“I mean, first she ‘strongly suggested’ that I consider taking a year off and traveling like some Instagram influencer or child of screenwriters, but I insisted. Maybe the fourth handwritten request was too much, but still . . . this is just mean.” Corinne sits down a few steps higher than me on the stoop.

“I had a hunch too,” she adds. “That’s why I requested an extra sealed copy for a college I wasn’t applying to, just to see what she wrote about me.”

That’s brilliant, I think but don’t say. For a moment there Corinne Troy, of all people, looks truly lost. As if the letter simply doesn’t compute.

“It’s exhausting,” I offer. “I thought the whole point of a school like FATE was to spit us into Ivy Leagues and corner offices.”

Corinne doesn’t say anything, still staring at the letter. I feel a thoroughly weird compulsion to comfort her.

“A single letter can’t keep you out of college,” I continue. “You know that, right? You’re always on the Dean’s List at school.”

“But colleges like Princeton don’t have to make concessions, Haltiwanger!” she snaps. “They get thirty-five thousand applicants from all over the world, every year! They’ll pick some other Dean’s Listed applicant with my exact grades and extracurriculars and ethnicity, even, but who also happens to be breezy, with, like, fun braids and poetry blogs. Some Black girl magic social media influencer with viral makeup tutorials will elbow me right out with a stain like this on my file.”

It’s dramatic, but she’s also not wrong. It’s established knowledge that all the effort you put into being the perfect college applicant should in turn also look effortless. The great catch-22 of Higher Education. Be perfect and make it look easy. Meanwhile, Corinne Troy is nothing if not intensity and effort. She folds the paper again, rubbing two fingers over every side as she does.

“Like, am I that intense?” she asks, glancing at me. “What do the other kids, y’know, say about me?”

Of course Corinne Troy does not have the largest audience of friendly acquaintances to poll on the matter. Because she is, in a word, intense.

“They think . . . you’re fine.”

“They think I’m terrifying,” she says, unconvinced.

“Fine, they think you’re the Loch Ness monster without the gift-shop plush toys.”

Her eyes widen, and she actually shoves me. “You’re such a jerk, Haltiwanger!”

“Well, look at the evidence!” I say, recovering with a chuckle and getting to my feet. “Someone refers to your studying behavior as ‘intense’ and your reaction a few days later is to wait outside his door with extensive blackmail material. Not exactly proving the assessment wrong.”