Mom: Don’t worry darling. Spoke to Dr. W. He’ll get someone on staff to rewrite

Me: No! I want to do it

Mom: You did do it, sweetie. Rewrite was wrong word. They’ll clean it up, add a little sparkle

Me: Mom!

Mom: What? You’re so stubborn. Like your father. I know you have a lot on your plate lately

Me: It’s my essay!

Mom: Of course. Still, nothing wrong with a little help

Me: Let me try again first

Mom: You sure?

Me: YES

Mom: Okay. By the way, it wasn’t a Chanel bag. It was a Birkin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Now

Isla pokes me awake with her Converse-clad foot, square in my ribs.

“Just checking to make sure you aren’t dead,” she says.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“It’s four in the afternoon.” I would have guessed it was still morning, and yet I take that as my cue to pull my bright white comforter over my head and burrow back into the mattress. I’ve always been a little shy about my undercurated bedroom, which, if I’m being honest, was modeled directly from a page in the Restoration Hardware Teen catalogue.

Isla’s room, on the other hand, has a shelf crowded with all her various academic awards, a Malala poster, and an overflowing bookcase. Her bulletin board, which hangs above her desk, is crammed with her favorite quotes and Polaroid pictures of her friends smiling and holding up stick mustaches.

You walk into Isla’s room and you think, I know who lives here.

You walk into mine and you think a designer decorated the place for a vapid, generic teenager.

Today, I take refuge in its blandness. Maybe, if I’m forgettable, this entire scandal will be too.

“Chloe!”

I can’t think of a single reason to get up. I realize my not going to school is a situation that will eventually have to be addressed, but not today, not when any moment the feds could arrive to arrest me. When everyone at Wood Valley hates me. When it feels like I no longer have anything resembling a future.

If I leave the house, I’ll be accosted by the paparazzi. Not that I have anywhere to go.

This might be what jail is like, I think optimistically, and then remember that jail will not have Netflix, two-ply toilet paper, or Intelligentsia coffee on demand. It will not have my delicious pillow-top mattress or hot showers or Fluffernutter.

I cannot go to jail. Neither can my mother. My mom can take or leave the dog, but when we were on vacation in Saint Martin, she freaked out when Carrie forgot to pack her La Mer.