At some point, Elise Simmons had become a name I could no longer avoid in conversations with Noah Carter.
She always came up. She was the one who solved that complex function problem Noah had been stuck on for days.
She was the first person to ever beat him in a math competition and take first place in the entire school.
And she was the one who partnered with him in the state academic league, where they won first and second place
together.
After that competition, the school even hung a banner at the front of the main building: “Congratulations to Noah Carter
and Elise Simmons for bringing honor to our school!”
It stayed up for two full weeks, battered by wind and sun, the red letters glaringly bright.
At first, I hadn’t paid it much attention.
I had always assumed that Noah was mine, and I had never lost him in more than ten years.
I never saw Elise–the girl who had just transferred in–as any kind of real competition.
But over time, I started to notice that she was quietly, gradually, and almost imperceptibly taking over the space I once
held in Noah’s heart.
She and Noah shared an unspoken understanding in academics, a field I couldn’t even begin to touch.
I could see it in his eyes–the way he lit up when she talked about math and logic. He understood her in a way I didn’t.
And I slowly became the bystander–present, but no longer a participant.
By senior year, when we were starting to apply to colleges, Noah suddenly told me: “Mint, I want to apply to Harvard.”
At the time, we had just gone through a few arguments–all of them, unsurprisingly, related to Elise.
We were in the middle of a cold war. Things between us were fragile.
Still, I looked up at him and smiled.
“Great. You’ll get in for sure.”
I meant it.
Even with the distance between us, I was still proud of him.
But what I didn’t know was Harvard had never been Noah’s dream.
It was Elise’s.
From the day she transferred in, she had always said her goal was Harvard.
And that year, when Noah earned a perfect SAT score and topped the nation, several Ivy League schools competed to recruit him.
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Harvard even made a special offer: he could bring one other person with him-
someone who would be admitted regardless of their academic performance.
I was certain he’d save that spot for me.
After all, I’d always been a constant in Noah’s world.
But on that day, he looked at me and said, word for word:
“Mint, Harvard is Elise’s dream. She needs this opportunity more than you do. If you come with me, people will talk. They’ll compare you to her. I don’t want you to get hurt. That art school in Boston is great for you. Once you graduate, we’ll get
married.”
I remembered it had been a beautiful sunny day, but for the first time, it felt like somewhere deep inside me had started to
snow.
