Benjy steps into the hallway first, then stops so suddenly Ash and Chloe pile up behind him.
“Jesus wept,” he says.
The entire hallway is crammed with students and white as a blizzard. Every locker, every bulletin board, every classroom door—all plastered with paper. Half the student body is there, passing sheets around and pulling folded pieces out of their locker vents and trampling them underfoot. Every page seems to be covered in different configurations of small, black type.
Overhead, the morning bell goes off, but nobody cares.
Chloe rips a page off the nearest bulletin board.
We can certainly make that arrangement for your son, it says, and as for the amount, $15K seems a bit low. What you’re asking would involve a lot of logistical support on our end to make sure this is done right, and the school doesn’t lose its status as a test center …
“Oh my God,” Georgia says, crowded against her shoulder. “No way. No way. Are these—？”
“Wheeler’s?” Chloe asks. “Is he actually talking about an—？”
“Admissions scam?”
“Isn’t that—？”
“A federal crime? Yeah, uh, I’m pretty sure it is.”
Chloe sets off down the hall in a frenzy, snatching up every page she can.
The papers are copies of emails, hundreds and hundreds of emails between Wheeler and parents of students. Payoffs and bribes and under-the-table deals to boost the scores of kids taking the ACT at Willowgrove.
She knew Mackenzie couldn’t have made a 29.
Now she knows what Wheeler’s been spending hours on in his office after everyone else goes home for the night. And why Wheeler wouldn’t want the police involved after Shara ran away, and why he was so threatened by people trying to dig into his family— Wait.
Was Shara involved?
She grabs another page, and another, skimming as fast as she can.
—balance owed—
—answer key—
—my daughter—
There.
We need to discuss discretion. There’s no need to keep your child looped in if his participation isn’t required. My daughter still has no idea I had Carol raise her final grade last year, and that’s for the best. If they feel they’ve earned this, they’re motivated to keep working hard and stay out of trouble.
She scans back up to the sender to make sure she read what she thinks she did.
It’s from Wheeler, and he’s talking about Shara’s grade in Ms. Rodkey’s class last year. The class in which she edged Chloe out by a single percentage point.
“Holy shit,” Chloe whispers.
He just admitted to having Shara’s grades changed.
Which means Shara is disqualified from—
“I think,” she says, staring at the paper so hard, her vision goes blurry, “I think I won valedictorian.”
* * *
By lunch, every single student at Willowgrove has at least one page of Principal Wheeler’s emails, which definitively prove that he conspired with the richest parents at Willowgrove to scam their kids into college in exchange for a lot of money and a higher ACT score average to lure in new students.
Dixon, whose dad paid at least $30,000 total to have a proctor look the other way while an Auburn senior with a fake ID took the test under Dixon’s name, has ghosted completely. Mackenzie was spotted melting down in the bathroom, swearing to everyone within earshot that she had no idea her parents paid to have her answers switched with someone else’s. Rumor has it Emma Grace told her that if she wanted people to believe things she says, she shouldn’t have lied about giving her best friend’s crush a handjob at her birthday party.
And Shara—Shara never shows up to school at all. Chloe imagines her in the Wheeler mansion, handing her mom a cucumber water and a Xanax while they meet with the family attorney.
Could she really not have known?
At lunch, Ash asks, “Who do you think did it?”
The choir room is a lot more full than usual, since Georgia invited Summer and Benjy invited Ace, and Ash has somehow convinced Jake and April to stop by and watch them play Breath of the Wild on the Switch they snuck into school. On the top row of the risers, Rory and Smith are having an animated discussion about either poetry or Dragon Ball Z—it’s impossible to tell.
“My money’s on Brooklyn Bennett,” Benjy says. “Total Brooklyn move. Plus, she has means and motive.”
“Nah, it was that kid with the tube socks,” Summer says. “The walking YouTube algorithm. He’s obsessed with ACT scores and loves conspiracy theories.”