The Chosen (A Talents novel)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

I’ve never been good at being aimless. No matter how worried or overwhelmed I become, drifting around the house with a pathetic look on my face isn’t really my cup of tea. I’ve always been more of a do-something kind of girl. So over the next week, instead of worrying about the future or dissecting my final interaction with Cam, I finished clearing out the attic, mowed the weeds in the backyard, and took Grandma to no less than three medical appointments. I checked my phone five million times a day and received one text from Cam saying he was off to Sacramento and he’d see me when he got back.

I refused to wonder what he might need to apologize for. Hadn’t he already admitted to being my watcher? Didn’t I already know that he’d lied to me about the Program? That he’d befriended me—and maybe even flirted with me—to get me to come to Delcroix? Surely that was all he meant. Surely there wasn’t anything else.

And if there was more, I refused to torment myself by trying to guess what it might be.

I went running every morning and got myself a kickboxing DVD that I did in the afternoon while Grandma was taking one of her hour-long bathroom breaks. As I sweated onto the brown shag carpet in the living room, I imagined myself in an action movie montage, and was somewhat disappointed when I didn’t actually grow any new muscles. In the midst of it all, I somehow managed to find time to pour over the contents of my mother’s box of Delcroix memorabilia.

I started, of course, with her journals.

Or, rather, I tried to start with her journals.

The notebooks, which were various sizes and shapes, reflected the eras in which they were made. There was a young girl’s diary, with a little gold lock holding the covers together and childish scrawl on the few pages on which she had written. The second book had a hard cover stamped with the word “JOURNAL.” There were no lines on these pages, just uneven writing, some cursive, some print, in colors ranging from pink marker to pale grey pencil. Then there were spiral bound notebooks—three of them—each filled with tight, cursive, adult-looking writing.

Some weird organizational impulse insisted that I read the books in chronological order, like I was reading a novel, and wanted to see the events unfold as they had happened. So I started with the diary my mom had kept when she’d been a young child. But there were only a handful of entries in it, and they reflected insightful observations like, Delcroix Academy is super cool and I totally want to go there someday, and, Molly is a big jerk and I’m never going to talk to her again. The only thing I took away from this journal was the sad recognition that my mother must have truly been obsessed to keep it in her Delcroix box.

The next older journal was much more interesting, though the mixed handwriting and ink made it difficult to read. Judging from the different names of teachers and friends, it spanned a number of years. There were no dates—at least no years—but I figured the book went from middle school through part of high school. There were references to boys, crushes, dating, and heartbreak.

And there were entries about Delcroix.

They started off as curiosity. I wonder why they have the wall around the school? What are the kids that go to Delcroix like, anyway? Are they really all that smart?

Then they turned more personal.

I hate my school. I bet things would be different at Delcroix.

Mom says we don’t have money for voice lessons. Delcroix is my only hope.

By the end, they sounded a little scary.