I’m unable to stop my right leg from bouncing up and down, a nervous habit that drives my mother bananas when we go to restaurants. “Stop that jackhammering,” she’ll say in a whisper under her breath, because of course she can’t yell at me in public. And I’ll stop, until ten minutes later, when she puts her hand on my knee and I realize I’m doing it all over again.

Maybe my shaking leg is how I got an accommodation. Maybe not everyone has so much constant, nervous, unfocused energy. Maybe I’m not lazy, I’m wired.

I wonder if I will accidentally wake the baby. I can’t see its face, but a puff of black hair sprouts out from Mrs. Oh’s elbow, like she’s sporting a Troll doll.

“Fourteen forty. A two-hundred-forty-point increase is practically unheard of. I love seeing hard work pay off,” Mrs. Oh says. She opens my file with her free hand. It’s all spread out on the desk—my grades, my extracurriculars (even a photo of Cesar), my scant AP classes (I took world history because it has the highest pass rate), and these scores. All my measurements taken and then used to determine whether or not I am worthy of a particular brand of future.

“Do you think? I mean, could there be some mistake?” I ask.

Mrs. Oh peers at me for a moment with a bizarre intensity, and then as if coming to some sort of decision, she throws her head back and laughs.

“I wasn’t kidding,” I say.

“Chloe, you did it. You worked your ass off—pardon my French, little monster,” she mutters to the baby. “And you did it. The College Board has never once, at least since I’ve been doing this job, had a mix-up.”

“I guessed on a few questions.” I don’t confess to how many. I don’t make clear the reason that this score report feels like an impossibility is because I’m pretty sure it is one. Or if not impossible, then magical. I’ve never been good at probability, but I’d put me guessing my way into a 1440 at similar odds to my winning the Powerball.

Then again, people do win the lottery sometimes. And when they do, they don’t call it a mistake; they call it luck.

“Well, either you guessed correctly or got enough of the other questions right. I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, sweetheart,” Mrs. Oh says. Hearing that expression for the second time this morning makes it no less annoying.

“Right.”

“I’ve been looking over that original list of schools we discussed last month. Now listen, I’m not going to lie to you. I think most are still a reach, but before I thought you’d be wasting the application fee even trying. Now I think it’s worth going for them.”