“Genie,” Anna said as she bustled into the room. “So sorry, dear. Come in, come in, we’re not late yet.”
I sighed and stood up. The decor in the room always made me look more like a skyscraper than usual. I glanced down at the other girl. She made a cowed squeak, waved politely to Anna, and then scurried away.
Anna Barinov had never reacted that way to me, not even the first day we met. She was a certain kind of unflappable, a scion of old money who had forged a successful small business of her own. Insured against disaster at either end of the economic spectrum. I envied that.
I chose her from the kajillions of admissions consultants in the area because out of the ones I could afford, she had the best background. Lengthy stints as an admissions officer for several top-tier universities decorated her resume. She knew better than anyone what colleges looked for in applicants, because she had done the looking herself. Anna would provide valuable feedback as to how I could present myself as a better candidate.
That’s what my Western sensibilities believed. The Chinese running through my veins said come on. COME ONNNN.
All those years working for the Ivy League had to have meant she’d stockpiled a nuclear arsenal of inside connections. Friends back in Cambridge and New Haven. People she could drop hints to over lunch about this one really impressive young lady she’d crossed paths with.
If that idea sounded corrupt, it was. It was guanxi—exerting social influence to get the outcome you needed. The grease in the gears of Asian culture. The need for networking was why so many overseas students crashed like waves against the doors of American universities in the first place—so they could make powerful, long-lasting connections.
Granted, I had little reason to believe Anna operated in this manner. But she had the power to. I told myself that maybe once I impressed her enough, she’d pull out a big red phone that went straight to Princeton.
Anna settled into her chair behind her desk, and then settled again like a falcon adjusting its wings.
“Practice essays,” she said. “I believe we were looking at first revisions.”
“Right,” I said. I fumbled with my bag trying to get at the papers I should have already been holding. I handed them over with only a few extra creases.
Anna began scanning the first of my essays, and already I was starting to get uncomfortable with how fast her eyes were moving. Was she even reading the sentences? Couldn’t she at least pretend not to skim?
And then she was done. A month’s worth of work consumed in thirty seconds. Maybe that was what the supposed time difference between Heaven and Earth felt like.
“Well, given that your initial draft was you listing your statistical performance at various activities, I’d be lying if I said this version wasn’t an improvement.”
“But it’s still not good enough,” I said.
“Genie, we talked about this. You only have one chance to tell the admissions board who you really are.”
“I didn’t do that? I thought I did that.”
“What you’ve done is address the prompts directly, word for word,” she said. “But there has to be an underlying current of your personality. A cohesive story of who you are.”
These conversations always left me frustrated. I didn’t know how to do this kind of doublespeak in real life, and I sure as hell didn’t understand how to do it in six hundred fifty words or fewer.
It didn’t help that this portion of the application infuriated me on a fundamental level. The message that I got from these drills was that I wasn’t a real person. Not by default. My humanity had to be proved with a vague test where “getting it” meant everything and hard work meant nothing. It was the Way, and I couldn’t see past the tortoises and snakes to grasp it.
“I could write about the time I fought a demon,” I said out of sheer frustration.
“A personal demon?” said Anna.
“No, a Chinese demon. An actual monster. Yaoguai, they call them.”
Anna pursed her lips. “I didn’t know those still existed.”
“They do, and they’re back in a big way. The first one I saw was this big ugly SOB who tried to eat me alive. I kicked his ass pretty bad.”
“Hmmm. There could be some traction there.”
This was the first hint of excitement I’d gotten out of Anna. I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on her desk, buoyed by my newfound confidence.
“I’ve fought other demons, too,” I boasted. “Just recently I beat up a bunch of shape-shifting lions. It was easy once I started using my magic powers.”
Anna was so pleased with me she began grinning like a maniac. “Well, there’s your angle. In fact, I’m pretty sure Brown offers a guaranteed full scholarship for their new demon-slaying track.”
“Pfft. We can do better than Brown.” I picked a tropical umbrella drink off her bar cart and sipped it through the crazy straw. “That’s like the caboose of the Ivy train.”
“You’re right, Genie. What you deserve is some kind of joint program along with some merit fellowship grant money to do with as you please. All the grant money in fact. You deserve it all.”
“Aw, let’s leave a few bucks on the table for the other meritorious fellows.”
“You’re so kind, Genie. Genie? Genie?”
“Genie?” Anna said. “Are you okay?”
I blinked. Someone calling me kind was too much to believe, even for a daydream.
“The story of me,” I parroted.
“Try this exercise,” Anna said. “Completely ignore the essay prompts and word limits for now. Write about yourself however you can, with your thoughts, your feelings, some personal anecdotes. Get something down on paper first, and then we’ll refine it from there.
“Who is Genie Lo?” she said, wiggling her fingers. “That’s what the admissions board wants to know.”
There is no Genie Lo, I wanted to shout. Not the kind that lived prettily in air-quotes. There was a sixteen-year-old girl from the Bay who answered to that name, but there wasn’t some sparkling magic nugget underneath that I could dig up, polish, and put on display.
I swallowed my pride and smiled.
“I think I get it,” I said. “I’ll have a better draft next time.”
I left Anna’s completely fried, but that wasn’t anything new. I bought two coffees from the café next door that was too fancy to sell a “large” and chugged one immediately. The other I took into the cab with me.
The taxi was a waste of money, but in my current state I couldn’t handle getting back on a bus. The driver took a different route downtown through the financial district, which was mostly empty on the weekend. We pulled up to a building that only looked like a bank. The second half of today’s trip.
I opened the door to the gym and was immediately greeted by the latest remix of the latest EDM hit. The girl behind the counter who tagged members’ badges with a bar code reader smiled and waved me on by.
It wasn’t crowded, not on a weekend afternoon. The gym was gigantic—an orchard of pulleys and benches—but I found him in the corner wiping chalk off the barbell grips. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned.