The ground is wet and hard under my hands and I push myself up to stand, taking one last look at what Rachel said.
It’s all so fucked up. Can we talk?
—
The first time I spoke to Rachel I thought it was unfair that she had to breathe the same air as me. She was striking, with cheekbones too high for someone who wore a high school uniform every day and eyes that were so dark you could barely see her pupils. She always wore her hair in soft waves that waterfalled down her back. When I got a haircut that year, I showed the stylist her class picture as inspiration. But my mane was never as smooth, always a little too unruly.
She found me in the library one day in early October of freshman year, withThe Odysseyopen in front of me. I tapped my fist against the desk, hoping that by some miracle I would absorb the final two hundred pages in thirty minutes flat before our midterm. My GPA was about to take a nosedive and for the first time, I could feel my scholarship slipping away, everything spiraling out of my control.
I had planned to stay up until 3 a.m. to cram, but I fell asleep with the thick book splayed out on my chest and all the lights still on. I woke up in a panic when my regular alarm sounded at 6:07. It took a Herculean effort on my part not to break into sobs right there in the stacks.
“You look like shit,” Rachel said. She rested her hands on the book and leaned down low so I could see the top of her cleavage peeking out over a lacy black bra. “Beaumont?” she asked.
I nodded. A ball sat in my throat. I swallowed hard.
“You know Adam, right? You’re Shaila’s friend?”
I nodded again.
“Cool.” Rachel disappeared and my face grew hot, mortified that she would run to Adam to tell him how awkward and gross I was. What loser screwed up this epically? A minute passed and then another, and then Rachel was standing in front of me, holding out two pieces of paper. “Here,” she said. “It’s a pattern. First answer’s A. Second’s B. Third’s C. Rinse and repeat. You get the picture. He’s just using Mrs. Mullen’s test from last year. And the year before that. She never changes it.”
“What?” I whispered, incredulous that she justhadthe answers.
Rachel smiled. “Trust me. Look it over, then destroy this. If anyone catches you with it, we’re done for, got it?” I thought about how disappointed Mom and Dad would be if I got caught cheating, if I was suspended or worse. How would I be able to live with myself? But then I pictured failing the test, losing my ride to Gold Coast Prep and all the college connections and the status and... the most precious pieces of my life would be gone. My chest pounded as I grappled with what I was about to do. I took the papers in my shaking hands.
“You owe me one,” Rachel said with a wink before she skipped away, her hips swinging with every step.
The next week, when Mr. Beaumont dropped a graded paper back on my desk, he stabbed at the red numbers proclaiming 98. “Well done, Jill.” I had purposely messed up one answer to throw him off my trail. I should have been elated, but instead I couldn’t feel a thing. I stuffed the exam way down into my backpack and tried to forget about it, about what I had done.
Rachel was right, though. I would pay her back throughout that year with various pops, like picking up her favorite donutsfrom Diane’s and researching her history term paper on the Vietnam War. I even steamed her prom dress so she could pose for perfect pictures with Adam.
It would be months before I knew the full scope of the Player Files, how there were only straight-up answer keys for small tests like this one. It would be the only one I ever used.
The real power lay in the gray areas, where former Players passed down access to an elite and explicit network of tips, like which local doctors would write you a note proving you needed extra time on standardized tests (Robert and Marla employed that one), and which college departments were partial to Players (a grad from the early aughts now works at Yale’s art program; Quentin has been emailing with him regularly for months). There was even a script on how to ace a case study given by the dean of admissions at Wharton (Henry freaked when he found it).
If Gold Coast Prep’s whole schtick was to set you up for life, the Player Files took it one step further. They made you untouchable.
We didn’t get the password to the app that housed them all until we were fully initiated, but throughout freshman year, we got flashes of its muscle, like when a senior felt pity toward us.
Shaila never touched the app. She didn’t need it.
When I got that English exam back, Shaila craned her neck to see my score. She smirked in approval. “Next time maybe you’ll get 100.” She gritted her teeth and pulled at a stray cuticle between her thumb and her forefinger. “Just don’t go beating me,” she said. “First in class ismyshit.”
I managed a smile and waited for her to break into giggles, but she held my gaze in a frigid standoff before turning away completely.
It was obvious that Shay was smart. She’d been in honors classes since middle school, and the homework packets that took me days took her just a few hours. English was her favorite. She often skipped study hall to go to Mr. Beaumont’s office hours, though she called him “Beau” for short. He was assigning her Shakespeare on the side to prepare for the SAT Subject Test, she said. She’d emerge from his classroom with weathered, worn copies ofThe TempestandKing Learand a small, secret smile.
After a particularly grueling pop where we had to stand in the ocean in November, wearing only bikinis, while singing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” for an hour, I asked Shay why she wanted to be a Player, why go through with all the hard stuff if she wasn’t going to reap the real rewards. She wrapped a terry towel around her body and looked at me with a baffled expression and quivering lips that had turned a pale shade of blue.
“It’s the most fun we’ll ever have,” she said.
She died with a perfect GPA.
Shaila was destined for Harvard. It was basically in her blood. Mrs. and Mr. Arnold had met right there on Harvard Yard. I’d heard the story just once from Mrs. Arnold after she downed a few martinis on Shaila’s fourteenth birthday.
Shaila’s mom, formerly known as Emily Araskog, was a sweet girl who had moved to Cambridge to attend Harvard from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where she had lived her entire life in a penthouse that overlooked Central Park. She’d grown up with an elevator operator who wore white gloves and a smart gray uniform, complete with a little hat that he tipped to her when she walked through the ornate wrought-iron doors.
Old money, Mom had whispered to Dad when she metMrs. Arnold.A grade-A WASP. And it was true. The Araskogs’ lineage dated back to the Liberty Bell, Mrs. Arnold said.
