Scores release the second Monday of May.
It is on every local news site within an hour. MARLOWE GIRL: 5 ON AP CALC BC, PROJECTED SALUTATORIAN AT ASHFORD HALL. Margot's name. My answers. MENDEZ GIRL: TANKED HER APS — RANK SLIPS TO #6. My name. Margot's answers.
The reporters come. Whit's PR woman from the foundation suggests a controlled press event. The Marlowes' Greenwich estate, the family room with the Hockney back on the screen, ten approved outlets, a Marlowe Family Foundation banner.
Bunny is in mother-of-the-year mode again. She has laid out a white Theory dress for me on my bed. She comes in with her makeup case.
"Sweet pea. You look so tired. Let Mommy do your eyes. The press will be charmed. They always are with you."
I look at the dress.
It is exactly the dress Margot wore to her Brown signing photo last winter.
I ask, "Where's Sara."
Bunny's smile holds. "Sara is fine. She's in the guest room. She's got her own admission. Daddy and I have asked the foundation to make a grant to a scholarship in her mother's name."
"I want her at the press conference."
"Sweet pea. No. That isn't —" Bunny's voice softens. "Sweetheart. Today is your day. Having her there will only complicate things. The reporters are confused enough."
I take the white dress off the bed and I drop it over the arm of the chair.
"I'm not going."
Bunny's voice drops a register. "Margot. How long are you going to keep this up."
"Until you're willing to hear the truth."
The press conference is at the Marlowes' country club in Greenwich at four p.m.
I go.
I am in black. A black knit dress, black flats, no jewelry. The tennis bracelet is in a tray on my bathroom counter.
Margot is also there. She is in my Ashford uniform — the four-year-worn navy blazer with the shiny elbows, the white oxford, the gray skirt. She has my too-small Casio watch on her left wrist.
She stands at the back of the room, by the curtain pull. No one looks at her.
On the small wooden stage, Headmaster Whitcombe is at the podium praising me.
"— Margot Marlowe, hard work, discipline, integrity, the best of what this school stands for, deeply proud, model student —"
I listen with my hands folded.
When it is my turn at the mic he steps aside and pats my shoulder.
I pull the HDMI cable out of the podium AV box. I plug it into my phone, which I have ready in my left hand. The screen behind me, currently showing the Ashford Hall crest, goes dark, then comes back up showing a tiled grid: hallway video, group-chat exports, Genetec timestamps, the New Haven police report number, the Connecticut State Department of Education investigator's letterhead, and my handwriting-comparison request, signed and faxed to ETS this morning.
I tap the mic.
"My name is Sara Mendez."
The room goes flat.
Headmaster Whitcombe's face does something he has not practiced.
"Ms. Marlowe — Margot — I think you're overwhelmed —"
"To be specific," I say, evenly. "The body I'm currently in is named Margot Marlowe."
A reporter laughs nervously. Three others have their phones up. The livestream camera tilts.
I gesture at the screen.
"The number-one score on the Calculus BC exam under the name Margot Marlowe — that score is mine. The answer document is in my handwriting. ETS has the comparison documents. They will confirm by next Thursday."
I look out into the room.
I look for the reporter with the local NBC lapel pin.
"The number-one scholarship student at Ashford Hall," I say, "is Sara Mendez."
Bunny is up the side aisle in heels. The Marlowes' head of communications and a club security officer reach her at the third row. The officer puts a hand on her elbow. She is screaming something I can't make out. Whit is also up, white-knuckled at the back wall, on the phone.
The livestream is already out.
The comments on the side panel are scrolling so fast the moderation widget can't keep up.
what is happening
body swap?? is she serious?
the evidence is real i'm watching it
she's saying the school covered it up holy shit
the score is whose now
I keep going.
"You don't have to believe in body swaps. You can check the evidence. Pull the handwriting. Pull the three-year grade transcripts. Pull the security footage from the redundant state archive that you were told was wiped. Pull the records of Sara Mendez's reports to the Dean of Students, and find me one — one — that was substantiated."
I look at Headmaster Whitcombe in his folding chair off to the side.
"Pull the question of why the salutatorian of Ashford Hall lost her Harvard enrollment packet to a toilet tank the day before the federal confirmation deadline."
Dean Caldwell has her face in her hands.
The Voss family attorney, in the back, is leaning into Tabitha's ear.
I step back from the mic.
Margot is moving up the side of the room.
She climbs the three steps to the platform. She takes the second microphone off its stand.
The cameras pan to her.
She is in my four-year-worn navy blazer. Her hair is in a French braid I helped her redo this morning. Her face — my face — is gaunt and sharpened and steady.
"I'm Margot Marlowe."
The room goes loud.
Bunny shouts from the aisle. "Stop her — she's lying — somebody stop her —"
Margot looks down at her mother.
"Mom. I really am Margot."
Bunny's voice cracks. "You don't get to call me that."
Margot smiles a small wrecked smile.
"I know you don't believe me. Because right now I'm not the Marlowe daughter. I'm a scholarship girl."
She turns to the cameras.
"What Sara just told you is true. For three years, I led the campaign against her. I started it the first day of freshman English. I told my friend Hadley Voss to dump iced matcha on her financial-aid packet. I told two of my teammates to write SCHOLARSHIP on her field hockey jersey in Sharpie. I had her photographed changing in the locker room and I watched Hadley post the photos to a senior group chat. I went to the basement music room of the science center, the building with my family's name on it, the wing that was built with no interior surveillance because my father wrote that into the gift agreement, and I let Hadley lock her in overnight."
She takes a breath.
"I knew her mother was sick. I knew her stepfather was a drunk. I knew Dean Caldwell would not act on her reports because my mother is on the development committee. And the night before her Harvard enrollment was due, I took her admission packet out of her locker and put it in a faculty toilet tank."
A reporter in the front row drops her phone.
"I did it because every time my father sat down at dinner he said Sara Mendez would have known that, Margot. I did it because I have never beaten her on a single test. I did it because I was scared, and scared was easier to put on someone else than to sit with."
She looks at me.
"Sara should have gone to Harvard a week ago. Sara is — was — number one. She is also the better person in this room, and the only reason any of you are listening to me right now is that she let me have her face for one week so I could see what my life had cost."
Her voice drops.
"My parents will not believe I am their daughter. Hadley's parents will protect Hadley. The school will protect itself. Ashford Hall has been protecting itself for four years. I want it on the record that I have asked the State Department of Education to revoke my salutatorian standing. I have asked ETS to invalidate my exam scores. The Brown letter on my desk — that letter is not mine. That letter belongs to the work, and the work was done by Sara."
The screen behind her is still showing the tile of evidence.
Whit is in the back of the room with his hand over his mouth.
Bunny is crying without making a sound. She is shaking her head very slightly. No no no no.
Margot lowers the microphone.
She walks across the platform to me.
She holds out her hand.
I take it.
We stand there, in two bodies that are not ours, in front of forty cameras, holding hands.
The Frame above the podium shows the tile of evidence and our two bodies in front of it.
For one second, nobody in the room makes a sound.
Then somebody, somewhere — I cannot tell who — starts to clap.
The hospital at midnight is the same as the hospital at three a.m. The fluorescent in the hall flickers in 614, then settles. The dialysis machine in the renal wing hums two doors down.
My mother is awake again.
She has color back. She is sitting up. There is a cup of pudding on her tray that she has eaten half of, which I have not seen her do in three weeks.
She looks at me.
She looks at Margot.
We are both still in the wrong bodies.
I sit down in the chair by the bed.
My mother takes my hand.
"Sara," she says.
I am crying without making any noise.
"Mami," I say. "Now."
Margot is by the window. She turns. She nods.
I look at her.
"You ready?"
She tries to laugh. "There's no protocol."
"No."
"What do we do."
"Last time it was a staircase."
"I'm not throwing you down a flight of stairs."
My mother, watching us, makes a small sound that on a stronger day would be a laugh.
Dr. Reiner is in the doorway. He has his bag over his shoulder. He looks the way people look when they are about to witness something they will never tell anyone about.
I hold my hand out to Margot.
She takes it.
I close my eyes.
I do not know what I think will happen.
What happens is that I am suddenly very tired.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. My head goes light. My ears ring.
When I open my eyes my hand is small again. My fingernails are unpainted. The wrist of the hoodie sleeve is frayed where I have chewed it for months. There is no bracelet.
Margot is on the floor, sitting hard, her own face wet and dazed.
She looks at her hand.
The French manicure is back.
She makes a sound. It is supposed to be a laugh and it is also a sob.
My mother pulls me down. Her arms are thin around me. She smells like hospital soap and the lavender shampoo I bought her at the Bridgeport CVS.
"Mi amor," she says into my hair. "Mi vida. Mi hija."
My love. My life. My daughter.
I close my eyes.
Margot stands up slowly. She braces a hand on the wall. She wipes her face with the back of her wrist, looking down at the wrist, which is hers again. The bracelet is on it.
"Sara."
I don't lift my head from my mother's shoulder.
"Yeah."
"I'll testify."
"I know."
"My father offered me Switzerland this morning. School in Lausanne. Full reset. I told him no."
"Okay."
She comes to the foot of the bed. She is uncertain about her hands.
She lays them, gently, on my mother's blanket.
"Mrs. Mendez."
My mother lifts her head. She looks at Margot. Her real face, now, on her real body.
She smiles.
She reaches and pats Margot's hand. Lightly. Once. Like blessing a stranger who came in out of the rain.
Margot bites her lip hard.
She steps back.
She lets us be.
I sit with my mother for a long time, with my own hand in hers, while the renal-wing machine hums two doors down. The fluorescent buzzes overhead. My mother's pulse on the monitor is slow and steady.
I am back in my body.
My body is what it was: thin, scarred, mine.
I have never been so glad to wear a frayed hoodie cuff.
Somewhere out beyond the parking lot, a Metro-North train pulls into New Haven, and somewhere up the coast at Ashford Hall the security camera on the back staircase of the Marlowe Family Science Center is recording an empty staircase that I will never have to walk again.
My mother squeezes my hand.
I squeeze back.