair of their khakis probably cost as much as Adam spent on clothes in two years. Who did he think he was, believing he belonged at a school full of boys whose fathers made millions as musicians, or hedge fund managers, or politicians? The night before, he’d spent an hour hunched over the ironing board as he hid in his tiny bedroom, starching his shirt and making sure his pants didn’t have a single crease. These Aglionby boys had never held an iron in their lives outside of a golf club. They sent their clothes off for dry cleaning and they came back perfectly pressed. When a growth spurt brought the hems of their pants to their ankles, they threw them away and bought new ones.
Beyond their clothes, they still couldn’t have been more categorically opposite Adam. Brilliant, loose smiles full of straight, white teeth. Hundred-dollar haircuts obtained in Washington, DC. Easy shoulders despite carrying leather messenger bags laden with textbooks. If Aglionby accepted him — a long shot, given the financial aid he'd require — Adam would never fit in with these boys. They'd sniff out his poverty like the hounds from the school's hunt club sniffed out rabbits, their chase marked by howls that filled the Henrietta air every weekend. He could wear the Aglionby uniform and look like them. He could clip his vowels and sharpen his ts and sound like them. He could act like them in every way, flippant and proud and confident, but as much as he tried, Adam could never be like them.
He would only ever be other.
But, Adam realized, he didn't have to fit in with them. He didn’t have to be like them. All he had to do was sit in class with them, work on projects with them, get higher grades than them. These Aglionby boys didn’t need to be his friends, something Adam was always better off without. Friends asked questions. Friends showed concern. Friends created ties to places he wanted to leave, so it was pointless to make them when — in three years — Adam Parrish planned to put Henrietta behind him and never look over his shoulder.
All he needed was to get into Aglionby and have patience. That would solve half the problems in his life.
Somehow, Adam kept his chin up his entire walk to the bike rack, through silently unlocking his bike, through walking it off campus so he didn’t draw unwanted attention. Then he climbed onto the seat and pedaled home, eyes focused on the bank of mailboxes at the end of Antietam Lane as soon as they came into view.
Those mailboxes became an integral part of Adam’s life for the next few weeks. From the day after his Aglionby interview — though an answer wouldn’t arrive that soon — he rode home, hope and desperation and want keeping his feet on the pedals every mile between school or work to the trailer park. They never put lead in Adam’s sneakers, they never increased his pace, but from the moment he crested the final rise in the road that brought him to the rutted dirt driveway of Antietam Lane, from the moment he first spotted the mailboxes, his heart hammered in his chest until he squeezed the brakes on his handlebars, skidded to a stop in the dirt, and wrenched open the mailbox marked with a rusty 21.
Day after day, he pulled out mail his mother threw away as soon as he handed it to her. Coupon postcards from Dollar City. The supermarket’s weekly saver. Flyers for rent-to-own furniture stores. White, windowed envelopes stamped with a red past due.
Nothing emblazoned with Aglionby Academy’s raven crest arrived.
The end of April rolled into May, and May marched toward June. Three weeks turned to four, and four weeks turned to five. Enough time passed that Adam’s patience began to fade along with a bruise across his cheekbone, and only one thought kept his hopes up: rejection wouldn't take this long. That would have been a quick decision, a short letter.
Thank you for your application to Aglionby Academy. While your transcript and interview were impressive…
He could try again for junior year. Apply again. Interview again, if they offered him a second one. But Adam didn't want to try again. Starting at Aglionby for sophomore year, he’d already be a step behind. No curriculum at Mountain View High School could compare. If he had to stay there another year before getting into Aglionby, he’d be playing catch up until graduation. College prospects would dwindle alongside his chances of getting out of Henrietta, and Adam could hardly stand staying there three more years, let alone the rest of his life.
But then it came.
The Friday before Memorial Day — at the tail end of six weeks — Adam meandered home to delay the start of three days stuck with his parents in their double-wide. Squeezing the brakes on his bike nice and slow, he stopped in front of the trailer park’s mailboxes and climbed off his bike before he opened the box for the Parrishes. A Harbor Freight catalog waited inside, alone and curled in half so it fit in the dark, narrow space, a single slice of sunlight showcasing the discounted air compressor advertised on the catalog’s cover. It was the one piece of junk mail Adam’s mother never threw away, the one piece of junk mail Adam’s spite wanted to leave in the mailbox until it dried out and disintegrated. Leaving it would result in more bruises though, so Adam retrieved the catalog and shut the mailbox, only to pause when a white envelope caught between the catalog’s pages fluttered to the ground and landed by Adam’s scuffed sneakers, flap side facing up.
It was probably another piece of junk. A credit card offer or a solicitation from a charity seeking money the Parrishes didn’t have. Adam’s conscience would withstand plenty, but it couldn’t withstand litter, and he couldn’t leave the envelope lying in the dirt. Even if the neighbors wouldn’t notice. Even if the neighbors wouldn’t care. More than one sun-yellowed supermarket circular stuck out of the patch of dry, colorless weeds growing around the mailboxes’ feet. Another discarded envelope wouldn’t make a difference.
Still, with the Harbor Freight catalog dangling in one hand, Adam stooped to pick up the envelope, and when he turned it over as he stood, hollowness spread through the pit of his stomach as soon as he noticed the letter was addressed to him.
As soon as he noticed the Aglionby crest printed richly in the envelope’s upper left corner.
Somewhere in the past six weeks, Adam’s heart had stopped hammering on his ride home, unable to maintain its pounding in the face of daily disappointment. And it didn’t hammer then as he stood at the end of Antietam Lane, staring at the envelope quivering in his hand. It did, however, crawl into his throat, and he swallowed it back into his ribcage despite a rapidly drying mouth.
For a month and a half, Adam had lived in limbo, neither accepted nor rejected from Aglionby Academy. Now that he had his answer, he wasn’t sure he could face it. Opening the letter — thin, too thin — should have been a special occasion. Adam never expected fanfare, someone to share in his joy or disappointment, but everything around him spoke of the mundane. The late spring sun warm on the back of his neck. The musty earthiness of the endlessly flat fields of dry grass spreading out around him. The buzz of premature cicadas clinging to the only tree within a hundred yards. The thrum of tires on pavement and the brief rush of air as a car sped past on the road at Adam’s back.
But Adam would rather open the letter on the side of the road than in his tiny bedroom in the double-wide. There, he’d be alone, a closed door between him and his mother, someone who — in any other family — should have been on his side. Cheering him on. Showing support. At least by the mailboxes, he had the spring and the sun and the cicadas as witnesses. They’d have no opinion on the matter, but they were better than nothing.
They were better than someone who didn’t care at all.
Turning his face up to the sky, Adam closed his eyes for a long moment, swimming in the red glow behind his eyelids as he took a few deep breaths. From here, there was a before and an after. He’d be an Aglionby student, or he’d be stuck at Mountain View for another year. He’d have a future, something that fit perfectly into his plan, or he’d be back at square one, erasing the slate to start over, to find something new.
Adam didn’t want to find something new.
When he opened his eyes again, he twisted his backpack around to stash the Harbor Freight catalog inside it, then he turned the Aglionby envelope over and slid his thumb carefully beneath the sealed flap. Dry adhesive crackled as he eased his thumb toward the other end of the envelope, and as he got closer to his answer, Adam’s heart began to pound, rioting loud enough his ears rang when the flap finally came free. He gently — respectfully — bent it back and then pulled out the single page tucked inside the envelope, and everything Adam needed to know, everything he had hoped for, was printed crisp and clear in black ink on thick white paper, right above the letter’s top fold.
Dear Mr. Parrish,
On behalf of the entire Aglionby community, I am delighted to inform you that you have been accepted to Aglionby Academy as a student in the Class of 2013.
In his hurry to read the rest, Adam nearly tore the letter in half as he unfolded it, then he had to read through it a second and third time before he believed it. Before he realized he hadn’t killed himself for nothing. Before he understood he’d gotten into Aglionby.
The astronomic balance of tuition he still owed after the partial scholarship he’d been awarded made Adam a little lightheaded, but it didn’t stop tingling pinpricks from spreading across his skin, like champagne bubbles rising up inside him and popping just as they reached the surface. For a second, his eyes stung until he blinked away the feeling, then Adam lifted his hand to touch his fingertips to his lips because he’d started smiling without really meaning to. It felt like forever since he’d smiled, wide, elastic, and true. If someone chose to leave the trailer park at that moment, if some junker bumbled up the rutted dirt driveway toward the county-paved road, they’d find Adam standing by the mailboxes, grinning like a fool. They’d shake their head, spit out their open window, and — for once — Adam wouldn’t take it to heart.
He felt too bright and too weightless and too warm for him to mind.
Eventually, he folded up the letter, taking far more care than he had in his rush to open and read through it. Corners square and neat, edges perfectly aligned, Adam tucked the letter back into its envelope, knowing he’d only take it out and read through it again once he was inside the trailer and inside his room. He’d take it out dozens of times over the summer whenever he needed a reminder he’d gotten in. Whenever he needed a few minutes of something good.
Twisting his backpack around again, Adam slid the envelope between his honors biology and honors geometry textbooks where it could stay safely hidden until he got to his bedroom. Part of him wanted to keep it out, hold it high above his head as he rode his bike down the dirt lane to the double-wide, but he knew better. No one else cared about his successes. Everyone in the trailer park — his parents included — would see it as him rubbing his Aglionby acceptance in their faces. As him declaring himself better than them.
And he was. Or he would be. Now he had something on Aglionby letterhead to prove it, even if he had to keep it to himself until he couldn’t anymore. Until he had to have his mother sign paperwork to withdraw him from Mountain View High School so he could enroll at Aglionby.
Adam had weeks to go before that, to when he couldn’t keep his secret anymore. But until then?
Hitching his backpack onto his shoulders, he climbed back onto his bike, and as he pointed his handlebars toward the double-wide and started pedaling, his head and heart and hope remained in the clouds. What lay at the end of his short ride would never feel like home, and neither would this tiny, rural town, but as his feet pumped on the pedals and a light breeze lifted his hair, Adam Parrish felt like the king of Henrietta.