“You can hang up and get back to your Saturday afternoon. I have some bookkeeping stuff to handle with your mom and dad,” Dr. Wilson says.

“All right, thanks again.” I tap the phone, as if to hang up, and then on impulse decide instead to continue listening. I’m not sure why. Maybe residual anger at my mother for flaunting her bikini in front of Levi? (Is it flaunting when that’s how you look? Isn’t my mother allowed to wear a bathing suit?) Or perhaps Dr. Wilson’s casual dismissal chafed? Like I’m not central to this process.

“So yeah,” Dr. Wilson says. “It’s two hundred fifty k now, and two fifty on acceptance.”

I assume I’ve misheard him. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? That can’t be right. That’s what k means, though, right? Thousands?

Are they talking about payments?

I’m not great at math, but that’s more than double four years’ tuition at a place like SCC. Dr. Wilson hasn’t really been much of what my dad calls a “value add.” It’s not that hard to push the submit button on the common application. Even if he wrote the entire thing himself, which of course he didn’t, five hundred thousand dollars? I feel sick.

“We make the checks out to that Horizons Unite and Cares International, right?” my dad asks.

“Yes. The underprivileged children thank you,” Dr. Wilson says, and barks a laugh, which my parents awkwardly echo. “Plus, it’s totally tax deductible.”

That makes a whole lot more sense—my parents making a charitable donation—though it is far larger than what they normally give, and I don’t understand why any of it’s funny. Or why it would be conditional on my acceptance.

Just two weeks ago, my parents had a fight about buying a table at yet another fund-raiser Aunt Candy was throwing in San Francisco. The buy-in then was twenty grand. I know this because my dad kept repeating it over and over again: Twenty grand, Joy, twenty grand. That ain’t peanuts, especially for something to blow smoke up Candy’s ass. We just gave to Chloe’s reading thing. We’re not like Charles. I’ve done the math. His money is so busy making money that, literally, when he pees he makes twenty grand.

I know my parents are, relatively speaking, well-off. Most people might see us as rich. But we aren’t rich-rich. We aren’t Aunt Candy rich. Or even Xander’s family rich. We don’t have homes scattered around the globe or a private jet or a yacht. Why would they write a five-hundred-thousand-dollar check to Dr. Wilson’s charity?

That’s half a million dollars.

It makes no sense. I decide I must have misheard them. My head swims as I tune back in to the conversation.