1.
Gardner Academy used to be one of the most prestigious private schools in New England, if not the whole of the United States. Its list of esteemed alumni included presidents, senators, judges, and winners of prizes and fellowships from MacArthur to Nobel. For years, acceptance to Gardner meant near-guaranteed admission to the Ivy League school of your choice, as long as your parents could pay the massive tuition checks.
But place a bunch of kids under the not-particularly-watchful eyes of badly vetted, overpaid teachers and coaches, and before you can say “Penn State,” you’ll have exactly the scandal you’d expect. The Boston Globe broke the story of how Gardner’s administrators covered up rampant sexual abuse in both its academic and athletic programs, and the school seemed doomed to go under.
Thanks to its enormous endowment, though, Gardner had time to weather the crisis and strategize. How could it regain the people’s trust while remaining solvent, let alone profitable? One option was to focus on the money, accepting any students who could pay, no matter the history of inappropriate behavior or limited evidence of literacy. This would keep the doors open, but the school would hardly be minting an impressive alumni class.
Another option was to emphasize academics, seeking out the best and brightest students who would never otherwise consider private school and offering them full scholarships, burnishing Gardner’s reputation as a feeder school for the finest universities. It could create a rigorous, goal-oriented curriculum for future leaders of America, whether in politics or business, making classes available that were rarely offered even at the best of its competitors. Not only would it salvage its mission to educate the most promising young minds, it would be serving a public-interest function, satisfying the clamoring voices of alums who wanted to be proud of their school again.
Gardner, in its infinite wisdom, chose to do both.
Enter yours truly, Amina Hareli, scholarship student. I did not want to be here, and yet here I was, sitting on a mattress so thin I could feel the springs under my butt, watching my mom unpacking my clothes as she valiantly tried to shake out the inevitable wrinkles that had formed when I stuffed everything I owned into garbage bags. I wasn’t about to do a whole bunch of fancy folding to go someplace against my will.
“I know you’re not going to just sit there and watch your mother do all the work,” Dad said, giving me a dark-eyed glare that I gave right back. He was better at stare-downs than I was, so I got off the crappy bed and began throwing clothes into random drawers. My little sister, Shana, took my place on the bed, only instead of sitting she jumped up and down like she was on a trampoline. The springs squeaked. I would never be able to sleep here. I was having enough trouble sleeping at home.
“Minnie, honey, you could fold the clothes one time,” Mom said.
“Don’t call me that,” I said, as if by reflex. She’d named me after her grandmother Minnie, but while she’d been kind enough to recognize that Minnie was a terrible name, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from using it as a nickname. “Amina” wasn’t awful; it made me the only kid in Hebrew school with the same name in both Hebrew and English, so that was a plus.
“I’m just saying that if you set up the room nicely at the beginning, it will be easier for you to keep it clean.” Mom was a neat freak. Everything in our house had a place, and she’d tried desperately to make me into someone who lived that kind of orderly life. She even looked the part, with her tailored clothes and smooth mask of makeup and sleek dark cap of hair. I was more like my dad, all dark messy frizzed-out curls and shirts left untucked and mismatched socks. His study and my bedroom even looked alike, piles of papers and books everywhere, tucked away behind closed doors so Mom didn’t have to see how she’d failed in molding us to her will. I wouldn’t have to worry about that now, I supposed, though that might depend on my roommate.
“Shana, stop jumping so I can make the bed,” Mom said. “Min, give me a hand.”
I’d trained myself to live with “Min,” if only to keep the peace. I grabbed two corners of the extra-long-twin white jersey sheets we’d bought on sale at Target and acted like I cared about the difference between the fitted and cover sheets, as if this bed would ever get made again once my family left. Once we’d tucked the sheets in so tightly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to undo them, Mom draped a brightly colored patchwork comforter on top. She’d bought it for me as a present, which is to say it was the complete opposite of what I would have picked for myself. At least it was reversible, so I could flip it over as soon as she was gone and just deal with the bland pink underside. It would still be awful, though, as would all the matching stuff she’d bought to go with it: throw pillows, a desk lamp, a new journal.
“I trust you’re going to adjust your attitude when you’re on your own.” Dad sat at the bare wooden desk, setting up the laptop the school had provided. I’d never had my own computer before. “I understand you want us to see you sulk to punish us, but you should at least pretend to be open-minded when it’s just you. You’ll have a much easier go of it.”
What if I didn’t want to have an easy go of it? I was tempted to ask, but I figured they knew that already. Last year had been a nightmare, and yet I’d made it very clear that I wanted to deal with my issues at home, not at some random school I’d never even seen before. We’d been over this a million times, and yet somehow I’d still landed here. I was fine with keeping the almost-silent sulking going for a while.
“Don’t ignore your father,” Mom said. Ugh, they were such a unit. Intellectually I knew it was better to have parents who were still together and who still got along, even loved each other, but seriously, did they have to agree about everything? Couldn’t they have debated this decision, for example, and left open the possibility that one of them might listen to my arguments for why I should have been allowed to stay home? Wouldn’t they want the family to be together if the world as we knew it was about to end?
“I will improve my attitude,” I said, fighting the urge to use a robot voice. “In fact, I’m going to go to a pre-orientation thing. Some sort of game night. It starts in about an hour and I should probably get ready, so maybe it’s time for you to go.”
Mom and Dad gave each other one of those looks that I knew meant they were trying to decide whether to yell at me for trying to kick them out, or to act like they believed I was going to give Gardner a shot. “We do have three or four hours’ drive ahead of us,” Mom said. My hometown, Brooksby, was in the northern suburbs of Boston, a couple of hundred miles away from Gardner, which was located in nowheresville, Vermont.
“Can we stop for ice cream?” Shana asked. “Please please please?”
Oh, to be ten again, to have your biggest worry be access to sugar and not the impending collapse of civilized society. I was still mad enough at my parents to think I wouldn’t miss them, but I really would miss Shana. They’d better get her ice cream.
In the hour before Game Night began, I loosened the sheets, flipped the comforter, organized my clothes (without folding them—I wasn’t ready to go that far), and briefly met my roommate, Brianna, who looked me up and down, checked out my Target sheets, sniffed, and asked if she could use the extra closet space. I nodded, and she ignored me until it was time for me to leave. I hadn’t even been sure I’d meant it when I told my parents I would go, but the thought of spending the night in a room with Brianna proved worse than the thought of meeting some new people, which honestly didn’t sound all that bad. And I liked games.