It was official. Angela Hawthorne was the stupidest smart person she knew.
She was stupid in too many ways to count but, okay, she’d give it a try.
Let me count the ways, said Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Fine, Elizabeth. Ms. Browning, if you prefer. Here we go.
First, she was stupid enough to think she was smart enough to get into Harvard. Which was the biggest mistake, and she’d been making it for years now. So sure of herself, so oblivious. Nobody got into Harvard. Well, people did, obviously, probably about eight hundred people had gotten in yesterday, when she’d been rejected, but nobody she knew. You could be valedictorian, you could be the smartest person in your school, you could be the person who worked the hardest and studied the longest and wanted it the most and ran the fastest and fluted the best and all that didn’t matter: nothing mattered. Nothing mattered.
Because there were so many high schools, and each one of them had a valedictorian, and there were so many families, and each of them had a smartest child. There were cross-country teams everywhere, and each of them had a fastest person. There were so many people who had already gone to Harvard, and those people all had children, or at least most of them did, and there wasn’t room for all of them to get in. So they did not all get in. Which was not breaking news, because she wasn’t stupid (see aforementioned), but still. Not everybody could be chosen. And she had not been chosen. So she was smart, sure. But she wasn’t smart enough. (See me, Ms. Simmons had written on her extended essay.) Angela didn’t even want to think about that essay. Of course Ms. Simmons had noticed, and had called her out on it, of course, and Angela had cried like a baby in front of her. She definitely didn’t want to think about that essay.
Second, she had no backup plan. Not one single backup plan. Every time in the past year, two years, five years, she’d started to think about this moment, and what would happen if it happened, if she got rejected, she hadn’t let herself get this far. Her mother had tried to get her to, but Angela had pushed her off with both hands. Ms. Vogel had tried to get her to too, but same deal. Double push.
Rejection. Not an SAT word. But such an awful word. Ugly and mean. Not deferred, as in wait until our regular admission time and we will reconsider your pathetic little application again, when we have not forty-five hundred people you are competing with, but more like thirty-five thousand people who all want exactly what you want, and who all think they deserve it as much as you do. Nope: just flat-out, don’t-bother-us-again, your application is going right in the trash or the recycling bin or wherever it is we put the real losers.
She must have blown it with that Susan Holloway way worse than she’d thought. That was all bullshit, Susan pretending to like her handshake, to like her honest answer about not having read a book for pleasure since she was a toddler. And for sure she never should have asked that question at the end. Susan Holloway had probably flagged her application. There was probably some special red flag, like a dark red, that meant: Stay really far away from this one. That flag meant: Don’t even think about it.
Third, she’d blown practically the entire gift certificate Aunt Marianne had given her on this one stupid, pointless, terrifying trip. She’d rented a car from a really shady place far from the airport because it was the only place that would rent to you when you were younger than twenty-five. And she still had to get home. Eventually.
Fourth, here she was, standing outside the Harvard admissions office, waiting for Timothy Valentine, admissions officer for the Northern California region.
I bow to him, she’d told Cecily. Like he’s Mecca. Well, maybe she should have.
The stupidest smart person in the world, right here. Angela Hawthorne. Allow me to shake your hand because I’ve been told I have a wonderful grip. Pleased to meet you.
But whatever flaws she had as a Harvard applicant, she was an excellent stalker. Because here he came now.
Timothy Valentine was a tall man, ginger-haired, thin, with a build similar to that of Angela’s cross-country coach, Mr. Bradshaw, which meant that he had a slight stoop to his shoulders that owed something to a deficit in upper-body fitness: the curse of the carb-gulping long-distance runner. Marathoner, thought Angela. Does Boston every April, I bet. How scary could this man be, if he was a marathoner? And yet he scared the crap out of her.
In one hand Angela clutched the printout of the email from Harvard, and in the other the keys to the dubiously obtained rental car.
Timothy Valentine, exiting the vaunted halls of 86 Brattle Street, didn’t look around to see if anyone might be following him. He didn’t walk particularly quickly, though his legs were long enough that Angela had to hurry to keep up with him. He seemed like a man who was out walking a dog, or strolling through a shopping mall. Timothy Valentine didn’t seem like a man with the fate of thousands of high school seniors resting on his narrow shoulders.
Timothy Valentine crossed the street and arrived at a burnt-orange Prius with a Patriots sticker in the rear window. Fortuitously (SAT word, not that it mattered anymore), Angela had parked just a few spots away. Angela’s mother was big into the Patriots. She was always going on about Tom Brady, but in their house she may as well have been speaking to the deaf, because nobody else in the family cared about football. Her father watched tennis and golf, and they all followed the Giants.
Now that she had found Timothy Valentine, Angela noticed things about her surroundings that she hadn’t had a chance to notice when she’d arrived at 86 Brattle Street just a short time before, and at Logan before that. The evening felt different here than it did at home—it wasn’t just the chilly quality to the air, though that was part of it, but something was different about the sky, too, which Angela, if pressed, would have described as a heaviness. A gravity. Angela had once heard her mother, fueled by a couple of glasses of Cabernet, describe to dinner guests what she viewed as the essential difference between the East Coast and the West Coast: the East Coast had been settled by people who were escaping something (persecution) and the West Coast by people who were seeking something (gold). “I mean, come on,” Nora had said. “Doesn’t that just say it all, right there? Isn’t that the crux of everything?”
There had been an early snow in New England, and vestiges of it lingered in the parking lot in the form of dirty ice chunks and ugly piles pushed against light poles. Christmas was only—what? Nine days away.
Timothy Valentine’s Prius purred to life. What else was there for Angela to do? She had flown all the way here. She’d forked over a lot of money at Payless Car Rental. (Although, because of her age, she’d actually Paid Way More. She’d Paid a Lot.) Angela climbed into her rented Hyundai Accent and followed Timothy Valentine into the Cambridge twilight.
She’d always thought San Francisco was difficult to drive in—all those hills! But Cambridge was a real bitch: small side streets giving way to other streets that were bigger but not exactly freeways, which then gave way again to more side streets. Everything seemed to be a one way going the way you wouldn’t expect.
In the early evening—civil twilight, Angela had heard it called, though there was nothing civil about her current situation—the headlights of the cars coming toward her seemed to merge with the taillights of the cars in front of her into one big soup of red and yellow. Angela took a second to wonder if she needed to get her eyesight checked. But there was no time for lingering thoughts: Timothy Valentine shifted lanes without warning and Angela almost lost him.
He pulled over at a 7-Eleven and Angela slid into a spot where she could see him but that wasn’t close enough for him to see her. (This stalking thing was complicated. And exhausting. She hadn’t slept on the plane.)
Timothy Valentine emerged from the 7-Eleven with a half gallon of milk and a package of Lay’s potato chips. A family, thought Angela, about the first item. And: A vice, about the second. She watched as Timothy tore into the Lay’s with an enthusiasm and delight that almost made Angela like him. Except he had ruined her life, so there was no way she was going to actually like him.
He pulled back onto the main road—Route 2, the signs told Angela—and she stuck with him for fifteen minutes, maybe longer, until he turned off of Route 2 and followed a bunch of smaller roads, eventually pulling up in front of a two-story red house. Cute house. A farmhouse without a farm. The house was on a street of homes that were different enough from each other to avoid the cookie-cutter label. Angela looked at it with her mother’s appraising eye and thought, This neighborhood has character. They were all two stories or more, which was one of the things her mother liked about architecture out here compared to at home. Though she said that only in private, of course. Never in front of the all-powerful Arthur Sutton.
Timothy Valentine pulled into the driveway and Angela parked the illegal Hyundai in front of the house across the street. She watched as the front door to the farmhouse without a farm opened and a golden retriever bounded across the lawn. She heard a voice call, “Daddy!” And then, more quietly, as though its owner had turned toward the bowels of the house, “Daddy’s home!” Except for the rapidly diminishing daylight, Angela could have been watching a commercial for life insurance. Timothy Valentine held the half gallon of milk aloft like a prize and turned toward the voice. He reached down and, with his free hand, rubbed the head of the golden retriever.
This is it, thought Angela. This is my chance. She closed the door of the Hyundai, looked both ways, and crossed the street. She cleared her throat twice—she hadn’t spoken to anyone since the rental car place, so she wasn’t sure if her voice still worked—and said, “Mr. Valentine?”
He turned, squinted. His bewildered face was almost funny. He put a hand on the dog’s collar—the dog was lunging toward Angela, but in a friendly way—and said, “Can I help you? Do I know you?”
“I’m Angela Hawthorne,” she said. She extended a hand, which was ignored (out of necessity, she told herself later, because he was trying to control the dog). “I was an early applicant in November. I recently received this email”—she thrust toward him the printout of the rejection—“and I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”
“Oh,” said Timothy, understanding. “Oh. I see. And you came from—”
“California.”
“California?”
“Northern,” she said, as if that explained anything. “Marin County. And I just thought if I could talk to you, then maybe—”
Timothy looked with dismay at the dog, who had loosened itself from his grip and was now making a large deposit in the center of the lawn.
“I’m sorry, Miss—?”
“Hawthorne,” Angela supplied, too eagerly.
“Miss Hawthorne. I’m sorry, but the decisions of the committee are very, very carefully thought out. They aren’t made by one person acting alone.”
“I’m not crazy,” she said. “I don’t have a weapon or anything, I swear. I’m just…” Here she momentarily lost control of her voice; it began to wobble, and she had to pause and take a deep breath. “I’m just confused.”
Timothy Valentine sighed and grimaced, not unkindly. Angela had the thought that if they could sit down together, or, better yet, go for a run together, if he got to know her, then he would recognize that there had been a mistake, that she should have been accepted. “I don’t remember your application specifically, Miss Hawthorne. But I’m going to take a guess that it was loaded with fantastic grades, extracurricular activities, astronomical test scores, varsity sports…am I right?”
“Yes,” said a tiny voice that Angela didn’t recognize as her own. “I have a copy of it right here.”
“I don’t need to see a copy,” he said. “As I said, the decisions of the committee are final. And I’m sure your application was stellar. Nearly every application we receive for the early-action deadline is stellar. So we find ourselves in the fortunate position of being able to choose from the best of the best of the best. And some of the best don’t get in.”
A small girl bounded out of the house and up to Timothy. She had bright blond hair and a smattering of freckles so perfect they looked like they’d been drawn on. All of this Angela could see because the path leading up to the red house was perfectly lit by a series of small lanterns. God. Timothy Valentine had great taste, too. Or his wife did.
The little girl reminded Angela of Maya.
“Let me ask you this, Angela,” said Timothy Valentine. The girl leaned against her father and wrapped one arm around his skinny leg. Oh, to be five again! The girl regarded Angela and said, “Who’s that?”
“Nobody,” said Timothy, and Angela tried not to be insulted.
“Do you think,” said Timothy Valentine. “Do you think you’re the first applicant who’s shown up at my office, followed me to the parking lot?”
“Um,” said Angela. “I’m guessing no?” Speak with confidence during the college interview process, came the voice of Ms. Vogel, college counselor extraordinaire. (But not extraordinaire enough for me, thought Angela.)
“You’re not even the first one who’s followed me home. It’s happened to all of us. Harvard applicants do some really crazy things. They send us stuff—”
Maybe Angela should have sent something. “Really? What kind of stuff?”
“You name it. Socks, hats, shirts, arts and crafts, music videos. Hot sauce.”
“Hot sauce?”
“But it doesn’t make a difference at all, of course.”
The girl tugged on her father’s pant leg. “Come in, Daddy,” she said. Angela saw now that one of her front teeth was missing, and that there was a little stump of an adult tooth coming in. That could be an awkward look on some kids, but this girl pulled it off. God, she was cute. Angela would babysit for this girl in a heartbeat.
Timothy crouched down to the girl and said quietly, “I’ll be right in, sweetie. Listen, can you take this milk and bring it inside to Mommy? It’s heavy, you have to hold it with both hands. Can you do that? And can you bring Bella with you?” At the sound of her name the dog bounded back over to the crew on the front lawn. Timothy kissed his daughter on her sweet little head. Angela felt like she was witnessing something very private and profound, something from which she should look away, and yet she couldn’t look away. Not only was Timothy Valentine a dog owner, he was a really nice dad. Both of these things made it hard to hate him. But he had ruined Angela’s life, he and the rest of the admissions board, so she would try to hate him anyway.
Timothy Valentine stood up. He let out a small groan and Angela thought, Tight quads. He was definitely a runner. He probably ran at lunch, around the Harvard campus, or right out along the Charles. That’s what she would do, if she worked at Harvard. Then, as though there had been no break in their conversation, he continued. “No, you are not the first to follow me home. You wouldn’t believe the things people do, both before and after their application is considered.”
Timothy Valentine may as well have taken an oversized pin and placed it in the center of Angela’s body: everything about her deflated.
“You mean even in my stalking I’m unoriginal?”
“Something like that.”
A little stinging behind her eyes: tears ready to jump out. Angela blinked them back. She felt like she had to say what she said next. He was waiting, even though there was a child inside, a dog, probably dinner. Something hearty and New Englandy. (Chowder?) He was waiting patiently on his front lawn in early winter.
“I thought I was special,” she said finally. It wasn’t a whine, it was a statement.
Timothy cleared his throat and frowned down at his shoes and said, “Do you want to know a secret?”
“Um,” said Angela. “Sure?”
“Everybody in your generation, you and all of your peers, you all think you’re special. But how can every single one of you be special? It is literally impossible.”
Angela’s head was staring to hurt. She blinked again, and the backs of her eyes felt hot. It was dark enough that she’d be able to hide the tears if they fell, but still. As a point of pride she’d rather keep them back.
“I thought you were going to tell me a good secret,” said Angela finally, and Timothy Valentine smiled. So at least there was that.
She looked to the sky, where the darkness was stripping away the remains of the day. It was odd to Angela to look around and see trees everywhere, along the highway, all through the neighborhoods, instead of open sky or mountain ranges or the San Francisco Bay. It felt like the landscape was closing in on you, instead of opening up, but the closing in felt comforting, the way it felt when you were little and your parents leaned in from two opposite sides of the bed to kiss you goodnight. Most of the houses on this street had Christmas decorations up; the lights were just starting to come on.
Timothy Valentine walked over to his mailbox and opened it. He peered inside, and then removed a stack of envelopes, some catalogs. Angela thought that he was signaling to her the end of their conversation, but then he said, “You know who gets into Harvard?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know the answer. (Will this question be on the test, teacher?) “Nobody?”
“No, not nobody.”
“Right,” said Angela. “Of course. That wouldn’t make sense.”
“The students who get into Harvard are something beyond the extraordinary, because unfortunately the extraordinary has become commonplace. We get so many applications from students who are broadly accomplished, but not always deep. We are looking for the deep. The extraordinary and the deep.”
Angela said, “I see.” She, Henrietta Faulkner, the rest of the Oakville High senior class (except for Maria Ortiz), they were all too broad and not deep enough, every single one of them. All those hours on soccer fields, in field hockey helmets, puzzling over foreign languages and instruments and algebraic equations—they weren’t enough. They had all come to nothing. Or, rather, they had come to this: Angela as stalker, Angela as desperate Harvard reject, clutching a rental car key and a printout of an email.
Just to be clear, though, and because she sensed that she was about to lose Timothy Valentine’s attention, she asked, “Are you saying that I did too much? That I should have focused on just one thing, all this time? Just one thing?”
Angela thought about the last cross-country meet, and the way she’d let that girl from Novato…just…very…gradually…get…ahead…of…her. She thought about taking Joshua Fletcher’s pills, and she thought about how she stole Teresa’s paper.
See me, in Ms. Simmons’s felt tip.
“What I’m saying,” said Timothy Valentine, “is that maybe you haven’t found your passion yet. Your one, single, driving passion. And that’s okay. Many people haven’t, at age seventeen, eighteen. But that’s the kind of thing that shines through on an application.”
Later there would be time for the tears and the heartache and all of the crappy pain that came out when a dream vanished. It would hurt. It might always hurt, but as much as she wanted to blame the pain on someone else she couldn’t justifiably do that. Because the worst part was that Harvard didn’t know about any of her transgressions—she hadn’t been caught, hadn’t been turned in or called out or publicly shamed. The truth was in some ways harder to bear. As mad as she was at her father, as much as she wanted to blame his lie for her failure, he hadn’t done anything to hurt her. Not on purpose. She simply hadn’t stood out; she hadn’t made the cut.
A woman appeared in the doorway, backlit by the light in the hallway, and called out, “Tim?” in a slightly impatient way that was familiar to Angela from a decade and three-quarters of being hurried along by adults. Angela could see a staircase. When she was little she wanted to live in a house with a staircase. “Tim? What are you doing out there? We’re waiting for you.”
Timothy Valentine waved and said, “I’ll be right in. Almost done here.”
So Angela hadn’t found her passion yet. Cecily was almost eight years younger, but she had! Cecily’s passion was Irish dance, and Angela had been ready to step squarely on that passion, to grind it right into the ground. Take up fencing, she’d told her. That’ll get you into college. Her mother’s passion was real estate. Her father’s passion—well, she didn’t want to think about her father right now.
Angela refocused her eyes on Timothy Valentine. Behind him the red house had become a blackish blur. The moon was nearly full. Civil twilight was over; night had arrived. The streetlights illuminated the Hyundai, and from far away she could hear the semi-muffled sounds of highway traffic.
All those people with somewhere to go, somewhere to be, a place in the world. Her North Face fleece, which had been bordering on deficient since she’d stepped off the plane, was now officially, exquisitely inadequate. She shivered and crossed her arms. She met Timothy Valentine’s gaze full-on. It was over, her long quest. It had ended right here on a suburban lawn in…
“What town are we in?” she asked.
“Concord. As in the battles of Lexington and.”
Angela nodded. Sure. Lexington and Concord, she knew. She had scored a five the previous year on the APUSH exam. She had nailed it.
“You caught me at a good time, Miss Hawthorne,” said Timothy Valentine. He peered at the mail, although there was no way he’d be able to read it in this light. “The other times I’ve been followed I’ve been less…how shall we say it? Less amenable to offering advice. But there are many, many options out there, available to an intelligent, accomplished, lively young person like yourself.”
Angela thought, Lively? Really? She didn’t feel lively. She felt ancient. She imagined the little blond girl building a snowman, sticking a carrot in it for a nose.
The dog barked twice. The door opened again and the woman called, “We have to start without you! Sarah and I are starving.”
Sarah. That was a nice name for that child, very New England Puritan. Sarah Valentine, whose father worked in admissions at Harvard and who lived in a farmhouse without a farm. What a lucky little girl.
“Listen,” said Timothy Valentine. “I have to go inside now, my family is waiting. Miss Hawthorne? Do you have somewhere to go? I’m assuming there’s an adult with you?”
Timothy Valentine was looking at her expectantly, and she wanted (when had she not wanted this? She’d wanted it her whole life…) to give the correct answer.
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, yes, definitely. I do have somewhere to go.”