When I met with Mrs. Oh, our counselor at school, she asked straight out: “Tell me, who is Chloe Wynn Berringer?” like it actually mattered. When I stammered an incoherent response, she followed up by asking specifics about academics—my grades, the subjects I liked best and why, my extracurriculars, what I was considering as an essay topic, what I might want to major in. Then she got more personal. She wanted to know my favorite food. My hobbies. The best thing that’s ever happened to me. The worst.
“My grandma died a few years ago,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else; nothing bad has ever really happened to me. My dad’s mother lived on the other side of the country and was one of those old people who thought her age allowed her to say whatever mean thought crossed her mind without worrying about the consequences. On the rare occasions we saw her, she’d make comments like Joy, it’s a shame Chloe didn’t get your nose or Chloe, dear, remember: a moment on the lips is a lifetime on the hips. Self-control is essential, darling. If you don’t work on it, you’ll turn into Hudson. Her dying was sadder in theory than in actuality. Isla and I didn’t go to the funeral because we had Hamilton tickets, which, in retrospect, was not our finest moment. “I guess I could squeeze an essay out of it.”
“I think the admissions people are tired of kids exploiting their dead grandparents,” Mrs. Oh said with a laugh, and her honesty made me like her. “Don’t worry. You’ll come up with something. I have faith in you.”
Since then, I’ve been scribbling ideas in a notebook. Sometimes I think about writing about Hudson and what it’s like to have a half brother who’s an addict—the sudden tightness in my dad’s face when his name pops up on his phone, like this might be the call; the way my stomach falls too—and then I remember that I can’t. It could be leaked to a tabloid in six seconds flat.
“As we discussed on the phone, it’s time to get Chloe an accommodation because of her learning issues,” Dr. Wilson says, looking at my parents, his attention so focused, I feel like a piece of the furniture, human clutter.
“What learning issues?” I interrupt, and both my parents shush me, as if I’m a little kid and not an almost-adult, here to maturely discuss my college options.
“ADHD is probably most apt,” Dr. Wilson says, continuing to ignore me as if I weren’t the one to have asked the question he is answering. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD or any other acronym. True, I don’t have the best attention span in the world—the idea of reading all of Crime and Punishment felt very much like I’d committed a crime and that book was, in fact, my punishment—but I think that’s true for most teenagers. The only notable exception might be Shola.
My problem isn’t my attention span. It’s that for me the stuff we learn in school is boring and irrelevant. I don’t care if some made-up Russian dude from a gazillion years ago murders a greedy old lady and then feels bad about it for five hundred pages. Classics are overrated, unless we’re talking Pride and Prejudice film adaptations.
I know I can focus when I’m interested. I once watched every episode of The Good Place in almost a single binge, and I basically mainlined the Fyre Festival documentaries. Also, after watching the shows and listening to the podcasts, I have very strong feelings about freeing Adnan Syed and locking up Elizabeth Holmes.
“Once we get that accommodation, she’ll have unlimited testing time, which I think will help her elevate her score,” Dr. Wilson continues, again with the shes and the hers as if I’m not even here. “She can take that accommodation to college, which will make the next four years way easier. It can really make the difference between getting As and flunking out.”
I don’t like Dr. Wilson and how he talks about a possible learning disability accommodation as if it’s this season’s must-have accessory, like an A.P.C. weekender bag. I once read an article about people pretending to have disabled children so that they could skip the lines at Disney World, and I thought, Who would do that? Now I wonder if the answer is us. We would do that.
Dr. Wilson is wearing a white linen shirt tucked into slim-fitting khaki pants, with shiny brown loafers. His hair is combed over a bald spot, as if he thinks he can fool us about what’s under his sweep. I imagine him doing the same thing with my application, maneuvering some kind of comb-over of my bad grades.
He must be in his midforties, and I wonder what would make someone want to spend his life helping teenagers like me get into college. It seems like a really sad way to make a buck. Though I guess it’s a large buck, if the way my parents have rolled out the red carpet is any indication. “I’ll help you with that paperwork. We’re late, of course, but I think we can make it work.”
“That would also help explain away her grades, right?” my mom asks. Apparently, she too has forgotten I’m in the room, and like with anything Aunt Candy recommends, she not only eats up this stuff, she also seems eager for more.
I don’t want unlimited testing time.
Time isn’t the problem. Not being able to figure out the answers is.
“Mom,” I say. “I don’t have ADHD. I mean, I’m not a genius, obviously. I know I’m not as book smart as Isla. But I don’t have, like, a problem?”
My voice turns this into a question, which pisses me off. It sounds like I’m not sure. For the record, I wouldn’t be ashamed if I did have an issue; I’d be thrilled if some legitimately prescribed Adderall was the solution to my GPA. But I’m not fooled by their broken logic. Some kids, by definition, have to be in the middle or the back of the class rankings. We can’t all use learning disabilities to explain away our performance.
I know I can’t.
I also realize I used the words book smart as if to carve out some wiggle room for myself. Like I have some other kind of yet-to-be identified intelligence. I can’t imagine I’ll ever be great at school—and let’s be honest, “street smart” is off the table since I was raised in Beverly Hills. Still, surely there’s something I’m good at that will come in handy in adult life.
I mean, Isla’s a genius, but she’s also a moron. She once wore a Canadian tuxedo to school with Tevas.
Dr. Wilson knows nothing about me, beyond my transcript and SAT scores. How can he make a diagnosis? Is he even a real doctor?
“Chloe, maybe you should go wait in the playroom,” my dad says. The playroom is what we always call our den, even though it’s been Lego- and toy-free since Isla was ten. For the first time, the word, which used to feel cute, chafes.
“Are you serious?” I ask my dad.
“This is all very common,” Dr. Wilson says, finally turning to look at me, and he smiles. It’s not quite creepy in the way it often is when middle-aged men smile at teenage girls, like they’re the Big Bad Wolf and they want to eat you whole. Shola calls that the Perv Grin. His is simultaneously condescending and menacing. “I would bet at least forty percent of the kids in your class got an accommodation for their tests.”
“I don’t know a single person who got an accommodation,” I say, hating the stubborn edge to my voice. I assume Dr. Wilson already thinks I’m spoiled. No need to play into that perception.
Privileged is the word I’d use instead, but maybe that’s equally obnoxious. It’s its own kind of cop-out.
“Of course no one goes around telling people. Not that anyone should be embarrassed—it’s all perfectly legit—but you know how teenagers are. They like to keep this stuff on the DL, as you kids say.”
No one says that, I think.
“Why should those other kids have an advantage that you don’t?” Dr. Wilson asks. Clearly he has dealt with a lot of wealthy parents, because there is no quicker way to fire mine up than to suggest someone else is getting something that I’m not. That’s how Isla and I ended up with a private meditation teacher and etiquette lessons and kidnapping insurance. That’s how I ended up at Wood Valley in the first place. All my parents
needed to hear was that it was the “best school in Los Angeles.”
No one stopped to think whether it was the best school for me.
“Shola didn’t get an accommodation,” I say, and Dr. Wilson glances at my parents with an unspoken Help me here.
“That you know of,” my dad says.
“Dad!”
“Also she’s black,” my dad says, with a knowing look to Dr. Wilson. “She’ll get in wherever she applies.”
“Dad!” I say again, this time louder. I know it’s hard having a stupid kid, but that doesn’t give him an excuse to be a racist jerk.
“What? I’m progressive. You know that. I think Shola’s great. And we need diversity. But let’s not pretend it doesn’t give her a leg up.”
“Or maybe she’ll get into every school she applies to because Shola’s third in our class and a National Merit Scholar. And a genius.”
“Maybe this one should think about pre-law,” Dr. Wilson says, and laughs, an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. I wonder if he even remembers my name.
“We’re getting off track here, sweetheart,” my mom says, and her performative tone—slightly louder than the moment calls for—makes clear I’ve lost this fight, not that I’m sure what we’re even fighting about. It’s the voice my mother used to use on Lil’ Missy, the seven-year-old kid on My Dad, My Pops, and Me, in the beginning of each episode, when she’d misbehave adorably. It’s the voice she uses when we are out in public and I’m embarrassing her. “This is not about Shola, whom we love, of course, and who I hope gets into any college she wants. This is about you, darling, and us doing our jobs as parents to make sure you don’t get left behind.”
I have no response to this. I want to ask her what she means by left behind. There are, in fact, many colleges that will accept me even if I don’t get my scores up. Not the kinds of schools my parents will want to flaunt with license-plate frames or brag about at dinner parties or drop into interviews on the Tonight Show. Still, Mrs. Oh gave me a long list of safeties, none of which we bothered to visit this summer but all of which are perfectly respectable schools where I imagine I’ll learn whatever it is you are supposed to learn at college to prepare yourself for adulthood.
“We didn’t pay six years of Wood Valley tuition, plus make God knows how many donations, for you to go to some no-name place,” my dad says. “This shouldn’t be that hard. You deserve this.”
“I mean, look at Philo. He got into Yale, and he’s truly an idiot, not to mention a criminal,” my mom says, which is true. Aunt Candy’s son got kicked out of Andover for dealing coke his sophomore year.
“Not when I got through with him,” Dr. Wilson says, tapping his coffee cup against my mother’s, like a fist bump. “If you read his application, you’d have thought the kid belonged in Mensa.”
“What’s Mensa?” I ask, even though I know perfectly well what Mensa is. Isla has been a member for years, because she’s ridiculous like that. I think about how this meeting will go for her next year, when she’s applying to colleges. Will Dr. Wilson suggest ADHD again so she has enough time to ensure a perfect score? To iron out any chance of minor human error? Probably not.
“Chloe,” my mother says with a defeated exhale. “Please just stop.”
“Sorry,” I say.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Now
“You know Dad could go to jail too,” Isla says without apology, waking me up from a deep sleep by sitting on my bed. The horror of yesterday seeps back in slowly. I tell myself that it can’t be that bad. This is a blip in what has been my otherwise seminormal existence. My mom’s home now, safe, and she’ll get the charges dropped like she did for Hudson a few years ago. Life will resume.
I reach past Isla for my phone and turn it on. I have three hundred twenty-six text messages and a full inbox of voice mails from various news outlets. The Today show, The View, even Dateline.
Apparently, this will not blow over. Blips do not involve being grilled by famous morning talk-show hosts.
“What do you mean Dad could go to jail too?” I ask. I swat at my eyes, which feel goopy and swollen, a reminder that I cried myself to sleep last night.
“Too, as in also. As in Mom might go to jail, and Dad might go too. What do you think I mean?”
“I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. Mom’s not going to jail. Neither is Dad.” I sit up, yawn, smile at my sister as if she is blowing this out of proportion. I pat her hand, and she pulls away.
“Have you even read the complaint?”
“No one is going to jail,” I repeat, avoiding her question, because no, I have not yet read the complaint. It’s two hundred terrifying pages long. According to the New York Times, the vast majority of it deals with the charges against the forty-five other people who’ve also been caught up in Dr. Wilson’s shenanigans. All of their kids are waking up today, like me, with their whole worlds shattered. I wish I could talk to them and ask, What do we do? Isla is not blowing this out of proportion. It’s just that she’s usually impossible to scare or to ruffle, always calm and collected, and so I will take this single opportunity for a role reversal. I’ll rise to the challenge. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Stop playing stupid, Chloe.”
“I’m not. You’re freaking out.”
“Wake the hell up. Read the complaint. Find out what we’re dealing with here. The only reason why they haven’t pressed charges against Dad yet is because they don’t have as much clear-cut evidence against him. But there’s a ton on Mom. Apparently, there is a phone call between Mom and Wilson—”
“Dr. Wilson,” I correct.
“Oh my God! Fine. Dr. Wilson. That call was wiretapped. Dad wasn’t there that day, so for now, at least, he’s in the clear. According to this legal blog I was reading last night, the prosecution will likely put pressure on Mom to plead guilty by offering not to charge Dad,” Isla says. She looks tired, and it occurs to me that when she went upstairs last night, it wasn’t to sleep. It was to research in private.
I wonder if Isla went to bed at all.
Of course, Isla would have been trying to find a way to help, unlike me, who spent most of last night weeping on the couch and staring at the ceiling. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I could be useful.
“You’re not a lawyer,” I say. It’s not fair that I’m angry at her. If anything, it should be the other way around. She has every right to be mad at me. I didn’t only blow up my reputation, but probably hers too. She’s in her junior year, on the cusp of this process.
Still, her competence feels cutting.
“You don’t actually know how any of this works,” I say.
“Do you think this is a game, Chloe? This is serious.” My sister looks like a mini replica of our mom, but unlike our mother, who clawed her way up out of a blue-collar life to Hollywood using her looks, Isla will never have to rely on her appearance.
“I was the one who had guns pointed at her. I realize this is serious.”
“You need to get a lawyer too. Someone separate from Mom’s—to represent only you.”
“What?” I ask. “Why?”
“Come on, the dumb act might fool Mom and Dad, but it doesn’t fool me. I wouldn’t count on it fooling a jury either. You’ve never been a good actress.”
“Stop talking in code, Isla,” I say, feeling the icy cold of panic infiltrate my veins. I was tired before, but that fog has been wiped clean. Now I’m alert, conscious that I’m blinking too much and too hard. I don’t want to hire my own lawyer. Even the thought of it makes me feel like I might be sick again.
I can’t do this.
Honestly, I don’t even understand how my mom broke the law. Shady is different from illegal.
“Why would I need my own lawyer?” I ask.
“You want to go to jail because you were stupid enough to ch
eat on the SATs? And then pretended to be a champion pole vaulter to get into SCC? I mean, pole vaulting? Seriously? I don’t think you guys could have picked a more ridiculous sport if you tried.”
“I didn’t know,” I say, fighting the tears that are gathering behind my eyes. I wrap my arms around my body and squeeze tight, but it gives me no real comfort. I wish I could hug Isla, but we haven’t hugged since we were kids. Our family has that weird pairing thing: my mom and I are on one team, my dad and Isla on the other. Which isn’t to say that this division is hostile—we love each other; we’re a family, after all—but this is how things usually shake out. I would never spend an afternoon with my dad at the club playing organized sports. Isla would never spend an afternoon with my mom at the spa, sweating in a sauna. It’s an interest/personality alignment issue. “I didn’t know about any of this.”
“It doesn’t matter. You need to protect yourself. You can be charged as a coconspirator.” I stare at my sister, who has always been a complicated package. Freckled nose, tiny ears on the outside, and combustible, tightly wound inside. She always plays the long game, takes the hardest route out. Once, she insisted on making all of us a three-course meal entirely from scratch, even the bread, a process that took a whole week. This was not born from some real passion for cooking. She wanted to prove to herself that she could do it. In other words, she’s made of the same stuff that makes people do bizarre, exhausting crap like triathlons.
“I didn’t know,” I say again, and hate that my voice is shaking. That my face is already wet again. “They can’t charge me if I didn’t know.”
“Really? Is that how the law works? You say you’re innocent and so they believe you?”
“Whatever, Judge Judy,” I say, using my sheet to wipe under my eyes. I take a deep breath, try to sound like I’m in control, like everything is fine. “Listen, it’s going to be okay. I’m not going to jail. And neither is Mom. There has to be some sort of mistake.”
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