Chapter 3

The English assignment was a comparative analysis of two texts — their choice of texts, which Ms. Parello always said because she believed student autonomy produced better writing, and which most of the class interpreted as an invitation to compare two things they already liked and had already formed opinions about. Sports essays. Song lyrics. Movie reviews set against each other like prizefighters.

Soo Yee had chosen the Harvard admissions office’s publicly stated evaluation criteria and the actual score distribution data from the PACER documents. She was three pages into a line-by-line analysis of where the stated criteria and the documented outcomes diverged when Ms. Parello stopped beside her desk during the work period and looked at her screen.

Soo Yee became aware of the pause the way she became aware of most things — not because she had been watching for it but because her peripheral processing flagged a change in the ambient pattern of the room. She looked up.

Ms. Parello was a tall woman in her forties with reading glasses she kept pushing up her nose and the slightly overextended patience of someone who genuinely loved literature and had made a separate peace with the fact that most fifteen-year-olds did not. She was looking at Soo Yee’s screen with an expression that moved through several stages in the span of about four seconds.

First: the automatic assumption that whatever a student was doing during a work period that was not the assignment was probably Instagram or a group chat.

Then: the recognition that what was on the screen was a dense column of numerical data alongside a block of legal text.

Then: something more careful. She leaned slightly forward. Read a few lines. Looked at the notebook beside the laptop, the columns of names and scores, the margin calculations.

Then she straightened up and said, “Can I see you in the hall for a moment?”

The class registered this with the particular attention students paid to anything that interrupted the ambient routine of a work period. Soo Yee closed the laptop, which was habit, and followed Ms. Parello to the hall.

The door closed behind them. In the classroom behind the small rectangular window the class went back to their screens.

“What are you working on?” Ms. Parello asked. Not accusatory. Genuinely asking.

“A comparative analysis,” Soo Yee said. “Stated criteria versus documented outcomes. Harvard admissions.”

“For the assignment.”

“It fits the parameters. Two texts, substantive comparison, argument supported by evidence.”

Ms. Parello looked at her for a moment. Soo Yee was used to this particular pause — adults recalibrating the gap between what she looked like and what had just come out of her mouth. She was four foot eight and weighed ninety-one pounds and had a face that people described as sweet, which she understood was a function of her bone structure and not an assessment of her character.