Admission

by Julie Buxbaum

  I feel joy and grief in almost equal measure.

  I wish I could tell her how happy I am for her. How I can’t wait to watch from afar as she takes on the world. How even though I lost her, I’ll always be proud of the fact that, for a while, at least, she chose me as a friend.

  “Yup,” Isla says, smiling.

  “Good for Shola,” my dad says, though I can’t tell if he really means it.

  EPILOGUE

  Fourteen months later

  Four duffel bags sit by the front door, stuffed to capacity, though this is only half of it. A bunch of boxes were shipped to the dorms last week. We looked at pictures online, and the rooms looks dollhouse-sized, so I’m not sure how this will work. The roommate, who based on her texts gave off no serial killer vibes, is from Wichita, Kansas, like Dorothy, and we’ve decided she’ll hopefully be traveling a little lighter.

  Apparently, you can take the girl out of Beverly Hills, but you can’t take Beverly Hills out of the girl.

  We’ve rehearsed this moment in our heads for months—or at least, I have—but now that it’s here, like with all the big life stuff, I find I’m unprepared. You’d think I’d be used to it after the year we’ve had. When my mom surrendered, which was prearranged with the marshal service well in advance, I still felt like grabbing her ankles and begging her not to go. Instead, I stood dry-eyed and joked that I’d already started hoarding all of the ice cream in Los Angeles for when she comes home.

  Only later, once she was gone, did I cry.

  My ability to hold it together felt like progress, though. A giant step toward adulthood. Like the other day, when I made my own dentist appointment. On the phone.

  I guess sometimes we grow up, despite ourselves.

  With this departure, though, the calculus is different. We’re all thrilled—celebrated it, in fact, all last spring, with another balloon arch and even a cake. This time, we’re watching a natural, earned progression, what is supposed to happen in the normal course of things. The built-in goodbye at the end of the childhood. That final wave and then the no looking back before independence.

  Still. The tears come, so many I don’t even try to stop them. Instead, I busy myself with details. I double-check the luggage, make sure each piece has a tag with a label and a telephone number, in case it gets lost. I run upstairs and grab Crime and Punishment and slip it into a bag.

  And then it’s time. No more stalling.

  My dad, Hudson, Isla, and I stand awkwardly at the door. Mom should be here for this, but that goodbye was said already, on one of our prison visits. I tell myself stories to make her constant absence feel better—that she’s on a yoga retreat, or away filming; that she’ll be home soon. At least that latter one is likely true. Mr. Spence said he thought her sentence of fourteen months, of which she’s already served six, will likely be reduced to eight on the grounds of good behavior.

  Two more months is nothing. A summer of sleepaway camp. As she says, it’s just enough time to finish the memoir she’s been writing between her shifts in the laundry room.

  A blink and she’ll be back.

  But here’s the thing with this goodbye: This one is permanent.

  Isla won’t be back, not for real. My sister and I will likely never live under the same roof again.

  I look down at my KALE sweatshirt, which I bought as a gag, knowing that Isla would be wearing her YALE one today for the flight east. She’s refused to let any of us come with her, not even to the airport, because she says that will only make it harder. That this is the start—this moment—and she wants to prove to herself that she’s ready to go it alone from here.

  I understand. If we came, there’d be more of that waiting that we’ve grown too used to.

  It’s time for her to go.

  She hugs my dad, and then Hudson, who got his one-year chip in June and has moved into the guesthouse for a while. I still worry about him—not sure how many chips he’ll need for that to go away—but I’ve also started allowing myself to like him again. She scoops up Fluffernutter, kisses him on his head, murmurs something in his ear I can’t hear.

  When it’s my turn, Isla stands in front of me, the expression on her face the mirror of mine: a smile through tears. She puts her hands on my shoulders, like she’s the big sister about to dispense advice, not the other way around. I beat her to it, though, and start talking first.

  “I love you and I’m so proud of you and I’m going to come visit soon whether you like it or not and, holy crap, Yale!” I say, because I’m swollen with pride for my sister, who did it, despite our parents, and also, of course, in part, because of them.

  She tackle-hugs me.

  “I love you too. Be good, okay?”

  “I’m always good,” I say. Isla laughs and hugs me again and we sway that way for a few minutes, a back-and-forth rock, until she pulls away. I know my sister well, especially after all the time we’ve spent together this past year, and I watch as she begins to retreat. I can tell she’s moved on from goodbyes. She’s thinking about her Uber, and how long it should take to get to LAX during rush hour, and maybe texting her roommate, who got to New Haven already and claimed the left bed. I wonder if this is how things will be now that she’s leaving—if our entire adulthood will be one long goodbye to each other.

  I’ve made plans to hang out with Cesar this afternoon, to keep me from wallowing. I work at the RRC thirty-five hours a week. I spend the mornings helping Rita with the administrative stuff, all of which counts toward college credit at Santa Monica Community College. This internship I got no doubt because of my parents’ large donation last year. This is something I try not to think too much about and instead simply appreciate and earn with hard work. In the afternoons, I stick to my old schedule, reading with Cesar.

  I’m taking three classes per semester, all of which I’m currently acing. Who knew how much it helps to do all the reading? And next month, whether I’m ready or not, I’ll start the college admissions process all over again. This time, Mrs. Oh is helping me draw up a whole new list, one that does not include SCC. I no longer care about the US News & World Report rankings or name recognition. I simply want a school with a strong social work program.

  I haven’t seen or heard from Levi or Shola since they left for Harvard, though I regularly stalk Shola on Instagram. She often posts pictures or videos, and Levi occasionally makes an appearance—the two them studying in the library or watching the Head of the Charles Regatta. From her feed, her friends seem less Wood Valley and more hipster cool, a crowd that is infinitely more diverse than the one we had in high school.

  I tell myself my lurking in her life isn’t creepy, because I am cheering her on. I liked knowing that last summer she found a paid internship with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that she got an A in that Intro to Philosophy class she was so excited about, that she has a new cold-brew addiction. I like knowing about her life, even if I don’t deserve to be a part of it.

  After my mom pled guilty and I was free to talk about had happened, I sent her long apology letters, by email, detailing what I knew and when, as if the technicalities mattered.

  And then I realized they didn’t, not really.

  There’s no version of my story in which I am not a villain.

  This is something we talk about often in our Signal group, which has been whittled down to only a few of us, those who are willing to wrestle out loud with our guilt.

  In happy news, Isla told me that the Littles got into Wood Valley after all. The school doubled their financial aid offerings last year as part of an image rehabilitation effort in the wake of the scandal, and they found their way off the waiting list.

  Maybe Wood Valley hired Paloma, who my mom let go shortly after her plea and who I find myself missing on occasion, if only because sometimes it’s nice to have someone to tell you what to do.

  Late at night,
when I think about the future, my future, the panic still comes like a hand over my mouth. To help, I think about Mrs. Oh, and her definition of the word fine, how it insists that I carry my past so that I can learn to serve myself and the world better.

  I think I’m getting there.

  When I remember the old Chloe, the pre-scandal Chloe, I feel itchy and uncomfortable, like she’s an old acquaintance I once knew but no longer really like or want to hang out with, which may be exactly how Shola feels about me.

  I am an entire person molted.

  I prefer the new me, the almost-but-not-quite-fine me. The one made brave and honest from being carved out of the carcass of a monster.

  Tomorrow, Dad and I are driving down to see Mom. Because the Federal Bureau of Prisons doesn’t allow you to bring gifts to visiting hours, I’ll have collected my stories for her. I gather all the details about this Isla goodbye—how she was brave and excited and ready. How at work, I found a new grant for the RRC to apply for that could help increase capacity and provide daily snacks and milk. That I taught Cesar his multiplication tables up to twelve. That Kenny’s son Emmet, who recently graduated from Penn Law and joined Kenny’s firm as a first-year associate, though he wanted to go into public interest work, has offered to represent Cesar’s mom pro bono. She might be better off remaining undocumented than risking deportation with an asylum claim, but I like the idea of her having someone on call if the worst comes to pass. Even grown-ups need a laminated card to carry around in their pocket sometimes.

  I’ll share the details of my life with my mom, honestly, like they’re a college admissions essay—the unfiltered story of Chloe Wynn Berringer that Mrs. Oh asked me for so long ago.

  This time, I’ll simply tell the truth.

  Isla walks out into the sunlight, bags thrown over her shoulders.

  I feel like clapping with joy and heartbreak. This walk to the Uber is her taking her final bow. She tosses me one last smile over her shoulder.

  Love you, I mouth, and take a picture in my mind for my mom.

  When Isla goes, she leaves the front door wide open behind her.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  When the college admissions scandal broke and was splashed all over the news and social media, I became obsessed. The material was endlessly juicy: The greed. The entitlement. And of course: the nerve. Yet that wasn’t the part of the picture (or the only part) that fascinated me. Underneath, I felt that the scandal was a story about teenagers and their parents, about families, about how the expectations of one generation shape the next. In other words, the stuff of novels.

  Reading fiction is often an act of empathy—as is writing it. This scandal set my imagination on fire. I was already almost a year into writing a new novel, but I found myself constantly (inconveniently) thinking about a new character, Chloe Berringer, who one morning opens her front door expecting UPS but instead finds the FBI there to arrest her mother.

  I began to cheat (yes, cheat) on my other novel, writing character sketches and thinking through the arc of this new idea. Does Chloe go to Wood Valley, the fictional high school where my YA debut, Tell Me Three Things, is set? (Spoiler alert: She does.) How does it feel for her to realize her parents have so little faith in her that they resort to fraud to make sure she gets admitted to the college of her choice? How much did Chloe know and when did she know it? What does it mean to examine our own culpability and privilege? Soon I abandoned my more-than-halfway-finished work in progress and started writing Admission instead.

  This book is 100 percent a work of fiction, and the characters are all born from my imagination, not from real people in the real world. I do not know anyone involved in the scandal, nor did I do any investigative reporting. And though there are a bunch of characters in that half-written novel on my laptop that are probably furious with me for abandoning them, I’m still so glad that Chloe took hold of my imagination and demanded I tell her story. After reading Admission, I hope you are too.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I’d like to thank every single person who has ever bought, borrowed, or recommended a book with my name on the cover. I am deeply, eternally grateful. There are a whole lot of novels in the world to pick from. I’m so honored you took a leap of faith and found your way to one of mine.

  Forever thank-yous to Susan Kamil and Elaine Koster, the two women who are responsible for starting my career. I miss them both dearly.

  Giant high five and thank-you to Jenn Joel and Beverly Horowitz. Fist bump/prayer emoji hands to Jillian Vandall. You guys rock.

  All my gratitude to the wonderful people at Random House Children’s Books: Barbara Marcus, John Adamo, Dominique Cimina, Kate Keating, Elizabeth Ward, Kelly McGauley, Hannah Black, Neil Swaab and Alison Impey, Adrienne Waintraub, Kristin Schulz and the School and Library team, Rebecca Gudelis, Colleen Fellingham, Nathan Kinney, Tamar Schwartz, and a million other awesome people who I will kick myself for not mentioning as soon as this goes to print. I’m deeply grateful to the international rights team at ICM and Curtis Brown, and in particular, Roxanne Edouard. Thanks also to Tia Ikemoto; the Hatchery, for providing me a writing home so close to home; and the Fiction Writers Co-op, for your water cooler magic. A special shout-out to Jennifer Mathieu, who answered a Facebook pun call and named Chloe’s yoga studio 9021-OM. A special thank-you to Andrea Peskind Katz for all of her insight, thoughts, and time.

  Thank you always to the amazing Lola Wusu, Charlotte Huang, my college crew, and the rest of my amazing village. You all know who you are.

  Big love to my amazing family: Dad, Josh, Leia, Jamesy, and of course, the Flore clan. Special thank-you to my mom, Elizabeth, who is loved and remembered every single day.

  And finally, thank you to Indy and Elili and Luca, my snugglebugs and my favorite people in the whole wide world. ILYTTMABABAI.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JULIE BUXBAUM is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult novels Hope and Other Punch Lines, What to Say Next, and Tell Me Three Things. She also wrote the critically acclaimed The Opposite of Love and After You. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. You can find her procrastinating on social at @juliebux (Twitter) and @juliebuxbaum (Insta).

  JulieBuxbaum.com

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