Always and Forever, Lara Jean Read Free

on a stack of cookbooks. Margot’s keeping me company while I finish decorating my eggs. “I think I’m going to do a pearl border around her, if that helps inform your decision,” I tell her.
    “Then I say go with the pink,” she says, adjusting her sheet mask. “Pink will pop more.”
    “That’s what I was thinking too,” I say, and I get to workdusting glitter with an old eye-shadow brush. Last night I spent hours blowing the yolks out of the shells. This was supposed to be a fun thing for Kitty and me to do together like the old days, but she bailed when she was invited over to Madeline Klinger’s house. An invitation from Madeline Klinger is a rare and momentous occasion, so of course I couldn’t begrudge Kitty that.
    “Only a little while longer before you find out, right?”
    “Sometime this month.” I start lining up pearls in a row. Part of me wishes I could just get this over with, but another part of me is glad to have this time of not knowing, of still hoping.
    “You’ll get in,” Margot says, and it’s like a proclamation. Everyone around me seems to think that my getting into UVA is a foregone conclusion. Peter, Kitty, Margot, my dad. My guidance counselor, Mrs. Duvall. I’d never dare say it out loud, for fear of jinxing anything, but maybe I think so too. I’ve worked hard: I got my SAT scores up by two hundred points. My grades are almost as good as Margot’s were, and Margot got in. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, but will it be enough? At this point, all I can do is wait, and hope. And hope and hope.
    I’m in the middle of hot-gluing a little white bow to the top of my egg when I stop to cast a suspicious look at my sister. “Wait a minute. If I get in, are you going to try to convince me to go somewhere else, just so I can spread my wings?”
    Margot laughs, and her sheet mask slips down her face. Readjusting it, she says, “No. I trust you to know what’s best.”She means it, I can tell. Just like that, her words make it so. I trust me too. I trust that when the time comes, I will know what’s best. And for me, UVA is best. I know it. “The only thing I’ll say is, make your own friends. Peter will be making tons of friends because of lacrosse, and the people he’ll be friends with aren’t necessarily the kinds of people you’d pick to be friends with. So make your own friends. Find your people. UVA is big.”
    “I will,” I promise.
    “And make sure you join the Asian association. The one thing I feel like I’ve missed out on by going to school in a different country is an Asian-American group. It’s definitely a thing, you know, going to college and finding your racial identity. Like Tim.”
    “Tim who?”
    “Tim Monahan, from my class.”
    “Oh, Tim ,” I say. Tim Monahan is Korean, and he was adopted. There aren’t all that many Asian people at our school, so we all know who each other are, at least tangentially.
    “He never hung out with Asians in high school, and then he went to Tech and met a ton of Korean people, and now I think he’s the president of an Asian fraternity.”
    “Wow!”
    “I’m glad Greek life isn’t a thing in the UK . You’re not going to join a sorority, are you?” She is quick to add, “No judgment if so!”
    “I hadn’t thought about it.”
    “Peter will probably join a fraternity, though.”
    “He hasn’t said anything about it either. . . .” Even though he hasn’t mentioned it, I could easily picture Peter in a fraternity.
    “I’ve heard it’s hard if your boyfriend’s in one and you’re not. Something about all the mixers and stuff, like it’s easier if you’re friends with the girls from the sister sorority. I don’t know. The whole thing seems silly to me, but it could be worth it. I hear sorority girls like to craft.” She waggles her eyebrows at me.
    “Speaking of which.” I hold up my egg for her. “Ta-da!”
    Margot moves closer to the camera to look. “You should go into the