Early Decision Read Free

lectures by Rangers on the animals of the mountains and ecosystem. Later we drove a long distance to our last stop and past an open field where Mustangs were grazing. Mustangs are wild horses that are not tamed. No one rides them. They have never been bridled. The Ranger told us that when there are storms, the mustangs run and run because running is their way of handling their fear. He gave us some grain to hold out over a fence by the road to see if they would come. The Ranger explained that local people come throw hay over the wire to help them because there’s drought due to Global Warming and the grass is too dry to sustain their enormous appetites during the foaling season.
    That was last summer and still to this day I feel my experience in Montana helped shape the way I handle thinking about my future at school and beyond. I realize the importance of community service not just at school, but during the summer and everywhere we go. I also realize that there are fragile ecosystems, even in the West, which need our protection. My AP biology class is giving me the tools to learn how to protect those beautiful places. I hope to major in Environmental Science at ____ so I can return to Montana and work with the Rangers in their missions to save our planet’s wild spaces.
    Shit, thought Anne. It was dead. He was dead. Here was a solid B-plus boy with solid everything else: SATs in the mid-eightieth percentile, a few 3s and 4s on the APs, tennis, photography, guitar, some student leadership—but whose essay revealed a boy without passion. And there were technical problems too: he’d get nowhere mentioning environmental science because he’d shown no real scientific aptitude. As in the professional world, on college applications affinity and interest had to be aligned. Welcome to the end of childhood. Anne stifled a sigh. This was the kid who gets turned down everywhere, a tanked guppy with some nice streaks of color but nothing different from the zillions swimming alongside him. She held her head low, as though she were still reading, trying to plot a set of optimistic responses. Beside her, she felt Hunter shifting awkwardly in his chair. Had she not had his essay in her hands, she’d have wondered if he was in some sort of pain. A faint body smell, accompanied by gentle heat, rose off of him, as off a roast. He kept pulling off his baseball cap to shape its sueded brim in his fingers. The curls that sprang out beneath it shone. The boy was bursting with life; he could barely stay in his own skin. Why the hell were his sentences so flat? And his voice was nowhere to be found. Not an idea in the draft, save one—but Anne knew it had to be approached tenderly.
    â€œSo, Hunter,” she said finally. “Do you want to go to college?”
    He glanced at her and said nothing, then aimed a disbelieving smile into his lap.
    She continued, “Or would you prefer to do something else next year?”
    â€œIs that a joke?” He winced, appearing embarrassed for her and how little she understood. “Of course I’m going to college. Do I want to go to college? Ha! That’s funny.”
    â€œNo, I mean it,” Anne said. “Do you want to go? A lot of people never do, you know. Some of them go to technical schools, or they spend a few years at a community college, or they just get a job. You could just start your life. You’re almost eighteen. You could head right out that door and rent a little apartment in the city, get a job, meet someone special, the whole nine yards.”
    Hunter slumped back in his chair and folded the brim of his cap low over his temples.
    â€œYeah, okay, right,” he said. He was worried he was being set up. And he was, of course; as flaky and hormonal as they were, teenagers always caught the trick. Hunter shot back: “I’ll take the meet-a-woman part.”
    Anne said nothing.
    â€œI mean, yeah, of course I want to go to