In the November of her senior year of high school, Rachel Abigail von Zanzibar was called to the counselor's office.
The hall was empty, except for a group of students filming themselves at one end for a project. It made sense; one side was entirely glass, filling the corridor with sunlight. The windows gave a view of the senior parking lot, where, if she had a car, her vehicle would be given a spot near the entrance for her to decorate with chalk. She ran her fingers over the bulletin boards as she passed. Framed in pink corrugated trim were the words "Fernwood never sleeps" in rounded bubble letters and a series of miscellaneous announcements: a sign-up sheet for Into the Woods; a reminder about the blood drive in the South Cafeteria on Friday; various student-placed advertisements for babysitting services or clothing being sold; a list for nominees for prom king and queen, with two columns for "him" and "her." A fuzzy pen dangled from the board in case any passersby thought of a new candidate.
Past that was the gym, with pennants listing championships wins back to the eighties, and beyond that, the track and football field. Judging from the black-and-white photographs of old games framed by the trophy cabinet, the field itself hadn't changed much. The same blocking sleds arranged on the turf, the same concessions stand, the same bleachers. Most startling were the faces. Part of her expected, however illogically, that young people couldn't possibly have looked the same half a century ago as they did today.
Near the entrance, under a Fernwood Falcons mural, Officer Leary sat with his gun in his holster. He said hi to Rachel. She said hi back. His job was to write down the names of visitors and give them nametags. How many years would it be before she would stop passing for a high-schooler? When would she start looking too old to slip in with the throng of students coming off the buses and be instantly identified by Officer Leary as a visitor (or, less charitably, as an intruder)?
Even in a year or two, none of the other students in the morning rush would notice her. Everyone had faces they didn't recognize. As long as she didn't go to class (teachers always knew which stragglers to shoo away when the bell rang) she could hang out in one of the cafeterias and pretend she was in study hall all day. She could make friends, hang out with them after school, and take the bus back the next day. But after three years? Four? Would it still work then?
Nostalgia for the present—was that a thing?
She pulled open the glass door to the main office. A laminated sheet posted there always listed what letter day it was. Fernwood ran on a six-day cycle, and today was an F day. On A, C, and E days, she would spend fourth period running around playing floor hockey or wrestling in the gym, relishing the feeling of slamming against another body, that momentary violence, before retiring to the locker room where, unlike the TV shows and movies, no one took long showers or pelted each other with pads. The girls changed from T-shirts and shorts back into crop tops and leggings, checking and comparing grades on the school's app.
Ms. Gray stood up when she saw Rachel approach.
"Hey, hi, take a seat wherever!"
There no chairs. This, and the combination of motivational posters—cartoon stars saying "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take"—was designed for children. She was 17, not seven.
"Redecorated a bit," Ms. Gray said. "I mostly got the beanbags for me, you know? When I'm relaxed, so are my students." She took a seat next to Rachel, instead of across from her like Rachel had hoped, and pulled up a profile on her laptop.
"You haven't filled out your destination yet. Where have you applied to? Or have you already been accepted?"
Rachel kneaded her hands together. "I'm still thinking."
"Most early applications are due by the 15th, which is"—she checked the date—"in 10 days, which might be doable if you have essays and recommendations done. Regular applications, that's by January. Final deadlines are going to be in May."
That seemed far away, but the acceptances were already flowing in. Of note was Erik Hansen, accepted to—yes—Harvard! Fernwood High had a good smattering of acceptances to the Ivys, but only one Harvard.
Ms. Gray opened another window on her computer. "Let's see. GPA 3.6, very nice. 1490 SAT. Currently taking APs in English, biology, computer science. Your last year's APs were a little weak—I see a 2 here in Chinese language and culture."
Well, it's not like it was fucking Spanish 101. It wasn't just a chart of verb conjugations. It was thousands of characters and four tones. You couldn't sound it out without having ever seen the word before. It required work.
Ms. Gray pushed the laptop aside. "You know, hundreds of years ago, only the top 10 percent went to universities. The rest were serfs."
But, then again, none of that mattered. Colleges—and she used this word selectively—didn't care about spotless report cards and test scores. It was easy to succeed when the rules were so clear-cut. Especially when the rules consisted of filling in bubbles on an answer sheet. But all of that stopped applying in the nebulous "real world," that terrifying place beyond explanation. Unlike report cards, there were no regular numeric tallies of worth in the "real world"—unless paychecks counted, perhaps.
Erik realized that. His grades probably weren't great, but he conformed to another poorly defined metric: "well-rounded." He was handsome and on the football team (she couldn't remember what position he played and wasn't familiar enough with the sport to care), which encouraged his natural charisma, something the unremarkable nerds lacked. He wasn't stunted and virginal. Charisma wasn't just about making others feel important. It required being an important person yourself. You only felt happy about occupying the time of someone who was busy. You only felt pleased about attracting someone who was beautiful.
Ms. Gray asked about her extracurriculars. Was she in any clubs? (No). Did she participate in any sports teams? (Middle school track didn't count). Did she have a job? (No). Had she ever had a job? (No).
"Would you consider an ASA school?" Ms. Gray asked. "The tuition savings would be substantial."
"I'm not sure," she said, meaning she wouldn't.
ASA schools had a reputation. As public schools with fully subsidized tuition, degrees from them were common. They weren't inferior in any actual sense. Yet they often figured into the plots of rags-to-riches misery porn flicks too much for her comfort. They had the impression of being schools of last resort—schools that would only be impressive in the context of miraculous rises from poverty and child abuse.
They were essentially free extensions of high school, with high admission rates and high graduation rates. Private schools still charged tuition at the usual exorbitant rates, but they were impressive. They had legacies. They had famous alumni and sweeping architecture. Presidents went there. Everyone knew what ASA schools were; their very acronym lent itself to cheap jokes. Everyone said that ASA schools were the GED of college.
"Impressive" mattered. Ms. Gray smiled when Rachel said she was thinking of majoring in biochemistry or industrial engineering. "There are a lot of good jobs in that field!" she said. "You ought to think of joining a group for women in STEM."
Rachel returned a sheepish smile. The reaction was always the same. Surprise turning into admiration. She had little idea of what being a biochemist or an industrial engineer entailed, exactly, but the effect of those words on other people was fascinating. They triggered instant pride.
"If you're interested in science, there are some internships you can look into." Ms. Gray placed a few pamphlets on the desk. All of these companies, Ms. Gray explained, were interested in high school students like her, who had a passion for science: Northrop Grumman was doing research into autonomous aircraft systems. Pfizer had a new pain reliever in their pipeline. Nvidia was developing a new kind of graphics processor to accelerate facial recognition. And Stevens Pharmaceuticals was in the midst of "promising gene therapy studies." She tensed up at this last name.
Ms. Gray tapped the Stevens pamphlet. "The networking might be easier with this one."
Rachel nodded and took the pamphlets. Ms. Gray's knowledge of her relationships was slightly uncomfortable—just what kind of information about students did these teachers pick up?
Armed with more handouts than she could fit into her backpack about deadlines and applications, she stood up to say goodbye to Ms. Gray, who called as she was leaving, "Maybe don't ask your Chinese teacher for a recommendation, hm?"
Officer Leary waved again as she passed on her way out. If a school shooter were to walk in and blow her brains out, at that exact moment, at her exact age, it would be a national tragedy. She wasn't vain enough to consider herself beautiful, but realistic enough to realize that every 17-year-old white girl was beautiful. A beautiful girl, dripping with potential, chunks of meat dripping out the back of her head. But potential, like beauty, had an expiration date.
There was a sliding scale of tragedy: at the height was the slim period of possibility where the breasts had developed and the career hadn't. It dipped a bit in college, assuming you went to college—after graduation, it tanked. It picked up again if you became a young bride, although not if you became an unwed mother. But, generally, it went down with each passing second. Anyone could shit out a concerto in old age. Only geniuses had the precocity to do in youth, lacking concrete experience but possessing wisdom and talent almost supernaturally beyond their years. The accomplishments that were described as having been achieved at only so-and-so years old—those were the truly great ones. Only was the most powerful word in the English language. If you became an only, you never had to worry about becoming anything else.
If she were shot, Officer Leary would cradle her in his arms. He would probably weep over her body. But she still wouldn't make the top. On a scale of most to least tragic, in the eyes of the media team that would swarm on the school in the aftermath, it would go Zeke, then her, followed by Julianna, Erik (although dying together would put Julianna and Erik at the top of the list automatically), and last, Kate.
She slipped back into her seat in English just as the lights came up and the class dove into discussing the movie they'd just watched.
"Do you think the priest did it?" Francine asked. "Do you think he molested the boy?"
"Well, did you see his fingernails, how clean they were?" Joey asked.
She lied when she said she hadn't applied anywhere. She had—to three schools, precisely. She made Kate take her to the one for Northwestern, her first interview, because her mother needed the car that day to go to work. This mattered more than minimum wage, she had complained, before acquiescing and asking Kate.
"Why would it be a problem?" Kate said, and then jokingly, "I think my parents are glad to be rid of me."
She said that, but it was embarrassing. It was humiliating, to have to rely on others to function like that.
And so, in a ridiculously ill-fitting men's suit (her mother didn't own any of the pantsuits she planned on wearing) she met the interviewer, a middle-aged man, bald, glasses, wearing a wedding ring. These types of interviews were conducted by nearby alumni in community centers or churches as a kind of sieve separating quality candidates from "leap of faith" applicants.
"Do you play any sports?" he asked.
"Track," she said, not specifying that it was in middle school.
"Why?"
"Why…?"
"I mean, why did you do it? For your college resume? Or because you liked it?"
"No, because I liked it. I liked getting to focus on improving myself, not relying on others."
"So you don't function well on teams? You're averse to teamwork?"
No, that's not what I meant, she wanted to say. He moved on. She had done something wrong. Said something wrong.
"Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
Ten years. Definitely beyond passing for a high-school student anymore. "I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?" He sighed and then said, "Rachel, let me give you some advice for future interviews. Never say you're not sure. Don't waste my time with 'not sure.' Do you have a direction? Something you'd like to do in life?"
She felt stupid. He probably hadn't intended to make her feel stupid, but she did. She could see herself from the outside—a nervous child wearing sleeves so long they nearly went past her hands. She crossed her arms, then let them fall back to her lap, remembering that the gesture conveyed standoffishness to interviewers. She decided to use her secret weapon.
The word "biochemistry," chosen carefully from her list of impressive major options, didn't have the usual effect. He frowned. He asked, again, "Are you choosing this major because you're interested in it?"
"Yes," she said, meaning it. She was interested in it, honestly. She knew about the sad, insular world of the "humanities": people studying things that could not be taught and that they would never be good at. They were leeches who worked on self-indulgent, semi-autobiographical screenplays and novels in coffee shops instead of getting jobs. They still lived with their parents. The products of their lives were transient and superficial. They would write, over and over, thousands and thousands of words, and all of them would be about the same thing: how much they hated their mothers and fathers, the very ones who funded their aimlessness, how much they envied the success of others, peppered with anecdotes about sexual exploits.
Novels were written in languages that would eventually become extinct and were about societies that would eventually become extinct. The same went for paintings, music, films. The elite would arbitrarily select a few specimens to preserve and call them classics, but everything else would be forgotten. They just wouldn't be relevant anymore.
Technology became obsolete, too, of course, but it occupied a real place in the lineage of human advancement. Even the oldest gadgets had objective metrics of worth. You could hold them in your hands, the physical manifestations of ingenuity and intelligence, and observe their effects on society. You could see how much they mattered, how useful they were, how good they were. Art was the projection of twisted psychologies; invention was the projection of skill and intent.
"What's your greatest weakness?" the interviewer asked.
That she was a perfectionist? No, that was too obvious. That she was too detail-oriented? That she could be too ambitious? Again, it all sounded too self-congratulatory. Perhaps he wanted to hear something vulnerable, but not too vulnerable. It was dangerous to air your insecurities when so much was at stake. It made you look unstable, emotionally fraught, unable to handle stress.
"Sometimes I doubt myself," she said.
The hour hand on the clock edged closer to three. The class settled into an even more vigorous discussion of the priest in the movie.
"I think you're right about the camera showing his fingernails being clean. I think it symbolizes that he did molest the boy."
Francine chewed on the end of her pencil. "It kind of reminds me of the novel The Diary of Anne Frank, because they're both dystopian fiction where the author sort of uses alliteration, symbolism, and synecdoche to make you sympathize with the antagonist."
Their teacher, Ms. Astra, smiled broadly. Her philosophy, as she made very clear to the class, was that all comments were equally valuable. She would not correct any factual errors made by her students, because she believed in getting to the Truth. She often told them of her enriching experience teaching Nabokov to Japanese doujinshi artists in inner city Tokyo, and the vanity plate on her Chevrolet Bolt EV was a corruption of "waxwing slain"—also the name of her punk poetry collective—so she encouraged what she called "literary warfare," or "complex examinations of the relationships between truth, time, and moral reality in narrative."
Francine, encouraged, pushed forward with her analysis. "And the fact that the priest may or not be an invert symbolizes that… that the world has become inverted, sort of. Just like how colors can be inverted! And how a cross can be inverted… you know, like Satan… and how morality, which is black and white, can be inverted! Just like how the priest is white, but is evil—or has a black soul—and the kid is black—but is pure and innocent, or has a white soul."
Ms. Astra clapped, saying "Wonderful! Wonderful!"
Rachel gazed beyond them, out the window. There was nothing more depressing than a blue sky.