The man from Harvard wore a skinny tie and owlish glasses over a kind face. The only thing severe was his brow, which crinkled judgmentally regardless of what the rest of his face was doing. He was young, surprisingly chipper, red cheeked and smooth skinned.
“Well, hello, Charlie,” he said.
Mr. Burklander stood behind him, hands on his haunches. Principal Morrissey stood on the other side, against her bookcase, arms folded.
Charlie remembered her nameplate in the Game:
DRAGON LADY.
The man from Harvard opened his hands, palms up, as if to say: What now?
“We’re very interested in you, Charlie. Please understand, this is no guarantee of admission. There’s a long process, and your grades will play a role, as will your SAT score, your AP scores, your extracurricular activities. We’ll be particularly interested in how your senior year plays out, given the bumps in the road you’ve experienced. You’re probably too late for early admissions, but you’re right on time for regular rolling applications.”
The man paused, took stock of the room, reset himself.
“The purpose of this meeting, Charlie, is to let you know that Harvard isn’t about one thing. We don’t consider just one dimension of a person. We like to say we’re looking for well-rounded students or well-lopsided students. And really, there are so many smart applicants with good scores—I like to say it’s a good thing I don’t have to apply now—so we’re really looking for something more. Call it character, if you want, or life experience. It’s diversity, actually. A diversity of viewpoints, of backgrounds. You have that, Charlie. You’ve seen things most students your age can’t understand. I understand you like computers.”
Charlie almost laughed out loud. “I do.”
“You program?”
“Yes. C++, Python, Java, PHP.”
“Whoa, you’re ahead of me.” The man smiled not unkindly. “You know Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard.”
“Before he dropped out.”
“Yes. Same with Bill Gates. We have a quite a good track record for our dropouts. Our graduates do okay, too.”
Charlie nodded.
“I heard about the work you and your friends did in the Tech Lab here. There are a lot of vocational students who are learning important skills because of the technology you set up.”
Charlie felt the guilt of his fight with Vanhi. This was her dream, too. “We did it together. The five of us. My friend Vanhi—”
“You founded the club, no?”
“Sort of. But—”
“And the other things you’ve done. Your work to end truancy courts, freshman year. Impressive.”
“It didn’t work.”
“You hit the brick wall of bureaucracy. Not the school’s.” The man glanced back at Principal Morrissey and Mr. B. “They supported your efforts. But the district would rather keep giving tickets and making money. That won’t be the last time you hit a dead end. I hope you won’t stop trying. Did you know we offer a whole class at the Graduate School of Education on diversionary programs, like the one you proposed?”
“No.”
“Did you know more than eighty percent of our students are from public schools?”
“No.”
“You have a lot of supporters here. They’re not naïve, Charlie. They know you’ve hit a snag. They know you’ve taken it hard. But they see something in you. They wanted me to see it, too. I’m the regional liaison to the admissions office. I don’t say yes or no. I scout. I fill in the gaps in the paper admissions. What I want you to know, what I think you understand because you wanted to give truancy defendants a second chance before scarring their permanent records, is that nothing is set in stone. There has to be room for salvation. Otherwise, why would anyone change? So I guess my question to you, Charlie, is this: What do you want?”
Charlie glanced around the room. Vanhi was on his mind. His dad was on his mind—Arthur had picked up the pieces of his life and found something new. Couldn’t Charlie do the same? Wasn’t it time to stop punishing himself? He thought about his mother, watching from above, from a real heaven (I wish!) or a digital one. This was a portal in time suddenly open in front of him. He could step back through it and become the person he was. Or he could flail ahead as the person he’d become. He had to choose.
He didn’t have time to think. This was the fork in the road. He knew it wouldn’t come again. Charlie locked his eyes with the baby-faced man from Harvard and said with finality:
“I want this.”