“But enough about me!” she says, throwing a glance at her phone, placed on the table, clock showing. “Henri Haltiwanger. Bright, Haitian American, child of immigrants, what else?”
I Smile.
And we’re off. I tell her about the debate team, our almost-victory last year, about the opportunity of attending a school like FATE, which could have easily gone to a thousand other kids. I tell her about how I begged Mr. Vu, my academic adviser, to set up a meeting with her based on her profile because her play about the Diaspora was so incredible. That part isn’t BS.
“I loved your play,” I tell her emphatically. “My parents moved here from Haiti in their twenties. Their extended families are around the world now. The only relative I know is my dad’s brother Lion. But they’re not close.”
Her eyes are on me with unprecedented intensity, as if the loud hurricane playwright of the past twenty minutes had merely been a role and now we’re on to the real thing.
“So. Why Columbia?”
I had prepared for this part. I wrote an application essay answering this exact question, for Pete’s sake. I go through all the reasons I had thought up in the numerous essay drafts. Columbia’s Core Curriculum, which touches on Art History and Music Humanities, making sure that all the students, regardless of their majors, share some unified body of knowledge.
I list the interesting majors, the teachers, the fact that the college doesn’t float above the city but is a part of it with an active alumni network of those who graduate and then stay put in New York, enriching the community.
And when I’m done, after pausing at the right parts, passionately rambling at others, and meaning it all too, Donielle Kempf is still looking at me, only now it’s with a slight, almost confused frown.
That was . . . not the response I was expecting.
“Well,” she eventually says. “That’s all great, Henri. But . . . anyone could have told me that. Why Columbia—for you?”
What the fresh hell? I wasn’t expecting her to be on her feet clapping—okay fine, maybe a little bit—but . . . this?
“Is there anything else I should know?” She leans forward like she’s expecting something specific and . . .
I let out a nervous chuckle.
“I’m a Scorpio on the cusp of Sagittarius?”
She returns my awkward laugh before glancing at her phone again. Dumb, Henri, real dumb. My brain feels like a hallway with a bunch of locked doors I keep trying to rattle open, but nothing reveals itself.
“Seriously, Henri—why Columbia? You can get a great education in a hundred other places. Why this school?”
My mind spins through a hundred answers, but nothing sounds right. Because my dad wants it more than anything? Because I hear his voice lilt when he says Columbia? Because I saw his face that day they asked us to leave, and I’ll never forget it?
“I . . . ,” I stammer. I take a breath. “When I was younger, five or six, Dad and Ma would sometimes take me here in the summer. My mom would read a book under a tree or on the Lowe steps while I fired up the old Game Boy 3DS. I’m not sure what Dad did. I think he just enjoyed watching the people. We couldn’t go on vacation, but this campus was a little green oasis right here in the city with way fewer tourist crowds than in Central Park.”
“That’s beautiful,” Donielle tells me.
I take a breath. Okay. Getting back on track. “It was. But it stopped when campus security started to crack down on ‘urban loitering.’ They didn’t come out and say it, but the message was clear—we didn’t belong here.”
There’s another SAT word: loiter. To stand or wait around idly without apparent purpose. Well, that encounter was all it took to give me a purpose.
“Going to Columbia has meant everything since then. My dad’s a super in Manhattan, and I end up at Columbia. It’s his American Dream.”
The corners of her lips tick up. She narrows her eyes just the tiniest bit.
“‘It’s his American Dream,’” she repeats.
“I mean, that’s the American Dream, right?”
“I’m just noting your phrase, Henri.” Donielle readjusts one of her bright scarves.
“Okay.” What is happening here? I just poured my soul out on the Hungarian Pastry Shop’s sticky-ass floor, and she’s parsing words?
“It’s a beautiful dream. It really is. I’m just asking, is it yours? What’s your dream, Henri?”
My mind cycles through a thousand answers. I don’t have a lot of free time; school keeps us so busy! I run my own business, not that I can tell you about that, since it’s a total fraud! I draw sneaker designs in my notebook when no one’s watching? As if. “Going to Columbia is my dream.”
Donielle looks at me, and if I’m not mistaken, she looks a little sad. “It’s getting late. I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you have a busy day ahead of you.”
“Oh . . . Um, okay.”
Outside the Hungarian Pastry Shop, Donielle shakes my hand. “It was really nice meeting you, Henri. You’ll end up exactly where you’re supposed to be,” she says. “Things have a way of working out.”
I nod and start to walk away, but she opens her mouth, closes it, and then opens it again. Please, please, please say something else, I silently will her.
“You know, Columbia is big and important and lovely. . . .” She waves her hand a bit in the air as if looking for the right word. “But it’s also just thirty-six acres. That’s all the space it occupies, in the grand scheme of things. Thirty-six acres in the world. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“I think I do.” I Smile.
I emphatically do not know.
“Thank you for your time, Donielle. I appreciate it.”
With that, she turns to walk away, leaving me to wonder only one thing.
What the hell just happened?
I ride the train home, barely paying attention to the podcast Ming recommended.
You’ll end up exactly where you’re supposed to be.
She might as well have told me that I smell like Trump University’s annex. This was bad. An upside of being on the debate team is that you develop self-awareness of your oratory performance. The judges’ faces might remain stoic, but you can generally tell when a point lands or when the audience is collectively shaking its head in disagreement. Donielle might have been polite, but this was, by all accounts, really bad.
Where did I go wrong?
I need to go online and check the college boards for exactly how much sway an underwhelming interview has on your overall profile.
I need to send an email to Mr. Vu and beg him to find me another local Columbia alum to interview with as soon as possible.
I need Dad to be fully passed out in front of some international soccer game because I don’t think I can handle a “So, how did it go?” conversation right now.
I exit the subway and walk to the Wyatt. I’ve been to enough nice buildings around the city to know that our lobby is fairly unimpressive by comparison. There are no fluffy couches, artificial fireplaces, or impossibly high ceilings like in Ming’s building. The Wyatt’s ground floor is clean, well lit, with the left wall comprised of three rows of brass mailboxes that Dad polishes once a month.