We Regret to Inform You

by Ariel Kaplan

  I snorted. Emily simply waved her off and said, “Eighty-eight thousand dollars. On top of your tuition.”

  “That’s a lot of money just to change a B+ to an A,” she said.

  “Yes. It is.”

  “And you want me to help you because…”

  This was the part where we bluffed, because up until now we’d only told her the truth. The lie was that we had any way, any way at all, to actually do anything with the information we had.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do?” Emily said. “I thought Lisa was your friend.”

  “We’re friendly,” she hedged.

  “Let me spell it out for you,” I said. “We’re going public with this, either on your terms or ours. If you play along, you look like a hero. You’re a whistle-blower, and everyone loves those. You did the right thing even though you had something to lose.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you’re the girl whose parents bought her way into Harvard.”

  When she sat silent, I said, “Didn’t you say you’d rather go to community college than take a spot you hadn’t earned? I guess it’s time to put that to the test.”

  She scowled. I could see the gears turning. I didn’t think she knew we were bluffing. Finally she said, “If I help you, I want one thing. I want the story to go out with my name on it. Alone. I was the one who figured all this out. I want all of the credit.”

  “You piece of—”

  “You can have it,” Emily said. “Who will you send it to?”

  “Margot,” she said. “My cousin. She’s at MSNBC. If I give her the story, she’ll make sure it runs.”

  “Keeping it in the family,” Nate said.

  “If I send it to a stranger,” she said, rolling her eyes, “they might not believe it. Margot will believe it, if it’s from me.”

  This is what we’d been banking on, but that didn’t make it any less infuriating.

  “You’re hoping that if you get all the credit, Harvard will forgive you the B+,” I said.

  “Gee, Michelle. I got a B+. And you got completely, totally shafted. But if you don’t want my help, that’s your call.” She smirked. “I’ll enjoy ordering hamburgers from you.”

  Nate muttered, “Crap.”

  I said, too loudly again, “I don’t know what your problem is! I showed up the first week of school, and you decided you hated me. I was just some random person you decided to focus your ire on, or whatever. What did I ever do to you?”

  “You were in my way,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “This is high school,” I said. “Not Game of Thrones!”

  “Oh, please. It’s exactly like Game of Thrones. Life is like Game of Thrones. There are only so many spots at the best schools. Only so many jobs. You have to be on your A game every day, Mischa, or you end up like a wounded wildebeest. You have a cruddy leg, and you can’t keep up, and BAM. You get culled.”

  “That’s a crappy metaphor. Wildebeests don’t eat each other.”

  “Fine! Pick a carnivore! Not the point!”

  “Ladies,” Emily said. “Nate, why don’t you show Meredith that book. About the thing. Mischa—” She jerked her head toward the door. “Step out with me. Please.”

  She dragged me out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

  “Are you going to tell me,” I said, “that she’s just another cog caught in Blanchard’s machinery? None of this is her fault, and I should go easy on her?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “No. She’s awful. But that’s not the point.”

  “And what is the point?”

  “Mischa,” Emily said in a lowered voice. “We don’t need credit for this. We need the truth to come out. We need Shira exonerated, and we need you unsuspended and in college. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”

  “But she’ll be a hero,” I hissed. “She’ll keep her spot at Harvard, she’ll be a hero, and she didn’t do anything!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “The ends justify the means. We don’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. We can wait for the Gazette to call us back. We can call other papers.”

  “There’s still the other problem,” she said. “They can say our database is a fake. We need Marlowe to incriminate himself, so everyone will have to admit that it’s real.”

  “That’s just a detail! We have enough!”

  “Mischa, have you not been paying attention? Do you not understand what we’re up against? We need Meredith. She takes the credit for this, we put her face on our work, and suddenly Blanchard’s looking at going up against Frederick effing Dorsay and his giant Scrooge McDuck vault of cash. The Dorsays can burn this all to the ground. If it’s just you and me? Blanchard’s lawyers are going to eat us alive.”

  “I’m willing to take that chance,” I said.

  “Are you willing to sacrifice yourself to spite Meredith?”

  “I might be,” I said.

  Emily met my eyes and said nothing.

  I blew out all my air. “I hate her,” I said.

  “Of course you do,” she said. “Good grief.”

  “There must be some other way,” I said.

  “If you have a plan,” she said, “I’m eager to hear it.”

  Meredith set up a meeting with Richard Marlowe at eight-thirty the next morning, to discuss her plans for the all-night grad party. Mrs. Richardson let Meredith into his office at 8:15. At 8:17, Meredith helped me climb in through the window.

  “He’s not going to be happy when he comes in here to talk to me and finds you instead,” she said as I hoisted my leg over the windowsill. “How are you going to keep him from walking back out?”

  “You do your job,” I said, “and I’ll do mine.”

  She stared at me for a minute, her eyes gray, mine brown. We were, I realized, exactly the same height.

  “If you screw me over,” she said, “so help me, I will make your life a living hell.”

  I smiled, letting her see every one of my teeth.

  And then I went to sit in Richard Marlowe’s chair to wait.

  * * *

  —

  At 8:28, Richard Marlowe came into his office, because Richard Marlowe would not want to keep Meredith Dorsay waiting. He was, as expected, not pleased to see me sitting with my feet on his desk.

  “Richard,” I said, because, no matter what, I had to sound like I absolutely owned him. “Won’t you sit down?”

  He was considering heading back out, because I was not supposed to be in the building, his office, or his chair. Meredith, on the other hand, could have used him like an ottoman, and he would have endured it without complaint.

  “Close the door, Richard,” I said.

  He shut the door.

  “Miss Abramavicius,” he said. “You do realize you’re suspended, pending expulsion.”

  “Oh, I realize,” I said. My hands gave an involuntary quiver. I shoved them under the desk. “That was a mistake on your part, Dr. Marlowe. But let’s not start off that way. Have a seat.”

  Very reluctantly, he sat. He didn’t know it, but this was perhaps the most important victory I would win that day.

  “I bet you’re wondering why Meredith was the one who set up this meeting. And I’ll tell you: she did it because I asked her to. She thinks I’m here for the SGA. I’m supposed to be asking you to get the board to donate more money for the graduation party. It seems we’re a bit underfunded this year. I told her I could convince you to go to bat for us. Seeing as you’re always such a champion for the students.”

  He said, “That’s not why you’re here.”

  “Correct,” I said. “But before we get to that, I want to ask you a question. Have you met my mother?”

  He looked back at the door ag
ain like he was thinking of leaving. It was a strange question. He said, “I’ve met all of the parents of students at Blanchard. Your mother included.”

  “That must be a lot of people, considering how long you’ve been here.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is a lot of people.”

  “And what did you think of her?”

  Of course, Richard Marlowe would have little reason to remember my mother. The amount she’d donated to the school was a pittance; neither was she famous enough to increase the school’s standing in some other way—she wasn’t a playwright or an artist or a washed-up politician. Marlowe said, “I found her quite admirable.”

  “Really,” I said. “In what way?”

  “Well, her dedication to your education, naturally.”

  I inclined my head. “Yes, she is very dedicated. I would say her entire life has been dedicated to my education. Her time, her money. Everything.”

  He nodded, conceding the point.

  “It really takes its toll, that kind of dedication. Eats you alive. Anyway, I’m going to make you a promise. While we sit in this room together, I give you my word—on my mother, on her dedication—that I will tell you no lies. And I’ll also give you my word that the true things I’m going to tell you are all things you need to hear.”

  He raised his eyebrows fractionally. “Miss Abramavicius. I think you should go.”

  I tamped down the nervous churning in my gut. I said, “Don’t believe me? I’ll start by telling you why I’m here. What my mother wants is for me to go to a very good college. This is also something I want.” I met his eyes. “But that isn’t happening, is it?”

  He laced his fingers together and regarded me carefully.

  “So there’s one thing that’s true. Here’s another: the only person in this building whose welfare matters to me more than my own is Nate Miller.” I waited for this to sink in and saw the moment that he remembered that Nate was on the list. “Do we understand each other?”

  He nodded.

  “Now, here’s the last thing I’ll tell you: I have, at my disposal, a copy of Blanchard’s transcript database. Meaning I have copies of the transcript of every senior in this building. Including the nineteen people with two different versions.”

  I waited for him to deny it or argue or simply eject me from the room. Instead he said, “Where is your cell phone?”

  I’d left mine at home, but I’d been prepared for the question, so I pulled Nate’s phone out of my pocket. I held it up so that he could see me power it down, and then I slid it toward the middle of the desk.

  “Where’s yours?” I asked.

  He scoffed. “You can’t possibly think I would want to record this conversation.”

  “Humor me,” I said. He reluctantly pulled his phone out of the inside pocket of his blazer and put it on the desk next to mine.

  “Do you have another recording device with you?” he asked.

  “I do not. And I assume you don’t have some tape recorder running full-time in here like Nixon.”

  “No.”

  “Such an idiot,” I said. “Right? To record incriminating conversations of himself? I mean, who does that? I wonder what he was thinking.”

  “Miss Abramavicius,” he said. “What is it that you want?”

  “Well, it’s simple. I don’t want your firstborn child. All I want is a kindly worded admission offer from the sort of school that should have taken me in the first place. If you give me this, you’ll never have to see me again.” I weighed this possibility in one open palm. “If you don’t”—I opened my other hand—“I’m sending everything I have to Meredith’s father.”

  We’d pulled this threat out of our hat, because it was a bluff Marlowe couldn’t afford to call. He let out a single bark of a laugh. “You can’t be that stupid,” he said. “He’ll bury it.”

  “Oh, he’ll absolutely bury it. He won’t want it to get out and hurt Meredith. However.” I crossed my ankles. “Once he sees the shoddy operation you’re running, once he finds out that your computers were hacked into by students—students who know about your little racket—he’ll never give you another dime. No more Dorsays will darken the doorsteps of Blanchard’s hallowed halls. Meredith has three younger brothers, did you know that?”

  He said nothing. Of course he knew.

  “That’s three more students paying sticker-price tuition, three students’ worth of tickets to the Christmas Gala, three students’ worth of end-of-the-year donations. Not to mention the endowment you were hoping Frederick Dorsay would leave you in his will. Millions of dollars, all told, Richard. We’re talking about millions of dollars. All lost. And for what?”

  He said, “I don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t believe I have the database? Let me remind you who’s in it. Meredith Dorsay. Amy Gregston. Connor Orton. Michael Lawless. David Chu. Do I need to go on?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I have to say, I’m a little confused, though,” I said. “I understand increasing the grades of the kids whose families gave money. I even kind of understand dropping the grades of the students whose parents didn’t give money. What I don’t understand is what you did to me. Why mangle my recommendation letters? Why drop my grades to Ds, when you could have just made them Bs? How does it help Blanchard for me to get in nowhere?”

  I got up from the desk and went to the window, and he turned in his chair to mark my progress. I propped myself against the windowsill, forcing him to squint, as I was now backlit.

  “It doesn’t,” he said. “That was a mistake.” He took off his glasses and set them on the desk, as if he were trying not to have to see my face in perfect focus while he explained how his school had ruined my life. “The letters and the transcript were supposed to go to Harvard and Princeton only. Ms. Pendleton made a mistake. For which she has been terminated.”

  “I hope you mean fired,” I said, horrified.

  “I mean fired,” he said. “The letters were an insurance policy.”

  “Because my SAT and AP scores were so high.”

  “Yes.” He put his glasses back on in one movement and crossed his arms. “You must understand the position I’m in. The position the school is in. Our tuition doesn’t cover our operating costs. We depend on donations to keep afloat.”

  “Of course,” I said sympathetically. “I understand that. You need students like Meredith to get into Harvard, so she can make more money. Perhaps she will remember fondly her alma mater, where she got her start in life, and write you a check. Maybe her children will come to Blanchard, and she’ll donate even more. And they will get into Harvard. And so on.”

  “You’re a very good student,” he said. “And you should have gone to a very good college. Mistakes were made. For that, you have my apologies. However, it’s easily remedied.”

  I asked, “How do you intend to remedy it?”

  “I have been in this post for thirty years, Miss Abramavicius. I have a certain amount of…clout…with the deans of admissions at a few schools you might be interested in. Duke, for instance. I can have a spot for you there within five minutes.”

  I frowned. “And what do I have to do in exchange for this?”

  “Sign a nondisclosure agreement,” he said, “stating that you will never again discuss what we’ve talked about in this room. And I also want your copy of the transcript database.”

  I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket, held it up so he could see it, and put it on the desk next to my phone. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask for it earlier,” I said.

  “Does Miss Sreenivasan have another copy of this?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, because I had promised to tell no lies. “But if you do what I ask, she won’t do anything with it.”

  Marlowe walked around to his file cabinet, went through one of his drawers, and pull
ed out a piece of paper.

  “Do you normally keep nondisclosure forms in your office?” I asked, retaking my seat at the desk.

  Ignoring me, he said, “Shall I call Duke?”

  I picked up the pen. I signed my name. And I said, “Make the call.”

  He picked up the phone and dialed, then spoke briefly to a man he called Bruce. He explained that he had a very good student who was not happy with her college choices, and he would like Bruce to take a last-minute look at my application. He would send my transcript over right away, along with an unofficial copy of my SAT scores and my letters of recommendation. Did he think he might have a spot for another incoming freshman? By all accounts, Bruce thought that he might. Marlowe hung up.

  “There,” he said, smiling. “That’s done.”

  I nodded. “There is one other thing. A small matter.”

  “We had an agreement already.”

  “You’ll hardly mind this,” I said. “It’s about Shira Gastman.”

  “I already told you: I’m not at liberty to discuss—”

  “You found drugs in her locker and never tested her for drug use. You know she’s as sober as I am.”

  “Are you implying that I had something to do with planting drugs on Miss Gastman?”

  “I’m not implying it,” I said. “I’m saying it directly. And we never did discuss the matter of my Instagram page.”

  “I’m not sure exactly what you’re accusing me of.”

  I pulled out a printout of the last Instagram entry and handed it to him.

  “I assure you,” he said. “I had nothing to do with this. Or with Miss Gastman.”

  “How did you know,” I asked, “that I was working with Emily Sreenivasan? I never mentioned her. How long have you known who was helping me?”

  When he failed to answer, I said, “555-234-8170.”

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Frederick Dorsay’s personal cell phone number,” I said. “That’s the number Meredith uses when she wants to reach him. The one he always answers.” Still no response. I said, “You don’t even have to admit this, Richard—tell me it was Pelletier. Or Mrs. Hadley. Or the Easter Bunny. I just want you to call it off. That’s it.”