I opened my mouth. What…what did I mean?
Looking into her quizzical, albeit extremely patient, eyes, I had a realization: this girl was a perfect.
“It’s…I put myself under a lot of unnecessary pressure.”
“Reshma,” she said. “I was a Stanford undergrad, and I hate to break it to you, but the pressure doesn’t end. It’s not easy to succeed here.”
I was drowning in the sticky sap of her earnestness.
“But I’ve learned the consequences of taking shortcuts,” I said. “Who would you rather have? Me? Or someone who still believes they can fall back on cheating?”
“Umm, Stanford has strict policies about cheating. Professors trust us to uphold the Honor Code. And we return that trust. Out of fifteen thousand undergrads and grads, there are only around forty Honor Code violations every year.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know! It’s insane. But, like, everyone here wants to do their best.”
“No, I mean you’re crazy to believe that. You accepted me. And the only reason you know about my plagiarism is that it got into the newspaper. Do you think no one else in your applicant pool got their perfect GPA by cheating?”
Her eyes flicked up, away from me, as if she was unwilling to endure the sight of so much sadness.
“Stanford cares about more than GPA. We want students who stand out—”
“I know. I wrote a novel. I have an agent.”
“Oh, you’ve found a new one?”
And that’s when I knew she must’ve met with my recommenders.
A scene—I was sure it’d taken place sometime in the last week—flashed in front of my eyes: Terry and Ms. Montrose are having coffee together, and at first they spend a few minutes clucking their tongues about me and how my case is really so sad and just so indicative of today’s overscheduled, overprogrammed, overparented youth. Maybe Ms. Montrose says, Honestly, her work showed promise, but it wasn’t quite there yet, was it? And then Terry starts tossing Ms. Montrose a few questions about what it’s like to be an agent, and, after they’ve had such a long and such a lovely conversation, Terry shyly brings up her own novel: a comic picaresque about an admissions counselor who spends her days dodging angry helicopter parents and rejecting their insane type-A children. Montrose asks Terry to send it over, but Terry demurs—it’s not quite perfect yet.
“You really don’t think I have anything to offer, do you?” I said.
“No! That’s not true at all! We know that many—maybe even most—of our applicants would do very well here. But we have so few spaces in our class….” She looked at her phone. “Well, I have to get back. So good to actually meet you. Though I’d spent so much time with your file that it was like I already knew you.”
All those years, I thought I was gaming the system, but I wasn’t. There’s no system. There’s only a snap glance by some twenty-four-year-old. You either look and sound and feel right, or you don’t. And I didn’t. I never had, no matter how much I’d tried to fake it. The moment anyone examines me, the illusion falls apart.
“Wait,” I said. She turned back a moment too soon—before she’d had time to reassemble her smile—and I glimpsed her neutral expression: the muscles around her eyes were tight as sphincters. Then her smile rippled back to the surface.
I took her hand and forced the deposit envelope into it. “Please,” I said. “I don’t know how else to say it. This is my future. You’ve already admitted me. Just let me attend….”
Her hand snapped close, crumpling the envelope. “Why don’t you take another look at those other schools?” she said. “Maybe you still haven’t yet found the perfect place for you!”
The prom is coming up. George keeps saying he might not have time to go, which is absurd, because as one of the senior class presidents, he helped to organize the entire thing. Today we were arguing about it over text message.
I don’t mind paying for everything.
Maybe that was a mistake. He took a while to write back.
We’ll talk later.
Are you seriously not gonna show up for me right now?
I’m supposed to be working right now.
Come on if you’re stringing me along b/c you’re afraid to dump me then please don’t. Just do it.
My boss is looking at me. Gotta go.
Can you call?
He didn’t call. A few hours later, I broke the silence.
Look, I really can’t take this.
It’s another burden.
Another thing in my life that’s going wrong.
It’s not all about you.
That slow-motion argument simmered for days.
I was only dating you for the sake of the novel anyway.
Some of us have to work in order to get anywhere in life.
I know.
And while I was trying to think of some way to tell him that I was feeling vulnerable and that I didn’t want to burden him, I just wanted, I don’t know…I just wanted to see him, he wrote back:
I really don’t think you DO know or you’d be cutting me a little slack.
And after that, he didn’t respond to any more of my texts.
Prom is in a few hours, and I haven’t heard from George since my last entry, so I guess I’m not going. This happened last year, too. After buying a dress and finding a date—the son of one of Daddy’s college friends—I backed out at the last minute because I had a paper due on the Monday after.
Went to answer the doorbell, but I ducked down and leaned against the front door when I saw it was Alex. She shouted: “Come on out, Resh! The limo’s here! Whether you like it or not, we’re taking you to my post-prom party!”
After a few seconds, she said, “Jesus Christ, Reshma, are you still mad at me over that gossip site? What do you want from me? I already apologized. You should be over this by now!”
She pounded on the door again, and I must’ve shifted slightly, because she said, “I know you’re there! So please, just listen! You know, my plan was actually not a terrible one. You were worried that you and George were too close for him to think of you that way, so I planted the story in order to get his mind working in that direction. And it worked! Of course it did. I know him. I know how suggestible he is. And I’ve already told you a million times that I had no idea that George and your family were trying to trick the school district. If I had, I never would’ve done it.” The door shook again. “Now open up and get out here!”
Then I heard another voice coming through the door.
“I hope she’s okay,” Chelsea said.
“I guess she’s moping about George,” Alex said.
“Are they broken up for certain?” Chelsea said. “That sucks. They were so cute together. And such a great story, too.”
“Whatever,” Alex said. “He was just a guy. It’s not the end of the world.”
“But she liked him. Isn’t that the important part?”
“Yeah.” Alex paused for a long moment. “I guess she really did.”
Then she rang the doorbell a dozen times more. What was this? Had Chelsea and Alex become friends again? I suppose it made sense. Alex always needed a friend that she could torment and mock and feel superior to, and once she’d lost me she’d gone back to Chelsea.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Chelsea said. “Reshma can be a little abrasive, but she’s a good person at heart.”
“No, she’s really not,” Alex said. “Has she ever done anything to help another person?”
There was a muffled shout in the distance, and then a car revved up.
“But if you don’t like her,” Chelsea said, “then why do you hang out with her?”
“You know, it’s so typical that you’d equate ‘She’s not a good a person’ with ‘I don’t like her.’ The truth is that I really don’t care how good or how evil a person is. If you’re electing a president, then you want a good person. But when you’re choosing your friends, you just want someone who understands you. So,
yes, Chelsea, I do like her. You’re the one who doesn’t like her.”
“What? No. I love that we became friends with her. I think she needed us.”
I could feel Alex roll her eyes. “Yeah, keep feeling good about yourself.”
A car horn sounded. Alex held down my doorbell for a long minute, and then she and Chelsea ran off. When I was sure they were gone, I went up to my room and cried until my head hurt and my throat was dry.
Dear Reshma Kapoor,
We regret to inform you that your offer of admission to Stanford University’s incoming class of freshmen is being rescinded as a result of plagiarism charges that arose subsequent to our initial evaluation of your application. Stanford takes academic honesty very seriously. As noted in your admissions packet, even pre-matriculated students are expected to uphold the intellectual and personal integrity that is embodied in our Honor Code.
Your check has not been deposited. We have expedited your review in order to give you the opportunity to accept any other offers of admission that you’ve been extended.
We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Elaine Nguyen
Dean of Admission and Financial Aid
On the way to school, I stopped at a red light, saw the sun shine through the eucalyptus trees, and thought: I’m worthless.
My sister sent me a link to a YouTube video where a baby panda falls off of a swing set. I watched it once, clicked it to replay it, got halfway through, and muttered: “I’m worthless.”
I got an e-mail from a Korean ninth-grader who lives in Indianapolis. Her deepest desire is to be a TV news anchor, and she asked me for advice on how to get there. I started writing a long list of questions she should ask herself and steps she could follow, but, halfway through, it turned into: “I’m worthless. I’m worthless. I’m worthless.” Writing those words makes me feel better.
I hit SEND and counted down one, two, three, ten, fifteen seconds until my Bombr account would actually send the e-mail, and then clicked UNDO at the last second. Why bother? She’ll learn soon enough. Or maybe she won’t. Not everyone is worthless. Just me.
Heard from someone who hadn’t spoken to me in a while.
Hey, how you feeling? I’m sorry about Stanford. =[
Just wanted to tell you to stay strong. Life will go on.
I don’t know. I just keep wondering what’ll become of me.
You’re smart. You’ll do fine. Some college will want you.
Smart enough for Stanford?
I waited at my desk, phone in hand. Twenty minutes passed without any reply.
No, I know you don’t really think I am. You meant I’ll do fine like I’ll set my sights lower and find my level.
I waited another ten minutes, then wrote back.
???
Hey, really sorry. Don’t have time to talk right now. I’m in the lab.
You’re lucky that I’m too tired to add anyone new to my shit-list. Enjoy playing with your test tubes.
He didn’t reply.
The worst part is that my mom keeps trying to put a good face on things. She’s been talking about how these top colleges don’t really give a good education anyway, and saying this way I have a year to research colleges and get some work experience and figure out what I really want from life and then I can really be successful right from the beginning of my college career.
For a while, I humored her, saying, uh-huh, all right, cool, that’s good, but when she started talking about how maybe this was the best thing in the end and from now on maybe I wouldn’t have such high expectations for myself, I said, “All right, Mummy. I get it: I’m nothing special; I’m not going to achieve anything.”
“What!”
I was shocked into silence. My mom had spoken so sharply that I could feel the word reverberating back and forth in my ears. And when I opened my mouth—I don’t even know what I was going to say—she yelled again. In all our time fighting, she’d never raised her voice before.
“Why do you think I care about smartness or specialness? No, I don’t care about that. All I care about is that you become everything you can be. If you were only smart enough to dig ditches, then I would put you into the finest ditch-digging school in this country and would set you up with some fantastic ditch-digging machinery. And if you dug a particularly long and fine ditch—a ditch that you were proud of, then I’d make sure you took pictures of the ditch and sent them to me, and then I’d forward them to your aunts and your grandparents, and even though others might laugh, I would be proud of you. And that ditch would be special to me.”
“Mummy…”
“I know that when you had those grades of yours, I never boasted of them, I never called attention to them, and I never praised you for them. But that was because I knew—I could sense—that they were not honest. But you should not use that as a way to say I do not care for your accomplishments.”
“I’m sorry for that, Mummy. I wish I’d never done it. I betrayed you, okay? But can we please forget it? And can’t you just accept me for who I am?”
But my mom’s eyes were hard, and I could tell she hadn’t heard a thing I’d said. “You know to work,” she said. “That is the most important thing. Meena never worked like you did. I remember how you’d work: nights, days, weekends, twelve hours at a time sitting in front of the dictionary. I still remember one night, after I’d quizzed you for several hours, you kept asking me to give you one more word, one more word, and I thought, My God, she will do great things someday.”
“It didn’t work, Mummy. My score didn’t go up at all.”
She shook her head. “No. It didn’t. So maybe you will not play around with the dictionary anymore. But the thing that made you study that dictionary is also the thing that makes you special.”
I shook my head. My mom had never gotten it. If working hard was all that counted, my parents would be richer than Susan Le. The truth is that in this world, you can either be a winner or a loser, and I am obviously one of the losers.
Today, during the morning announcements, Colson said, “I hope you’re looking forward to graduation! It’s confirmed: Susan Le will be speaking! Many thanks to your class presidents for working so hard to book her. Your other two commencement speakers—the class valedictorian and salutatorian—will be announced on May first.”
I sat so still that I could hear the sound that my eyelids made as I blinked. It felt like everyone was looking at me, but I’m sure they weren’t.
I calmly got up, left my bag, left my notebook, left my pen, left everything at my desk in the back row, walked past Ms. Lin, and headed into the hallway to text my parents that I needed to speak with them.
It’s hard to get my parents into the same room nowadays. My mom has a product launch coming up at Google, and my dad is always down at his little office. I guess they’ve always worked a lot. And it’s not like I minded or anything. But it’s different when people are working together. It’s different when work means getting excited at the dinner table over some breakthrough with the algorithm or over some new deal that they’ve made. Now it’s not like that. My dad is keen to talk about what he’s doing with the remnants of their business, but I can tell my mom’s not interested. And whenever he asks about her work, she shrugs and says it’s going well.
So the only way to catch them was by waking up very early this morning and knocking on the door of their bedroom. My dad was sitting up, drinking coffee, with an iPad resting on his bare belly. And my mom was typing away at her computer. And it wasn’t a dark or gloomy day—the room was full of sunlight—but there was a quietness and a stillness there that I didn’t like. And I wondered if maybe I’d made that quietness. Had I introduced the fear and distrust into our house, or had it always been there?
When I told them, “I have something to tell you,” I don’t even want to describe the look my dad gave me. It wasn’t even a look, so much as a tensing up of the body, like he was expecting me to pun
ch him.
“Umm, they announced it at school yesterday. Susan Le is speaking at our commencement….Now wait,” I rushed onward. “Believe me. You don’t have to go. In fact, maybe I won’t even go either. We do not need to sit through her speech.”
“Ridiculous,” my mom said. “I’m the one who put your school in touch with her.”
“Why?” I said. “Why would you do that?”
“Because they asked me. Your obsession with Susan has become absurd, beta. Why must you always bring her up?”
My dad put his iPad down, then he pulled himself backward until his hairy back had slapped against the wall. “Why all this fighting?”
I didn’t even know what to say. They’d been giving me the silent treatment for months because I’d plagiarized a few sentences in an article, but they were willing to sit and listen to the woman who’d cheated them out of millions of dollars? It didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense at all.
My mom and dad exchanged weary glances. The harsh morning light made their skin appear wrinkled and discolored. I wanted to keep arguing, but there was no point.
I remember Susan Le, you know. She came over a few times, years ago, when she was thinking about investing in my parents’ company. I must’ve been about thirteen, and she would’ve been about twenty-seven, and I followed her around, asking her questions and telling her about my classes and my good grades and all the contests I was entering. She smiled and asked me questions. She had the straightest black hair—it came down just past her ears—and every time I met her she was wearing tight black jeans and a plaid button-down shirt with a gold pen tucked into the front pocket.
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