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brother, watching his face as he studied the little squares. When I looked back at my father, he was still staring at me, just like the first time we’d met, but it felt different now. This was our thing, our shared interest. Maybe it was weird there was only one. But I’d take it.
    “Yeah,” I told him. “Absolutely. I mean, that’s the plan.”
    “Good.” He nodded, pleased. “Glad to hear it.”
    A week later, the first book arrived.
Test Best: Preparing for the SAT
, I think it was called, although in the months following he sent so many more it was hard to keep them all straight. Books about taking tests, writing powerful essays, making your application stand out. About picking a college,calculating your chances, making sure you had the right backup and safety school. One by one, they crowded out my novels and magazines, taking over the entire shelf to the point where it sagged in the middle. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that with all these words, bound between covers, he was building me a way out of Colby, one book at a time.
    The thing was, even though I was a good student, the schools where he wanted me to apply—Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia—were ones my guidance counselor hadn’t even suggested. Plus there was the question of money, always tight. “Don’t worry,” he assured me, whenever I got up the nerve to broach this subject. “Leave the finances to me. You just concentrate on getting in.”
    It was a big promise, though, coming from someone who did not exactly have the best track record. This was something my mom, in particular, could not ignore. Our e-mail relationship was one thing; at least there, he was still at a distance, existing to me only, really, in cyberspace. But money and promises were real. As was the disappointment I’d feel if he wasn’t able to deliver.
    “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she told me. “When I knew Joel he was a big talker, but not so big on delivering.”
    “Mom, he was
my
age then,” I pointed out. “Would you want to be judged based on how you were at eighteen?”
    “I didn’t really have a choice,” she said. “I had a child.”
    Point taken. And I got where she was coming from. She’d done everything she could to make sure I didn’t have thesame experience, on any level, that she did. Luckily, I had some people on my side.
    “Stop worrying,” my grandmother said to her more than once, when I overheard them discussing this behind a door that was supposed to muffle their words. “He wants to get her there and pay for it, let him. You’ve done everything else.”
    “I don’t want her to get let down,” my mom replied. “The whole idea of being a parent is your kid
not
repeating your mistakes.”
    “People do change, Emily. He’s a grown man now,” my grandmother told her. “And anyway, no matter what happens, she has you and Rob. She’ll be fine.”
    The books, essay prep, and hard work all paid off: I got into three of my top five schools, and my safety, East U, offered me a full ride. It wasn’t until the e-mail came from our first choice, Columbia, however, that I finally let myself exhale. The first thing I did was hit Compose and type in my father’s address.
    Columbia
, I wrote in the subject line. Then, below, without a greeting or closing, only,
I got in
. Then I hit Send.
    I expected a quick response, as, like me, he checked his messages almost constantly. Instead, it was about five hours later that he wrote back.
Great news
, the e-mail said.
Congratulations.
    It wasn’t like he’d ever been that effusive in our exchanges. But I had expected a bit more excitement—or something—at this particular news. He’d written me pages about
Huckleberry Finn
. This was only three words.
    I tried not to think about this, though, as I hit Reply andthanked him, saying I’d be sending along some links to financial and admissions stuff we needed to work out. No response. In fact, the next time I heard from him was three