Admission

by Julie Buxbaum

  Shola: Remember Liam, that senior when we were freshman? He used to look at me like that

  Me: I totally forgot about him. Remind me what happened there?

  Shola: He went to college, never to be heard from again, and with a girlfriend no less. But hot damn, the way he used to glance at me across the cafeteria. So…yum

  Me: Who knew looking could be even sexier than kissing? I mean the kissing was great too, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something about that look, like right before the kiss…

  Shola: You are going to be insufferable for a while

  Me: YUP

  Shola: I’m so happy for you

  Me: Thanks

  Shola: I bet you are dying to send me a string of ridiculous emojis

  Me: YUP

  Shola: I’ll make an exception to my no-emoji rule, just this once

  Me: You are a true friend

  Shola: I know. You’re lucky to have me

  Me: I am

  Shola: I’m going to miss you next year. Is it too early to get weepy about graduation?

  Me: We have nine months!

  Shola: I’ve already graduated in my mind tho. Putting my apps in

  Me: Noooo college talk

  Shola: Okay, only Levi talk

  Me: Thank you. Did I tell you he’s afraid of cats?

  Shola: You did not

  Me: Did I tell you I think I’m in love?

  Shola: You are the worst

  Me: I am but you love me anyway

  Shola: We can’t help who we love, my friend

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Now

  Hudson poses for the paparazzi on the lawn. He puts his hands on his waist and looks off into the distance like Superman, and he follows that up by arching his back and holding up a pretend microphone, Mamma Mia! style. Paloma rushes outside and wrangles him into the house to get him away from the hungry camera clicks.

  He’s done his damage already, though.

  Here’s what the gossip sites will say: we’re not taking this seriously, we assume we’re above the law, this is another example of our gross entitlement and privilege.

  If Hudson has a superpower, it’s that he can always manage to make everything worse. I always feel the need to at least partially cleave myself from Hudson, to use that isolating half. I tell myself that I wouldn’t attach this qualifier if I liked him, but it’s hard to like addicts. My dad claims that when I was little, I was Hudson obsessed, that as a toddler I followed him everywhere. Now I can’t imagine choosing to be in the same room as him.

  “Are you kidding me? Do not talk to the media. Do not make silly poses. Do not give them anything,” my father says.

  “Come on. I was having a little fun.” Hudson sticks out his tongue at Isla. He and Isla have always gotten along, even though they couldn’t be more opposite. She’s a consummate rule follower. Once Isla and I were the only people in a movie theater, and still she made us sit in our assigned seats. Hudson, on the other hand, ingests illegal substances for breakfast.

  But Isla never uses the word half, even though it’s accurate. And when she won her class’s academic award last fall, she invited Hudson to the ceremony, even at the risk of him showing up high and embarrassing us. In the end, he didn’t come, which is the way it is with Hudson—we all know better than to count on him for anything—and still I could sense Isla’s disappointment.

  “Fun? Are you serious? The crisis folks are coming tonight. They’re going to give us a media strategy and we’re going to follow it word for word. I guarantee you it doesn’t include dancing the floss for the paps,” my father says.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Hudson says, and even though I’ve been hearing Hudson call my father “Dad” all my life—and it too is accurate—it always chafes. In my mind, my dad belongs to us, not to him. Which is unfair. And selfish. I don’t know what it is about my brain that divides us into teams. “Just so you know, you don’t say ‘dancing the floss.’ You just say flossing.”

  “To what do we owe the pleasure, Hudson?” my mother asks, and her tone is hard and angry, a slice. Usually, she’s warm to my half brother, even when he doesn’t deserve her kindness. Once he showed up so loaded to our big Easter brunch that he passed out in the backyard. Instead of getting angry, my mom put him to bed upstairs so he wouldn’t disturb the guests. She didn’t even yell at him later after everyone had left.

  I got yelled at that day, though, for taking off my tights, the ones with cute bunnies on the knees, in the bouncy castle. She said my behavior was “unladylike” and “unbecoming” and that I hadn’t been “raised in a barn.”

  I was eight, only beginning to learn the contours of my mother’s professional life, how even hosting a brunch and a bouncy castle in the backyard required a certain level of performance.

  “Oh, hello, stepmonster,” Hudson says, which is what he calls my mom. She pretends not to mind, but I did once hear her complain about it to Dad: If he has to be offensive, at least he could try to be a bit clever. “I was worried about you guys. Wanted to make sure everything was under control. As you know, I have a wee bit of experience getting into trouble with the law myself.”

  If for a moment, even after his front-lawn performance, any of us has been clueless enough to hope that Hudson was clean, our hopes are shattered when he starts to sway to the right and has to reach for the console table to steady himself.

  “For Christ’s sake,” my dad yells, voice cracking. “We are not dealing with this right now.”

  “I see a lot of suits here. Last time I was arrested you refused to pay for my lawyer,” Hudson says.

  Although my dad likes for everyone to think he’s low-key and relaxed, Hudson’s problems weigh on him in a way I’m sure the rest of us don’t fully appreciate. Sometimes, out of nowhere, my dad will say, “I hope Hudson’s okay,” when what he really means is, “I hope today is not the day that Hudson dies.” Sometimes I wonder if it’s not the fact that I don’t like Hudson that keeps us from being close, but the subconscious understanding that if I were to let him into my life, I’m likely to one day get my heart eviscerated.

  Indifference seems a safer strategy. I don’t want to be Isla staring sadly at an empty chair, like she did when he didn’t show up for her award ceremony or even the dinner afterward. I don’t want to let him leach joy from moments of glory.

  “Hey, Hud, did I tell you about my science fair project?” Isla asks out of nowhere. “It’s actually pretty cool. I looked at what happens when you feed male fish estrogen. Come on, let me show you.”

  Isla grabs Hudson’s arm, and at first I think, I’m sorry, Isla, but he doesn’t care about your science project unless it’s made out of heroin, and then I catch her eye. Again, I’m the dense one. She’s trying to get him out of our mom’s way. I take my cue.

  “It is pretty amazing, and I, like, hate science,” I say. Isla leads Hudson upstairs and I follow behind, partially to be a human buffer in case he falls and takes Isla down with him.

  Once we’re safely ensconced in Isla’s room, she closes the door behind her—to minimize his potential for damage, I assume—and when he again lists to the side, she points to her bed. Hudson obeys, curls up on top of the covers, and rests his head on her pink satin pillowcase.

  “Some major shit happening here,” he says.

  “Yup,” Isla says, making no move to show him her project. She doesn’t seem angry, though that’s always how I feel when I see Hudson high. She seems only sad and frustrated, like he’s an equation that she should know how to solve. “Some major shit.”

  “Your mom might go to jail for, like, twenty years. The most I’ve ever faced is like five. I find the whole thing very ironic.”

  “That’s not really what ironic means,” Isla says. I want to scream at them both: Mom is not going t
o jail for twenty years, you idiots. It was only a college application!

  “I can’t believe you cheated on the SATs, Chlo. I can’t decide if that’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard or totally badass,” Hudson says.

  “I didn’t cheat,” I say, for what might be the hundredth time, though I wonder why I feel the need to make this excuse to him. It wouldn’t matter to him one way or the other. I bet he’s not even curious. One added cruelty of addiction—it turns you into a narcissist. “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah right,” Hudson says, and then, “Wait, are you eighteen yet?”

  “No.” I know what he’s driving at. If I were, and the feds decided I knew about everything, I could be charged as an adult. That was one of the very first questions Kenny asked me when we sat down to talk: Are you eighteen?

  “Lucky bitch,” he says, and closes his eyes. His words cut, but I shake them off. Hudson can’t hurt me. Not when he’s too busy hurting himself.

  We wait a minute. Wait some more. Isla pokes him to confirm that he’s passed out. She puts her hand on his chest to make sure he’s still breathing. You never know with Hudson.

  She reaches into his pocket and takes his phone.

  I stare at her, shocked.

  “What? This way he can’t sell a story to the tabloids,” Isla says. “Or at least this will make it harder.”

  “Did you really do a science project on fish?” I ask.

  “Of course not. The fair isn’t until the spring. And anyhow, you can’t experiment with hormones like that. It would be animal cruelty.”

  “I love you,” I say, feeling suddenly thankful for my sister. If things had been the other way around, if she had ruined my life, I wouldn’t be nearly as generous about trying to help sort it all out. I throw my arms around her and kiss her cheek.

  “Stop being weird,” she says.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Then

  The SAT results are posted Friday morning, two weeks after I take the test. I want to check them alone, but of course, as with everything college admissions related, this has ballooned into a family affair. Thankfully, Isla had jazz band practice before school, so she’s not here to witness my final mortification.

  “Let’s do this,” my mom says, all pumped up, clapping to release her nervous energy. She’s wearing her workout clothes—Lululemon yoga pants and a sports bra, the same outfit from her “Celebrities: They’re Just Like Us” photo in Us Weekly. Even though she’s almost fifty, she doesn’t require a shirt.

  “Please calm down. I already told you I bombed it,” I say. I’m not nervous about my score—it will be, no doubt, embarrassingly low. That’s what happens when you eeny-meeny-miny-moe half the questions. I’m only nervous about how my parents will take the news. After all the money spent, the countless hours of private tutoring, and a testing accommodation, these results will confirm for them their deepest, quietest suspicion: that their eldest daughter is, in fact, a moron.

  I don’t want to watch that disappointment play out on their faces in real time. I don’t want to see the inevitable sag and the exhale, and worst of all, their attempts to hide it all so they can protect my feelings. There will be hugs and tears and a reflexive need to comfort me; all the while I’ll know they’re making eye contact over my head and having their own terrible conversation.

  “Stop being so negative, sweetheart. I bet you did great,” my dad says in a voice I recognize from childhood, the one he’d use after I fell, when he’d scoop me up so fast that I wouldn’t have time to notice the hurt. I’m sitting in front of what we call the “home computer,” which is the desktop in the playroom, although we each have our own laptops and iPads and iPhones. Between us, there are at least twelve other gadgets I could have used that would not have required me to sit here, with my parents standing behind me, so close I can not only smell but also feel their hot coffee breath. Their bodies tent over mine, as if to shield me.

  I should have done this in the bathroom, before they woke up, behind a locked door. I could have stepped straight into a steaming hot shower to scream afterward.

  I want to remind them that the SAT isn’t a group sport. Neither is college admissions. But that will only make things worse. I know my parents. They will take this score like a punch.

  I want to ask them to please not scoop me back up this time—no conciliatory hugs—that we should each retreat to our corners after to lick our own wounds. I don’t know how to say this without hurting them.

  I sign in to my College Board account and take a deep breath.

  “Right there, honey. Click there,” my mom says, pointing with a long, blue-polished fingernail to the results link. She’s the only person in the world over the age of twenty-five who can get away with blue nail polish. “I’m so nervous and excited. I’m nervited!”

  “Mom,” I say.

  “I’m excervous,” my dad says.

  “Stop, guys,” I say.

  “Relax. This is going to be so great. Click it already!” my mom says.

  “Give me a second.” I close my eyes. I think: I am lucky. I am lucky. I am lucky.

  I list all my good things: Levi and me on the beach, him saying I like you. I think of Shola, how even if we end up at colleges on opposite ends of the country, she’ll still be my invisible safety net. I think of my health, and my parents’ health, and Isla’s. I think how I’ve never known food scarcity. How I could have been born in Syria or South Central, instead of Beverly Hills.

  I think about the word privilege, the good edges of it, the reassuring ones, and how it applies to me on every front in every way.

  I think: This doesn’t matter. This doesn’t matter. This doesn’t matter.

  “It does matter,” my mom says, which makes me realize I must have said this last bit out loud.

  “I know,” I say, defensive. “I’m trying to keep things in perspective.”

  “A little late for that,” my dad says, and laughs, though I have no idea what he means. I think I’ve kept my panic hidden pretty well, all things considered.

  “I swear, if you don’t press that button, I’m going to do it for you,” my mom says, and so I click.

  My scores appear on the screen.

  Reading, 720. Math, 720.

  Wait, what? I double-check again that it’s my name on the top and that this isn’t someone else’s file.

  There has to be some sort of glitch.

  A total score of 1440—720 reading, 720 math. That’s two hundred forty points higher than the last time I took the test.

  Two hundred forty points.

  “Holy crap! Yes! Yes! Yes!” my mom cheers, and kisses my cheek, and then does a happy dance, which in her case, apparently, takes the form of some sort of cha-cha.

  “Well done,” my dad says, and hugs me tight from the back. I don’t turn. I’m still staring at the screen, bewildered and frozen. I check the question breakdowns, and I must be remembering incorrectly, because it seems like there are way fewer marked wrong than I guessed on. How could that be? Could I have had some bizarre, magical sixth sense when randomly picking? I click over to my percentiles: 97 percent across the board.

  “These are wrong,” I say, without thinking. I don’t understand. “They must have mixed up my scores. I have to talk to Mrs. Oh.”

  “Chloe,” my dad says. “Look, it’s right there. You did it, honey. All those practice tests. All that early morning studying. You did it!”

  “We’re so proud of you,” my mom says, grinning, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. She was more nervous than I was. “See? Hard work pays off.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” My parents exchange a worried glance, and I get a whiff of that familiar disappointment: Why does Chloe have to make everything so hard?

  “Of course it does, sweetheart. It makes perfect sense,” my dad says.
r />   “There’s no way,” I say.

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” my dad says, and taps the screen again. His voice is sharper, with a tightness I only ever hear when he’s on the phone with work people, what I think of as his cut the crap tone. I don’t understand the undercurrent of anger, and so I shake my head, smile, feel the slightest bit of relief.

  1440.

  “This is great. This is best-case scenario. Be happy,” my mom says, looking from my dad to me and then back again. “All I ever want is for you to be happy, Chlo.”

  I make a conscious attempt to suck up her joy. She’s right. This is best-case scenario, actually better than best case, because I never allowed myself to consider the possibility of scoring this high.

  I let my mom pull me out of my chair so we can cha-cha together, though mine is worse than hers. I allow myself a minute to revel.

  Maybe I’m not as stupid as I thought.

  Maybe I do not need to create my own, new category of smart, after all.

  * * *

  —

  I text Shola.

  Me: 1440

  Shola: !!!!!­!!!!!­!!

  Me: I know, right?

  Shola: AMAZING! I’m so proud of you!

  Me: There has to be a mix-up

  Shola: Come on. Stop that. You EARNED THIS

  Me: I mean, I did work my ass off, but…

  Shola: But nothing!

  Me: 1440 shouldn’t be a big deal to you Ms. 1560

  Shola: Don’t do that. It’s a HUGE DEAL!!!!!!!

  Me: I raised my score 240 points. That doesn’t sound like too much? Like there’s a glitch in the matrix?

  Shola: No glitch, bitch. That should be your senior quote

  Me: 1440!!!!

  Shola: Well, I always said you were a genius

  Me: You’ve never once said I’m a genius

  Shola: You’re right. I didn’t. But I love you, you beautiful smart human whose value comes not from how you fill out a Scantron on a standardized test even when it gets you a score as kickass as this, but whose value comes from the beauty within. Nothing standardized about you