“Whitney loves the scholarship program,” Mr. Court says, and now he’s sitting up straight, as if he’s cast off the worries that were weighing him down. It’s as if, regardless of Whitney, he’s so anchored, nothing can faze him. Or maybe the scholarship program is part of his anchor. “She loves helping kids go to their dream schools. She always felt so lucky that she could go to Kenyon, like she wanted. A lot of her friends were limited financially, and she always felt bad about that, always thought choosing colleges made it way too important whether someone was rich or poor . . .”
“But you didn’t ask for financial statements,” I say, and I barely manage to sound curious, not surly. I didn’t miss something I was supposed to fill out, did I?
“We don’t want to duplicate the financial aid kids would get anyway,” Mr. Court says. “Sometimes we do ask the counselors which kids are longing to go to a school that’s out of their reach.”
So it’s good I told Ms. Stela I want to go to Vanderbilt, I think. Focusing on Vanderbilt helps me tighten the control on my emotions. They’re layered now, worry and anxiety and resentment, and then, down below, the fury that’s been there from the start.
I tamp the fury down deeper and try to figure out how to weave Vanderbilt into the conversation, how to make it clear that I’m exactly the kid he’s describing.
But Mr. Court is still talking.
“Anyhow, we can usually find everything we want to know from the essays kids write about Whitney’s graduating class,” Mr. Court says. “It’s in who they pick to write about, what they pick out from that person’s life. And Whitney loves to read those essays, loves remembering how her friends used to be. She and her classmates had such a special experience in high school—we wanted other Deskins classes to know what that was like, and get ideas for making their own senior year special. We—and Whitney—want her life to be about more than just the schizophrenia, more than just focusing on herself and her own problems.”
I’m back to struggling for control over my fury: So did I screw up completely by picking Whitney herself as my subject?
Maybe I did. Mr. Court is grimacing now.
“We probably shouldn’t have let her read your essay,” Mr. Court says. “I think it was too much for her.”
The rage I’ve been holding at bay surges past my control.
“Just because the whole essay’s about her?” I ask, and my voice is stingingly bitter. There’s no hiding it now. “Because I didn’t know what really happened, or that she would be a scholarship judge, or that it would hurt her to be reminded of how she used to be? Why didn’t you just say no one’s allowed to write about Whitney?”
I want to explode: “It’s not fair! I never had a chance at this scholarship, did I? Why’d you say I’m a finalist? I bet I’m not even a real finalist—you probably just wanted to shock me by introducing me to Whitney and then lecture me about what a loser I am for researching Whitney for a whole month and never even knowing she was crazy.”
It’s not like I’m so disciplined, I can hold all that anger back. It’s not my self-control that keeps me from screaming, “That’s not fair!” It’s the expression on Mr. Court’s face.
He’s squinting at me, his brow furrowed, his eyes glazed with confusion.
“Your whole essay wasn’t about Whitney,” he says. He shakes his head. “I mean, sure, you mentioned her, but—”
“Every single word I wrote in that essay was about Whitney!” I insist. I am still drowning in fury, but this is my scholarship interview, this is the fifteen minutes that can determine the rest of my life. I can still grasp for something reasonable, something to save me. “You must have confused my essay with somebody else’s.”
The furrow in Mr. Court’s brow deepens, but he reaches down into a briefcase beside his chair and pulls out three stapled-together papers. He drops them in front of me.
“This is what you turned in,” he says.
I look down, and those are my words on this paper. But it isn’t my essay about Whitney and the Congreves girls, about their magical times in the Land of the Two Seas.
What lies before me—what I turned in, what all the Courts read—is my furious rant about how much I hate Daddy.
Still the horrifying now. Only, it gets worse
“Nooo,” I moan.
In a flash I see what happened. I was so mad at Mom the night I turned in my scholarship application by e-mail. I was half-blinded by rage. And my rant at Daddy, labeled “Whitney Court Scholarship Essay,” would have been right below the actual “Whitney Court Scholarship Application Essay” in my computer files. I must have clicked on the wrong label.
I have to fix this.
“I made a stupid mistake,” I say, and attempt what should be a tinkling laugh, a charming effort to poke fun at myself.
The laugh comes out sounding like maniacal hysteria.
Mr. Court is watching me much too carefully.
“I can explain,” I say. “I attached the wrong file. I’ll send you the correct file right away, and you’ll see by the date stamp, I did it before the deadline. It’s what I meant to turn in. And it’s really good.”
I consider another reassuring laugh, making fun of myself for bragging about my own essay. But I can’t afford to have another laugh turn into another epic fail.
This time it would probably sound more like sobbing.
Mr. Court touches the papers in front of me, which practically seethe with my rage at Daddy when I thought he might have made up the whole Court scholarship as a scam to give me money.
“So if this wasn’t what you meant to turn in,” he begins, “what is it?”
“Oh, I can explain,” I say confidently. “It’s . . .”
I hesitate, trying to find the best lie. An English-class exercise? An acting-class role-play?
What if Mr. Court checked and found out I’m not even taking an acting class? What if he talked to my lit teacher?
I am lost. I can’t make up a good lie fast enough.
“Whitney read this, and she was worried about you,” Mr. Court says. “We all were. Marlene and I—we’ve seen a lot of other mentally ill people besides Whitney over the years. What you wrote seemed so . . . paranoid. We began to fear that you were—”
“What?” I say, and my voice is sharp now, a knife slashing through my own half-planned lies and pretense, through Mr. Court’s careful inching forward.
Nothing can protect me now.
“This essay seems like a classic case of paranoid schizophrenia,” Mr. Court says. “We were worried about your mental health. That’s why we wanted to talk to you.”
His eyes hold such gentle concern. And I learned enough in AP psych to see what he means. I do sound delusional in that essay. I do sound like I believe my enemy—my father—holds almost supernatural powers, pulling the puppet strings of dozens of people in Ohio while he’s imprisoned thousands of miles away.
I do sound crazy.
“No,” I say. “No. You don’t understand. I’m not crazy. It’s my life that’s crazy. I’ll prove it.”
I grab the laptop Mrs. Court and Whitney abandoned. I turn it sideways between Mr. Court and me.
“Let me show you . . . ,” I say, typing frantically. I am a whirling dervish, the only thought in my mind, fix it, fix it, fix it . . . Lies about English assignments or acting class or role-playing aren’t good enough right now.
The only excuse I can save myself with is the truth.
“This is my father,” I say. I’m on the Internet now and I’ve typed in the words “Roger Jones.” And it’s amazing how desperate I am to reveal the secret that my mother and I have spent three years desperately hiding. Everything’s flipped around—suddenly it’s backward day. I know Mr. Court will never believe me—will never look at my actual scholarship essay, will never help me go to college—unless I can convince him who I really am.
I click on one of the nine hundred thousand sites that hold information about my daddy.
M
y father’s picture stares out at me, his cockiness glowing from eyes that are shaped and tinted just like mine. The words beside the picture shout, “Infamous criminal bilks millions from victims in multiple layers of scams.”
“I know who Roger Jones is,” Mr. Court says quietly from across the table. “During his trial—when was that? Four years ago? Five?—he was all over the news. Nobody could stop talking about him. But . . . you didn’t list Roger Jones as your father on your scholarship application. Jones is a common name. Maybe you just want to believe that you’re related to someone famous? Even if he’s famous for awful things?”
I clench my jaw, grinding my teeth.
“Look,” I say.
I minimize my father’s picture and go to the genealogy website where I searched for proof that Whitney died. I remember all the other records they bragged about having.
“Here’s my birth certificate,” I say.
I type my name and birthdate and “Fulton County, Georgia.” I add my parents’ names.
A split second later the site tells me no such person exists.
“I must have typed something wrong,” I say. I click the back arrow, and all the information’s there, everything that made me me from the very beginning.
Maybe there was just a clerical error, I think. Something miscategorized . . .
I start eliminating information, erasing one fact about myself at a time.
Erase my birthplace?
I still don’t exist.
Erase my middle name?
I still don’t exist.
Erase my mother’s name?
I still don’t exist.
Erase my father?
Mr. Court puts his hand over mine, stopping me from this search.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Don’t torture yourself. Obviously you’re a very troubled person. It’s not your fault. There are things you’re not going to understand until you get some help. And we want to help you.”
I jerk my hand back from Mr. Court’s.
“I know the guidance counselors are still in their offices,” he says. “We’ll just go in and talk to Ms. Stela. . . .”
I stare at him—wide-eyed, startled, terrified. There is nothing left for me to do, nothing I can possibly do to rescue this disastrous interview. There is no way I could ever win the Whitney Court Scholarship now.
I turn around and flee.
Now—
Do I exist?
I whip the door open and race out into the hall. Oscar and Rosa are sitting there waiting for me—they’re relaxed; Rosa’s pressure is off. . . .
I can’t bear to look at them.
I jerk away, sprinting in the opposite direction. Their cries follow me, crazily distorted: “Becca, what’s wrong? What happened?” The hall’s acoustics are weird, creating some eerie form of the Doppler effect. Or maybe my ears are just working the same way they do in nightmares.
I keep running. I was lousy at cross-country, but nobody could catch me now.
I smash out through a side door, across the lawn, across the street, through the apartment complex parking lot. Then I’m at the door of my own apartment, and I shove it open, banging the doorknob against the wall. I know Mom’s asleep in her bedroom but I don’t care. If the banging door doesn’t wake her, then my ragged breathing will. I’m as loud as a steam engine, as a freight train—as any mechanical thing that’s loud and primitive and practically impossible to stop.
I slam the door behind me and race into Mom’s room. I stand over her bed, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her hard.
“Why don’t I have a birth certificate?” I scream. “What happened to it?”
She opens her eyes and blinks, a woman startled from deepest sleep.
“What . . . do you mean?” she mumbles, squinting stupidly up at me. She has a crease across her cheek from her wrinkled pillowcase, and her gray hair is tangled around her face. “Of course you have a birth certificate. You’ve seen it. It’s in the file in my desk, with our other important papers.”
“I don’t mean paper,” I say scornfully. “Anyone can fake paper. We used a version without Daddy’s name to get my driver’s license, remember? I mean online. It’s missing online.”
She’s still squinting at me—it’s like I’m speaking a language she’s never heard before. I let out an exasperated snort and run out of the room for my laptop. I left it recharging this morning so it’s already on. I yank it away from the cord and run it back to Mom. Even as I sprint down the hall, I’m calling up the search form, I’m typing in my own name.
I thrust the laptop at Mom.
“See, this is me,” I say. “Right?”
I click on “search now.”
“So where am I?” I ask Mom. “Why doesn’t my birth certificate show up?”
Mom’s squint intensifies. The furrows in her forehead seem as deep as some unexplored trench out in the ocean.
“I . . . don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t think . . .”
I am not patient enough to listen to thoughts or speculation or theories. I want explanations. I want facts.
“Let’s see if yours is there,” I say. “What’s the name of the county where you were born? Owsley?”
Mom sits up to watch me fill in her information and click the “search now” button.
This website says she doesn’t exist either.
“Look for my marriage license,” Mom says quietly.
It’s missing, too.
“Maybe . . . ,” Mom says.
There’s a buzzing from the living room—the sound our phone makes when it’s set to vibrate and light up rather than ring. It’s not loud enough to wake Mom when she’s sleeping, but it sounds like a pounding alarm to me right now.
“You can get that,” Mom says.
“No,” I snap at her. “It’s probably Oscar and Rosa, and I can’t talk to them. I ruined everything today, because I didn’t know my birth certificate vanished—”
I break off, because even though the phone hasn’t stopped buzzing, there’s now someone knocking at our front door, too. Distantly, I hear, “Becca? Are you all right?”
Of course I’m not all right.
I stride across the room and slam Mom’s bedroom door, though this is ridiculous. The doors in this apartment are as thin as cardboard, and the extra layer of closed door doesn’t block out the voices or the buzzing phone. If Oscar and Rosa really want to find out how I am, they could break in easily, and the doors would be no protection.
But Oscar and Rosa are law-abiding types. Neither of them would risk acquiring a police record just to make sure I’m okay.
Surely they don’t care about me that much.
I turn back to Mom and look at her, really look at her deeply for once. Under the blankets she’s got her knees drawn up to her chest in a cowering, terrified position. Her eyes are wide with fear and—what? Confusion? Anguish? Pain?
It still hurts to look at her. Worse than ever, actually. Her hair is still sticking up, and she’s been sleeping in a ratty old bluish-green T-shirt. Because of her cowering, I can’t read the shirt’s front except for the flourish of the top of the letter F. But I know this shirt. The F is for “Florida”—Daddy bought this T-shirt for Mom on our last family vacation before he was arrested. It was just a quick weekend getaway; Daddy had to get back for “business.” But he said the shirt was a promise of fun trips in the future. He said the shirt was the exact same color as the ocean at dawn; he said it was the exact same color as Mom’s eyes.
How can Mom stand to still wear that shirt? I wonder. How can she stand to still wear anything Daddy gave her?
I know how: We’re poor. I can’t think of any clothing Mom has bought for herself in the past three years. And when it comes right down to it, all the clothes Mom owned before Daddy was arrested came from him. Why should this shirt be worse than any other?
Maybe the shirt doesn’t mean anything to Mom, I think. Maybe it never did.
Still, the shirt an
d Mom’s cowering position—and her gray hair—make it seem like she’s trapped in the past. She will never escape.
I have to, I think. I have to have a future.
But I can’t have a future if I keep getting sabotaged by things I don’t know from the past.
I cover the distance back to the bed in three long strides.
“I’m going to find out what’s going on,” I tell Mom as I reach for the computer again. “Do you think Daddy’s birth certificate is missing too?”
I’ve just typed the R of “Roger” when Mom shoves my hands away from the keyboard.
“Don’t bother,” she says in a flat, bitter voice. “Even if it’s there, it’s not real.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
She stares up at me. I can name the emotion carried in her eyes right now. It’s sorrow, all sorrow.
“Do you really want to know about another lie your father told?” she asks.
No, I think.
“Yes,” I say.
Now—
and there’s more
“This happened before I met your father, and I didn’t know about it until after the trial,” Mom says. “His attorney managed to get the evidence thrown out, so it never became public, but—”
“What?” I ask.
“Your father’s real name isn’t Roger Jones,” Mom says.
For a second I actually feel a flare of joy: So there! I knew it all along—my daddy isn’t that evil criminal Roger Jones. This was a case of mistaken identity from the very beginning.
Then I understand what Mom really means.
“You mean he even lied about his name,” I say in a dull, dead voice. “He lied to everyone he met from the first word out of his mouth.”
I’m still trying to grasp it all: Mom took his name when she married him and it wasn’t his to give. He passed the name down to me, so he made me into a liar before I could even speak.
Mom is frowning at me so, so sadly.
“Your father had a fight with his family when he left home,” she said. “He says it was their fault, but who knows? He didn’t want them finding him. So he changed his name. He says he did it legally, but the courthouse where it was recorded conveniently burned down . . . and this was before everything would have been online.”
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