Hacking Harvard

by Robin Wasserman

  "Hey." He put his hand on my back, lightly. "You did fine. You did great."

  I jerked away from him. "So great we almost got caught."

  "The firemen showed up faster than we calculated," Eric said. "It wasn't your fault."

  "No, it was your fault for dragging me into this in the first place."

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  "It all worked out okay, didn't it?"

  "You call this okay?" I kicked at one of the empty cardboard boxes. "We're hiding in a trash alley and we almost got arrested back there--which, by the way, you swore was not a possibility."

  "It wasn't," he said obstinately. He held up his wrists. "Do you see any cuffs?"

  "Easy as pie," I said sarcastically, ^quoting what he'd told me. "Couldn't be simpler."

  "Who asked you to come along?" he snapped.

  "Uh, you."

  "Not in the first place. I'm not the one who invited you over today."

  "Trust me, that was made perfectly clear," I said. "I'm well aware you don't want me anywhere near you."

  "And you know exactly why."

  "Because you're a baby?" I suggested.

  "Because you're a liar."

  "Because I'm a better liar than you are, you mean. Because you can't handle the competition?"

  "Yeah, competition," he snorted. "If it weren't for me, you'd still be back under that conference table, hugging the leg and crying for your mother."

  I gave him the fish eye. "There were no tears involved, and you know it."

  "Only because I got us out of there."

  "You wouldn't even have been there if it weren't for me," I said. "You'd still be back in the dorm room and Atherton would be poring over your precious binder, and--"

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  "What?"

  "Nothing." It didn't seem like the time to admit that I'd just noticed the freckles on his right cheek looked a little like the Big Dipper.

  "Lex . . ." But now he was the one who couldn't get his sentence out.

  The sun was starting to set, which gave everything a reddish tinge. It was also freezing, but I only noticed because I saw him shivering. I put my hand against his cheek, just to see if it was cold.

  And then I realized what I'd done. Before I could move, Eric put his hand over mine. He smiled.

  "It wasn't all a lie," I said quietly.

  I couldn't hear his reply, but I could read his lips: I know.

  And then he leaned in, and for a moment, I felt like running away again. But I stayed where I was.

  His lips were soft. The kiss was firm.

  For the two months I'd dated my one and only boyfriend--the two months before he'd ditched me for ABP gill--I'd strived to kiss him as infrequently as possible. There was his tongue, which had always seemed short and stubby to me, and too red. And then there was everything else. Too much drool, or not enough drool and thus too much scraping. His nose would loom in my face like a fleshy tumor, but I would keep my eyes open because when I closed them, it was too easy to hear all the slurping and sucking noises, and all the little grunts he breathed out every few seconds, just as he squeezed my shoulders or dug his hips into me. I'd told myself that it wasn't kissing I hated, it was just that he was doing something wrong. Or, more likely, I was.

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  This kiss was different.

  There was no tongue. And no drooling, no saliva, no messy sticky sounds or slurping or anything else that I'd come to identify with kissing. There was just this perfect moment, a soft pressure, warmth, a hand against my neck, a tingling in my lips, and then, too soon, it was over.

  We stared at each other, our faces about an inch apart, his eyes and nose huge in my field of vision, my gaze straying down to his lips, trying to make it seem real that, just a second ago, they'd been attached to mine. He smiled. I laughed.

  "What?" he whispered.

  "I don't know."

  Then he laughed, too. But only for a moment.

  "You're not about to run away, are you?" he asked.

  I traced a finger across his cheek. "Why would I?"

  "And you're not. . . you're not in the middle of some kind of psychotic break?"

  "I don't think so." I smiled. "I'm beginning to think you might be. What's wrong?" Our faces were still so close, I could feel his breath.

  "I just . . ." He chewed on the edge of his lower lip. I brushed a swath of hair away from his face, and he grabbed my hand, wrapping his fingers around mine, tight. "I just want to make sure I know what this is. I want this to be real."

  "It's real," I said. "I swear."

  And then he kissed me again.

  This time, there was tongue.

  But not in a bad way.

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  March 15-DECISION)-DAY

  Objective: Admission

  As an admissions officer... I travel around the country whipping kids (and their parents) into a frenzy so that they will apply. . . . Then... we reject most of them.

  -- Rachel Toor, Admissions Confidential: An Insider's Account of the Elite College Selection Process

  You know how in the movies, they always try to ratchet up the tension by pretending that the whole "thick-versus-thin" envelope thing is just a myth? The stressed-out-- though always well-coiffed-- heroine quivers in front of her mailbox and pulls out a thin

  envelope, her expression crying, Oh no, thin! My life is over! And then she opens it up, only to pull out, in an oh-so-shocking twist, the congratulatory letter: "Fictional University is pleased to welcome you to the class of when Hell freezes over."

  My point?

  It's a plot device.

  In real life, some things are exactly the way they appear to be.

  A big, fat envelope that barely fits in the mailbox and appears to

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  contain forms and brochures and stickerrs and a crimson "Admissions Certificate Suitable for Framing" isn't going to tell you "Sorry, try again next year." And trust me when I say this. Much as you may tell yourself it's possible that the razor thin envelope--the one that obviously contains only one piece of paper, one typed page with very little text--might still be good news, it's not. Size does matter.

  Bernard Salazar knew about size.

  He had the biggest stack in town. A thick stack of skinny, skinny envelopes.

  Princeton. Brown. Yale. Stanford. Berkeley.

  Wait-list.

  Rejection.

  Wait-list.

  Soon he'd have enough for a bonfire.

  Of course, he hadn't had to wait for the mailman. Not thanks to the technological wonders of the modern era. Life and death decrees were all available online. Key in a name, a password, and there it was, black and white, instantaneous and inescapable: a dead end.

  He had saved Harvard for last, knowing it was a sure thing.

  He hadn't been angry or upset about any of the others. They were all second-raters, beneath him. He was destined for Harvard, just as he and his father had always planned. There was a sizable check and a new car waiting for him as soon as he had the acceptance letter to wave in his father's face. It was only a matter of time.

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  He paused at the computer, feeling almost sorry for everyone else, the suckers who'd played things straight. He even felt a little sorry for Eric, Max, and Schwarz, the dweebs he'd screwed over without a second thought. Which, after the way they'd treated him--the way they looked down on him--was one thought more than they'd deserved.

  He hit return, and his file flashed up on the screen.

  Applicant: Bernard Salazar

  Status: Wait-list

  Bernard got very angry, and very drunk.

  He was still drunk three days later when the official letter arrived.

  And he was even drunker when he built his fire.

  The house didn't burn down. Not quite. But the pool table, leather couch, and Bernard's wall-to-wall collection of hip-hop CDs were all burned beyond recognition.

  It wa
s Clay's name on the application, so Clay got to sit in the official Harvard chair. The rest of us hovered behind him, holding our breath. Eric's arm was around my waist, my head on his shoulder. It still didn't feel quite real--but it felt right.

  Clay keyed in his name and password. Then he stopped, turning around to face us.

  "I want to go," he said.

  Blank looks all around.

  "If I get in, I want to go."

  "What do you mean?" Max asked. "Since when?"

  Clay didn't explain or elaborate. But he looked sure. "You can keep the money. I just want to go."

  It seemed like he was asking for permission, which I didn't get--

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  until suddenly, I did. Clay was a fraud. And when the guys made their hack public, he'd be out before he had a chance to be in.

  Schwarz grinned. Nothing new there. His life had been bisected into two eras: Before Stephanie, and After Stephanie. Now, in A.S., schawrz was a new man--emphasis where he liked it: one man. A happy man. A joyous, devil-may-care, whatever-you-want, perpetually grinning idiot of a man. "Fine with me," he said in a dreamy voice. In A.S., everything was fine with him.

  Max shrugged. "As long as I get my money, I don't care what you do. It's not about the bragging rights for me, or the principle. But Eric ..."

  Eric was only in this to make a statement.

  And you couldn't make much of a statement with your mouth shut.

  You certainly couldn't stand up for principle and take down the admissions system--or at least give it a good jolt--without revealing some crucial details and offering some proof. You couldn't do it without Clay.

  Eric stepped away from the group, away from me. Toward Clay. "You really don't remember me from elementary school?"

  Clay shook his head. "Dude, why do you keep asking me that? It was, like, ten years ago. A lot of shit went down."

  Max pressed his lips together. "Eric, why don't you just--"

  "Yeah. I know all about the shit," Eric said.

  "So were we friends or something?" Clay asked. "Is that the deal?"

  "No, not quite--"

  "Seems like we would've been."

  "What?"

  "Friends," Clay said. "Right?"

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  Schwarz stifled a laugh. Max shoved him.

  Eric just smiled, if you can call it that. The corners of his mouth twisted up, but the rest of his face stayed frozen in place. "We weren't," he said flatly.

  "Yeah, well . . ." Clay paused, and in that pause, there was something--some flicker of expression across his face, something about the way his mouth was still half-open, like there was more he wanted to say. Something that made me wonder if he remembered more than he wanted to admit.

  Eric looked thoughtful, and I wondered if he had seen it, too. "You hate school. Why would you want more of it? Why would you want Harvard?"

  Clay shrugged. "It'd be . . . better. You know?"

  I waited for Eric to ask, Better than what?

  He didn't.

  "Okay." eric nodded once, slowly. "I won't say anything. None of us will. If you get in, you go."

  They shook on it.

  I waited for the hug, or the tears, or the emotional outburst, or anything to indicate that something big had just happened. But they were guys. They shook. And then they were done.

  Clay clicked the mouse, and his results popped up on the screen.

  Applicant: Clay Porter

  Status: Admit

  Max fell to the floor, spread-eagled on his back, like he was trying to make a snow-angel on the hardwood. "Twenty-five thousand dollars!" he screamed.

  Clay looked bewildered.

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  Schwarz, as per usual, looked delirious with joy.

  And Eric looked at me.

  "You did it," I said.

  He laughed. "No thanks to you."

  "You're welcome."

  And this time, I kissed him.

  There would be no feeble mouse click for me. I wanted the whole experience: the long walk to the mailbox, the gaping hole at the pit of my stomach as I held my breath and, with equal parts terror and excitement, pulled it open and peered inside. . . .

  I'd been visualizing the moment for years, walking myself through every step, right up to the triumphant end, as if somehow watching the scene play out in my head enough times would somehow make it all real. Now that the time had come, I wasn't going to cheat myself out of my moment of victory. Even if the wait was killing me.

  Every day, I walked down to the mailbox, opened it up, flipped through a pile of bills, held my breath, and prayed I wouldn't see that familiar crimson seal--because I knew that if the envelope was small enough to get lost between the credit card mailers and the cell phone bill, it wasn't the envelope I was hoping for.

  And every day, before I opened the mailbox, I tested out my new mantra: It doesn't matter.

  Acceptance, rejection, whatever. I'd go to college somewhere-- probably somewhere good. It didn't have to be Harvard.

  It was just one decision out of a lifetime of decisions. I'd let it rule my life for far too long. More than that--I'd pretty much given up

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  having a life, all for a single goal, a goal I couldn't even come up with a good reason for pursuing. I wasn't going to live like that anymore. No more blinders. No more ignoring everything else, everyone else, no more pretending that nothing mattered except where I was going, even at the expense of where I was now.

  If I got in, so be it.

  If not? I'd survive.

  And on the day I opened the mailbox and discovered my envelope, I finally believed it. Thick or thin, yes or no, admit or deny-- even wait-list--it didn't matter.

  Not to this story.

  And, in the end, not to my life.

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  I see no harm in telling young people to prepare for failure rather than success, since failure is the main thing that is going to happen to them.

  --Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

  Bullshit. You didn't actually buy that, did you?

  Of course it matters.

  When you're a high school senior, two months away from The Rest of Your Life, it's pretty much all that matters.

  People--especially adults, especially adults who don't remember what it was like and wonder why half the high school population is zonked out on mood-regulating medication--like to tell you that it doesn't matter where you go to college. Let me say it again, just to be clear.

  Bullshit.

  College is the start of real life. High school is practice. (Middle school is torture.) College is the beginning. Chapter one. College

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  is where you become the person you're going to be. As for the person I was going to be? She wouldn't be a Harvard student.

  The envelope was thin.

  I held out hope to the bitter end. Even though I knew better. I closed my eyes, I came up with a host of possible explanations for a thin letter, and I told myself that the brochures and the forms and the certificate, the packet, could all be arriving later. This was Harvard, I told myself. They didn't need fanfare.

  And they didn't supply it:

  Dear Ms. Talese,

  It is with sincere regret that we inform you we cannot offer you a place in our incoming freshman class. We received an unprecedented number of applications this year and were forced to turn away many candidates with exceptional personal and intellectual qualities. Please understand that this decision is not necessarily a true indicator of your potential. We wish you the best in your future endeavors.

  Note the "not necessarily."

  As in, maybe you'll manage to be successful at something, someday.

  But not necessarily.

  I wish I had saved it. But I tore it into tiny pieces and let them sprinkle down onto the ground, where they mixed in with the snow. It was the last snowfall of the season.

  And the first time in my life I'd ever littered.

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  ? ?
?

  I'd like to say I took it well.

  Of course, I'd also like to say I got in.

  I can at least say that I had no regrets.

  And that the mourning period only lasted a week. There was a fair amount of crying. Several long days when I refused to get out of bed. Infrequent showering.

  Thete didn't seem to be much point.

  There didn't seem to be much point in doing anything except lying in bed, the soggy pillow littered with snot-encrusted tissues, my hair knotted, my eyes red, my blinds closed, and my iPod playing "Everybody Hurts" on an endless loop.

  On day eight, I got up. Got out of bed. Shut off the music, opened the blinds, and piled all my getting-into-college books into a giant cardboard box. I sealed it up and left it in the hallway with a big sign taped to the top: TRASH.

  On day nine, I dug up the postcard from Brown with the handwritten "Hope to see you next year!" scrawled across the top. I checked off "Yes."

  Things don't always go the way you expect them to.

  I know, huge shock, right?

  I didn't expect to spend prom night rappelling down the side of a roof while my boyfriend fiddled with sprinkler pipes, Max laid down an indoor river of detergent across the dance floor, and Schwarz kept the car warm so we could escape the wrath of the soapy, sopping prom king and his princely henchmen.

  I didn't expect to fall in love.

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  I didn't expect to like Katie Gibson's valedictory speech . . . and, okay, I didn't. Who would? It was pretentious, rambling, self-congratulatory and, in the end, boiled down to the stunning revelation that "This isn't the end, it's the beginning!" But I also didn't expect to clap just as loudly as everyone else, and to discover that I wasn't jealous anymore. I wasn't bitter, I wasn't even a little sorry that I'd persuaded the guys to fix her file and set things right. Because none of it mattered anymore; things were over. High school was over.