Finally, he turned the last page. Then he clipped them back together and returned them to their folder.
“I wonder how it’ll end,” he said.
“Did you like it?”
“I like you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a great story. That girl’s voice gave me chills. That part about being so desperate to incinerate everyone with your greatness….I mean, you try living in someone else’s basement.”
My stomach wrenched sideways. “So, now you know everything about me….”
He flipped his hair out of his eyes. “This girl is a great creation. But she isn’t you.”
“But that’s still my voice. Those’re my thoughts!”
He shook his head. “Nah. They’re a few of your thoughts. You’re telling a story about a girl who’s forced to deal with the fact that she’s not really special. And it’s a good story. But it’s not your story. You’re still in the process of becoming an amazing person. And someday you’re going to make and do and think some pretty revolutionary stuff.”
A tear wavered at the edge of my eye. I scrambled toward him. My heart expanded and expanded until it was enveloping us both.
The twin bed was really narrow, so I ended up wedged between him and the wall, but I didn’t mind: it made me feel safe.
He grimaced, pried up my head, and inserted a pillow between me and the wall.
“Better,” he said. “Now I’m not worried about giving you a concussion when you start flailing around in the throes of passion.”
“Hah.” I blinked, and then rubbed my eyes. “You wish.”
He started to kiss away my tears, but I pushed him back and stared into his eyes. My left hand, the one that was lying on top of him, was clutching his T-shirt. “It’s time,” I said. “This is the last thing that I need to do.”
I reached for his belt and yanked on the buckle. His hand drifted down, until it lay on top of mine, but I put it on my bare thigh, just below the hem of my skirt, and then went back to work on his belt. It took me a few moments, but I finally pulled out the free end, and—
He was laughing.
“God,” he said. “You’re so goal-oriented.”
“Let’s just do this,” I said.
One of his hands took mine, and his thumb rubbed the top of my palm. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “We will, but it’s not like it’s a race,” as his other hand drifted upward, along the contour of my hip. When his fingertip worked its way under the seam of my underwear, my leg started to twitch. Although we weren’t even really doing anything yet, the feeling was already a little too intense—none of the books or articles or videos had told me to expect anything like this—and I almost wanted him to stop, but then his hand paused, and he said, “Hey, just tell me if anything doesn’t really feel like it’s working for you.”
I looked into his eyes and then touched my lips to his.
I can’t say that everything went as smoothly as that—God, I don’t even want to talk about the part where I fell off the bed—but it was fun enough.
(Yes, dear safe-sex enthusiasts, we used protection. It was my first time, not George’s.)
Well, there we go. That’s the big transformation, right? Isn’t this the point where this book stops being the diary of a buttoned-down Indian overachiever and starts being the confessions of a wanton American slacker?
But I don’t know. I don’t feel very transformed. I just feel like myself.
Alex has texted me a few times, trying to tell me she didn’t understand the legal precariousness of George’s situation, but I don’t think I can forgive her. I told her something in confidence, and, without thinking about the consequences, she repeated it to the entire world. And you know what? That’s not something she would’ve done if she actually cared about my feelings.
The truth is that our friendship was something I forced into existence. First, I blackmailed her, and then I carefully slipped into the place that was left behind when she started fighting with Chelsea. And I thought that made us real friends, when, really, we were nothing more than two people who sometimes hung out together.
Today was the deadline for mailing out the midyear reports: the ones that would give my updated grades and class rank. Before, Arjuna had been talking about filing an injunction to stop them from sending it. And Mr. Kilming, that guy who wanted to represent me, has been calling me for weeks, saying we need to get on this. But I stopped taking his calls, and today when I looked online at the status of my Stanford application, it said the midyear report had been received.
The irony is that my class rank didn’t turn out so bad. Everybody did a little slacking off at the end of the year, especially when they heard about how I had fallen. Chelsea even got her first-ever B. According to my calculations, I only ended up number seven. Maybe that’ll be enough for Stanford. I don’t know. Is that crazy? I mean, I’ve looked it up online. They’re saying that Stanford almost never rescinds applications: once you’re in, you’re in. And what am I talking about here? Just one D. That’s all. One D in one semester. They never even formally suspended me, so my disciplinary record is still spotless.
Even as I write, a wild, crazy hope is beating away in my chest. I mean, I did what everyone wanted me to do: I stopped fighting. And now life is better, isn’t it? I’m at peace with my parents. I’m dating a guy who likes and respects me. Won’t this come back to me in a good way, somehow? Is there a chance that Stanford will understand?
Everyone knows Chelsea is the valedictorian, even though it won’t be officially announced until May 1, which is the deadline for challenging or altering fall semester grades.
George and I decided to eat lunch outside today, but we had to watch out: dozens of caterpillars were dangling from tiny filaments. George laughed and flicked one with his finger. It went swinging back and forth like a trapeze artist.
“Had to meet with Alex today to finalize the prom arrangements,” he said. “I still can’t believe she’s the one who outed me.”
“Really?” I said. “You can’t believe it? She’s a total bitch. And we’ve both seen how she can turn on her friends.”
Alex had texted me a few more times, but I still hadn’t responded.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She apologized, and I said it was okay, but she kept trying to talk about it. Finally, I was, like, ‘Can you keep it down? I don’t want everyone in the school to know where I really live.’”
“Have you heard anything about that?” I said. “Officially?”
He shook his head. “Nope, and let’s hope it stays that way.”
“You only have to get through the next two months,” I said. “In the meantime, just stay away from Alex.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “All the prom arrangements are done. As soon as we find a commencement speaker, we’ll be settled.”
“So Susan Le isn’t going to do it?”
“I don’t think so,” George said. “She’s been jerking us around for months. I honestly think she doesn’t even want to come here.”
“Good. I think I’d have boycotted commencement if I had to spend a half hour listening to her self-important life advice.”
“I don’t know,” George said. “I wonder what she would’ve said.”
“She’d tell us to work hard, follow our dreams, never give up….The regular bullshit,” I said.
“Hey, I believe in that bullshit.”
“It’s stupid. No matter how hard we work, none of us are going to become Susan Le. A lot of kids have dreamt of becoming a nineteen-year-old billionaire. Many of them probably worked hard. But it only happened for one person. What I want to know is, what happens if you fail? You should invite a real failure to come up. A janitor, or…or one of the teachers. Someone who tried really hard”—I laughed—“maybe someone who really tried to become a rock star. If that person says that they’re glad they followed their dreams and worked hard instead of settling for a safer and easier path, t
hen I’ll believe it.”
George was looking at me strangely. “Someone? And who might that person be?” he said.
I paused. “What? Did I say something?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s no big deal. Anyway, she’s not coming. We reached out to get Congressman Chao, and he said that if the dates worked, he’d be happy to do it for free.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. “As long as you’re not mad at me for some reason.”
He ran his thumb over my wrist, and when I looked down I was startled to see that a caterpillar had landed on it. I jerked my hand free and shook it until the caterpillar flew off into the bushes.
George had a pained expression on his face. “I was going to coax it onto a leaf,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “The caterpillar is fine. Insects are very resilient.”
Guess the school isn’t as on top of their online gossip as I thought, because it took them until now to find that squib about George. Or maybe it took them a while to consult lawyers and draft a proper response. In any case, my parents got a call last night from the school’s general counsel. I listened from the top of the stairs while my dad shouted and threatened to sic Arjuna on them again.
Halfway through the call, my mom came upstairs. “They won’t kick out George, will they?” I asked.
She looked at me and shook her head, like, how could she expect anything better from me. “So this is how I’m to hear that you and George are seeing each other?”
I was turning distinctly red. “I, umm…”
“Your father will do what is needed,” she said.
In the morning, George was gone. My mom woke him up early and drove him to his place in Fremont.
“But how will he get to school?” I said.
“The school district was very gracious in allowing him to finish the school year and graduate,” she said. “There are buses and trains that he can take in order to come here.”
“That’ll take hours! This is so unfair!”
“No. It was unfair to let him stay so long in a household with a teenage girl.”
I called him to apologize, but he said, “Yeah, it’s no problem. Sorry I’m a bit distracted, I’m trying to sort out the bus schedule.”
The only time I really see George is when I pick him up from the south courtyard and drive him out to Fremont. I’m willing to bring him to my place, but he doesn’t ever want to go back there. So we drive aimlessly for hours…sometimes all night. My grades are suffering—I got a 79 on my last chem test—but I don’t care. Grades from the final semester of your senior year don’t matter. Colleges don’t care about them, and they don’t count for selecting the valedictorian (although it’s not like I have any chance at that anyway).
Now that they’ve seen my midyear report, colleges are making their choices. Today, I got rejection letters from Williams and UCLA.
My parents took the news in strange ways. My mom has obviously given up on me. She keeps asking about my novel. A few days ago, she said, “Maybe we could help you start a restaurant to pay the bills while you write.”
The other day, I finally asked her: “Do you think Stanford will revoke my acceptance?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they should?”
She didn’t blink for a few seconds. And then she finally said, “Yes.”
“What? Really?” I said.
“You have cheated many times,” she said. “You are also litigious. And your test scores and grades are not top-quality anymore. Should they accept you just as charity?”
“Please, Mummy,” I said. “There’s no one listening. It’s just you and me here. And between us, you really don’t think I’m good enough? You don’t think that I…that I have something that’s not captured by grades? Some kind of inner fire?”
My mom sighed. “I think you are very hardworking,” she said. “And you could have made much of that. But you took a wrong path. And it will take many years to get on the right one.”
“But that’s not what I asked,” I said. “I want to know whether, from your perspective, knowing everything you know about me, you don’t think…that…” I wasn’t sure how to put it, because it sounded stupid even to me. I’d asked the question, and she’d answered it.
All of this is making me remember the time that Alex told me Stanford student was just a label. But whatever; guess what, Alex? Bitch is just a label. That doesn’t make it meaningless. For a minute, I was tempted to text that to her, but I didn’t. So far, I’d managed to unfriend her with dignity. But if we started lobbing messages back and forth, I’d be giving her another chance to hurt me.
Dr. Wasserman thinks I’m trying to speed up the pacing of my novel by using lots of short, far-apart entries. The truth is: I don’t care about this novel anymore. Last week, I got rejected by Penn State, Georgetown, and UChicago. All are selective schools, but with my grades and my accomplishments, I should’ve been able to get into at least one of them. Isn’t there anyone who can see my worth?
I don’t know. Sometimes I find myself wishing I hadn’t given up the lawsuit. I had a chance. Mr. Kilming said so. In idle moments, I sometimes go back to my old ways. Like the other day I got a bunch of certificates in the mail from some online classes I’d taken, and for a moment I fell back to my old self and started scheming about how to get back on top, but then I stepped back. No. I’m different. I’m not the girl who’d do “anything.” Ever since the Marshall Henderson taping, I’ve somehow become the girl with principles. At least a few of them, maybe. Isn’t that worthwhile? I mean, come on, someone out there has to be able to see that I’ve changed.
But I still have Stanford. Maybe they’ll allow me to attend. My whole life, whenever I’ve done something intelligent or bold, I’ve always thought, Stanford will appreciate this.
From: Linda Montrose
To: Reshma Kapoor
Subject: Please Send Your Current Draft
Reshma,
Could you send me the current draft of your novel? I’d like to see it immediately. Please reply to confirm that you’ve read this e-mail.
—linda
In the last week, Amherst, Brown, Yale, Cornell, Sarah Lawrence, Davis, and UC Riverside have all rejected me. With that, I’m done. Seventeen rejections.
And one acceptance.
It’s either Stanford or nowhere. My heart spasms every time they send a letter or e-mail, but it’s always new-student stuff: pictures of smiling kids in red T-shirts who’re taking a break from their microscopes so they can cheer on their school’s best-in-the-nation sports teams. I’ve filled in my notification card and enclosed my deposit check. I should have accepted their offer of admission a long time ago.
But I’m afraid to mail it. What if they claim they never got it?
Stanford’s admissions office is down a little hall with tan carpets and blond wooden walls. Stone sculptures—busts of famous people—sit on marble pedestals.
When I arrived, a bunch of young people were kicking back at their desks, laughing with one another. The walls were lined with waist-high post-office bins that were filled to the top with manila envelopes.
I rang the countertop bell, and a girl who was only a few years older than me—she had short hair that sprang outward, anime-style—came to the counter. When she looked at me, her eyes narrowed.
When she didn’t speak, I said, “Hi! I’m an admit? I’m here to drop off my notification card.”
“Oh.” Slowly, she smiled. “Oh, that’s great. What did you decide?”
“I’m coming here, of course.”
A girl in the back area shouted, “Hey, is that one of our admits? Send her back here!” A little cheer went up in the back. I could see the flash of a television and two feet propped on a leather ottoman.
I was about to yell back at them, but the girl stepped between us and yelled that she’d handle it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Now that admissions are over, everyone
’s a bit more relaxed. Hey, I’m Terry. Now what’s your name? I feel like I might’ve been one of your application readers. We always get very proprietary about the kids in our stack.”
“Err, Reshma Kapoor.”
“Oh.” Her fingers were splayed out on the countertop. “It is you.”
“You know of me?”
“Let’s, uhh, let’s get ourselves out of everyone’s way.”
She led me through snaking halls where exposed pipes hummed above chiseled stone walls. When we reached a dead end, she gave me a smile that didn’t involve her lips: it was more of a smoothing out and slackening of her face.
“So, what other schools are you considering?” she said. “I heard that Santa Cruz was thinking about taking you. I know they’re looking to raise their profile. Did they?”
We had to scrunch up against the side of the hall as a maintenance man trundled past with a cart holding three huge jugs of water. I, umm, how could I handle this?
I took a breath and said, “I already turned down my other offers. Stanford was always my first choice.”
“Oh, wow. Well, thanks.” She toyed with the neon-pink, green, and blue rubber bracelets on her wrist.
“I’m sorry, are you the one who’s making the decision about me?”
“I’m assigned to work on the midyear admissions report that we type up for some students. But, of course, the admissions director makes all the final decisions.”
“And are you going to recommend…?”
“I really can’t say.”
We looked at each other for a few moments. I wanted to throw myself to the ground and grab her knees and scream, Oh Lord, I am forsaken! Please have mercy on me!
“I know I’d do well here,” I said. “All that stuff I did, it was…High school can drive you crazy, you know?”
This time, the smile was only a slight expansion of her cheeks. “What do you mean?” she said.
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