Love Me Crazy

18. The Interview

Just to let you know, at one point in the story it is not from Mary's perspective. It's a third person view which I really thought would be cool. So just keep a watchful eye out for that. Oh, also, if you feel lost, there is a full recap of the story in the author's note of Chapter 17. So check that out if you feel confused.

The Interview

I knew today wasn't going to be easy.

In fact, I knew today was going to be difficult.

Today was the day of my Berkeley interview—the interview that decided whether or not I would be on the Californian campus come this fall.

My throat was already clogging up, making it hard to breathe. My fingers were so numb they could very well be chopped off and I wouldn't even feel it. And even though I had slept on a fairly cushy pillow, my neck ached.

So slowly, and with numerous grunts, I lifted myself to a sitting position. Glancing to the side table in the guest room, I saw that the digital clock read 7:13. My interview would start in a little under two hours.

Grudgingly, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and plopped my feet onto the floor. I then walked over to the small dresser adjacent to the guest room bed.

Now I wasn't a very classy girl and thus, I didn't really own any college interview appropriate clothing. And even worse, the only clothes I had with me were the few articles I could scrounge up as Bastion and I fled from my home just two days ago.

So I pulled on a wrinkled pair of black skinny jeans and an ill-fitting whit peasant top. After untangling my hair with my small comb, I looked into the mirror and observed my frumpy ensemble.

I sighed.

Nothing could really be done.

It was when I knelt to put a pack of tissues into my shabby messenger bag—tissues I would need when the interviewer told me I had been rejected—that the guest room door opened.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Leon saunter into the room. His hair was in a neat braid lying against his chest and he was wearing a pair of loose jeans and a black hoodie. This told me he was ready to go as well.

"Nervous?" he said with a teasing grin as he kneeled beside me.

I mimicked someone barfing as I clutched onto my bag straps. And even though the both of us smiled and laughed after this, my stomach was churning violently and it was taking everything within me not to pass out.

"I'm not going to get in," I sighed hopelessly as I rose to my feet, "I just know it. I don't even know why we're risking our safety for some meaningless—"

"Shut up," Leon interrupted as he gripped my shoulders firmly. He then proceeded to shake me fervently.

"You're already psyching yourself out," he said sternly. "If you keep telling yourself you can't do it, then trust me you won't be able to. You have to go in there believing in yourself. You have to go in there thinking that if your one applicant out of five hundred others and there is only one spot left...that you're going to get that spot."

"And you will get it," he said, leaning in with a warm, kind grin, "Because I know that...that you're the best. And that if-if my Marsbar believes in herself...then there is no possible way anyone else won't."

Did he...

Did I...

Is...

What?

By the expression on Leon's face, the muddled thoughts rolling around in my head seemed to be plaguing his mind as well.

"...Did...did I just call you...my Marsbar?" Leon said, I think more to himself than to me. Rubbing the back of his head nervously and quickly backing away, Leon laughed softly before bumping into the bedroom door.