Efrain's Secret

Imperative
(adj.)
necessary, pressing

Application fee to Harvard University: $65

Tuition per year for a full-time student: $32,557

Annual room and board: $11,042

Average SAT score for incoming freshmen: 2235
      (although Harvard ain’t trying to admit that)

My chances of getting into any Ivy League
      college with an SAT score of 1650: worthless

I type “SAT prep” into a search engine when Chingy yells, “Yes!” from the computer station next to me. “I got a 1560.” The librarian puts a finger to her lips. After mouthing an apology, he asks me, “How’d you do, cuz?”

“You don’t want to know, kid.”

“C’mon, man.” Chingy’s giddy because the average SAT score of an incoming freshman at Howard is only 1530. Being senior class president and having a GPA of 3.5, he’s headed to D.C. next August. That is, if his older brother Baraka doesn’t convince Chingy to join him at Morehouse in the ATL. “I know you did better than me,” he says, leaning over my shoulder to peek at my monitor.

“I got a 1650,” I finally say.

“Yo, I think you broke the school record, man! Mrs. Colfax said that back in 1986, this girl scored 1050 on the old version of the test.” Chingy activates the calculator on his computer
desktop and types in some numbers. “Yeah, E., you did it! A score of 1050 on the old test is only a 1515 today. Congratulations, man!” I feel like a fraud but still give Chingy a pound for being a good sport about my outscoring him. “Get a teacher to mention that in a recommendation. That way you won’t sound arrogant in your essay. Stay shy, cuz.”

“You don’t get it, kid,” I say. “I
have
to retake the damn thing.” A 1650? I studied all summer. After borrowing every prep book I could from any library within walking distance—Princeton Review, Nova, Kaplan, you name it—I spent a few hours every week practicing math problems and memorizing hundreds of vocabulary words. When I took the test three weeks ago, I swore I scored much better than I did on the preliminary exam last October. But all that work did me no good.

I open up a new window in my browser to search for the next test dates. Thankfully, even the colleges with December 31 deadlines will accept scores from the test scheduled for late January. With November around the corner, however, that gives me only two months to study. As I write down the test date and registration deadline, I tell Chingy, “Harvard ain’t checking for no 1650.”

But Chingy’s already back at his station, pimping out his class ring on the Jostens Web site. A sales representative is coming to our high school next Friday, so today all the homeroom teachers handed out catalogs and order forms. You can design your ring on the company Web site, then print out an order form to give to the rep along with a fifty-dollar deposit. As Chingy adds and subtracts features, the subtotal on his monitor rises and falls. “Yo, E., what you think?” he asks. I roll my seat over to his computer. With a tap of the mouse, Chingy rotates the ring on the screen—a bulky model from the “Champion” series in white gold—so I can see it from all sides. “Smooth?” he asks as he clicks an onyx onto
his design. “Or the majestic cut?” Chingy taps the mouse again, and the black stone morphs into a polygon.

“Definitely smooth. All those cuts are too busy,” I say, kicking off to roll back to my own station. “What happened to stay shy? You ain’t Allen Iverson.”

“Dude got jokes.” Chingy clicks back to the smooth onyx. The price of his ring drops twenty-five bucks but still costs over three hundred dollars. “Yo, you know what Leti told me? Some wild child just transferred to our school.”

“Yeah?” Leticia Núñez is Pedro Albizu Campos High School’s one-woman news network. She provides breaking stories on public affairs and human interest along with occasional unsolicited editorials, but her specialty is—you guessed it—gossip. I suppose when your best friend is GiGi González—the hottest chick in school—a girl has to make her claim to fame some other way. I scan my search engine results and click on the link for an SAT prep company whose name I recognize from subway ads.

“This kid is from K-Ville.”

“K-Ville?”

“You know … New Orleans. Katrina.”

“Oh.” At a hundred fifty bucks per hour with a minimum commitment of twenty hours, I can forget about one-on-one tutoring. But I’ve already tried the cheapest option—studying independently with books and software—and that ain’t cutting it. “Leticia must have it twisted. Why would he transfer to a high school in New York City so many years after the hurricane? That makes no sense, kid.”

“She’s
been here since Katrina, and according to Leti, home-girl got kicked out of Mott Haven High School because she threw a chair in a teacher’s face.”

“That’s gangster.” Enough with the
bochinche
. That 1650 put me in a serious bind. Even if I had a new computer with a fast
Internet connection at home—which I don’t—my gut tells me only a live class that meets for six to eight weeks before the next test date will make a worthwhile difference in my score, but how much does that cost? Eleven hundred bucks, that’s how much. Even though it means being limited to the public library’s hours, I check out online courses as a last resort. The least expensive one is four hundred dollars. Even if I skip the prep course, I still have to shell out another forty-five dollars registration fee for the January test. No fee waivers for a second shot at the Ivy League for me. Plus, eighteen bucks for the answers to last month’s test so I can see which ones I got wrong. And that’s just the beginning because there are no scholarships for students just to apply to college.

There goes
my
class ring. As much as I want one—as much as I
deserve
one—I can’t buy one now. But, really, when did I ever? Deserving a ring and being able to afford it are two different things, and a man has to set priorities and make sacrifices. It’s all good. I’ll get a ring in four years when I graduate from Harvard. With a crimson stone, baby,
veritas
engraved around it. Word is born.

Abet
(
v
.) to aid, help, encourage

“Don’t look so scared,” I say as I lay out the financial aid forms across the kitchen table. After clearing it of all the shakers, keys, bills, bills, and more bills, my mother sits down with this apprehensive look on her face. “I just need you to give me some information and then sign them. It won’t take long.” The ironic thing is, if we owned a house, stocks, bonds, and things like that, we’d be drowning in financial aid forms, so for once, being broke has some benefit. My moms can actually rest on her one day off after
haciendo la compra
, washing the clothes, balancing the checkbook, and a hundred other things.

Moms places fresh batteries in the calculator. “Okay,” she says, jamming a pencil into the electronic sharpener. After grinding it to the rubber as if the shavings were cash, Moms fusses over her tax returns, repeatedly tapping the forms against the table.

“It looks like a lot of paperwork, but most of it is just information, that’s all.”

“Well, I guess I should read it, then,” she says, reaching for a random booklet from Yale. Ten seconds later, the frown lines on her forehead reappear. “Oh my God … Honey, the tuition at this school costs thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“Yup.”

My mother glances again at the page. “Per year, Efrain!”

“Lo sé.”

Her dark eyes dart down the page. “Room and board is an
additional
eleven thousand dollars. Each year!”

Okay, I freak out a bit every time I think about it, too, but I’m determined to find a way. Holding up a batch of forms, I force a smile and say, “That’s why we’re doing this.”

“You can get a big enough scholarship to cover everything, right?” Now my mother sounds hopeful, as if she answered her own question. “We’ll do whatever we have to do.
Lo que sea.”
See how she says
we
? My moms believes in me, all day, every day.

“I’ll probably have to take out a student loan every year,” I say. “But the interest rates are really low.” It took me a long while to accept that I will have to borrow money to pay for college, but it is what it is. If Harvard is going to give a kid from the ’hood a full scholarship, it ain’t going to be the valedictorian of Albizu Campos High School but the dude already getting a free ride at Exeter, Andover, or some prep school like that. Real talk.

My mother shakes her head. “That’s what I should’ve done to finish college.” My surprise must be obvious because she flashes a big grin at me and ruffles my hair. “Yes, Efrain, your mother finished two years of college. Where do you think you get all those smarts?”

I definitely knew I didn’t get them from Rubio, but I just assumed that when my mother graduated from high school, she went straight to work. “Where’d you go?”

“Not Yale, that’s for sure,” she laughs. “I would take two trains to Jamaica, Queens, to go to York College. I was majoring in occupational therapy. Back then you only needed a bachelor’s degree to qualify for a license.” My mother talks with her chin on her hand and faraway eyes as if she can still see her dream play across the yellowing wallpaper of our kitchen.

I debate whether I should ask, but my curiosity gets the best of me. “Why didn’t you finish?”

My mother drops her arm as if I should know. “I had you.”

“Oh.”

She reaches out for my hand. “Hey, once you were in school, I could’ve gone back to college. But your father and I didn’t think we could afford it. I mean, it might’ve been possible had we been willing to borrow the money, but, I don’t know…. Your father and I were both raised to either save money for the things we wanted or just accept that we couldn’t afford them and learn to live without them. But we were wrong, Efrain.” Moms picks up a stack of blank forms and sifts through them. “Learn from our mistakes, honey, and set the right example for your sister. Go to college first, get married if that’s what you want to do, buy a home within your means, and
then
have children if you want them. In that order.” She winks at me. “Your education and your home are investments in your future. They’re the only things you’ll ever truly own and are worth going into a reasonable amount of debt to have. If Rubio and I had done that, you wouldn’t be sorting through this mound of paperwork right now wondering how you’re going to pay for college.”