Admission

by Julie Buxbaum

  “Talk to the lawyer. He’ll help you figure it out.”

  “Do you really think this is necessary?” I ask.

  “Look around. What do you think?” Isla asks, and motions to the chaos beyond the office doors. The air is ripe with tension. I catch a glimpse of Paloma going by, and I wonder if she’s hiding a Fitbit clipped to her bra; maybe she’s trying to get her steps in. “By the way, don’t freak, but Hudson is coming over.”

  “Why?” The very last thing we need is for my half brother to show up high out of his mind and to put on a show for the paparazzi. Even worse, depending on whether my dad is still giving him money—he was supposed to have cut him off because a therapist told him it was enabling—Hudson might be desperate enough to sell a story. I feel sorry for my brother—his mom, Sage, my dad’s first wife, was an addict too, years ago, so he’s genetically predisposed—but my empathy for him doesn’t mean I want him anywhere near here. Not to mention, my dad does not have the bandwidth to deal with Hudson. None of us does.

  “Hud says he wants to give moral support. I told Dad to tell him we moved,” Isla says.

  “Did Dad laugh?”

  “Nope,” she says. “But in all fairness, I wasn’t totally joking.”

  Isla leaves, probably to go do homework or, you know, find the legal loophole that will save my mother. Before I lose my courage, I dial the first number on the list. Carrie decided yesterday that it was too complicated to change our chips, so instead she bought both Isla and me brand-new iPhones. Normally, I’d be excited by this—I’ll wipe my old one and give it to Cesar’s mom—but every time I look at the shiny new cell, which is empty of all contacts and texts and photos, I feel lonely. Nothing has carried over. Not even my apps.

  “Jaberowski, Lowe, and Stein,” a receptionist answers. “Mr. Lowe’s office.”

  “Hi, may I speak to Mr. Lowe, please?” I ask this in as confident a tone as I can muster. My voice comes out tinny and young, a child asking for permission. I hate talking on the phone. If I could manage to hire a lawyer over text or email, I totally would.

  “I’ll see if Mr. Lowe is available. Who may I say is calling?”

  “Umm, Chloe Berringer? Umm, Joy Fields’s daughter.”

  I hear an audible gasp from the secretary, followed by an: “One moment, please.” Apparently, she too must get the New York Times news alerts.

  “Chloe,” a man says warmly, less than twenty seconds later. “I’m so glad you reached out. I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Hi,” I say, because I’m not sure what to say to this. I’ve never met Mr. Lowe. I don’t even know how he found his way onto Isla’s list, or why she put him at the top. I have no idea why it would have occurred to him to worry about me.

  “I assume you’re calling because you’ve found yourself in a little spot of bother.” That’s one way to put it, I think. Spot of bother.

  “I guess so? I mean yes. My mom has. And my sister said I should call you in case, I don’t know, I could be in trouble too?”

  “You have a smart sister,” Mr. Lowe says, and I’m glad we’re on the phone so he can’t see me roll my eyes so hard I almost sprain them. “Given the nature of the allegations against your mother, and potentially your father, you absolutely need to have your own separate counsel.” This is the second time I’ve heard the word separate and it still makes me uncomfortable. A surge of loneliness bubbles up in the back of my throat, and I swallow it down. I think of the corner of my mom’s robe hanging out of the FBI car, waving goodbye to our old life.

  “I…I…This is all a little overwhelming. Am I…I mean, if I didn’t know anything, can I still be in trouble?” I ask. “I mean, I didn’t know. I only knew—”

  “Stop!” he says sharply, and then catches himself. “Chloe, I don’t want to hear anything about what you did or did not know, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I say, though I’m not sure I do.

  “There’ll be time to iron that all out later. In some cases, it’s better for lawyers to know less, not more. How about we set up an in-person meeting for later today? I’ll come to you, since I imagine you can’t leave your house.”

  “No, the paparazzi are here. Also, I’m not sure how I’ll pay you. I have a trust fund, but—”

  “We can worry about that part later too. Until I get there with a retainer agreement, I only need you to do one thing. Can you do one thing for me, Chloe?” He’s talking to me like I’m a little kid, as if he too thinks I’m clearly the stupidest person in America. I’d be annoyed except for the fact that I want the hand-holding. I’m terrified.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t talk to anyone—not your mom or your dad or even your sister—about the case or anything that’s happened. Not a single word.”

  “I can’t talk to my family?” I glance at the picture of the four of us in Bora-Bora that sits on my dad’s desk. Isla’s in the middle, grinning without front teeth and wearing bright orange wonder wings. I’m next to her, holding up a hairy coconut and drinking out of a giant straw. My mom, in a string bikini, stands behind us, my dad’s arm around her shoulders, his abs more chiseled than they are now.

  We look so happy. A perfect family.

  “Of course you can talk to them. You can say ‘good morning.’ You can say ‘I love you.’ But you can’t discuss college or these allegations or anything that happened. What you knew or did not know. Nothing. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Also, don’t talk to your mom’s lawyers or the FBI. They might want to interview you.”

  “The FBI?” I can’t keep the panic out of my voice. I think of their guns, long and precise, and I think about Law & Order again, which I like to watch late at night, when I can’t sleep. I imagine sitting at a table in a small room, trying not to get manipulated into a game of good-cop/bad-cop.

  I am in so over my head.

  “Chloe, listen, you are central to this case. You do not talk to anyone, do you hear me, anyone, without my say-so. If the FBI asks to speak to you, you say, ‘I need my lawyer, Kenneth Lowe,’ and then they’ll have to call me.”

  “Right. Got it.” I want to ask Can I talk to Shola? but then I remember that apparently she’s not talking to me. If she were, she would have texted or called. She would have returned my dozens of voice mails. She would have found a way to say I’m here, Chlo.

  I think about the word separate, how it conjures up that movie about the guy who becomes untethered from the International Space Station and is left floating alone in the infinite universe talking to himself.

  “Not a word to anyone, understand?” Kenneth asks again.

  “Sure,” I say, and mime zipping my lips. And then I feel like a moron all over again, a dumbass p.o.s., because we’re on the phone.

  He can’t see me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Then

  “Will you be one of my backups?” Cesar asks. I can tell he’s nervous because he doesn’t look at me. I’m used to his brain zipping around so fast I can’t always keep up, so at first I have no idea what he’s talking about. Sometimes I’ll think he’s telling a story about the playground at school, and then all of a sudden, a talking porcupine starts shooting bullets from their wrists, and I’ll realize he’s transitioned to some show he recently watched or a dream he had.

  We’re hanging out at the Reading and Resource Center, where I’ve been volunteering with Cesar for four years, five afternoons a week, since he was three. What started as school-required community service has become a big, essential part of my life, the place I go to decompress and relax, and the only place where just being me is more than enough. Cesar’s assigned as my “little buddy,” which means in addition to helping him with his homework, reading to and with him, and, of course, playing, I’m occasionally allowed to take him on field trips if I get permission from h
is mom in advance.

  “Backup for what?” I ask. Of course I’ll be Cesar’s backup, regardless of context, because I love this kid like he’s my little brother. Sometimes he tells me stories about other kids making fun of him—for not knowing about Minecraft or sucking at kickball—and it takes all my willpower not to drive over to his school and destroy some first graders.

  “You know, in case anything happens and I need, like, more adults,” Cesar says. He has a giant gap where his two front teeth used to be, a dark bowl cut, and no concept of personal space. When we read together on the big overstuffed chairs, he likes to hurl himself onto my lap, like he’s doing gymnastics. He often farts out loud, and then giggles his contagious giggle, and for a minute, he turns me seven too, and farting becomes the funniest thing in the world.

  “Anything happens?” I ask. I do not reflexively correct him. Do not say what I am thinking, that I’m not, by any measure, an adult. Because to Cesar I am. When we first started hanging out together, I asked him how old he thought I was. He guessed fifty. “What do you mean?”

  “Like, you know, if my mom has to go away or something.” My heart sinks. By necessity, Cesar’s been taught to talk in code, even with me. His mom is a refugee from El Salvador, and though no one has told me outright, it’s pretty clear she’s undocumented. A lot of the parents of kids at the Center are.

  “Your mom’s not going anywhere,” I say, and then realize that I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep. Cesar and his mom live with a daily fear I can’t even begin to contemplate, a fear I don’t even try on for size while I’m here and then leave behind. Rita, the head of RRC, told me recently that many of the moms, even the immigrants here legally, have started forgoing free lunches at school and SNAP benefits for their kids because they’re scared they’ll be targeted by ICE and deported if they use government resources. It’s horrifying to think about the level of terror they must feel to be giving up needed meals for toddlers.

  I’ve learned to compartmentalize my time with Cesar and to not think in comparative terms when I learn horrible stuff like that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to go back home to my normal life, to comfort and Cristof-prepped meals. Instead, I do what I can to help—volunteer my time, bring bulk snacks from Costco, encourage my parents to donate to the RRC. No good can come from my dwelling on the giant divide between Cesar’s life and mine.

  “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t stay in your house with you or anything. My mom said that wouldn’t be possible. I asked. I was like, But Chlo has a screening room! But she wants me to keep seeing you, no matter what. She says you’ll make sure I go to college one day.” I almost laugh—I should not be responsible for helping anyone get into college. The only reason why I’m able to help Cesar with his homework is because he’s only in first grade. Still, I’m all in. “So what do you think?”

  He is staring at me, waiting for my answer. I sweep the hair out of his eyes.

  “Of course. I’m like a bad rash, little dude.” I blink back tears, flash him my biggest smile to hide how both honored and heartbroken I am. Cesar should be thinking about Legos and, just on the night before it, his spelling test, and even maybe those little jerks who tease him. He should not be worrying about losing his only parent or counting his people for the long run.

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.” I resist the urge to pull him into my lap. I don’t want to frighten him with my affection.

  “I had a bad rash once,” Cesar says, looking up at me, his eyebrow tented, like in a cartoon. “But it went away after like two weeks.”

  * * *

  —

  “You look beautiful,” Levi says when he picks me up the Friday night after the SATs in his new Prius, and I blush. We do not usually say things like this to each other. Our move from good friends to something else has been slow and steady at school, and I wish we could stay like this, on the cusp. Luxuriate in the potential before I inevitably screw it up or he realizes that this was all a mistake.

  That I’m a mistake.

  Every night this week, we’ve texted late into the night, and twice I’ve fallen asleep holding my phone and woken with a circle on my cheek from my PopSocket. I liked the indentation, like physical proof I’ve been struck by Cupid’s arrow.

  My mom helped me get dressed tonight. She wanted me to wear her bandage dress, which is red and so tight I’d have to choose between sitting and breathing. What if we’re going some place casual like In-N-Out? I’d be forced to order a Double-Double in something once worn to the Emmys. I opted instead for my favorite ripped jeans and a peasant blouse—a step up from school, a step down from trying-too-hard.

  Levi calling me beautiful feels like a stretch—at least in the ways in which my mom is synonymous with the word—but I feel…attractive under his gaze. I feel seen. Maybe like with the word smart, I can find a more expansive view of the word beautiful so that it can somehow include me too.

  “Thanks,” I say, and of course I ruin the moment by playfully punching his shoulder despite the fact that this is not a locker room and we are not teammates. Still, I don’t know how to take the compliment, how to fold it up like the notes that used to get passed around in sixth grade—Do you like me? Y or N—and keep it in my pocket like a good-luck charm. I should have stepped on my tippy-toes and kissed him on the cheek. I should have grabbed his hand. I should have smiled back.

  He’s wearing a blue cashmere sweater and khaki pants, and I realize that in the five years we’ve known each other, I’ve mostly seen him in jeans or athletic shorts. He’s stepped things up a notch too. He smells like that expensive candle my mom likes to burn in our living room, an almond woodsmoke, and it makes me want to lick it right off his neck.

  Levi Haas.

  Once we are settled in the car, Levi puts on music, a guy and a guitar, acoustic and relaxed, and I wish Shola could telepathically tell me who’s playing since music is one more thing she knows and cares more about than I do. I worry this is one more test in my life that I will not pass.

  “So where are we going?” I ask.

  He takes his hand from the steering wheel and puts it next to mine on my seat. His pinky touches my pinky, and the enormous thrill of it, from this smallest of touches, surprises me. My insides tremble. What happens when he touches me for real? I don’t know if I’ll survive it.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Give me a hint,” I say.

  “Nope.”

  “Do you know how hard it was to get dressed not knowing where we’re going?”

  “I think you did just fine,” Levi says, and his fingers move to the hole in my jeans, right at the thigh. He draws a circle, and I swear, for a second, I leave my body. I’m a puddle on the floor. I’ve never had a real boyfriend before, never had anyone casually reach out for me like that, like my thigh is also his thigh for the taking. The entire ripped jeans trend now makes sense to me.

  I’ve kissed a few guys, but always at parties, always not-quite-sober kisses, the kind that happen on a dance floor in front of other people and lead nowhere, certainly not upstairs to the empty rooms at Xander’s house, where the doors lock and the sheets are changed by a daily maid service.

  For five whole years I’ve fantasized about kissing Levi. I’ve thought about doing all the things my classmates seem to get to do to each other in those rooms, or in their own bedrooms, or in their cars, and the thought that some limited version of that might happen tonight, will likely happen, is hard for me to wrap my mind around. What if I’m a bad kisser? What if being that close to my face, where Levi can see my pores, where he can see my distinct tangy human-ness up close, turns him off? Or even worse, what if we don’t even make it to the kissing? What if we go to a restaurant and sit across from each other at a table and he discovers that I have nothing interesting to say?

&n
bsp; We’re merging onto the freeway, heading west, and he takes back his hands to concentrate on the road. I like that he’s careful and cautious. In lab, he always wears his goggles and gloves, and moves slowly with the pipettes. In seventh grade, our math teacher gave us one of those trick quizzes where he buried in the instructions to not answer a single question, a lesson in reading the fine print. Levi was the only kid in the whole class who passed.

  “So tell me, how do you feel about sand generally?” Levi asks.

  “I’m pro-sand. Especially in large quantities spread out across the coastline.”

  “Cool. I’m pro-sand too. I can’t remember: Do you surf?”

  “Oh crap. We’re not surfing, are we?” I ask. I spent an hour blow-drying my hair. Getting it wet was not an option I’d considered.

  “Nope. Was curious. I don’t surf and it always feels like it hurts my Cali cred. But I’m scared of sharks.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Dead serious. They eat people’s limbs. I don’t understand how anyone could not be afraid of sharks,” Levi says.

  If he had asked me to guess, I would have said Levi was afraid of nothing. Levi seems deliberate, not anxious, like reading the fine print keeps him from experiencing fear. He does not need to expand the definitions of words so that they one day include him.

  “Well, they’re not what I’m most afraid of, but I’d say sharks are in my top ten.” He exits onto the PCH. We’re headed to Malibu and I feel myself relax, maybe because I can picture our destination, the white sand and the setting sun, a postcard place where only good things can happen. Our conversation is flowing. It seems silly that I was ever worried. I’ve never had any trouble talking to Levi. The trouble has always been my feelings while talking to him.

  “What’re the other nine?”

  “You really want me to list my biggest fears?” Levi asks, and a smile spreads across his face, a withholding, a reminder that with Levi the ratio of what he thinks and what he says out loud is way lower—or is it higher?—than mine. But then, I say everything I think. Shola calls me FDB, Full Disclosure Berringer, for a reason. I think it’s because I’m naturally lazy—it takes work to filter your thoughts before you say them aloud.