Brendan puts his hand up and so does Abigail. “God help you,” I whisper to her.

“No, God help you.”

“Great, thanks,” Evelyn says, brushing some chalk off her hands. “Reach out if you need essay help. Everyone else, be working on your independent book projects. And, oh okay, fine. Have a great weekend,” she says, surrendering to the sound of the bell and the whole room hopping up. I’ve almost tasted sweet freedom when she waves me over. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Sure.” I zip my bag and join her at her desk.

“I just wanted to give you some more feedback on your essay. Did you get a chance to work on it since we last talked?”

I look down at my combat boots, which are my “single item of chosen sartorial individuality” that Gill School allows on Fridays. “Um…”

“Never mind, don’t answer that.” She takes a folder from her desk drawer, then hands me the printed copy of my essay. It’s floppy in my hand, and each sentence is so covered in red ink she might as well have slaughtered the alphabet. God, it’s mortifying to reread myself, but I can’t not read it.

Dear College Admissions Person,

It was just a minor setback, getting kicked out of public school at the end of eighth grade, but I’ve definitely come out on the other side of it.

“It’s a good start,” Evelyn says, leaning toward me. Her amorphous squiggly metal earrings jangle against her second set of amorphous squiggly metal earrings. “But I don’t know that you really want to open with a misdemeanor. Also, the essay can’t end a few paragraphs later with And everything’s good now.

She points to a particularly ink-gory paragraph, and I nudge my essay away from her. I pretend to examine it, but I know exactly what it says. It includes the phrase overcame my anger amidst a pit of stress balloons.

“It’s great how you learned to be in control of your emotions,” she says gently, “but your essay doesn’t really go anywhere. There’s no lesson here.” She leans back in her rolling chair as if we’re two friends shooting the shit. In reality we’re one teacher and one student who can’t seem to give a shit. “The college essay can be about tapioca pudding as long as it shows you, the real you. What makes you different? What are you passionate about? What have you learned in the past seventeen years?”

She peers into my soul. I peer at the clock. “Ummmm, I guess I don’t really know.”

“Would you be opposed to choosing a new topic?” she asks hesitantly. “Maybe getting some tutoring?”

“Yeah, good idea,” I say, unzipping my backpack and carefully placing this little number in the one binder I put all my schoolwork in.

She purses her lips. “I’ll send you some of the Common App questions,” she says. “Maybe you can work on it this weekend and send me the first paragraph?”