The Book Thief 》Hemmings A.U

49.00

          IT'S SORT OF LIKE I stop being aware, like I lose feeling for those initial thirty seconds after I read that line. 

      I know my heart is beating because it sort of has to to keep me alive, but I don't really feel it in my chest. I know Luke and Lucy are talking to me, but I can't make out any of their words. It's a muffled mess, almost like I'm hearing them from underwater. There is no distinction, only noise. I know I'm crying, but only because I'm hiccuping and can barely breathe, not because I taste the saltiness on my open mouth.

        I'm gasping for air and my hands are shaking and then all at once, the feeling comes back to me. It is the worst feeling, the feeling I never wanted to experience in my entire life. It is failure, it is emptiness, it is the reality that my dream, my goal, everything I had been working towards for as long as I can remember, is gone. 

       They rejected me. They don't want me. I'm not good enough. My best just wasn't good enough for Brown University. And God, that fact hurts like a bitch.

       I always knew that this was a possibility, that yeah, obviously my acceptance wasn't guaranteed. But never once did I think that this would really happen, that rejection would transpire and my world would be flipped completely upside down. 

         Lucy reaches out to touch me and I turn to look at her and I see it. I see the look. 

          The look that people give you when they feel bad for you, when they approach you like you're some wild animal with rabies, when you become a shard of shattered glass, when you become something that people feel the need to fix but don't know how to go about doing so. 

           It's a look that I hate with every fiber of my being full of pity, disappointment, of realization. Realization that poor Kendall Cohen's dream is shot to hell. Her writing wasn't good enough to get first place (or was it? Maybe her intelligence was just lacking here, since she let herself be pulled into complete insanity and chaos by an eighteen year old boy. Maybe it wasn't her writing that was failing here, maybe it was just her common sense. After all, it goes without saying that you never put a boy before yourself, before your future. If she would have backed up her file, if she would have stood up to this boy, maybe she wouldn't have been in this situation right now. Maybe she would have gotten her applications in earlier and they would have been better. Acceptance worthy.)

        Her life wasn't good enough to make her parents stop feeling like there's a void that needs to be filled; to stop feeling like they should have gone through with that abortion Grandma wanted so badly.

         Her throwing herself into her work, making education her number one priority, all those sacrifices, they just weren't good enough.

          We regret to inform you --spoiler alert; rejection, rejection, and oh, wait, some more rejection is soon to follow!

        The thing is, I didn't even put a boy before myself or my future. If that were the case, I would have forgotten about my submission completely, I wouldn't have fought Luke on getting my story back, I wouldn't have worked so fucking hard. 

     Deep down I knew that when the time came, I was going to have to choose between school and Luke. And I had the same choice every time. He knew that, and he still loved me and I still loved him even though it would make things even more difficult. I wanted to choose both, but I knew I couldn't have that, I knew I couldn't have it all. But really, what could I have? It seemed like the entire world was conspiring against me. 

       I fell in love with someone who was essentially blackmailing me, I missed prom weekend, I got into a terrible accident that almost killed me, the story I had been working so hard on for months and months was destroyed in seconds, and now I didn't get into school of my dreams.