Catalyst

It’s the day after Kate went to Teri’s house. A substitute teacher for Kate’s chemistry class plays Alice in Wonderland, the Disney animated classic. Kate loves Disney movies: “Disney is our collective stepparent, the nice one who tells us bedtime stories and bakes cupcakes” (67). Kate misses her mother’s watch. Not long into the movie, her father, waving a thin white envelope, comes to the door. The envelope is from MIT. Kate knows it is too thin to be an acceptance, and the letter confirms her fears. Her father consoles her—they will move on to her other schools. Kate cannot bring herself to tell him the truth—that she only applied to MIT.

As she returns to her seat, she tries to figure out why she was not accepted. She treats it like a lab protocol. Where did she go wrong? She wishes that, like Alice, she could shrink and fit into her locker. She is humiliated and knows everyone will see she is the “Amazing Lying Egghead” (73). Mitch tries to hug her in the hall, but she fends him off: “I can’t be hugged right now” (74).

Kate skips her next classes. She watches as the art students in the school lobby assemble a massive papier-mâché statue called