Imani leaned on the hallway wall, taking a minute to compose herself before entering room 203. Typically, the space was used by the drama teacher. According to the front office, he’d temporarily moved his classroom into the auditorium to allow students to space out, leaving this tighter space for her and Barbara, a sixty-year-old theater critic, St. Catherine alumna, and head of the Parent-Teacher Organization.

The PTO lead was essentially a full-time, unpaid position. Though all committees had a chief, those positions were largely ceremonial. Nate, as head of the admissions committee, had ultimately rubber-stamped most student résumés that had come blessed by the faculty and Barbara. It was Barb who really did the work: organizing meetings, gathering applications and teacher addendums, liaising with the staff, and digitizing damn near every document.

Imani opened the door to see Barbara already seated at a desk. Unlike in many schools, St. Catherine’s workstations weren’t in a spaced line but arranged side by side, forming a horseshoe with the teacher at the center. The setup reminded Imani less of a school than a conference room.

Barbara acknowledged her with a warm, albeit mask-muffled, “hello” before lamenting the stack of financial-aid-contingent applications. “It’s bigger than I’ve ever seen it,” she said. “And it includes a bunch of students who’ve paid full freight for years.”

“The pandemic has been devastating for many families,” Imani muttered through her own face covering, thinking of her personal predicament. Had her husband not hidden the home equity loan, she would have filled out two aid applications herself. But it was too late now. The deadline had passed months ago. St. Catherine’s senior teachers had already weeded out those they’d felt undeserving. She and Barbara were providing parental input on the finalists.

Imani approached a seat that Barbara had already furnished with a stack of petitions. She unzipped her coat. As she began to remove it from her shoulders, a blast of frigid air from the room’s cracked windows changed her mind. The best part of the pandemic ending wouldn’t be removing her mask, she thought. It would be feeling warm inside public places.

Imani pulled the first packet from the stack and began reading. According to the parents of five-year-old Angelique, their daughter had “it,” an amorphous star quality that people immediately recognized. The essay went on with examples of little Angelique’s giftedness, some of which had to be exaggerations. “Making her own short films?” Kids that age couldn’t hold a camera steady.

The parents included a TikTok link to their daughter’s “comedic monologues.” Imani brought up her phone and painstakingly copied the address from the printed form.