Page 60 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“They basically remind you there are only, like, ten schools worth going to, and statistically how unlikely it is you’ll get in, and if you don’t get in, how you might as well just kill yourself. They get bonuses for making students cry,” Harper said.
“It’s not that bad,” Dalton said. “They help you strategize. You know, what extracurricular might round you out, or what classes you should take to stand out as an applicant.”
“They brought in someone from the admissions office at Harvard last year to speak,” Crosby said, flicking Drew playfully on the knee. Somehow, Drew had finagled her way into sitting next to him and Ren was glaring at her from across the aisle.
“I’m feeling kind of carsick,” I told Leo, who was sitting next to me. “I think I’ll go lie down in the back and try and take a nap.”
“Feel better,” he said.
I found an empty bench at the back of the bus and lay down, using my messenger bag as a pillow. But first, I got out the old 1990–1991 Knollwood Augustus Prep yearbook I had stolen from the library the other day. After the conversations I’d had with Claire and Uncle Hank, I’d gotten to thinking about my father. There must have been snippets of his time there, glimpses of who he had been when he was my age.
I cracked open the hard cover of the book, which was in classic Knollwood colors: navy blue and gold. The pages were slick and glossy inside. The first one was an “In Memoriam” page for a student who had passed away.
Jake Griffin
July 8, 1973–December 21, 1990
Beloved son, brother, friend, and an invaluable member of the Knollwood Augustus Prep family.
It didn’t say how Jake had passed away. (Was it some sort of chronic illness? A car accident? Or something more sinister, like suicide?) There was a large school portrait of Jake in the middle of the page. He was wearing the Knollwood school blazer and tie. He had been a handsome kid, with dark hair and kind features. His wide smile seemed genuine and infectious.
Around the portrait was a collage of pictures of Jake at Knollwood—Jake presiding over the student council, gavel poised to signal the beginning of a session; Jake standing on a foldout chair to hang streamers for the homecoming dance; Jake extended in the air, racket raised over his head as he delivered the winning serve at a tennis tournament. I was about to turn the page when I noticed it—a picture of Jake on Healy Quad, his arm slung over the shoulder of another boy. Beneath the picture was a caption: Jake Griffin and Alistair Calloway. I almost hadn’t recognized the seventeen-year-old version of my father standing next to him, but when I really looked at him, I could pick out his familiar features—the blond hair, cut short; his blue eyes; his long forehead and sharp chin. Yes, that was my father.
My father often talked about his time at Knollwood and the friends that he had made there; he remained close with many of them. They were the people he golfed with on Sunday, the families we dined with in the summer on Martha’s Vineyard—even, occasionally, the people we vacationed with. But he had never mentioned Jake Griffin. That wasn’t a name I recognized. And yet, here the two of them were, arms around each other, beaming at the camera.
But perhaps it wasn’t that strange that my father had never mentioned Jake. Maybe they weren’t as close as the picture suggested, or perhaps they were close, and the memory of Jake was painful, so my father preferred not to bring it up.
I turned the page. The senior portraits came next, in alphabetical order. I quickly found my father’s portrait near the front. Alistair Calloway. He had been voted “Best All-Around” by his classmates. His quote was from an unknown source: “Never look behind. What’s done is done. Be wise and look ahead.”
Flipping through the pages, it was easy to see the kind of boy my father had been: good-looking and well liked, smart and athletic. Captain of the tennis team, head of crew, president of the senior class, valedictorian. But then again, what other story was a yearbook supposed to tell but the happy one, the one that everyone wanted to remember?
One of the great joys of Camp Wallaby—and there were many, including the cabins that lacked A/C, and the intensive nonstop team-building exercises in which everyone jockeyed to be the leader, and the forced fireside chats in which students passive-aggressively complained about other students’ passive-aggressiveness—was the fact that we were forbidden to bring our cell phones or any other technology that would connect us to the outside world. So, not only was I cut off from hearing about any progress my uncle Teddy may or may not have made into tracking down the PI’s files on my mother’s case, but I was also cut off from talking to Greyson, the only person who had an inkling of the mind-fuck I was going through on a daily basis.
At the moment, the group of twelve I had randomly been assigned to was at the volleyball court. Our counselor, Kirk, was a twentysomething who was overly enthusiastic about his lot in life.
“Okay,” Kirk sang, clapping his hands together. “This afternoon, we’re gonna play some volleyball. I’m going to assign two team leaders. These are two people who really excelled at trust falls this morning.”
I raised my hand to ask how it was possible to distinguish oneself at something as passive as falling, but Dalton was standing in front of me, and his height blocked Kirk’s view of my hand.
“Sheila and Zachery, come on up here and pick your teams,” Kirk said. “And let’s give them all a hand for their performances this morning.”
I slow-clapped while others around me applauded.
“Let’s hear it for gravity,” I said. “To be honest, it did most of the work.”
Dalton turned his head and chuckled at me. At least I amused someone.
“I’ll take Crosby,” Sheila said.
Crosby jogged past me to stand next to Sheila on her side of the net. They high-fived each other.
Zachery called Dalton. Sheila called Harper Cartwright. When it was Zachery’s turn, Dalton leaned down and whispered something in his ear.
“Come on, man,” Zachery whined. But still, he raised his hand and pointed at me. “We’ll take Charlie.”
I couldn’t blame Zachery for his reluctance in choosing me. I had never been into sports, really. I just never got the appeal of sweating, or shortness of breath, or the way it made your body ache. It had never been fun to me, and I had never been particularly well coordinated.
“All right, Calloway,” Dalton said as I made my way up to them. He raised both hands above his head in the air and I had to raise myself onto my tiptoes to reach them.
