His Jealousy Sent Me Straight To The Ivy League Chapter 02
At one in the morning, an iMessage lit up my screen.
“Inez, you asleep?”
That was how he always addressed me.
Just my first name. Never my last.
I didn’t reply.
He sent another message.
“All your applications are in, right? Weren’t you always talking about going to Atlanta? Emory should be a lock for you.”
His tone was breezy, punctuated with a smiley face.
As if nothing had happened.
As if he hadn’t confessed everything to my anonymous page an hour ago.
As if he hadn’t personally changed my applications to three schools I had no chance of getting into.
I stared at that smiley face for a long, long time.
Eight years ago, Conrad moved in next door.
Three years ago, after he transferred to Northgate High, our entire grade knew we lived next to each other.
On the first day he moved in, he memorized my Wi-Fi password, my birthday, and my cat’s name.
By the second week, he was using my iPad to play games, my Netflix account to watch shows, and my printer for his homework.
The truth was, I’d liked him.
From the day he moved in until this very moment.
But he never knew.
Because starting freshman year, the person he liked was Talia Blake.
Talia sat behind him in class. She spoke softly, solved problems slowly, and looked like a character straight out of an anime.
The first time Conrad came to me for help, he was blunt.
“Inez, can you explain this problem to Talia? I’ve been trying forever and she still doesn’t get it.”
And just like that, I became Talia’s math tutor.
After a year, she went from barely passing to landing somewhere in the middle of the class.
Conrad was thrilled. He bought me a Starbucks.
In our sophomore year, Talia started falling behind in chemistry, too.
Conrad said to me, “You’re best at chem. Help her out, okay? She wants to apply to STEM programs with me.”
I agreed.
In our junior year—this past year—
Conrad came to me again.
“For these last few months, can you go over physics and biology with her, too? Her foundation is weak. I’m worried she won’t get into any decent schools.”
I said yes again.
For six months straight.
Three times a week, two hours a session.
Talia never once thanked me.
Every time tutoring ended, she would just turn to Conrad and say, “Conrad, Inez was kind of harsh again today.”
Then Conrad would come knock on my window.
“Inez, can’t you be a little gentler? She’s struggling with the basics. It’s not her fault.”
I had never been harsh with her.
All I’d said was, “I just explained this one,” when she got the same problem wrong for the fourth time.
But in Conrad’s eyes, Talia was always the one who needed protecting.
I wasn’t.
My phone rang again.
This time it was Mallory Quinn.
Mallory was my best friend.
I answered.
“Why are you still up?” I asked, my voice rough.
“Inez, did you submit your applications? I just finished mine and I’m way too keyed up to sleep.”
“I did.”
“Emory, right? I applied to Georgia State. If we both end up in Atlanta, we can still see each other all the time.”
I paused.
“Mallory.”
“Yeah?”
“What kind of trouble would someone get in for secretly changing another person’s college application?”
The line went quiet for two seconds.
“What are you talking about? Whose application got changed?”
I opened my mouth, the word *mine* on the tip of my tongue.
But in the end, I swallowed it.
I didn’t have any hard evidence.
Conrad had used an anonymous account.
The page didn’t store any information that could directly identify a user. At registration, it only performed a one-time encrypted verification. The system stored only processed data—no names, no public-facing login sources.
I had written that rule myself three years ago.
Now it was protecting him instead of me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just been watching too many legal dramas. Random question.”
After I hung up, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.
The glow of the streetlight was a fixed, unmoving square on the drywall.
Conrad lived right next door.
He was probably already asleep.
He thought I would spend a year at community college, stuck exactly where I was.