Admission

by Julie Buxbaum

  They stopped talking when they saw me. No one defined necessary.

  I made the mistake of setting up a Google alert, and op-eds across the country celebrate the idea of my mom going to jail, declare her (and by extension me) a symbol of everything that is wrong with our country. Even debates that have nothing to do with us—immigration? health care?—somehow pivot back to the scandal, how the 1 percent take more than our fair share, how we hoard our privilege. How we’ve corrupted every system, that we are emblematic of a perversion of capitalism.

  Off with our heads.

  Under all this lies the terrible quicksand of fear. What if they are right? What if it’s true that we are terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad people? If I allow myself to dip my toes into that idea, that I am not actually the hero of my own story but a villain, I quickly find myself neck deep.

  And, of course, there’s the heartbreak that slithers in late at night, when I’m alone in bed, the darkness so heavy I can’t breathe. Sure, I can handle the humiliation of Levi temporarily blocking me. I can understand that he needs time. Time I can give. Time I have in spades. What hurts the most, what sends me into the fetal position, is thinking about Shola. I’ve sent her increasingly desperate text messages:

  I’m sorry

  I need you

  I can’t do this alone

  Please

  I’m begging

  Of course, no response.

  “If I don’t go to school, I’m not going to get into college, no matter how much you pay the next Dr. Wilson. You want to ruin my future too?” Isla says, and this shuts my mom right up. My sister has always known how to angle the knife, especially with my mother. Sometimes I wonder why they don’t get along with the same seamlessness that my mom and I do. I think it’s because they are eerily similar people—stubborn, competitive, compulsively diligent—who can’t help but be as hard on each other as they are on themselves. Isla’s 4.4 GPA, it turns out, is not unlike my mother’s abs.

  “I’ll drive you, Isl,” I say, because my sister is still a few months away from getting her license. “I can drop you off a block away so you don’t have to be seen with me.”

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “Carrie will get you a driver,” my dad says, and it comes out like a command. He too reaches for the Xanax bottle, shakes one into his palm, pauses, shakes another. His hair is wet and neatly combed, and he’s wearing a stiff, white shirt, fresh from the dry cleaner. A small way, I think, of signaling to the rest of us that he still has this all under control. “Chloe is not leaving this house.”

  I don’t know if this is a punishment—am I grounded?—or if this is for my own protection. It doesn’t matter. Even though my mom has been negotiating our first public outing since the scandal broke with the crisis people, I have no interest in going anywhere. That’s what we’ve been calling it around here—“the scandal”—which I think is a cop-out. The word scandal divorces us from our own culpability, makes it sound like something that happened to us instead of something we’ve done.

  Paloma says we need the photographic evidence to show that things are business as usual in the Fields-Bellinger family, that we are close-knit, happy. Celebrities: they’re just like us.

  The only place I’d like to go is the Reading and Resource Center to see Cesar. We are well into Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and I miss hearing about his day—who he played with at recess, whether he got his name written on the board for talking without raising his hand. But I realize going there would be selfish for a variety of reasons, not least of which I’d be using my friend for reputation rehabilitation. More importantly, the last thing Cesar or his mom needs is media sniffing around them. I did text Rita, though, to let her know I wouldn’t be back for a while, and to pass along my new number in case Cesar needs anything in the meantime.

  I wrote Tell him I miss and love him and I’m so sorry and I’ll be back soon.

  I haven’t heard back from her, and I wonder if Rita has decided, without telling me, that I’m no longer welcome there. I decide that’s another rejection I would not survive. I am Cesar’s backup, no matter what. Rita cannot—will not—banish me.

  I imagine walking out the front door of my house into the bright sunlight. I imagine facing the paparazzi who are still, a whole week later, camped outside, cameras aimed liked the FBI’s guns.

  I don’t think I can stomach it.

  My new phone buzzes, but it provides no escape.

  There’s a text from my lawyer: I’ll be there by nine. It’s important. Prepare yourself for news.

  The coffee that mere minutes ago felt like a lifeline does a quick crawl up the back of my throat.

  I reach for the Xanax.

  “Don’t even think about it,” my dad says, and slips the bottle into his pocket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Then

  Levi and I lie on the picnic blanket he keeps in his trunk. Of all the details I’ve gathered about him over the years, that may be the one that’s most surprising to me: He’s ever-ready for a pop-up picnic.

  “What did you write your college essay about?” I ask. My head rests on his stomach, and my laptop sits on my knees. He’s reading Crime and Punishment and has a pink highlighter tucked behind his ear. I scroll through the common application essay prompts: Discuss something that inspires you….Tell us about a challenge you’ve overcome….Elaborate on some of your interests outside of school.

  Levi inspires me. It’s challenging to negotiate with Levi out of the friend zone. My biggest interest outside of school is kissing Levi, because kissing Levi is, to borrow an SAT word, transcendent.

  Of course, I know that I can’t actually write my application essay about Levi, that not only is the idea pathetic, but it will also be shot down by both Dr. Wilson and Mrs. Oh. Even my small brain should stretch beyond the confines of a boy. It should be singing more complicated, fulfilling songs than simply a ditty that repeats: Levi, Levi, Levi.

  And yet: Levi, Levi, Levi.

  Dr. Wilson said to write about whatever I wanted, that he has a professional writer on staff who will help clean up my essay later. Mrs. Oh said to dig deep and tell the story of Chloe Wynn Berringer. The problem is there really is no story of Chloe Wynn Berringer. At least, not yet.

  “I wrote about having cancer as a kid and that’s why one day I want to become a pediatric oncologist,” Levi says, his body stiffening below me.

  “Wait, you had cancer?” I put down my computer and roll over so I can see his eyes. Though our MO generally is to keep things light between us, this seems too important to gloss over. “How did I not already know this?”

  “It was before you knew me. I’m fine now.” He does a flipping-a-pancake motion, so I turn around, back to the way we were lying, head to chest, the universal couple-in-the-park position.

  We are a couple in the park, I tell myself with a secret thrill.

  “That must have been rough,” I say. Here’s what I want to know but don’t ask: What kind of cancer? and Could it come back? and How are you so amazing? Also That’s not fair and I’m so sorry and Thank you for sharing with me.

  “Yeah, it sucked. Though I think it was harder on my parents and my sister. I was too little to really understand.”

  “How old were you?” I can feel his hand in my hair, a slow combing.

  “Seven.” I squeeze his ankle, the only body part I can reach. My reading buddy Cesar’s age. Cesar, who is both impossibly young and also impossibly old, someone who has lost too much already and still is made joyful by a Pokémon card. I think about a smaller version of Levi, rendered bald by an IV drip.

  The sadness sets deep.

  “That kind of explains your fears list. Why you worry so much about disappointing your parents, maybe?” I ask Levi. I’m seeing Cesar tomorrow. I make a mental note to bring him someth
ing special for moving up a reading level at school. Maybe I’ll stop at that gaming store on Melrose, find a powerful Pokémon card that no one else in his class will have.

  “You’d think it would be the opposite. Honestly, it’s not them. They’ll be happy no matter what I do, so long as I’m healthy. But you’re probably right. Maybe I’m desperate not to disappoint them because I feel like I already have. No one wants a sick kid.” He stops, letting the thought sink in. “Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever articulated that.”

  “What happened to you…it’s not your fault.” I wonder if Levi would have told me this if we were face to face, or if this is information I’m only learning because the two of us are talking to the sky and not to each other. “You don’t need to make up for it.”

  “I know.”

  “Isn’t it so weird how we can know things but not know them at the exact same time?”

  “You should be a therapist,” he says, and I laugh. “Seriously, you’re really good with people. That’s why I always ask for your advice.”

  I smile and soak up Levi’s compliment. For a second I try to picture myself as a therapist. I can see the slick couch (a velvet cobalt) and even the notebook (cloth, hardback, pink Shinola), but the rest—college, graduate school, training—I can’t even fathom. Me capable of setting a goal like that—becoming a therapist—and managing to follow through.

  When I think about growing up, I mostly imagine a meandering crawl through my bucket list—kayaking the dunes of Namibia, seeing gorillas in Rwanda, hiking the entire Na Pali Coast, celebrating New Year’s in Times Square, visiting a hedgehog cafe in Tokyo, dancing costumed at Burning Man. Nailing the perfect Coachella look. Taking Cesar to Disneyland and getting him his own Mickey ears cap with his name embroidered on the back.

  That last one I’ll check off before I leave for college.

  Last year, my mom said, apropos of nothing, “I bet you go into PR,” and when I asked why, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know but it’s full of girls like you.” I didn’t ask what she meant by girls like you.

  What kind of girls? Stupid girls? Rich girls? Empty girls? Boring girls? Not-so-pretty girls?

  I like to think she meant it as a compliment. If Paloma is anything to go by, you can be a boss in PR. But I’ve noticed she’s never suggested this to Isla.

  “So what’s your essay about or”—he gestures to my blank screen—“going to be about?”

  “No idea. I have absolutely nothing to say.”

  “That’s not true. Tell them about you.”

  “Nothing bad has ever happened to me.”

  “Getting into college isn’t the pity Olympics.”

  “I know. But they ask about a challenge you’ve overcome. My life has been, like, mostly challenge free,” I say. I feel Levi laughing, his belly jiggling my head, though this time, I think, he’s laughing at me.

  “We should all be so lucky, Chlo.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Now

  Kenny arrives wearing an olive cashmere sweater and khaki pants, which I appreciate because it makes it easier for me to pick him out of the lawyer lineup. The bloated and underslept faces of the many middle-aged white men and women who crowd our house have become indistinguishable in their shades of gray. They sit hunched over laptops, fueled by the empty adrenaline of the billable hour.

  The PR people are, at least, easier to tell apart. They’re better, more casually dressed. High-waisted pants and fashion sneakers and the tips of tattoos peeking out at the collarbone. Painted nails and fake smiles.

  I follow Kenny into my dad’s office. He shuts the door and motions for me to take a seat. My body feels electric with nerves, and I wonder if people can short-circuit. I picture this all ending with me in an institution, catatonic from stress overload, a far cry from the SCC student my parents had so desperately hoped I’d become.

  “Okay, so I have bad news and I have slightly less bad news,” Kenny says.

  I don’t say anything but I feel myself shrinking, as if I can collect my atoms and tighten them into a ball, out of his reach. Smaller and smaller I go. I want to disappear, become a puff of air to be walked through. Not the same as wanting to die, but not far off either.

  How could there be more bad news?

  “You got a target letter,” he says, and again I don’t say anything. I’m afraid if I open my mouth, screams will erupt, loud and long and deranged. I don’t cry like my mother does, dainty and clean. I’m all snot and red eyes and I spread my sad around, like germs or loneliness. “Let me explain what this means. It means that you are the target of a criminal probe. It does not, I repeat, it does not mean they will necessarily bring charges against you.”

  “But they could,” I say, and it’s not a question. “This is them saying we might.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought they were only targeting people over eighteen? Only legal adults.” I wonder why I thought this. Did I have an official source for this information? From the Signal text group? From Kenny? As usual, I wish I was more like Isla. She’d have taken notes in every meeting with her lawyer, and then typed and color coded them for later reference. Then again, Isla would never have gotten into this mess in the first place.

  “We thought they’d draw the line there. It seems they’ve chosen not to.”

  “Why?” I ask, which is not what I really want to know. What I really want to know is what will happen to me? Am I going to jail? A juvenile detention center?

  I wouldn’t last five seconds in either place. In my whole life, I’ve never once thrown a punch. I get queasy at the sight of other people’s cracked heels. I can’t poo in public restrooms.

  “Can’t say for sure, but I think it’s because people are pissed as hell about this, even angrier than anyone anticipated. They don’t like being reminded that the system is rigged,” Kenny says in a neutral, way-too-casual tone. I no longer appreciate his sweater and khakis. This is serious business. He should be wearing a tie.

  “What about the kids whose parents buy buildings to get them in? Doesn’t that happen all the time? Why aren’t they getting target letters?”

  “That’s not illegal,” he says.

  “If what my parents did was illegal, then that should be too,” I say, and then realize I’m not helping myself. The whole thing feels unfair. Like I’m being held to account for how this complicated world works. For its arcane laws and unclear lines.

  How should this have played out? I remember that list Mrs. Oh had handed me after our first meeting in the fall, all the places she said would be a “more natural fit” for a student like me.

  What was so wrong with those schools?

  I think about Levi and me on the picnic blanket: We should all be so lucky, Chlo.

  Shame finger-crawls up my spine.

  We were so greedy.

  I consider the word unfair, how it has never once applied to me. Not even now. Maybe especially not now.

  “What’s the slightly less bad news?” I ask.

  “My friend at the US attorney’s office seems to think that they aren’t really that interested in hauling a bunch of kids into court. Won’t look good. They have the public’s support. They want to keep it.”

  “Okay.”

  “He says this—you, specifically—is all part of their scare tactics. They want to pressure your mom into a plea bargain,” he says. “They think she’ll be more likely to accept a plea with prison time if it means keeping you from being charged.”

  “How is this slightly less bad news? This feels like worse news. Like it’s either me or my mom, or maybe both of us going to jail.”

  He doesn’t answer, cocks his head to the side, in a way that reminds me of Fluffernutter. I feel like walking out of this room, begging one of the million more serious lawyers in the living room to represent m
e.

  “The cops think I was in on it?” I ask.

  “Well, it’s the US attorney’s office for Massachusetts, not the cops. But yes. They think you knew,” he says, pausing to let this sink in. “They must have at least some evidence to back this up.”

  “I want to tell you what happened.” I mentally replay the last eight months, as if fast-forwarding the video, and my mind catches. I hover above myself, think about the word evidence. What could make them think I knew? What did I know?

  “Nope.” He holds up his hands, like I’m about to assault him with my words. “I know it seems helpful to unburden yourself to me, but it isn’t. There are restrictions once I know things, and I don’t want to know things. Capisce?”

  “No.”

  “Capisce means understand in Italian. Or maybe it’s in the Mafia? I actually don’t know.” Kenny takes out his phone, presses a button. “Siri, what does capisce mean?” He looks at the screen, turns it toward me. “She did a Google search for cat piss.”

  “Kenny,” I say.

  “Right, sorry. I love that you can immediately ask any question you have in the whole world to a device that fits in the palm of your hand. And then you know the answer. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers, like the world is so easy and simple, black and white.

  “Really? Then ask Siri: Is Chloe Berringer going to jail?” I’m only half joking. I feel borderline hysterical. My brain sloshes around in my skull, useless, shriveling. “Seriously, though. Am I going to jail?”

  I want to tell Kenny my story, not as a confession or even as a means to absolution. I want to better understand, to turn this into something that makes sense. I want someone to write me a field guide so I can understand the extent of my own culpability.

  What evidence?

  No, a story is for bedtimes and sitcoms and Hallmark movies. Not for potential felons. A story won’t protect me. I need to grow up.