Identity

Christmas break

But before any admissions decisions could be made, I still had to get through this semester, which meant the rest of my finals. And for Cambridge and Oxford, the best any American student could hope for was conditional acceptance; they almost always waited for the last semester's grades to be posted before offering a final offer because their term started in October. Somebody whose gifts were undeniable, like Uncle Tony, could probably get a full acceptance after this semester, but most of us were not in that select group and would have to expend extra effort in the spring. Fortunately, the studying I'd done beforehand saw me through, and I felt good about the exams. The Saturday after finals was the winter dance, a semi-formal thing that I attended with my friends, none of whom took dates. Although John and I were the only ones applying internationally, most of them had earlier interviews with the colleges they'd applied for, and we were all a little burned out and ready for the Christmas break.  I bumped into my old crush Craig Benson in the hall with one of his friends when I went to refill my water bottle. Dancing was thirsty work. Sigh. Still so cute.

"Hey, Anna," he said, friendly as ever. "How were finals? I heard you were interviewing at Oxford."

"And Cambridge," I said, just to set the record straight. "I think I did pretty well. How about you?"

"Grateful it's over," he said. "I'm ready to sleep in." I agreed, smiling.

"You trying out for the tennis team again this year?" Mark Andrus asked me. "It was fun last year."

"Yeah, I really liked it," I said. "I think I got to be a much better player."

"You might be able to go to State," he said. "Carlie and Jacob said that you play at their club and have good things to say."

"That's nice of them," I said, pleased. "I hope so. But my main goal is to win a tournament." He grinned.

Then the door to the girls room opened, expelling Jane and Molly. They came over to their dates and Jane took Craig's arm possessively.

"Jane," I acknowledged. "Molly."

"Lys," they spoke in chorus. Molly looked nervous and Jane smug.

"Wait, what?" Craig asked, looking between us.

Jane smirked, and I rolled my eyes. "When I enrolled here, I decided to go by a new nickname," I explained.

"Why?" he asked. "How do you guys know each other?"

"Jane attached herself to my group of friends at the prep school. My parents didn't give me an over-the-top Sweet Sixteen birthday party, though, which was kind of social suicide, so I switched schools, got a fresh start after every one of my friends dumped me." Jane was practically scarlet, but she should be, she'd been the driving force to get me excluded from our group of friends, I'd found out.

"So what's your name?" Craig asked.

"Lysippe Alexandra Wayne," I said. His eyes widened. Mark snickered.

"She couldn't take the heat," Jane said. "So she's sl-- taking the easy way out here."

"Aren't you pissed off?" Mark asked, looking at the other girls and me.

"I was hurt more than anything, I'd been friends with Eleanor since kindergarten, but I've moved on. I'm not slumming, Jane," I explained patiently. "HKHS is a really good school and I'm enjoying the diversity of classes that we have here, a lot more than the prep school. And I'm doing well enough to get interviews at Oxford and Cambridge; I don't have to rely on my status as a legacy at Harvard or Yale to get into a good school. Did you get interviews there?" I hadn't heard anything, not surprising because I hadn't bothered to try to find anything out. She'd been talking about going to one or the other for as long as I'd known her as a step up the social ladder, wanting the contacts you make at school more than the world-class education. But she wasn't a legacy there; her parents and grandparents had gone to good schools, but not the ones to which Jane aspired.