“Well, it would have very much hurt our case if you failed to be admitted even after we had your number one spot restored to you.”
After a few pleasantries, I got off the phone.
Jesus. Arjuna got me into Stanford just so he could win the case. I hadn’t even…I couldn’t think. My mind was so empty. Everything, all my scheming for good grades and a hook and a high class rank, had been unnecessary. All I’d really needed was Arjuna on my side. I thought of my mother sitting in the car with me two days ago and saying nothing. Had she known? Did everyone know?
I turned around in my chair. Beyond the window, I saw leaves and darkness. Nothing more.
At Wasserman’s office, the receptionist’s desk was gone, leaving a bare patch on the carpet. The whiteboards were stacked five deep all around the edges of the front room. But the back room only had one whiteboard, and Wasserman was in the process of erasing it. When he saw me, the eraser dropped from his grip. He rushed over to shake my hand, pumping it up and down, and frantically saying how glad he was to see me.
When I sat down, I said, “It’s time. There’s something wrong with me. I got what I want, but I just…I don’t feel right. Fill me with some of that real therapy.”
He nodded his head. “The mania is over. You’re in the depressive part of the cycle.”
“No, that wasn’t a mania—I might’ve been addicted to prescription amphetamines.” I sketched out the events of the last month.
“Just ending abruptly? No, no, no! That’s a terrible ending! There’s no revelation. No surprise.”
“You haven’t read it,” I said. “It actually worked pretty damn well.”
“You made extremely poor use of this hospital visit. Your protagonist’s delusional breakdown should have come much later, right before the culmination of the lawsuit arc. Then, she could have used the self-knowledge she gained from the breakdown to make a stirring statement to the court, thus neatly merging the internal and external plotlines.”
“No,” I said. “The novel is over. I finished it. Now we’re here to talk about me and my fragile mental health.”
Wasserman put his head in his hands. “God, if I’d had your opportunities…”
I waited, but he didn’t speak. For the first time, I saw the rip in the lining of his tweed jacket and the grayish pallor of his skin.
“Well,” I said. “Actually…there might be a sequel.”
His head tilted upward, and his eyes stared out from behind the lattice of his fingers. “Go on.”
“It’d start the day after the other book ends,” I said. “And…it’s about finding some way to keep Stanford from withdrawing her acceptance….” I filled him in about what Arjuna had said, and about the status of my lawsuit and the fights I’d been having with my mom.
“Hmm,” he said. “I see now.”
“So what do I do? How do I feel better?”
He shrugged. “You don’t.”
“What?”
“Well, at least not yet,” he said. “This is the part where you walk in darkness for a little while and question your values and your sense of self.”
“And then?”
“Something happens. You mentioned the lawsuit? Maybe you lose it. Yes, I think you lose it.”
“And, what?”
“You mur—”
“Don’t even say it.”
“Well fine, then,” he said. “You…you grow as a person and learn to recognize that your cheating was wrong and that it came from a deeply wounded place inside of you.”
“Are you kidding?”
He looked around. “Mmm no,” he said. “It’s pretty much what people expect. Either that, or for you to be given some horrible comeuppance.”
“That’s absurd,” I said. “I won! I planned hard, and I worked hard. And I…I did everything. And I won. Why can’t people respect that? Are you really telling me that my readers want it to be so neat and simple? That what they want is for me to be transformed into some pathetic whining sorrow-filled regretful…” I trailed off into a slurry of exasperated noises.
“Perhaps we should discuss this lawyer figure, then?” he said. “Isn’t he the one who ultimately got your character into Stanford? I think you need to sit down and look at your own book. After all, this isn’t my story. You wrote it. And what you wrote is the story of a spoiled girl who uses external influence, rather than personal merit, to get into college. And that, I am afraid, is not the sort of character who deserves a happy ending.”
I ground my teeth together and tried to think of something to say.
What does Wasserman know anyway? He’s not a writer. I’m a bigger writer than him. He doesn’t even have an agent.
I texted Alex to see if she wanted to hang out, and now that Alex and I were friends for real—and not because I was, you know, blackmailing her—she responded by inviting me over. Her house was really different in the morning. Before the sun burned the fog off the hills, everything down below us was wreathed in gray. And even though it was cold, Alex insisted on sitting out on the soggy, leaf-strewn deck in a pair of wrought-iron chairs.
“Can’t smoke inside while my parents are here,” she said, while she toyed with the cigar in her hand.
“They’re here?”
She waved her hand. “Oh, yeah, somewhere.”
“And they’re okay with the fact that you’re out here—”
“Please, you’re getting to be as bad as Chelsea,” she said.
While she fiddled around with the cigar, I watched the sun etch a hole in the sky.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you think you would have gotten into Princeton if you weren’t a legacy?”
She tapped the cigar against her palm. “I don’t know. Who cares? Do we still need to talk about this stuff?”
“But doesn’t it bother you? The thought that you might not really have deserved to—”
Bits of tobacco sprayed out as Alex dropped the cigar onto her lap. “Seriously, Reshma,” she said. “If you want to know why people don’t like you, it’s because there are some basic human concepts that seem to baffle you. Like, let me ask you this, do you understand that getting into a nice college doesn’t change who you are as a person?”
“Yes.” I frowned. I knew there was only one right answer, but I felt there was more to be said. “I mean, I know everybody is intrinsically valuable and everything. But Stanford students are…They’re so intelligent and so accomplished, and whenever you hear about someone who—”
“No.” Alex picked the cigar up and swept the loose tobacco off her lap. “You’re really not getting it, and it’s kind of freaking me out. Please tell me you understand that college admission decisions are made by people—human people—based on words that you shot at them through a computer, and that those people have zero ability to reach back through the computer and down into your soul and in any way add or subtract from your intelligence or character or determination or whatever else it is that, in your opinion, makes someone into a valuable person. Stanford student is just a label on a jar. You can rip that label off, or maybe forget to put it on, but the contents of the jar stay the same.”
Alex was the one who wasn’t getting it. Obviously, getting into college didn’t change who you were. But…what if you knew your contents were high-quality—the best possible contents—but no one else did? What if they treated you like you were a plain old jar whose contents could be dumped out or thrown away or used up? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get the right label? And…what if you’d done everything? What if you’d worked really hard? Maybe…maybe not in the approved way of working hard. But, you know, still pretty hard regardless. And what if you’d been brilliant and analyzed the labeling system and insinuated yourself into just the right place at just the right time so you got the label you knew you deserved? And what if you then discovered that the labeling wasn’t like that at all? That it was pointless and arbitrary all along? And that your brilliance and your maneuvering had been completely beside
the point?
“Don’t just shrug,” Alex said. “Tell me you know that.”
She drew out a match that was almost as long as her finger and used it to light the cigar, creating great clouds of sweet-smelling smoke in the process.
“You really don’t care that you might not have gotten into Princeton if it wasn’t for your name.”
“No, Resh.” Alex coughed out some smoke. “Yes, I was happy when I got into Princeton. But that wasn’t because I thought a Princeton acceptance had somehow proved that I’m smart and capable. No. I know I’m smart, and I know I’m capable. What made me happy was that a Princeton degree will make it easier for me to effect the changes that I want to see in this world.”
“Changes? What changes?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Alex said. “I mean, I’ve always been part of the student government. And I’m a debater. I mean, I don’t talk about it, because that would be gauche, and I’m not one of those self-righteous activist types, but…”
“Oh my God. Are you political? Is that what we’re talking about? You care about political change?”
“And you’re saying you don’t? I mean, look at our racist prison system. It’s a national disgrace. And what about global warming? Do you know the likelihood that all of this is going to be underwater in—”
“Come on, please. We cannot be having this conversation,” I said, but Alex kept talking, and finally I let her words flow out unimpeded into the valley. She had years upon years of ranting saved up, so we were there for a pretty long time.
My lawsuit has been getting more and more publicity. The other day, I even got a call from someone at The Huffington Post who was thinking about doing a story. For a while, I thought they wanted me to write another column, since it was someone from the Opinions page, but when they started asking me questions, I figured out that it was research for an editorial of their own, so I redirected them to Arjuna’s office.
After I learned that I’d only gotten into Stanford because of Arjuna’s influence, I considered dropping the lawsuit, but I decided against it. Stanford reserves the right to revoke an acceptance if there’s a change in academic performance and dropping ten or more class ranks certainly qualifies. Moreover, Arjuna took this case as a way to make a point, and if I give up the suit, then I might make him angry. Without the lawsuit to protect my grades and without him to step in and intervene with the provost, I’d be totally defenseless.
Tomorrow I’m going to Alex’s New Year’s Eve party. Normally, my family stays up and watches the ball drop on TV. Then we write our resolutions on 3x5 index cards and burn them in the fireplace. Mummy’s resolution is always the same: to lose weight. My resolution is always random scribbles. Making a resolution would mean that I hadn’t already been doing everything I could possibly do to achieve my goals.
But this year, Meena won’t be around, since she’s visiting her boyfriend’s family in Wisconsin, so there’s no real need to make a thing of it, and when I asked my mom if I could go out to a friend’s house on New Year’s Eve, she looked relieved that she wouldn’t have to spend a whole evening with me.
Even though he’d promised to come, Aakash tried to wiggle out of the party at the last minute, but I finally said, “You know what, Aakash? I actually really like you. You’re one of the best things that happened to me in this last year. And I know it’s stupid and superstitious, but I want you with me when the New Year starts.”
He got red and started sweating, and we made out on my bed for a while, and he finally said he’d go to the party. I think I would’ve let him sleep with me then, if he’d tried, but he didn’t. I really ought to check out his Bombr sometime to figure out the timeline on that. You know, I guess that by this point I could’ve easily dispensed with Aakash and either written the breakup or happily-ever-after or what have you, but you know what? I like him. He’s a good guy. And romantic, too, in his own way.
When I got into Aakash’s car last night, he didn’t lean over for a kiss. All he said was “Hey.”
I asked him whether he was content with MIT or if he’d send out more apps and his only reply was, “No.”
The car scurried up the winding, unlit roads of the hill where Alex made her home. Her parents were off skiing in Utah, and they’d left her alone with an unlocked liquor cabinet. In her text to me, she’d written:
Now that I’m into Princeton I can do _anything_ I want.
What did that mean? Had she been restraining herself?
I learned the answer when she opened the door. Her normally perfectly tamed blond hair was puffed out in every direction and all the tension was gone from her face.
“Oh my God! Resh! You came! I’m so happy to see you!” Her tight hug forced the breath out of my body. Then her hands started browsing up and down my back. Was this about to become a lesbian thing?
(Wow, wouldn’t that be a twist!)
Then she said, “My God, what is this dress made of? It’s, like, the softest thing I’ve ever felt!”
I untangled myself from her hug and gently pushed her back into the house.
Inside, a hip-hop beat was bouncing from the speakers and people were swaying on the patio. George was in the kitchen with that girl, Cecily. He looked over at me, and I dropped my eyes. Since the hospital, he’d tried, a few times, to ask how I was doing, but I’d done my best to avoid him.
When I looked up, he’d put his arm around Cecily.
A group of senior girls walked in and tossed their coats into a corner. I knew one of them and I expected her to be surprised when she saw me, but she just said, “What’s up?” Had I actually become someone who people expect to see at parties?
Aakash and I stood there, awkwardly clutching cups of beer. He touched the cup to his lips but didn’t drink. Finally, he said, “How long do you want to stay here?”
“I don’t know. At least until midnight.”
He gave me a sour look and turned back to his beer.
What the hell was up with him? Obviously, we were going to stay until midnight. This was a New Year’s Eve party!
I took out my phone, shielded it from view, and logged into the fake Bombr account that I used to monitor the protected account that Aakash thought I couldn’t see. There it was, his latest bomb:
@Korylambis
Yeah, I thought I was okay with what she’d done, but she’s been so smug since getting into college.
I shook my head. No. There was no way he could be talking about me. Then I scrolled down until I saw a bomb from earlier today:
@Korylambis
Planning on breaking up with my gf sometime in the next week. Any advice on how to make it as painless as possible?
What? So much for Aakash being a good guy. I clicked out of the screen and stowed my phone. Did Aakash really think he could drop me as casually as that? His back was to me. I thought about flinging a beer at him. How dare he? To put that on the Internet? To humiliate me in front of God knows how many people who went to our school? I wanted to scream at him, but I didn’t. Instead, my body went completely cold. Aakash was my enemy now, and I knew exactly what to do with my enemies.
Despite the cool air, everyone was sweating and disheveled. In a corner of the kitchen, Ray and Tina rhapsodized over a green apple.
“This is the best apple that I’ve ever tasted,” Tina said. “Do you think it’s, like, genetically modified?”
“Oh my God, let me have another bite.” Ray took it and flicked it with his tongue. “Where can we get more of these apples? Do you think Alex’s parents would give up their apple connection?”
“I dunno.” Tina plucked the apple from his hand and ran her lips over its wounded flesh. “Maybe it’s, like, a vintage, twenty-year-old, three-thousand-dollar apple?”
It was strange, I didn’t respect them or their opinions at all, but I still experienced a desire to join their inane conversation.
“Can I try it?” I said.
They looked at me with eerie smiles. Their pupils wer
e so wide that their eyes were more black than white.
Aakash pulled on my upper arm. “They’re high,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I can see more than you think I can.”
He stared at me uncomprehendingly.
You know what hurt the most? I was the one who had made the effort. I didn’t have to be with him. He’d worshipped me for years. No one would’ve faulted me for thinking I was too good for him. But instead I reached out to him. Not just that. I allowed myself to like him. Allowed myself to feel feelings for him. Allowed myself to think that he was a good person, and that we were right together.
The apple fell out of Tina’s hand and rolled under the dishwasher. They giggled at each other and started humming along with the music. Tina bent down and ran her fingers through the grooves in the tile countertops.
“Those two are being so silly,” Chelsea said. “I’ve been watching them for the last hour. You should’ve seen them try to peel a banana.”
“Chelsea,” Aakash said, “I don’t think I mentioned it at school, but can I say how sorry I am that you didn’t get into Stanford? They made a serious mistake. You, at least, deserved to get in.”
What? He was actually angry about the cheating? I got it now. All the jokes about me going to community college. He was okay with things as long as he thought I’d been punished. But now that I was winning, he was angry.
How could I have ever allowed that idiot’s tongue into my mouth?
Chelsea’s eyebrows went up.
“No, it was my mistake,” Chelsea said. “I should have gone ahead and applied to Harvard like I originally intended.”
Aakash wouldn’t look at me.
“My boyfriend doesn’t agree,” I said. “He thinks you’re better than me.”
“I never said that,” he countered. “But…you did cheat.”
“It’s not that simple,” Chelsea said. “Reshma has said all along it was just a mistake. Or an accident.”
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