Fake Out Excerpt

I hopped off my bed and pounded my fist into the air, twirling once before running across the hall. I threw open my sister’s bedroom door and bounded inside. Gwen glanced up from where she sat at her desk tapping away on her MacBook Pro. When she saw me, she raised her eyebrows, the typical Gwen reaction to anything I ever did.

“I got in!” I threw the invitation at her, brochure and all. “Can you believe it?”

“Got in?” She picked up the invitation by the very tips of her fingers like it was a dirty sock or something equally as gross. Her eyes flicked across the paper. “You mean Adamawa? No way.”

“So way.” I gave her a triumphant grin. “You won’t be the only Gray there this year.”

She frowned and continued staring at the paper. “They don’t send out invitations this late. It starts next week.”

“Okay, this was not the reaction I expected,” I said, picking up one of her karate trophies and bouncing it in my hands. “I thought you’d be happy.”

She scanned the words on the paper, eyebrows slowly furrowing until her face was scrunched up into a tight crinkly scowl that made her look a hundred years old. “I bet you’re a backup.”

“A backup?” I set down the trophy and leaned against Gwen’s dresser.

“Yeah, just in case someone doesn’t accept, they have backups planned to fill their first year twenty spot,” she said, rotating her desk chair around so she faced me. “Someone must have said no, so you were an alternate choice. You weren’t really picked.”

Ouch.

“So, I take it this means you aren’t happy,” I said. “I thought you wanted me to go.”

She blinked and looked away. “Why would you want to go knowing you weren’t a first pick?”

“I don’t know, Gwen.” I shrugged. “Maybe because it’s this famous place I hear about all the time. Maybe because every single person who goes gets into any college they want. Maybe because you made it sound like the summer of awesome?”

“Summer of awesome?” Gwen fiddled with the ends of her shoulder-length blond hair. “I didn’t tell you everything about the camp, Thora. You know that.”

“Of course I do.” I pushed off her dresser and fell backwards onto the twin bed covered in a massive array of black and white pillows. “But you said enough for me to know how much Adamawa rocks.”

“Well, I never thought you’d get invited. No offense. It’s just…ten girls and ten guys from the entire country? What are the odds, you know?”

I sat up straight only to find myself staring at the back of her desk chair. She had turned around to face her computer, but she was just sitting there with her hands in her lap. I frowned. “I have as many trophies as you do. I know, to you, track isn’t as hardcore as karate, but I’m a good runner. A good athlete.”

“I don’t think you should go,” she said, her shoulders slumping a little. “You can’t go.”

I folded my legs underneath me and leaned forward. “Where is this coming from?”

She’d always said she wanted me to go. She’d told me she wished I’d been there with her last year. How she’d been surprised at missing her little sister. And now? She acted like my going would be the worst travesty ever.

It must be that time of the month.