Chapter Text
The irony of having her future depend on an ancient history test is not lost on Veronica. Still, as Miss Carpenter hands out test papers, she prays life will decide not to spit in her face for once and make her lose the Kane scholarship over a question on Babylonian Akitu festivals.
She watches Wallace pack up his locker for the last few seconds before the door shuts, taking a moment to imagine what life will be like if she fails this test. Stanford’s been the dream since elementary school, but she’s spent most of that time knowing it’s a slim chance she’d ever get there. She dreads the thought of being stuck in Neptune for another four years, but being at Hearst with Wallace? Hey, that’s not so bad. He’d gotten all sentimental on her out in the hallway, and hey, she’s not made of stone, alright? She’d miss him too. Hearst is still a good option, and she’d be near her dad, near Mac, near-
And yeah, she’s preparing herself for the worst. Because Stanford’s not just the dream, it’s the escape — she’s just had to learn to prepare herself for life going to hell, nowadays. You have to learn to, at a certain point, especially in a place like Neptune. If you expect the let down, the loss doesn’t get to hurt you so bad. That’s the idea, anyway.
She feels the buzz of a text coming through just as she turns her phone off, but the message doesn’t pop up before the screen turns black. It’ll have to wait — Thutmoses II calls, and the idea of Palo Alto is pushing her pen to paper.
An hour and a half, 20 questions and one hastily scrawled essay on Sumerian gods later, she walks out the door of her final high school test with hope fluttering in her lungs. She’s telling herself she can’t know for sure, but- god, it felt good – it felt promising, even. She’s trying to hold back her smile when she looks across the hall, and there, Angie Dahl sits outside Ms. Dunne’s science class, head in her hand, sobbing her heart out. Veronica’s mouth drops open, and then quickly, as she turns away, it turns straight into a grin.
Angie was the only one still with a chance of beating her out for that scholarship. Sure, the girl can pay her way into Stanford anyway, but if she’s failed, that means Veronica’s golden. She’s all set. A full ride to Stanford is right around the corner and she can leave Neptune in the dust without a care.
Without meaning to, she breathes out a disbelieving laugh as she heads towards the exit. It’s real, Stanford’s real and possible and just a few months away. She’s practically skipping down the hallway, until she looks up.
Logan. Standing there, a few feet away, looking almost like he did that morning a week ago when she made an idiot of herself for thinking he was serious about ‘epic’ love. His mouth’s fallen open like he’s struggling to breathe a little. She almost expects Kendall Casablancas to come up behind him and break her heart all over again. But, no, there’s something else there. He looks… angrier, maybe. But just as devastated.
“Logan?” She asks, taking tentative steps towards him, like he’s a bomb about to go off. He’s still staring at her, scanning her face just as she scans his, trying to figure out what’s going on.
“Haven’t you seen.” He says, after a moment, but it doesn’t quite sound like a question. He looks down at her hand, still holding the pen from her exam. Then, after a moment, “They reached a verdict.”
He doesn’t have to say which trial. After a breath, she abruptly looks and turns to walk to the door, to get to the courthouse — she wants to be there, she’s got to see that smug asshole’s face when he-
“Veronica.”
She looks, and Logan’s hand is outstretched like he was reaching to stop her, but he’s fallen short of touching her. When she looks in his eyes, he shakes his head, swallowing. “It’s already been read.”
She watches him like she’s hoping he’s lying, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because if he looks like that, if he’s hurting this bad then it has to mean-
“All the charges? Everything?” She blurts out, suddenly breathless. He closes his mouth into a grim expression, and finally looks away.
“Not guilty. All of it,” he confirms. She’s lost in her head for a minute, red waves of anger and grief sweeping over her like a wave ¬—she’d be planning Aaron’s murder if she wasn’t just so damn tired of it all. When she comes back, blinking, he’s stood much closer to her, looking at her intently. “I bet he’s never been so proud of those acting skills, he’s bought the whole jury over.” He scoffs, and she recognizes his anger now. “That performance on the stand, plus the Tinseltown presentation, equals… Daddy-dearest goes free.”
She can taste bile in the back of her throat, and he must notice her fighting to keep her breathing under control because he lays off for the moment. Drops onto his back foot and just watches her. His hand’s still a little awkwardly outstretched, like he doesn’t know what to do with it. She reaches for her phone and starts to turn it on, the start-up screen taking a second to load.
“It’s all over then, just like that?” She doesn’t know why she says it, it’s not like she doesn’t know how these things work. Things just happen for no reason, and nothing makes any sense.
“Well I didn’t exactly stick around to hear papa’s sermon, but they were flocking to him in the masses. I saw your dad there, though. I’m sure he’s looking for you.”
On cue, her phone screen lights up with a missed text and several calls from her dad. There’s one from Logan, too, about ten minutes ago. She’s reminded of the joy she felt coming out of that classroom and tries to cling to it amongst the bitterness. She looks back to Logan, and the awkwardness of their recent interactions is starting to set back in. The urge to comfort each other battles with the hurt between them, and the fact that they wouldn’t even know where to start.
Her phone buzzes again in her hand, and he seems to notice she’s checked out of the conversation before she can even start to excuse herself.
“I’ll see you, Veronica,” he mumbles as he’s backing away, and for a second she catches this look in his eye, something like guilt, or maybe grief.
But she’s already walking out the door, phone up to her ear, needing her dad more than ever.
In the days that pass, with her and her dad distracting themselves looking for Woody, there’s this promise hanging over her. The idea of Stanford — of escaping, of proving her worth, of getting far away from Aaron Echolls — it settles deep in her chest, cooling down her pessimism amidst it all. By the end of summer, no matter what, she’ll be gone.
The official confirmation of her scholarship comes through just before graduation, and she and her dad celebrate with cheap wine, decent takeout, and suitably sappy conversations. It’s nice to talk with him about something good, about something that feels hopeful, even when the thought of being far away from him hurts.
Then, when she thinks he’s dead, it aches like nothing will ever fix it.
Stanford’s a pale dream lost to her mind, that night. She’s just replaying everything with Cassidy on the roof, clinging to Logan like a lifeboat and trying to breathe through the sobs. Passing out in his arms on her couch is its own escape.
But by chance, and by miracle, and by the luck she’s finally owed, her dad gets to live, and Logan’s doesn’t. Overnight it’s all shifted, and though Aaron Echolls should’ve rotted in prison, at least he’s not living in the room next to Logan.
Logan, who she is tentatively calling her boyfriend again. Because when nothing felt like it could matter, he was a rock, and the good overtook the bad. She knows better than to throw away a good thing, right now. Before they even get a chance to talk about it they’re melting into each other again, grief and guilt and shared trauma sticking them together like glue. Because she can talk to her dad about some of it, but not all of it. Logan’s the only one who knows about Cassidy at Shelley Pomeroy’s party, for now. Logan’s not always great at putting things into words but when he holds her she feels him tremble, and it makes the pain feel less like it’s hers alone to bear.
Through it all, she knows she’s getting to escape. She gets to pick the good things for herself, for once. And she’ll cling tightly to the people she loves until its time.