Chapters (43)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Ben Philippe
- Back Ad
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
I attend FATE Academy on the Upper West Side. For the uninitiated, that is the Fine Arts Technical Education Academy. Around the streets of Manhattan, you might recognize us by our gray slacks and skirts, purple blazers, and navy ties. FATE is a very woke school, very woke. We pride ourselves on our wokeness. The student body is diverse and amassed from all corners of the city. There’s a giant photo of Barack Obama in Freedom Hall. Freedom is the south wing, Voice is the east, Action is the north, and Mindfulness is the West. (All that is missing is a recycled, environmentally conscious Sorting Hat to bring it all home at this point.)
Dad had pinched me when I made that joke during our tour.
“You’re only laughing at it because you’re inside it now,” Dad said. “Believe me. Kids are writing their homework on tiny chalkboards in Haiti right now. This is a true gift for us.”
My schooling is and has always been an “us” issue in the Haltiwanger household, which explains the bow tie he wore that day as well as Ma’s ironed hair and new dress when we were given access to this inner sanctum.
I was still in middle school over at MS 250 when we had first learned about the existence of the Fine Arts Technical Education Academy. MS 250 with the same off-putting sea-green walls in every classroom and metal-detecting security checkpoints that did not work, which only made passing through them more unsettling every morning. But for FATE, the elitest of the elite schools in Manhattan, “diversity” and “inclusion” have become key words, and simply spitting out another generation of world-wrecking Finance frat boys is no longer in vogue. (Don’t worry, they’re still alive and well.) And since these schools are looking to diversify their student body, and since I am: a.) very smart (not bragging, just true); b.) Black; c.) poor (sounds depressing that way, but strictly speaking, also true); and d.) the kid of immigrants, the admissions director literally shook my hand four times over the course of my interview. And so I was to be a FATE student: tuition, spaceship-looking building, and megawatt future all included.
Another point of pride at FATE are the extracurriculars, which are, in fact, curricular here and mandatory for students. From chess to basketball to fencing, you can do anything here at the highest competitive national level, but you have to pick one, which explains my presence on the debate team. On paper, debate was the right fit for me according to Mr. Vu, my academic adviser. “Charming and unafraid of public speaking! You’d be wasted anywhere else. It’ll be a breeze for you.”