In the movies, they cart away the killer in handcuffs, shoving him into a police car whose blinding lights throw swirls of blue and red onto the wan faces of the shocked partygoers. It’s in slow motion, with a dramatic swell of music as the camera cuts to the heroine, who survived the fight, shaken and bloody but triumphant. Justice is served. Everything is going to be okay.
That’s not how it goes in real life. Not when the rich and privileged kill and get caught.
Mr. St. Clair hires Tyler the best defense lawyer money can buy, the kind who has all sorts of connections with respected journalists and rags alike. The best defense is a good offense.
Stories smearing Emma’s character begin to appear immediately.
She cheated and backstabbed her way to the top of the class.
She stole her best friend’s spot at Harvard by sleeping with the college counselor.
She ran a test scam for years.
Emma Russo was a common criminal.
From there, it snowballs and explodes into an international media frenzy. The College Board and ACT void the scores of everyone involved in the scam and launch an investigation. Claflin’s name is dragged through the mud, first for hiring a predator like Tipton and then for producing such students and allowing the scheme to take place on its grounds. And, you know, there’s the murder and all that.
The school opens an inquiry before winter break is even over, and the administration comes to a conclusion swiftly. It was my name that was used over and over again to print the fake IDs. The files themselves are wiped, but the digital traces remain. I was her roommate, one of the notorious Ivies. There is no proof that I wasn’t involved.
I am informed of my expulsion by telephone one day before I’m due to return to campus. My things will be packed up for me and shipped to my home in Maryland, at Claflin’s expense. The expulsion isn’t official, don’t worry; it won’t be on my transcripts. I’m simply not welcome to return. Claflin wouldn’t want to invite a lawsuit. Not that Mom and I could afford the lawyer.
My only consolation is that none of this is public. When the SAT cheating story is published by Slate, I am spared by the truth. I had nothing to do with it. But tell that to Harvard, which rescinds my early-decision acceptance in February. Or to the rest of my RD schools, which in April regret to inform me they are unable to offer me admission to the class of 2025. I don’t know what Claflin did or didn’t tell any of them, but based on the slew of rejections, it can’t be good. Claflin probably didn’t have to say anything at all, truth be told. My sudden transfer to a public school in Maryland to finish out senior year spoke loudly enough.
I think Avery, Margot, and Sierra might have checked in on me had it not been for the Atlantic article that dropped in late January.
They’d Kill to Get In, the headline read over a pixelated image of Tyler. And at the end of the third paragraph: And then, there are the Ivies.
It wasn’t talking about the schools.
My friends and I are exposed in ten thousand scintillating words to an audience of millions. Along with Tyler, we are endemic of the sociopathy running through an entire generation, obsessed with elite college admissions. That article goes on to win a Peabody. Heiress Avery Montfort, media mogul’s daughter Sierra Watson, budding Broadway hopeful Margot Kim, and, of course, villainous victim Emma Russo are described in painstaking detail. And me?
Russo’s roommate, a scholarship student from the Mid-Atlantic states, discovered her body one pitch-dark, frosty morning in December.
That was all I got. A footnote in Emma’s murder. It was the double-edged sword of it all. Publicly, I am too insignificant for the Ivies to claim, but privately, I was Claflin’s perfect scapegoat.
In the end, I take a gap year. I graduate from public high school on time and, to my credit, with barely a dip in my GPA. But I have to start all over again on college applications in the fall. There are no Claflin recommendations, no rowing achievements to bolster my chances. Every school I applied to before is burned, given my complete slate of “mysterious” rejections. I aim for schools where Claflin doesn’t have board members, alumni, undue influence. It’s a short list.
And then, one year and three months after I found Emma’s lifeless body in a rowing pool, in between my shifts of serving up caramel macchiatos at Starbucks and sweeping stale popcorn at the local movie theater, the subpoena for Tyler’s trial arrives. Which is how I find myself in courtroom number 204, back aching from the punishing wooden benches, once again feet away from Emma’s killer. Tyler is smug as shit in a swank suit, with a bloated defense team straight out of a Hollywood drama. I spy multiple cameras throughout the courtroom, capturing everything for the HBO documentary. Because of course there will be a documentary. I’ve been fastidiously avoiding emails and calls to participate.
Right now both the cameras and I are laser focused on the current witness, a girl I used to consider one of my closest friends.
“I told Emma to pound sand when she asked me to join her little operation,” Sierra answers calmly. Tyler’s defense team is slick and cocksure, but they’re dealing with an Ivy. “She wanted to double her business with the girls, since the SAT was easy for me. Sixteen hundred on my first try. Anyway, I didn’t need the money, and I wasn’t about to let a bunch of privileged white kids benefit from my success.” Sierra pulls a cluster of braids over her shoulder, fiddles with them. The only sign she’s nervous.
“Why were you friends with a group of girls whose sole goal was to sabotage others in order to get into the Ivy League? Surely you didn’t need them, with your grades and that SAT score.” The lawyer has asked the question I’ve been burning with for too long.
Sierra sniffs, gives a microshrug. “I knew their secrets, and they knew mine. It was mutually assured destruction. Avery, Emma, and Margot made that clear. Keep your enemies close.”
I cringe at the line, Sierra’s most memorable from the Dateline special on the Ivies. I wonder if the PR specialist she hired wrote it for her.
“Secrets like Miss Russo having an affair with Mr. Tipton?”
Sierra smarts. “I never held that against Emma.”
“Did you hold it against Mr. Tipton?”
“I didn’t blackmail Mr. Tipton, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Objection,” opposing counsel calls out.
“I’ll move on,” Tyler’s lawyer responds.
But I don’t move on. I always assumed Sierra was blackmailing Tipton. She cut the video feeds. Who else would have had access? And then it hits me like a thunderclap. Paul. Security had access to the cameras, and he was on the night shift. He would’ve seen Tipton and Emma hook up all the time. Instead of reporting the abuse of power, he did nothing. Boys will be boys. But in doing so, he handed the defense a healthy dose of reasonable doubt.