by Ariel Kaplan
I never open the door. I always drown.
* * *
—
At school, I made a beeline for Ms. Pendleton’s office. A good night’s sleep (nightmare notwithstanding) had taken the edge off my feeling sorry for myself, and I had a new thought: I was being screwed over. I hadn’t gotten into that septic tank by myself. I’d done everything right. I could accept not getting into Harvard, Princeton, and maybe a few of the others. But Revere? No. That didn’t make any sense.
Someone had made a mistake. It had to have been a mistake.
There was a sign on Ms. Pendleton’s door saying she was out for the day. I smacked my forehead against the wood, then I did it again.
Bebe Tandoh, who was getting a drink from the water fountain across the hall, said, “She was out yesterday, too. You okay?”
Looking at Bebe made me feel even more like something the cat dragged in; her aunt’s a Ghanaian fashion designer, and every summer Bebe goes to stay with her relatives in Accra and comes back with a closetful of the most amazing clothes you’ve ever seen. She was wearing these lime-green gladiator sandals that made her look like a cross between Lupita Nyong’o and Xena: Warrior Princess. I was wearing my two-year-old sneakers with the beginnings of a hole in the toe. I wondered where Bebe was going to college.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Then I turned around and walked out of the building.
I’d driven my mother to work that morning because I had a French club meeting after school, so I went and sat in my car. I turned on the radio. I turned off the radio.
I googled the admissions office of Revere on my phone. I recognized the name of the assistant admissions dean, Nicole Smythe, from my rejection letter. I wondered if she’d been the one to sign it, or if it had been some stupid intern.
An intern. Did they have interns in admissions offices? Or maybe not interns. Maybe just entry-level people who did the preliminary sorting into “yes” and “no” piles based on test scores and GPAs. Maybe my file had landed in the wrong pile somehow. That was the only explanation I could think of. There was a mistake somewhere in the process. I turned the key in the ignition and left the parking lot.
Revere is only twenty minutes from my house, which is one of the reasons it was my safety school; if my financial aid situation got really bad, I could live at home and commute, which would save the room and board money. It was supposed to have been my worst-case scenario. Ha.
I had to park a block away from the admissions office, in front of some academic building called Matlin Hall, which had people coming and going from it in droves. I wondered what they taught there for a second before I remembered that I didn’t care.
I had to step over a couple of kids who were studying in the middle of a walkway in front of the building. One of them reached out as I passed and tugged my shoelace loose. I scowled at him.
“Are you a freshman?” he asked, his voice a teasing mockery that set my teeth on edge.
“No,” I said coldly, bending down to retie my shoe. “I don’t go here.”
“Ooh,” his friend said. “Fresh meat. One if by land, two if by sea, girl.” Which managed to be both the grossest and most ridiculous pickup line I’d ever heard.
“Does that line often work for you?” I asked.
“Every night, baby.”
Good lord. I looked them over—white boys with backward baseball caps, one thin, one fat, both with bad skin. The one who had hit on me wore a slightly dead-behind-the-eyes expression.
This. This, here, was the school that had rejected me. This guy, who couldn’t even come up with a pickup line that made sense, had gotten in here. They’d taken him.
“What were your SAT scores?” I asked. He replied with a scandalously low number, smirking, as if it were something to be proud of. “If you come by my room later, I can help you study.”
“Study what? I just said I don’t go here.”
They both laughed. “It’s okay,” he said. “I like stupid girls.”
“Oh, ew,” I said. Then I picked up the notebook they were studying from and stuffed it into the nearest trash can.
I took the steps to the admissions building two at a time, wishing I’d worn a dress that day instead of the yoga pants I’d slept in the night before. Inside, I found a secretary sitting in the giant lobby. She was young and blond and smiling a little too wide. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said confidently. “I’m here to see Dean Smythe.”
“And you are…”
“Mischa Abramavicius,” I said.
She frowned. “Do you have an appointment.”
“Yes.” I glanced at the clock. “For ten-fifteen.”
“Hmm. I don’t have you down.”
“I’ve come a long way,” I said. “I really do need to see her.”
She drew her mouth up to one side. I wondered how many other college rejects had shown up demanding to meet with Dean Smythe. Maybe I should have called ahead and made an appointment. Except that I doubt she would have seen me.
“I’m afraid Dean Smythe is in meetings all day,” she said.
“I only need ten minutes,” I said.
“She’s just not available. Is there someone else who can help you? Perhaps someone in the financial aid office?”
“It’s—It’s not exactly a financial aid issue,” I said.
“Can I ask what this is regarding?”
I scowled. “It’s a private matter.”
“Honey,” she said quietly. “If this is because of an admissions decision—”
“It’s not,” I said quickly. Stupid yoga pants.
“Okay, if it is…”
I scrambled for some legitimate reason to be talking to Smythe. Why did anyone come to see her, except to talk about why they didn’t get in? If they had gotten in, they wouldn’t need to talk to her. Her usefulness to the students has a pretty limited shelf life. “It’s for an interview!” I said quickly. “I’m interviewing her for my school paper. I’m doing an article about demystifying the admissions process.”
She looked at me doubtfully. “And you’re not in school today because…”
“I go to a private school,” I said. “It’s an in-service day for the teachers.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Please,” I added.
She gestured to the waiting area, which was filled with several overstuffed chairs and a couch. Nobody else was there, because the decisions had already been mailed out. Probably the whole admissions staff was at a bar somewhere getting roaring drunk and laughing at all the pathetic people they’d rejected. “If you want to wait,” she said, “she’ll be on a lunch break at twelve. She might be able to talk to you while she’s eating.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully, and then remembered that I didn’t have anything with me that looked plausibly school newspapery, like a camera or a recorder or, you know, a notebook or a pencil. “I left my stuff in my car,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
She waved me off, and I went out to get my government notebook, which I turned to a blank page, and a pen.
It occurred to me that I should have stayed for homeroom, because any minute now my mother would be getting a call to tell her I hadn’t shown up for school. Which meant that about ten seconds after that, my phone was going to start blowing up with my mom freaking out because she thought I was dead in a ditch somewhere. I decided to stave off disaster and sent her a text.
Stomachache on my way into school this morning. I went home but I don’t think Mr. Bronstein checked me in first, so don’t be surprised if you get a call.
Are you OK? Did you throw up?
I decided to cut things short. Other kind of stomachache.
Oh dear. Do you need me to come home?
I’m fine.
Don’t come home.
Please don’t come home, I thought. Please don’t come home and discover that I am not there.
Are you sure?
No no. I’m OK.
OK. I’ll pick up some probiotics on my way home. Eat yogurt.
Will do.
And wash your hands.
Seriously??
That taken care of, I stashed my phone in my backpack and settled in to wait. I pulled out my government book and opened to page 524 to start the reading I’d need to have done for tomorrow. I looked down at my book. Then I started laughing hysterically because I realized that I could do nothing, literally nothing, for the rest of the year—I could skip all my classes, never read a page, draw cartoon characters on my exams, whatever I wanted—and it would make absolutely no difference. None. None! Well, I suppose if I really jacked things up badly enough, they could refuse to give me my diploma. That would be worse. Slightly.
I put my book away and spent the next hour and a half googling pictures of cats.
* * *
—
There are a lot of pictures of cats on the Internet. Fat cats. Fluffy cats. Cats sitting in flowerpots. Cats with bunnies. Cats with goats. Cats with other cats. I don’t know why looking at pictures of other people’s cats is such a pleasant way to pass the time. Sometimes there are videos. Cats climbing into fishbowls. Cats running away from zucchinis. Why are cats so scared of zucchini? I don’t know. I thought, College is for suckers. I can just look at cat pictures every day for the rest of my life and then die. That’s not so bad.
I looked up because the secretary at the desk was waving her arms and pointing toward a woman walking into the building. Dean Smythe, she mouthed once she had my attention. I jumped up and hauled over to her as soon as she was through the door.
“Dean Smythe!” I said. “It’s Mischa Abramavicius. From Blanchard?”
She looked at me blankly, and I had to jog to keep up with her. “It’s nice to meet you, Mischa. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Ah,” I said. “Yeah, the secretary said it got left off your calendar, but we were supposed to do an interview today, for my school paper. The secretary said you might be able to work me in during lunch?”
She looked darkly at the secretary as we walked by. “Did she,” she said. The secretary quailed and pretended to read an email.
“Yes, so is that okay? I only need a few minutes.”
“Fine, Mischa.”
I followed her into her office and sat down on the other side of the desk while she pulled out a lunch bag and unwrapped a sandwich. “I’ll have to eat while we talk,” she said. “I have another meeting in half an hour.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I just have a few questions.”
“Well, let’s get started,” she said.
“Okay. Um, first, what percentage of applicants did you accept this year?”
“It was about 70%,” she said, licking mayonnaise off her upper lip. “This was a particularly competitive year.”
I wrote the number down because it’s what I was supposed to be doing. Seventy percent? I thought. I was in the bottom 30% of applicants? That had to be a mistake. Had to be.
“So do you have any safeguards in place for the admissions office? To make sure nothing throws a wrench into the process?”
She took a big bite of sandwich and answered me with her mouth full. “What do you mean?”
“I mean in case someone makes a mistake someplace along the way. Like, if someone puts a student in the wrong pile, like, someone sneezes and accidentally puts the valedictorian in the ‘no’ pile. Is someone double-checking that?”
“We have multiple people reviewing the applications, if that’s what you mean.”
“Okay,” I said. “But, like, if someone, someone who was very qualified, got put in the ‘no’ pile by mistake, like, because they were confused with somebody else or they just hit the wrong button or something, does anybody ever go back and double-check that?”
She put her sandwich down on the desk. “Let’s be honest here, Mischa. This isn’t for a school project.”
I was writing down the word “safeguard,” but I paused. “Um,” I said.
“If I look you up in my computer right now,” she said, “I will find that you applied here and did not get in, correct?”
I set my pen down. “You would probably find that.”
“And you think that was a mistake on our part.” She shook her head. “Mischa, we had a very highly qualified applicant pool this year. We had to turn down a lot of good students.”
“But,” I said. “But no, you don’t understand. I have a 3.98 GPA! I had a 1580 on the SATs!”
But she was already pulling up my file.
“I’m sorry, Mischa,” she said. “Your test scores were good, but some of your grades were very poor.”
“Poor?” I said. “No. I mean, I know I got that one A− in gym, but…”
“Honey,” she said. “It’s okay not to get into your first-choice college,” she said. “There’s a college out there for everyone, even people who struggled in high school.”
“I did not struggle. At all.”
“Mischa,” she said soothingly, which made me want to punch her. “Honey. It’s okay. I’m not very good at math, either.”
“Not good at…what??”
She turned the monitor around to face me. She’d pulled up a digital copy of my transcript, and I got up to look at it. My GPA was in the upper right corner. It was not a 3.98.
“No, no, that’s just wrong. That’s not me.”
“Born January 5, 2000?” she asked.
“Yeah, but that’s not me.”
“Are there other Mischa Abramaviciuses at Blanchard?”
“No,” I said. “Just me. But maybe they put my name on someone else’s transcript. That isn’t me!” I was scanning down the list of courses…the classes were all right. And most of the grades were fine. But, randomly, it was showing a D in geometry, a D in Algebra II, and a D+ in my sophomore world history class.
Dean Smythe had gotten up from her desk and was steering me out of the office by the shoulders. “You can always transfer in for the spring semester,” she said. “Or next year, if you do well at your next-choice school.”
“But I didn’t have a next-choice school! Your piece-of-crap school was my safety!”
“Susan,” she was saying to the secretary. “Call campus security.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I’m leaving.” And I stormed out to my car.
Sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine idling, I pulled out my phone. My finger hovered over my mother’s picture in my contacts list. I played out the conversation we would have in my head. It went like this:
Me: Mom! Something terrible has happened!
Mom: Oh, no, dearest offspring, do you have to go to the hospital? Seeing as you told me you left school early today because you were sick.
Me: Uh, no, I am not actually sick.
Mom: You lied about being sick? You skipped school?
Me: Yes, but only because I had to strong-arm myself into a meeting with the admissions dean at Revere.
Mom: Oh! To talk about their honors program?
Me: Not exactly.
Mom: To discuss your financial aid package?
Me: No…
Mom: Well, what was it? They must be so excited you’re going there.
Me: Yeah, heh, funny story…so I was kind of rejected from every school I applied to, which I kind of forgot to mention before? And I know this sounds super bad, but listen! I think something went wrong with my transcript, not that I have any physical evidence of that, but I did see it on Dean Smythe’s computer screen for like two whole seconds and then she said I was bad at math and threatened to call securit
y on me.
Mom: You’re not going to college?
Me: Did you hear what I said about the transcript?
Mom: YOU’RE NOT GOING TO COLLEGE?
I did not call my mother.
Instead, I sent a text to Nate.
Someone is messing with me.
* * *
—
The next morning, I tried to see Pendleton again, but she was still out, and now the sign on her door said she’d be out the rest of the week. So I went into the main office to see Mrs. Hadley, the registrar. Mrs. Hadley shares the front office with Ms. Richmond, the receptionist, and Ms. Thompson, the assistant to Dr. Marlowe. The three of them are all over sixty, and every year at Halloween, they dress up as the three witches from Macbeth, which is actually kind of great, except for that one year Ms. Richmond tripped over a cauldron and broke her toe.
For the hundredth time, I smacked my knee into the giant cardboard box that blocked the way to her desk, which has been there since midway through junior year and was a testament to Ms. Richmond’s office-keeping ability. The official story was that she’d accidentally ordered five hundred reams of paper instead of fifty, and since no one could lift the box to return it to Office Depot, it was stuck there until all the paper was used up. The unofficial story was that it contained a dead body. Whose body depended on whom you asked; the prevailing theory these days was that it was Mr. Pelletier’s mother, whom he’d murdered in some Norman Bates–esque fit of oedipal pique.
