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college if you don’t graduate high school?”
    “I’d still like to go to college. I took the GED already.”
    There, thought April. I’m not a complete fuckup.
    Mrs. Barrett opened her mouth, then shut it again. She shook her head.
    “I passed,” April said. “And I already sent my scores to the University of Wisconsin. The admissions committee said they were fine, in terms of holding my place in the freshman class. I should have taken the GED months ago, really. I could have saved all that time I spent sitting in class.”
    April knew she was acting defensive with Mrs. Barrett, maybe even cocky. But one of the main reasons she’d stopped showing up at the high school was that everybody, from her guidance counselor to the lunch lady, seemed to think they knew what was best for her. They didn’t hesitate in sharing their opinions but never asked April about her own.
    “I’m assuming the fact that you’re telling me all of this means you’re planning to keep the baby,” Mrs. Barrett said.
    April nodded. She knew Mrs. Barrett probably expected her to say what a difficult decision it had been, how she’d considered all of her choices, including adoption, but that would have been a lie. April knew what it was like to lose a mother, and she couldn’t put another person through it.
    “I don’t have children,” Mrs. Barrett said. “But I’ve managed to stay busy all these years with my charity work. I’m not sure I would’ve had time to do it all if I did have a family.”
    April realized she must have looked scared, because Mrs. Barrett continued. “Not that I’m saying you can’t have children and still do other things you want to do in life, necessarily. And that’s what we should talk about. If you haven’t been going to your classes, what have you been doing with your time?”
    April looked out the window. The peony bush her mom had planted several summers ago on the side of the house was now blooming a brilliant pink. Peonies had been her mother’s favorite flower. April thought they were a rather unstable plant. The flowers were too showy for their own good; the stems often flopped toward the ground under the weight of the huge blossoms.
    She turned her face back toward Mrs. Barrett. “Well, I’m still going to my advanced calculus course at the university, so I can get the credits, but that ends in a couple of weeks,” she said.
    April didn’t mention that the main reason she kept going to her college-level class was that she hoped to run into Charlie on campus. She knew he had some science classes in the same building she went to for calc. They’d met when the building was evacuated for a fire alarm in the fall. April had stood shivering on the sidewalk waiting for the firemen to let the students go back inside, and Charlie had offered her his sweatshirt. She still remembered the way it smelled, of pine needles and Ivory soap.
    After that, they’d started studying together. April also began spending the night sometimes at Charlie’s apartment on campus, telling her mother she was staying at a girlfriend’s house. She hated lying to her mom, but she was willing to do almost anything to spend a series of uninterrupted hours with Charlie, lying skin to skin and sharing secrets underneath the billows of his down comforter—a shield from the petty, perpetually boring world of high school, which April couldn’t wait to leave behind.
    Her mom didn’t approve of the relationship. The few times April had brought him over for dinner, Kat had thought Charlie was sweet enough, but she worried that, because he was older, he would soon move on and break her daughter’s heart.
    Charlie’s parents didn’t approve of the situation, either, but for different reasons. Judy and Trip Cabot thought it was inappropriate for their son to be dating a girl who was still in high school, and they worried about what people would think. Even before they had a chance to meet April, they pressured Charlie to