“Black?” she interrupts.

“Give me some credit. I was going to say you’re amazing at everything you do.” I block out the memory of my dad talking to Dr. Wilson, his unfair jab at Shola. I think about all the times other kids at Wood Valley have made snide comments about her being a shoo-in, and how Shola clenches in response. Maybe she has more reasons than I realized for being ready to graduate and move on.

“I’m totally overwhelmed, Chloe.” Her eyes fill with tears, even though she’s not usually a crier. She’s more the type to go cold and quiet. “I’ve been tutoring the Littles and it’s not going well. And then the FAFSA is a nightmare.”

“What’s a FAFSA?” I ask, gripped with the sudden terror that I’ve missed some essential application step.

“Exactly.” She wipes at her face with the backs of her hands and stands to leave.

“Shola, please, wait.” She sighs the sigh of the eternally weary.

“It’s the financial aid form.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

“It’s why I’m not applying early decision anywhere, even though that would up my chances of getting in. I can’t commit to any school, even Harvard, until I know exactly how much aid I’m being offered. And did you know some colleges aren’t need blind? They actually take into account whether you can pay full tuition when considering your application. I’m not the one making it about money. They are.”

I didn’t know any of that.

“I still bet you get a full scholarship to Harvard,” I say.

“Harvard doesn’t offer merit scholarships.”

“Oh. Well, Harvard’s a dick, then.”

“Yeah,” she says, and smiles the tiniest bit.

“And you’re the best. Like if you look in the dictionary, it would say, ‘Shola: proper noun, meaning the opposite of a dick.’ That should be your yearbook quote.”

“Tell me more.”

“And any school that doesn’t give you full financial aid plus a full scholarship so you make money on this whole college deal is a loser school not worthy of the presence of you,” I say.

“Amen,” Shola says.

“Sometimes I’m an insensitive, overprivileged white-girl idiot.”

“We do know this,” she says, and her tone changes. “Maybe it’s time you worked on that.” I reach out my insensitive, overprivileged white-girl idiot hands, a small gesture, and she takes them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Now

I find my mom in flannel pajamas eating cookie dough ice cream at the kitchen table at four-thirty in the morning. Her hair is pulled into a loopy bun, and her face gives off the metallic smell and sheen of her expensive serums. My pristine mother has gone slack with sadness. I think, And this is just the beginning.