Finally, she said, “My main concern is that you’re not giving yourself a whole lot of safeties. A place like Hamilton, I’d say that’s a good bet for you. But when we’re talking about Middlebury or Bowdoin, those could be trickier.”
“What about Brown?”
“Lee.” She reached forward, touched my forearm, then leaned back and pushed her glasses up on her head, nestling them in her fluffy hair. “You’re going to love college. Do you know that? Love it. And that’s because there are more wonderful schools out there than either of us can count. But if you listened to some of the people here, you’d think there were about eight good schools. Am I right?”
She was exactly right. The number was eight because Penn and Cornell were barely Ivies, but Stanford and Duke might as well have been.
“That’s just silly,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “I know you know it’s silly, too.”
“So you don’t think I can get into Brown?”
“You know what I’ll say? I’ll say apply to Brown. Go ahead. Why not? But I want you to look at other places, too. Did you order a catalog from Grinnell like we talked about? Grinnell’s a fabulous school. And Beloit, too.”
“What state is that in again?”
“Grinnell is in Iowa, and Beloit’s in Wisconsin.”
“I don’t want to go to school in the Midwest,” I said. “I like it better here.”
“Lee, I want you to feel comfortable with the decisions we make. But I need you to work with me, and that might mean taking a second look at some places.”
“What if I write a really good essay for Brown?”
She sighed. “Lee,” she said-never had my name been uttered with more sympathy-and I could feel a hardness form in my throat, a welling behind my eyes. “You almost flunked precalculus,” she said. “You’re up against kids from here, your own classmates, who have straight As and board scores of 1600. And then you’re up against the top students from schools across the country. And we haven’t even touched the issue of financial aid. I’m not going to set you up for disappointment. Lee?”
I didn’t speak.
“Wherever you go, that school will be lucky to have you,” she said, and I burst into tears. In the first gush, I thought of Cross-I had been thinking of him for most of the day anyway, for most of the time since he’d left my room a little less than thirty-six hours before-and it felt like I was crying, simultaneously, because I hadn’t heard from him, because maybe our interaction had been random and singular and he’d never touch my hair again or lie on top of me, because I hadn’t even really appreciated it while it was happening, and, finally, because Cross, being a prefect, would probably go to Harvard and Mrs. Stanchak was trying to separate us by sending me far away to Wisconsin. Desperately, I thought that I just needed one more chance from Cross and that if he gave it to me, I’d understand the situation. I’d be grateful to him without showing my gratitude in a way that was sickening.
Mrs. Stanchak passed me a box of tissues and said, “Take as many as you like.” My tears did not appear to faze her at all. (Later, when I told Martha about crying in Mrs. Stanchak’s office, she said, “Oh, I’ve already cried twice with Mrs. Hessard. It’s like a rite of passage.”) “It’s a tough time,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “I know.”
For at least a minute, we sat there listening to me sniffle. During this time, I managed to have a fantasy that Mrs. Stanchak would ask what I was really upset about, and when I told her, she would respond by saying something about Cross, and the situation, that was wise and true. I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable. But then, outside Mrs. Stanchak’s window, I saw Tig Oltman and Diana Trueblood walking with their hockey sticks to the gym, and I remembered how it was probably unwise to confide in anyone at Ault besides Martha. There wasn’t anything in particular about Tig and Diana that reminded me of this fact, nothing about them I especially didn’t trust, it was just that-they existed. They wouldn’t literally be able to hear, but if you had a moment of vulnerability at Ault, someone always found out. Once a thing left your head, you lost your privacy.
I glanced again at Mrs. Stanchak, who was waiting patiently, and I suddenly doubted that she had great truths to impart. “Sorry for this,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. What I want you to think about is you.”
It occurred to me to tell her that I did little else.
She passed me the list of colleges. “I want you to rework this,” she said. “Take a few days, and give it some thought. Talk it over with your parents. Take a long walk. And let’s try not to get too hung up on labels. Will you try that for me?”
“It’s not like I want to go to Brown just because it’s prestigious,” I said.
The expression on her face implied both that she did not believe me and that she did not fault me for lying. But I was lying only partially. “I want to go to Brown because it attracts interesting people,” I said. “And because it’s in the Northeast and it doesn’t have distribution requirements.” I wanted to go to Brown because if I went to Brown, it would mean I was a person who deserved to be there. And also: because if I was a person who deserved to be there and if this was somehow official, then it would mean everything was going to turn out okay.
“Those are great reasons,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “And you know what I want you to do, and I’m giving myself the same assignment? I want you to come up with five other schools that also fit that description. Now, remember that the federal financial aid forms will be available in November, and your parents need to get them in, in January. And you know you’re not applying anywhere early-we’re clear on that?”
I nodded. It was slightly surreal to speak so openly about money when I was accustomed to considering it the worst possible topic. It was like going to the gynecologist, which I started doing in college-how embarrassed and apologetic I’d feel about the fact that my vagina was in the doctor’s face and how it was both liberating and just weird to remember that there really wasn’t anything to hide, that exposing my vagina was why I was there.
“You can sit here awhile if you want to get collected,” Mrs. Stanchak said.
“That’s all right.” I stood. In equal parts, I was mortified that I had started crying, and I wanted to leave her office while I still looked teary, because maybe Cross would see me and think I had been crying about something that mattered and then I would seem intriguing. “Thank you, Mrs. Stanchak,” I said.
“Thank you, Lee. Do you know why I’m thanking you?”
I shook my head.
“Because you’re the one who’s going to get yourself into college.”
That morning, I’d received a note in my mailbox from Dean Fletcher reprimanding me for missing Sunday chapel and instructing me to report to the dining hall at five p.m. for table wipes, which was basically predinner cleanup. After soccer practice, I walked with wet hair from the gym to the dining hall. I’d never received table wipes before, and I was possibly the only senior who could make this claim, including Martha. As I headed around the circle, the air smelled like burning leaves and the campus was shot with that amber light you see only in the fall, and I felt, as I often did at Ault, both as if I were undeserving and as if the beauty around me was not really mine.
Just before I stepped from the outer hall into the dining room, I heard Cross’s voice, felt a wave of shock, and considered turning around. I shouldn’t have been shocked at all-in addition to being the senior prefect, Cross was one of the three dining hall prefects, and apparently this was his night on duty.
I entered the dining room, where about twenty students were wiping the tables and setting down cloths. Cross was holding a sheet of paper and a pen and laughing while he spoke to two sophomore guys. Even when I was three or four feet away, he did not seem to notice me. “Excuse me, Cross,” I said.