“ADHD is probably most apt,” Dr. Wilson says, continuing to ignore me as if I weren’t the one to have asked the question he is answering. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? I haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD or any other acronym. True, I don’t have the best attention span in the world—the idea of reading all of Crime and Punishment felt very much like I’d committed a crime and that book was, in fact, my punishment—but I think that’s true for most teenagers. The only notable exception might be Shola.

My problem isn’t my attention span. It’s that for me the stuff we learn in school is boring and irrelevant. I don’t care if some made-up Russian dude from a gazillion years ago murders a greedy old lady and then feels bad about it for five hundred pages. Classics are overrated, unless we’re talking Pride and Prejudice film adaptations.

I know I can focus when I’m interested. I once watched every episode of The Good Place in almost a single binge, and I basically mainlined the Fyre Festival documentaries. Also, after watching the shows and listening to the podcasts, I have very strong feelings about freeing Adnan Syed and locking up Elizabeth Holmes.

“Once we get that accommodation, she’ll have unlimited testing time, which I think will help her elevate her score,” Dr. Wilson continues, again with the shes and the hers as if I’m not even here. “She can take that accommodation to college, which will make the next four years way easier. It can really make the difference between getting As and flunking out.”

I don’t like Dr. Wilson and how he talks about a possible learning disability accommodation as if it’s this season’s must-have accessory, like an A.P.C. weekender bag. I once read an article about people pretending to have disabled children so that they could skip the lines at Disney World, and I thought, Who would do that? Now I wonder if the answer is us. We would do that.

Dr. Wilson is wearing a white linen shirt tucked into slim-fitting khaki pants, with shiny brown loafers. His hair is combed over a bald spot, as if he thinks he can fool us about what’s under his sweep. I imagine him doing the same thing with my application, maneuvering some kind of comb-over of my bad grades.

He must be in his midforties, and I wonder what would make someone want to spend his life helping teenagers like me get into college. It seems like a really sad way to make a buck. Though I guess it’s a large buck, if the way my parents have rolled out the red carpet is any indication. “I’ll help you with that paperwork. We’re late, of course, but I think we can make it work.”