Chapter 8 - My Words in Someone Else's Mouth
On Monday the scholarship office sent me the text of the withdrawal submitted under my name. I sat beside Ms. Calder and read it twice.
I have decided not to attend Lakebridge because my younger sisters need me at home. Please release my award to another student.
The language was tidy and polite. It sounded like an adult explaining away a life that wasn't theirs. My own application essay was messy and full of specific things: the creek behind our apartment, the math teacher who stayed after school, the maps I'd drawn of neighborhoods without sidewalks. Whoever wrote the withdrawal knew how to make a stolen decision look respectable.
"I never wrote this," I said.
"I believe you," Ms. Calder replied. "We need the school to determine what happened to the account."
An identity officer joined a call. He confirmed that the withdrawal came from a previously trusted browser and that a recovery code had been sent to the alternate address attached to my profile. He would not identify the user from an internet connection alone. The records did, however, show that my account had been opened from the same device again after the withdrawal.
"Can you protect it now?" I asked.
"We've suspended access through the old recovery email. I'll help you establish new authentication. The scholarship decision is separate from account security."
I finished the verification call, holding my driver's license up to the camera. It felt ridiculous that I'd needed to prove I was the person whose name I'd signed on every application since freshman year.
That evening Mom called from an unknown number. I answered because I thought something had happened to the girls.
"You made the university look at our family," she said.
"I asked them to look at my account."
"It's the same thing."
"Did you write the withdrawal?"
May you like
She breathed into the phone for a long time.
"I gave them the answer this family needed," she finally said.
