Days Like This by Danielle Ellison Page B

education
courses at home, it was time to move on, and Rice was my number one. If I got
in. I applied to five of the country’s top ten schools, and so far, I’d only received
a response from two. I was accepted into Iowa State, but not to the University
of Texas. I scrolled down the site on my phone—no news yet.
    “Your shake,”
Molly said as she handed me a protein shake and took a seat next to me. She
reached a hand over the table to rest on mine, a smile on her face. She pushed
a piece of blonde hair behind her ear and in a flash it wasn’t her I was
staring at. It was Cass.
    Cass before
she left, when her hair was long and her face was still bright and hopeful. We
sat here, like this, me with an orange juice and her with a cup of tea. She
held my hand over the table, and the ring I had just given her sparkled under
the sun.
    “We should
tell your mom,” I’d said.
    She’d nodded.
“I’d like to do it by myself. If that’s okay? Tell her and then your parents.”
    And I said yes
because I didn’t know she would leave me to go there and never come back.
    “You okay?”
Molly asked. Her nose got this crinkled spot at the top of it when she was
worried, and it was there now. “Is it your neighbor who’s in the hospital?”
    I shook my
head. “My neighbor” was all I’d told Molly that Mrs. H was. I don’t know if she
knew Mrs. H was Cassie’s mom—she knew about Cassie, but I’d never connected the
dots or filled in the pieces. I didn’t know how. The truth of everything was
too complicated. “I was checking in on Rice. Nothing yet.”
    Molly leaned
up on the table on her elbows. Her face was happy, and there was something
about this girl that was so completely free and motivated. I hadn’t met anyone
like her in a long time. Cassie was like that once. “You’ll get in, and you’ll
take the world by storm with your buildings.”
    “If I don’t?”
    Molly
shrugged. “There’s always Iowa State. You’ve been talking about this since I
met you, and I think when people want something bad enough, they make it
happen.”
    “That’s a good
way to view life.”
    “It’s too
short to do it any other way,” she said. Something sad flashed across her face,
but it was gone. I knew she had something in her past that haunted her, but she
never brought it up. Molly moved toward me. She was so pretty, generous and positive.
I was lucky to have her. She was solid. I needed solid.
    Molly lowered
herself into my lap, one leg on each side of me, and wrapped her hands around
my neck. Her fingers trailed at the ends of my hair. I wondered if this was a
weird place to make out. Right outside The Good Drip seemed a little out there.
But then, she smiled and I kissed her and it didn’t matter anymore.

    MOLLY HELD MY hand as we
walked from the car toward the doors of St. Joseph’s. I didn’t want her to
come, not really, but I couldn’t tell her that. She was being supportive, and
even though I was only coming to sign a paper, it was good that she wanted to
be here. That she seemed to care about me and what I needed.
    “You’ve really
been to sixteen countries?” I asked Molly as the hospital doors opened. I’d
never left the country. We moved here as a kid and I was content to stay,
mostly because Cass was here.
    She nodded. “I
started junior year of high school. The Model UN Club took a trip to Paris. I’d
never been out of Atlanta before and I loved it.”
    “Model UN,
huh?”
    She laughed.
“I went to South Africa that summer with an organization that let teens travel
to help the underprivileged. Senior year I went to China, and saved all my
money to backpack across Europe after graduation. Twelve weeks in Europe. I go
every semester during school, too—anywhere I can. My sister loved to travel, so
I wanted to go to her favorite places, and it helps me build my resume for
Doctors Without Borders.”
    Molly was
amazing. I knew how passionate she was about medicine. She wanted to do