Rules for Being a Girl

Second-semester seniors are allowed to leave campus during their free periods, so on Tuesday I run out to Panera for bagels and lattes, then come back and meet Gray in the common area outside the library, where he’s reading A Room of One’s Own for book club with his busted ankle propped up on a bench. It’s just a bad sprain, but he’s on crutches for a couple of weeks at least.

“Eh,” he said when the doctor told him, “only a couple of games left anyway.”

I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t sound all that broken up about it. He still hasn’t talked to his moms about college.

“My hero,” he says now, taking his bagel and lifting his face to kiss me before holding the book up for my inspection. “This one’s super fucking boring,” he reports.

“Oh, shush,” I chide, though the truth is I read the first fifty pages last night and it’s not like he’s wrong, exactly. I sit down on the bench beside him, taking a sip of my latte before reaching into my backpack and clicking the mail icon on my phone. If Mr. DioGuardi catches you even looking at your phone during school hours he’ll take it for the rest of the day, where it sits in a big basket in the admin suite labeled with a picture of an anthropomorphic iPhone crying enormous cartoon tears that he must have printed off the internet, but Brown notifications are going out this week, and I’ve been refreshing my email every fifteen minutes. I checked while I waited at Panera, and then again before I came back into school, but this time when I click over I can’t hold back a quiet gasp: there’s BROWN UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS in the sender line.

Gray looks up from his book. “Hm?”

I shake my head instead of answering. When I pictured this moment—and let’s be real, I’ve been picturing this moment more or less since freshman year—I was always sitting calmly at home on my laptop, a mug of tea beside me and a cat curled in my lap, the hugeness and inevitability of the occasion somehow managing to overcome the inconvenience of the facts that I don’t drink tea or have a cat. Now I force myself to take a breath, to take in the scene around me—the crispy January grass out the window, the faintly medicinal smell of Gray’s face wash, the crinkly brown Panera bag in my lap. I want to remember exactly how this feels.

Dear Marin,

Thank you for your interest in Brown University. Unfortunately, I’m very sorry to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission for the upcoming academic year.

I feel the blood drain out of my face, pins and needles prickling in the tips of my fingers. For a long, disorienting moment, I can’t get the words to compute.

I didn’t get in.

I didn’t even make the wait list.

The letter goes on from there, explaining how many applications they receive and how rigorous the admission process is, reassuring me that just because I didn’t get into Brown doesn’t mean I don’t have a bright academic future ahead of me, but it’s like the whole thing is written in a language I don’t understand. My heart slams against my rib cage. My hands and feet are cold and numb. This is just one more situation I totally misjudged, I realize grimly: I was overconfident, too sure I was in control of what was happening. I played it all wrong.

Gray glances over at me again, a tiny divot appearing between his thick, straight eyebrows. “Everything okay?” he asks.

“Um,” I say, swallowing down a lump the size of a pair of gym socks stuck at the back of my throat. “Yup.” I can’t bring myself to tell him, and as soon as I have that thought I remember that somehow I’m going to have to tell my parents—God, that I’m going to have to tell Gram when it’s all she’s ever wanted for me—and that’s when I start to feel like I might throw up.

I thought I was a shoo-in. How could I have been so dumb?

Wait a minute, I think, my head clearing briefly. I thought I was a shoo-in because my interviewer essentially told me I was.

“Um,” I say, getting to my feet so quickly the paper bag slides to the tile; I bend down and scoop it up before thrusting it in Gray’s direction, swinging my still-open backpack onto one shoulder. “I just remembered I left my notes for next period in the car. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” Gray’s eyes narrow a little. “Sure.”

Then, laying one big hand on my arm: “Marin,” he says, “Are you sure you’re okay? You just got, like, super weird all of a sudden.”

“Yup,” I call over my shoulder, pulling gently away and darting down the hallway toward the exit. “Everything’s fine!”

Out in the parking lot I dig wildly through my backpack until I find the business card Kalina gave me on the day of the interview; it’s crumpled at the bottom, crumb-stained and soft around the edges. I dial her office number with shaking hands, squinting up at the midmorning sunlight.

“Marin,” Kalina says, once the front desk assistant puts me through to her office. Right away she sounds uncomfortable, and I wonder if any authority figure is ever going to be happy to hear from me again. “How are you?”

“Um, not great, actually.” I dig the nails of my free hand into my palm, trying not to sound hysterical. I’ve only got six more minutes until I have to be in class. “I just got a rejection letter from your office.”

Kalina makes a sympathetic sound. “Oof, I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “You know, the university gets over thirty thousand applicants each year, and there’s such a limited number of spots that often even when a candidate is qualified—”

“No, I know,” I interrupt. “It says so in the letter. And I’m sorry if it’s inappropriate to be calling you like this. I know it’s probably bad form. But I just wanted to know what happened. For, like, the future.”

“Unfortunately I can’t really speak to the specifics,” Kalina says. “We’ve got a policy of not commenting on individual applicants—again, the pool is just so large—”

“Kalina,” I say, and my voice is dangerously close to be breaking. “Please? You had all the information when we met, right? And you said—”

“I shouldn’t have,” she interrupts me. “I know you and I had a rapport, but I was speaking out of turn, and I’m sorry if I—”

“Was it my grades?” I ask. “My extracurriculars? What?”