The Ivies - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alexa Donne is the author of Brightly Burning and The Stars We Steal, sci-fi romance retellings of classics set in space. A graduate of Boston University, she works in TV marketing and has done pro bono college admissions mentoring since 2014. A true INFJ, in her "free" time she mentors with WriteGirl, organizes the Author Mentor Match program, and runs one of the most popular writing advice channels on YouTube. She lives in Los Angeles with two fluffy ginger cats named after characters from YA literature. Find Alexa online at alexadonne.com and @alexadonne.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One 

Today, half the seniors at Claflin Academy will die. 

On the inside, that is. 

A hundred kids will obsessively refresh their emails and portals so a dancing bulldog, or a tiger, or whatever mascot represents all their hopes and dreams for the future can tell them: 

Welcome to Harvard, class of 2025!

Or:

We regret to inform you that we must crush all your hopes and dreams. . . .

Or at least that’s what we interpret. It’s early decision day, and hearts are going to break.

Then heads will roll.

College admissions is always a heady mix of longing, desperation, and rage. Claflin kids are quick to the rage part. How dare they reject me?! Don’t they know who I am?!

Me? I am nobody. My mother isn’t a senator; my dad isn’t a high-priced corporate lawyer. No one in my family has won a Pulitzer or an Oscar. And I’m certainly no prodigious math or music scholar. Nice SAT word, though, right?

I had to take the test three times, but I finally cracked 1400. I lied about my score, of course, pretending my first try had netted a comfortable 1520, and the other two times were to get a perfect score. The Ivies think I landed a 1550 and called it a day--more than good enough for Penn. My real score is my secret shame.

But at least I know I’m not the only kid at Claflin lying about their application. You can’t doctor test scores--colleges get them directly from the testing companies. But everything else?

My peers lie about the stuff that colleges don’t bother to check. Like the clubs they founded and are president of, awards and honors won, that sort of thing. Last year a Claflin senior, Chelsea Cunningham, copied another girl’s résumé down to the letter. She got away with it because the student she copied was accepted to Dartmouth early decision. So when Chelsea’s app showed up, Princeton didn’t have two applications from two different girls both claiming to be the president of Model UN, and a summer intern for the Boston Globe newspaper, and the recipient of a Scholastic Gold Key Award for Novel Writing. Sloppiness gives colleges a reason to make phone calls to high school counselors. It’s how you get caught.

Or, you know, committing a federal crime. When celebrities and CEOs got caught in that huge college admissions scandal a couple years back, I laughed. The prevailing view at Claflin was restrained relief that none of the academy’s parents were indicted. Students here had long ago learned far more subtle, and legal, ways to cheat. Really, money is the ultimate cheat--rich kids get all sorts of advantage in the admissions process, no lawbreaking required. Anyway, Chelsea got into Princeton on her fake credentials, and the world keeps turning. She’s lucky she wasn’t in our graduating class. The Ivies would have turned Chelsea’s ass in and gotten her expelled for good measure. Karma is a bitch.

I guess I’m a bitch, too. It’s an unfortunate side effect of being an Ivy.

But the Ivies get results. I look across the table at Margot surreptitiously scrolling through the Princeton clubs and organizations page on her phone. She got in three days ago, early action. The elites start sending their ED--early decision--results the second week of December. It’s like blackjack: What day will the decisions for your dream school land? The vast majority drop on December 15, though, so Claflin calls it ED day.

“Because no one eats all day,” Avery jokes almost every time someone says it. And today, the words ED day are slipping past our lips a lot as we all count down the seconds and minutes to 5:00 p.m. ET, when most schools will pull the trigger. Then tonight we’ll let loose at Claflin’s infamous ED day party. Accepted or rejected, every senior gets drunk off their face.

“ED day is so much worse than I thought it would be.” Emma Russo, aka Brown University, shoves her iPhone into her bag so she can’t look anymore. I give her a minute before she pulls it out again.

On cue, Avery makes her tasteless eating disorder joke. Normally, I let her barbs slide, because calling her out isn’t worth it. She always turns it back around on me, like a jellyfish: you step on her and she stings. Today, though, I’m practically vibrating from nerves and could use a diversion.

“I fucking hate that joke,” I snap, stabbing my fork into a piece of grilled chicken before deliberately chewing and swallowing it. I wait for Avery’s eyes to flash cold as she delivers an oblique threat, but instead she throws back her head, blond curls swinging in a perfect arc over her shoulder, and laughs.

“I guess it is getting a bit old,” she concedes.

“Is that all it takes to get you to back down when you’re being a bitch? Wow, Olivia, you have a superpower or something.” Emma’s tone is spun sugar, but it lands like an anvil on the table, though the tension is hardly new. Usually, Emma’s the only one among us with the stones to bite back at Avery. They’ve known each other since first grade, when they met at a fancy-ass private grade school in Wellesley. They wrestle back and forth for queen bee dominance.

Margot Kim and Sierra Watson--Princeton and Yale, respectively--are looking anywhere but at Emma or Avery, refusing to wade into this conflict. I catch Sierra’s eye briefly, and we exchange a knowing glance. This has to be about Tyler, Emma’s boyfriend and Avery’s stepbrother of a year. He’s supposed to be off-limits to the Ivies--Don’t shit where you eat, Aves said, cruder than her WASPy exterior hinted. But Emma started going out with Tyler anyway, and Avery takes every chance she gets to jab the knife under Emma’s rib cage and simply . . . wriggle it around. Having a weakness is dangerous where Avery Montfort is concerned.

The confrontation fizzles as we all dive back into our phones. We’ve fallen into what might be termed companionable silence, though we all know it’s more of a détente. I scan the room, taking in my fellow students who are assigned to lunch slot B. It was Sierra’s job to ensure that all the Ivies got a class schedule that put us in the same lunch period. That’s her hook.

In a school of elites, Avery has a way of attracting the very best to stand by her side. President of the Girls Who Code club, Claflin chapter, Sierra had figured out how to hack into the school’s administrative system before spring semester freshman year, and it remains her most useful asset as an Ivy. Margot is the school’s premiere actress, surely Broadway bound; she can charm (i.e., deceive) teachers and students alike. Emma’s the social Renaissance woman, in with every conceivable group. As captain of FIRST Robotics, first-chair flute in band, butterfly champion on the swim team, and tech director for the drama club, Emma’s got a finger in every pie.

I’m not technologically or socially gifted, but as one of the few scholarship students at Claflin, I offer Avery a bit of social-proofing. How open-minded and gracious of her to hang with me. Although I am editor in chief of the Claflin Ledger. Well, co-editor. And it’s my access as a work-study student in the main office that gave Sierra the edge to hack the scheduling system. I’m just as valuable as anyone else.

I meet eyes with Ethan Kendall, who throws me a wave from four tables over, even though I’m going to see him next period. Hasn’t he learned yet that I never acknowledge him outside of journalism class? I can’t, because that would mean--

“Olivia Caroline Winters!” Emma scolds me as if...