“Please tell me you did not just say you are jealous of Levi because he had cancer and gets to write an essay about it,” Shola says before school the following Monday while she reapplies her red lipstick in her locker mirror. I wonder what it would be like to move through the world in her body. To be tall and striking and beautiful, to make people stop on the street and ask Who is that? But even while I think those thoughts, I know that this description is missing a huge part of the story. That by virtue of her skin color, Shola gets none of the perks of my invisibility, or of my presumption of harmlessness. Since she’s had her license, she’s been pulled over twice driving her parents’ car for no reason at all. And at Wood Valley, where she sticks out—not only because she is in the minority at our mostly white school, but because she refuses to play the high school conformity game—she’s met with less admiration and more mystification.

“Of course I didn’t say that. I’m not a monster.” I knew that applying to colleges would be stressful but I didn’t realize it would feel like this—a constant tightening. Last term, the principal ran a required seminar for both parents and students discussing ways to ease anxiety during this process. The hour-long PowerPoint presentation included tips like “Establish a daily meditation practice” and “Put a Post-it on your bathroom mirror that says: ‘Where you go to college does not define you.’ ”

I assumed I’d be mostly immune to the pressure, though, like I’ve been throughout my time at Wood Valley. I’ve never been terribly concerned when I bombed a test. To be honest, I’ve never put myself at risk for any real rejection, at least not in the way Shola and Levi have. I’m not a good enough actress to expect a part in the school play or popular enough to run for student council or ambitious enough to want the EIC position on the school newspaper, not that I’m interested in any of those things anyway. This will be the first time, with the exception of middle school (and in that case my parents did all the hard work), that I’ve ever applied for anything.

“Chloe, you know I love you, but you really need to check yourself,” Shola says.

“What? Why?”

“You literally said, out loud, to my face, ‘it’s so unfair that you get to write about being a scholarship kid and Levi gets to write about cancer,’ ” Shola says, in what’s supposed to be an imitation of my voice, but is really a generic, obnoxious whine. For the record, I did not say that.