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weeks later.
Emaline,
    I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but due to unforseen circumstances, I will not be able to supplement your tuition to Columbia. It was always my hope and intention to help you, but some things have occurred that make it impossible. I hope you understand.
    Supplement?
I thought. Not only was the deal off, it had never been what I thought in the first place. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the tone—distant, almost automated—sounded not unlike messages I’d received from the schools that had rejected me. All that was missing was a
We regret to inform you.
    So that was that. Columbia had been a long shot. I’d gotten there, and now it was being pulled away again. Sucker. To make matters worse, it was too late to apply for financial aid, which I’d assumed I wouldn’t need. And while we theoretically could have taken out a loan, all I could think of was my dad, who never bought anything on credit, paid his bills in full each month, and expected all of us to avoid debt with the same vigilance we did pedophiles and rabid animals. I could only imagine his face when I told him we’d need to borrow about as much as he’d make in a full year. Luckily, I didn’t have to. When he and my mom sat me down after dinner the next night and told me there was no way we could affordColumbia, I wasn’t surprised. After all, it had never been their promise.
    So East U it was. I had a full ride, it was a good school: you didn’t have to have a degree to see it was a no-brainer. That night, I sat at my desk, looking at that full shelf of college prep books, all lined up in a row. Thanks to ongoing budget cuts, they numbered more than the entire collection on the subject in my school’s media center. Just as I thought this, I had a flash of my mom graduating eighteen years earlier, while I watched from my grandmother’s arms. How different our lives were, then and now. She’d wanted so much for me: the moon and more. But maybe, right now, the moon was enough.
    So it seemed fitting, really, that the moon was out and shining through the corner of my window as I pulled up the Columbia Web site and notified them I wouldn’t be attending in the fall. After all that hard work, it was so easy. Just a couple of clicks, some keystrokes, and done.
    As for my father, there were no more e-mails, no explanations: he was just gone, Bigfoot all over again. At times, I found myself questioning his very existence, even though I knew I had, in fact, spotted him, with my own eyes.
    And while I kept my initial acceptance message from Columbia in my inbox for a while, looking at it didn’t really make me sad. Instead, it was the lack of e-mails. How pathetic I felt logging in to my account, hoping to see my father’s address atop the new messages. The weirdness of donating all those books to the media center, now that I didn’t need them anymore.
    Mostly, I felt stupid for falling for his big talk, the verything my mother had warned me about. Even from a distance he’d taken me in, and I’d gone, gullibly and willingly. In my less masochistic moments, I reminded myself that I, a girl from Colby High, had gotten into an Ivy League school. That had to count for something. I just wasn’t sure what it was.
    But life went on. And the one person who knew that best of all, always, hadn’t gone anywhere. She was always bragging, telling anyone who would listen about my full scholarship to a great school. Squeezing my shoulder as she passed by me as I sat on the couch watching TV. Smiling from across the dinner table when Amber said something typically ridiculous. Stopping outside my closed bedroom door for only a moment, yet always just long enough so I knew for sure she was there.

3
    “I’D JUST LIKE to say again how thrilled we are that Andy will be joining our family in August. Here’s to the bride and groom!”
    There was a burst of applause as Mr. Templeton held up his glass, followed by a collective