Hacking Harvard

by Robin Wasserman

  "Excuse me, but you are planning to do all that with six hundred and thirty three dollars?" Schwarz asked.

  "You break your calculator?" I asked. "Try eight thousand dollars."

  There was a long silence. And not like the cozy, peaceful one we'd been enjoying a few minutes before, the kind where no one feels the need to talk because there's nothing much that needs to be said, and the quiet gives you space to think about how, for once, everything feels just right and you know--even though they're not saying anything, or maybe because they're not saying anything--that the people you're with feel the same way. This silence was heavy, and filled with a series of meaningful looks that lacked any meaning for me. Schwarz's wide eyes stared at Eric, then turned to Max, who gave Eric a helpless half-smile, which Eric greeted with a glare. It

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  couldn't have lasted for more than thirty seconds, which--if you've ever sat in a room while everyone but you is engaged in a complicated game of silent assassin--is a really long time.

  "You'd better tell him," Eric finally said.

  "Tell him what?" Schwarz's voice carried the churlish note of someone who's been referred to in the third person once too often.

  "You tell him," Max said.

  "Let her tell him," Eric said, "since she practically already did."

  "Tell him what?" Now I sounded churlish.

  "How much the bet is for," Max mumbled.

  "Twenty-five thousand dollars," I said. Then, "What?"

  There was another silence, an expectant one, as everyone stared at Schwarz.

  He held himself perfectly still, with his mouth twisted, his forehead wrinkled, and his eyes scrunched so closely together they nearly melded into one giant, owlish field of green. He looked like a cautionary statue erected in testament to the "Don't make that face, it could freeze that way" credo.

  "Why?" It came out as a croak. Schwarz cleared his throat and tried again. This time, his voice cracked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I didn't know either," Eric said. "Well . . . not at first."

  "We didn't want you to freak out," Max said. He rolled his eyes. "Don't know what we were thinking."

  Schwarz was a statue again, his pupils darting back and forth between his two best friends while the rest of him stayed immobilized. A bead of sweat had broken out along his hairline.

  "You were better off not knowing," Eric said. "Trust me."

  "No. I get it." The color was starting to leech back into his face

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  and, with surprising speed, his shade shifted from paper white to pale pink, right on through to tomato red. "Why bother tell me what was really going on? Why would I need to know? It does not matter what I think, right? Poor little Schwarzie, he will do whatever anyone wants him to do. He will believe anything, he'll do anything, so why bother to tell him anything? Better to just give him a pile of excrement and call it the truth, right? Better protect him from finding out the facts, he's so sensitive, he's so fragile, he might break."

  Eric shook his head. "That's not--"

  "That is! That is what you all think, isn't it? Is it not?" Schwarz's voice, high to begin with, was climbing the octaves with acrobatic speed and skill.

  "Schwarz?" the door pushed open slowly, and a tall, slim girl with a Harvard hoodie, wavy brown hair, grey sweats, and incredibly bad timing peeked her head in. Max had said she was average looking, but that's not the word I would have used. She was polished-- even in sweats, even with her hair pulled up into a sloppy ponytail and her face pale and wind-chapped, she looked ready for a photo shoot. She was straight out of a New England girls' prep school catalog. And even though she was only a year older than me, she was a college woman, and she made me feel like an eighth grader. "Oh, sorry, you've got people here, but Schwarz, I really need your help--"

  "And you? Schwarz whirled on her, all five feet two inches of him ready to pounce. "You may be beautiful, you may look like a goddess, you may be brilliant and funny and have Miss December's smile, but you are also selfish! And arrogant! And you treat me like excrement!"

  Eric winced and took a few steps toward him, but, as if afraid

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  to enter the danger zone, didn't come any closer than that. "Uh, Schwarz, maybe you--"

  "No! No. She has to know--you have to know. You do not think about anyone but yourself. And you manipulate people into doing whatever you want. And you're needy and whiny and melodramatic. And you only date losers, and you rub my face in it, even though you must know ..." He took three deep breaths, closed his eyes, then muttered a list of his favorite Bunnies. It seemed to have a magic calming effect--until he opened his eyes, and his face turned pink again. "A picture would be easier," he said, almost to himself. "A picture would make sense." He glared at Stephanie. "But you don't make sense, because all those things are true about you and you're still--whenever I look at you I--" He shook his head. "But you have to stop. You all have to stop! I'm not a little kid. I'm not your servant. I'm not here to do whatever you say. I am a man, and--"

  She kissed him.

  She took two steps toward him, grabbed his shoulders, pulled him toward her, slammed her lips against his while his arms flailed wildly, searching for purchase, and then found it, found her, digging into her waist and staying there, holding tight, like he knew that as soon as he moved, even an inch, whatever fantasy he'd created for himself would disappear in a puff of air.

  But I knew better. I was watching. She was real, and she was still kissing him.

  I couldn't help but glance at eric. He was staring at me. Probably twelve steps between us, I calculated. Two would have been easier. With two, there was less time for second thoughts.

  Stephanie finally let go, and Schwarz took a deep, wheezing

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  breath, as if he'd been holding it all this time. Which he probably had. His face was even redder than before, his eyes half-closed, his mouth trembling.

  "I--I--um--" His voice was a whisper. He tipped his head back and sighed. It was the sound of someone who'd been waiting a very long time. "Shiiiiiit," he moaned. Schwarz, who never cursed. Who hated cursing the way my vegan cousin hated pork rinds. "That was . . .fuck?

  And then he passed out.

  Two hours later. Schwarz was up in Stephanie's room, making up for lost time. When he'd woken up to see her face looming over him, he'd promptly passed out again. But five minutes later, upright and blissed out, Stephanie's arm around his waist, he'd floated out the door to the staircase, mumbling something that sounded like, "Clay is smarter than he looks," though afterward the rest of us agreed we must have misheard.

  Max, Eric, and I stayed in the dorm room and watched the minutes tick by. We played cards, struggled to remember old cartoon theme songs, and argued about whether Will Ferrell was "inspired" (Max), "overrated and dangerously dumbing down American humor, tranquilizing his audience rather than puncturing the assumptions of his society as all good comedy should do" (Eric), or "that doofy-looking guy who used to be on Saturday Night Live, right?" (me). An hour passed.

  By hour two, Schwarz was still up in Stephanie's room, either passed out again or ... I preferred not to know, or at least, certainly not to imagine. Eric and Max were poring over some kind of pro

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  gramming manual--that's what I'd decided it was, since the parts of their conversation I could overhear didn't appear to be in a human language--while I kept an eye on the screen. According to the admissions docket, Clay's file was coming up any minute.

  I zoned out, letting the denys, wait-lists, and admits wash over me. So I almost didn't notice it.

  A change in the pattern. Something new. An assistant standing in the doorway. Interrupting. The flicker of motion caught my attention, and I turned up the volume.

  "He said it was for you, Samuel." She handed Atherton a square package, about the size of a textbook. "He said it was an emergency and that you would want to see its contents as soon as possible."

  Atherton rolled
his eyes. "He didn't leave his name?"

  The assistant shook her head. "Just some kid. He said he was 'a concerned citizen trying to help.'"

  "Probably another lame stunt," he said. "Yesterday I got a sneaker with a note that said 'Just trying to get my foot in the door.'" The committee cackled. "I'll check it out at our next break." Atherton turned back to his stack. "Sorry, folks. Anyway, as I was saying about..." He snuck a glance at the open file in front of him. "Sarah Stratton. A mundane record, nothing to really set her apart, and if you ask me ..."

  I stopped listening, and zoomed in on the package sitting at his elbow.

  Because, I realized, it wasn't a package at all.

  "Uh, guys, that binder with all the incriminating stuff in it," I called over my shoulder. "Remind me--did the sticker have a big picture of that spaceship on it?"

  "The Enterprise. Yeah." Max laughed. "Schwarz is such a dork."

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  Eric punched him on the arm. "And that would make you--"

  "The preferred term is geek? Max said with dignity. "If you don't mind."

  "Guys, the binder ..." I gulped. "I think Bernard held on to it. And I think he just delivered it to the admissions office."

  "And what makes you think that?" eric asked.

  "Because I'm staring at it right now. And Samuel Atherton's about to look inside."

  The jig, as they say, was up.

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  There's nothing casual about this. It is serious business--it's someone's life. The stakes are very high.

  --Harvard University Dean of Undergraduate

  Admissions and Financial Aid William Fitzsimmons, quoted in The Harvard Crimson, July 7, 2006

  We tore the room apart looking for the binder. Max finally found it, lodged in the back of the closet behind a stack of Playboys and under a pile of unwashed polo shirts. It was the binder all right--or at least, a binder, bright blue with a Star Trek sticker on the front and bunny ears on the side.

  And it was filled with a ream of scrap paper.

  Surprise.

  "How could Schwarz not look inside the damn thing?" Max raged.

  "Not our current problem," Eric pointed out.

  The clock was ticking, the boys were panicking, and I couldn't help but wonder what Atherton would find when he finally opened the binder and looked inside.

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  My name?

  I wish I could say I was mostly worried about the guys, who were more likely to get in trouble--not to mention lose twenty-five thousand dollars they didn't have--but I'm not that person. A small, weak, easily distracted part of my mind worried about them. The rest worried about me, and whether I was about to be totally screwed.

  By which I mean, rejected.

  Same difference.

  "Come on," Max said suddenly. "We can deal with this." He glanced at Eric. "Same deal we pulled at the bakery last year, right? When they almost caught us with the thing--"

  "And then we did the--"

  "Right, with the--"

  Eric nodded. "Could work. Let's go." They made it to the hallway before they realized I wasn't behind them. "Well? Come on!"

  "I don't--come where?"

  "It's a three-man job," Max said impatiently. "And since schawrz is otherwise occupied . . ."

  I didn't do capers. I didn't do break-ins or pranks or hacks or whatever immature, illegal activity they were about to drag me into. I'd tried, yes--a little surveillance, a dash of sabotage--and look where it had gotten me.

  "No. Not me. I can't."

  Max massaged his temples. "Can't what?"

  Couldn't help.

  Couldn't play along.

  Couldn't run or climb or sneak or spy or save the day.

  Couldn't anything.

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  "Go without me," I said.

  "Lex." That was Eric, meeting my eyes for the first time since he'd found out the truth. It was also the first time he'd said my name. "Please. We need you."

  It turned out, I could.

  Max pulled the fire alarm. He just waltzed in the front door, a T-shirt over his face to disguise his identity for assistants and security cameras, and pulled the red lever.

  After that, it was simple.

  Or, at least, that's how it was explained to me.

  The siren shrieked, the building emptied out, and Eric and I snuck around to the back, where a ramp led down to a locked door into the basement. It took him twenty seconds to pick the lock.

  We crept inside, running as fast as you can when you're trying not to make any noise, my heart thudding about three times faster than my feet. I stumbled once, but Eric's hand shot out, his fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist, and he kept me from slamming into the ground. I pulled away, and we kept running.

  Up the stairs to the ground floor, now empty, but the fire engines were screaming in the distance and soon the place would be crawling with firemen. I dimly remembered hearing that setting off a false fire alarm was a felony. If I spent graduation in jail, would I still get my diploma?

  "Okay, you know what you need to do?" Eric whispered.

  I nodded. "You sure we have to split up?"

  He gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder. "You'll be fine." And then he was gone. I was on my own.

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  I was breaking into the Harvard University Admissions Office.

  I was stealing from the Harvard University Admissions Office.

  And if I got caught--when I got caught--I would be on my own.

  Don't think, I told myself, knowing that if I paused even for a second, I would never get going again. So I followed instructions, sneaking through the empty offices, trying to remember the floorplan they'd sketched out for me, dreading the consequences of a wrong turn, a dead end.

  Down the hall, two rights and a left, and there it was: the conference room. I glanced up at the security camera, hoping that Eric had followed through on his promise to switch off the system.

  The binder was still on the table. All I had to do was run across the room, grab it, and run out again. Easy as that.

  My legs were shaking.

  One second passed, then another.

  In a dream, my feet would have stuck to the floor.

  But I was awake, and I jolted myself into motion, rushing across the room, wobbly but fast. I grabbed the binder and stuffed it into my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, raced to the door--and froze.

  A door slammed in the distance. And then the shouting began-- too muffled for me to hear what they were saying, but loud enough that I got the idea. The fire department was in the building. And they were closing in.

  "Down!" Eric hissed, blowing through the doorway and dragging me back into the room, down to the floor, under the conference table. I hugged the leg and, trembling, waited to be caught.

  Some hero, right? That's me. Nerves of steel.

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  "Close your eyes," Eric whispered, fumbling with something in his bag.

  "What?"

  "Now!"

  I squeezed my eyes shut just in time; the bright flash blazed through my eyelids. "Go!" Eric shouted, pulling me up and out of the room before I could figure out what was going on. We wove through the firemen, who were frozen in place, their hands pressed to their eyes. Back down the hall, through the office, out of the building--out the front entrance, pushing through the crowd, then running, racing across the Yard, dimly aware that someone was following us, maybe a horde, but the running pushed away all the fear, narrowed the world down to my feet slamming against the pavement, my lungs screaming, the air slicing against my cheeks, the green smear of grass blurring by, Eric's hand on my arm pulling me this way, then that, around a corner, through an alley, down the stairs and into a dark passageway behind the library where there was nothing but huge, empty boxes, a bush whose leaves had all withered away, a low concrete wall, a rusted door to the building that looked like it hadn't been used in years, and us.

  We sat on the ground, our backs pressed against the
concrete, our chests heaving. We sat silent and still, savoring the sensation of being at rest, of breathing.

  "They won't find us here," Eric said, still wheezing. "We'll wait a while, just to make sure, then we can go back to Schwarz's."

  It was another minute before I had enough air to speak.

  "What the hell was that back there?"

  "What?"

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  "The light."

  "I call it a flasher," Eric said. "It lets off a single burst of light, bright enough to blind you for twenty seconds, with absolutely no lasting effects. I designed it myself. Schwarz keeps a couple in his room for emergencies."

  "Sounds dangerous."

  "It's totally harmless."

  "You could have warned me."

  "I told you to close your eyes."

  I wanted to yell at him; I wanted to thank him. My heart was still pounding, and I couldn't stop smiling. It was like stepping off a roller coaster for the first time, half-exhilarated, half-terrified, still trying to convince myself that the world had stopped spinning and I wasn't going to plummet to my death. A little nauseous. Almost ready to go again.

  "What if they recognized us?" I asked.

  "Who would recognize us?"

  "Are you sure you shut down the cameras?"

  "Every last one of them. When I take on a mission, I get it done."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked bitterly. "That I screwed up? That I should have gotten the binder faster? I told you this wasn't my thing, and you--"