Chapter 4

Chapter 4

To silence any second thoughts, I opened my laptop right there on FaceTime with Maya.

Without hesitation, moments before the midnight deadline, I logged into the Common App portal and changed my acceptance from Columbia to Stanford. The cursor hovered over the “Confirm Change” button for just a second before I clicked, watching my future transform with a single mouse click.

been begging me since junior year to join her at Stanford, painting pictures of California sunshine and Silicon Valley dreams.

SATS, and head to Columbia together. The aerospace engineering program

were twelve.

loved the idea of harsh New York winters or felt particularly drawn to Columbia’s engineering focus, I’d spent three years of high school making it my goal. Every AP class, every SAT prep session, every extracurricular -all carefully chosen to match Columbia’s requirements. I’d even joined the robotics club just because Aiden said

future together. His mom would invite me over for Sunday dinners, talking about how nice it would be to have both of us at Columbia, casually mentioning all her friends whose children had found their soulmates during freshman orientation. Everyone, including me, thought Aiden and I would naturally become a couple after graduation – the perfect high school sweetheart

couldn’t find a single reason to go to Columbia anymore. The thought of walking those same campus paths with him, sharing classes, running into him and Madison at the library or campus coffee shops – it made me physically ill. Or rather, after today, if I

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