One of the first times I visited her mom’s penthouse, I noticed an antique glass candy jar and asked Fay if I could take a jelly bean from it. “Help yourself,” said Fay. “Whatever’s yours is mine.” A second later we realized her slip of the tongue—she’d meant to say Whatever’s mine is yours—and cracked up. It became one of our running inside jokes. Whenever she wanted to borrow my pen or take a handful of my French fries, she’d fake-generously say, “Whatever’s yours is mine!” while reaching for it. And whenever I offered her my umbrella or my notes for an upcoming history test, I’d say, “Whatever’s mine is yours.”
It was a joke, but I took real pride in sharing everything with her. Textbooks. Notebooks. The peanut butter sandwich my mom packed for me every morning. My AIM password (she gave me hers, too, and sometimes we pranked each other by logging into each other’s AIM accounts and making silly away messages). My MetroCard. A description of the texture of my period blood that day, if it was interestingly gross. I thought nothing of going to the bathroom and peeing while talking to her on the phone. There was nothing I had, nothing I wanted, no part of myself that I wouldn’t give to Fay.
But of course, looking back, that wasn’t true. There were certain things I kept from her, certain conversational zones we both understood to be off-limits.
For a surprisingly long time, one of those things was college.
I’ve heard that the college application process has gone unprecedentedly crazy these days, but trust me, it was a big honking deal even in 2002. Idlewild employed a heavily perfumed lady named Deenie Mellman as the college counselor. That was literally her only job. She didn’t teach any classes or counsel students on any matters that weren’t college-related. She just had monthly one-on-one meetings with all of us, starting in junior year, to discuss our college plans. She was constantly saying, in a soothing tone, “It’s all about finding the right fit. There are lots of good schools out there, so you shouldn’t stress out about getting into a top school.” The subtext there, of course, was that it was normal and expected to stress out about getting into a top school. So I did. Stress out, I mean. (My mom helped with that too.)
It was a pretty effective form of reverse psychology. Not only did it plant the idea in your head that of course you’d want to get into a “top school,” but it made you feel like it was your idea, like you were rebelliously going against the sober professional advice of Deenie Mellman. And it worked on me. By October of my senior year, I’d already lined up my teacher recommendations (Devi the Dove and my Latin teacher Mr. Prins). I had taken the SAT twice and was doing the cost-benefit analysis of taking it a third time. I had also taken the SAT II subject tests in Writing, Literature, Mathematics, and Latin. My Common App essay had passed through so many editorial hands—Deenie, Devi the Dove, and of course (multiple times) my mom—that it was all but unrecognizable as my own writing.
All this was pretty standard for a New York private school. But as a Quaker school, Idlewild put us at an unusual disadvantage. It was such a major handicap that Deenie coached us specifically on how to address it in our applications. In the box where we were supposed to list our awards and honors, we had to handwrite a careful little paragraph, copying out a script provided by Deenie:
To elevate one person above another is a violation of Quaker values, which hold all human beings to be equal in the eyes of God. As a Quaker school, Idlewild does not award grades, prizes, or personal honors.
Pre-Idlewild, I was a public school kid. I knew how stressful it was to test for the gifted-and-talented program, to enter a poetry contest and lose, to fuck up in a spelling bee (curse that extra M in accommodate) and be forced to clap for my nemesis when the trophy was presented to her. Fay was different, though. Fay was an Idlewild lifer, so she had for real never gotten a grade, let alone a prize. The competition of the college process seemed to disturb her on a deeper level than it bothered me. She was nervous, more nervous than I’d ever seen her, before her first Deenie meeting our junior year. “But how does she know which college I’ll be a good fit for?” Fay asked me on the way to Deenie’s office. “What does she base it on?”
I wasn’t sure either, but I’d already had my first Deenie meeting, so I wasn’t about to pass up this rare chance to be the smart one. “Well, for one thing, your SAT scores.”
Fay looked uneasy. “She knows my SAT scores?”
“What do you care? They’re amazing.” Mine were good enough (700 verbal, 650 math after months of prep) that I didn’t feel threatened by hers (800 verbal, 530 math without studying).
“So that’s it?” said Fay. “Deenie just sees me as a number?”
“She looks at your extracurriculars too,” I said. “She’ll probably suggest colleges with theater programs. Or creative writing. Tell her you write gay stories about Sherlock Holmes.”
“I’m not gonna tell her that,” said Fay. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“You told me.”
“You don’t count.”
“Wow, I’m so flattered,” I said sarcastically to cover up how genuinely flattered I was.
Fay went into Deenie’s office. As I waited for her in the hallway, Eddie Applebaum came over and leaned against the wall next to me. “Deenie meeting?” he said sympathetically.
“Nope.” I said it curtly, without even looking at him. Then I felt bad. I didn’t want to get drawn into a conversation with him, but I also didn’t want to be an asshole. “What about you?” I asked. “Are you here to see Deenie?”
“Nah. I missed Meeting this morning, so I have to report to Trudy.” Skip and Trudy’s office was right next to Deenie’s.
I made a noncommittal noise. Even though it didn’t affect me at all, I was irritated by Eddie’s inability to get to school on time. He made all of us public school transfer kids look bad. People would be nicer to him, I thought resentfully, if he would just get his shit together.
Fay stepped out. I was surprised. She couldn’t have been in there for more than five minutes. My own Deenie meeting had lasted much longer.
“Christ,” said Fay. “I need a Frappuccino after that.” She was already walking down the hall. I had to trot to catch up with her.
Eddie called out, “How was your Deenie meeting?” When he yelled, his voice came out extra squeaky, especially on the first syllable of Deenie.
As we turned the corner, Fay coughed into her hand while muttering “homosexual.”
We were far enough away from Eddie that I don’t think he heard us. At least I hope he didn’t. Or if he heard, I hope he understood that this wasn’t an insult, at least not in the way it would be an insult coming from anyone else. Anyway, I laughed really hard.
That was the closest Fay and I had ever come to having a conversation about our college plans, which is why I sort of panicked on that late September day when Jimmy Frye brought up the subject at Joe Junior. He was treading into forbidden territory.
Fay didn’t know it then, because I hadn’t told her, but I’d already made up my mind to apply early decision to Yale. The year before, my mom and I had taken a tour of the Yale campus, and I’d fallen in love with it at first sight. The application was due the first week of November, and I would hear back from them about a month later. If I got in, it was binding: I’d have to go to Yale, no backsies.
If you’d asked me at the time, I would have said I was following Fay’s lead by keeping this a secret. After that Deenie meeting, she never brought up college, so I never did either. I got the sense that the whole topic made her uncomfortable.
And, okay, there was another reason.
Whatever’s yours is mine.
If Fay knew I was applying to Yale, she might apply to Yale too. If Yale had to choose between the two of us, they were obviously going to go with smart, sophisticated, Film Comment–reading, Sontag-quoting Fay. And I wanted to get into Yale so fucking bad. I wanted this one thing just for myself.
After we looked at the cast list, we walked together to her dad’s apartment. “I’m seriously so happy you got Iago,” I said, and I meant it. She’d wanted it more than I had. I was excited to play Emilia. “You’re gonna be amazing in the role.”
But Fay wasn’t as happy as I expected her to be. Actually, she seemed troubled. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wish we were sharing it.”