Fun fact: Drew was always right.
As early as elementary school, I’d noticed how much easier school subjects came to Drew than they did to me. He’d spend twenty minutes studying and come home with perfect scores on all his exams. Based on his standardized test scores, he was placed into all the accelerated programs.“Drew is so smart,”everyone would say to him, to my parents.“You must be so proud.”They used words like ‘advanced,’ ‘gifted,’ and ‘genius.’
I’m smart, too!my little eight-year-old self wanted to say. But to get the same results, I had to toil at our kitchen table for hours, growing frustrated when things didn’t click. Sometimes my mom would ask Drew to help me. He’d sit next to me, solve the homework question quicker than I could read it, and then say something like, “See? It’s easy.” When I didn’t get the hang of it after a few tries, he’d grow frustrated with me, too. “I don’t understand, Val. How do younotget this?” he’d ask me. We’d fight. Sometimes I’d cry. I wanted to be like Drew. I wanted to be told I was smart and gifted. But seeing firsthand how much easier it all was for him, feeling his judgment and condescension, made me feel stupid.
Eventually, Mom stopped asking Drew to help me and would sit with me at the table herself.All the better, I thought at the time. She was kinder and more patient than an eleven-year-old boy. And I wanted to do it without his help, anyway.
“You still there?”
“Yeah,” I muttered. I appreciated him taking my side, but it was still hard for me to talk to him about things like this.
“Mom said he’s the head of your group so you have to, like, play the game and pretend to roll with it, but that doesn’t change the truth. I know how these firms work, how they leverage the associate workforce to the hilt so the partners can take on several deals at once and maximize profits. He’d benowherewithout you. What an unbelievable prick.” Drew’s vitriol radiated through the phone.
“Thanks, Drew.” His loyalty was actually touching. Sometimes he wielded his blunt, ruthless tongue for good, I supposed.
“Anytime. You’re okay though?”
“Yeah, I’ll be okay. Sending a couple emails and taking the rest of tonight off.”
“Good.”
Once my emails were sent, I was as exhausted as I had ever been, but I still couldn’t fall asleep. The chorus of car horns and voices from twenty stories below didn’t faze me. It was the self-doubt swirling in my mind that kept me up. I stared at the ceiling as my subconscious poked and prodded at my resolve, asking—for what felt like the tenth time this month—if this success I was striving for was worth everything I’d given up to attain it.
2
Two Weeks Earlier
“Do you think you can get us a draft of the purchase agreement by Monday?” Jasmine stared at us from her little video conference square on Thursday night. She’d just explained the details of their opportunity to acquire 51 percent of a hot new tech company.
I shot John a look that I intended to say:They cannot be serious. We only learned about the deal that morning when Jasmine sent us a two-sentence email with an angry red exclamation point marking it ashigh importance.
John acknowledged my look with a slight shake of his head, but to the client he said, “We can do that.”
I controlled my facial expression until the call was over, but after we hung up, I dropped my forehead to my desk.Another weekend, ruined. I stopped keeping track a long time ago. And unlike most weekends, this weekend I actually had plans.I’m so tired of this.
After a minute I turned my head to theside and focused my gaze on the plain white wall of my little office and the UPenn and Michigan Law diplomas I had hung there. I usually felt a surge of pride when I looked at them, but today my brain decided to fixate on the diploma that wasn’t there. The first one I ever really wanted.
Franconia Academy was nestled unassumingly in a small town in New Hampshire not far from where we grew up. I was in sixth grade when Drew got in. The school looked like an idyllic small college with brick buildings, a state-of-the-art athletic facility, and a collegiate-level theater program. Almost every student that went there gained admission to a prestigious college.
I wanted to go there desperately, too.I’d study and do theater and make friends and get into a great college,my younger self thought. Whatever natural ability I lacked that Drew had, I would make up for by working harder than everyone else. After that—I’d been told by my parents and teachers and society—I’d be on the fast track to success. I’d be respected and admired by everyone I met, and my parents would be just as proud of me as they were of my brother.
Drew was home for spring break when my letter from Franconia arrived a few years later. I ran to the mailbox as soon as the mail truck pulled away. Back inside, I sat on the couch and tore open the letter, ready to read the word‘Congratulations.’
My stomach plummeted when instead it said:We regret to inform you…Hot tears built behind my eyelids. Thirteen years old, and I felt like the universe was telling me I wasn’t good enough.You don’t get to be as successful as your brother and his classmates.The thought burrowed into my psyche and set up a permanent residence.
Drew found me in the living room of our childhood home, holding the letter in my clammy hands, staring at that first line but unable to read the rest of it. He read it over my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Val. That stinks. But some people find it really challenging there, you know. Maybe you’ll like public high school better.”
Whether he meant to or not, his suggestion that I’d find Franconia to be too challenging made the rejection sting even more.
“Please leave me alone.” Humiliation laced my tone with venom.
Drew slipped out of the room silently, and next thing I knew, my parents sandwiched me on the couch.
“I’m sorry, honey,” my mom said. “I know how badly you wanted to go there.”
My dad patted me on the back. “Going to that school isn’t the only way to succeed. Their loss. Stay the course, Val. Keep working hard and it will pay off.”
