“No. I mean, yeah, it sucks. But they’re right to rescind. I don’t. I wouldn’t. I can’t anyway.” I stop talking, give up. She knows what I mean. SCC belongs to fictional alterna-Chloe. Liar Chloe. I stare again at the chandelier, willing it to give me answers, or a plan, or a road map. Something to get from here to whatever comes next so I can hop over this terrible part. I feel myself sinking into my mattress and I imagine the pillow top suffocating me slowly. “I don’t know what I’ll do now, though.”

“That’s okay,” Mrs. Oh said. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I’m not sure I believe you,” I say.

“That’s okay too,” Mrs. Oh says.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Then

The first morning of Thanksgiving break, I sleep till one in the afternoon. Despite the fact that our teachers know we’re all in the middle of college admissions, they haven’t let up on the homework. I’ve been up late every night this week trying not to fall further behind.

I’ve scrapped the essay Mrs. Oh hated, and I’ve rewritten it from scratch. What I end up with won’t win any awards, or be excerpted in the New York Times, like Maverick Stone’s—last year’s valedictorian—essay was. That was about a kid who convinced his parents to defect from Scientology while in middle school. I still think mine’s good enough to send off.

Even Mrs. Oh agrees. When she handed it back, it was covered with red pen, but she also said, Well done, Chloe, which felt better than I would have thought. The closest thing I’ve gotten to a gold sticker at school.

Now it’s in the hands of Dr. Wilson and his on-staff writer, for what he called a “quick copyedit.” I imagine there might be some tinkering, but at least I wrote the gist of it myself. I wrote about the real me, which is to say, unlike my classmates who all seem to already know who and what they want to be when they grow up, I admitted to not yet finding my passion or myself. That I’m hoping college will be the venue that helps me to do so.

Okay, so nothing mind-blowingly original, but at least it’s honest.

“Get up, lazybones. Dr. Wilson needs a photo of you,” my dad says, and barrels into my room and opens the blinds. The sun streams in through the window. I can hear the buzz of a lawn mower and Isla conjugating Spanish verbs. The number of these sorts of mornings are running out, and I want to hold on to them. My bed, the sounds, the promise of a familiar, unchallenging day.