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.

since junior year to join her at Stanford, painting pictures

promise over late–night study sessions and shared dreams. We’d work hard, ace our SATS, and head to Columbia together. The

were twelve.

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

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

library or campus coffee shops – it made me physically ill. Or rather, after today, if I kept trailing after Aiden like his faithful shadow, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror.

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