Like Mother, Like Daughter

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death by suicide, child abuse, death, and cursing.

Katrina goes to Advantage Consulting to meet Brian Carmichael. She doesn’t think Brian was extorting Doug, but she wants to learn whether Doug had actually paid Brian to bribe Amherst to admit his daughter. The meeting is also a useful distraction from thinking about whether Cleo is still seeing Kyle. Recently, Katrina has been so worried about Kyle that she read Cleo’s texts, found out about the drug dealing, and then forced Cleo to take a drug test. She threatened to cut off Cleo’s tuition if she didn’t end her relationship with Kyle and see a therapist. She thought it had worked until she saw Cleo drop off the envelope the night before.

Now, Brian tells Katrina that Doug made “a significant additional investment” to ensure that his daughter Ella was admitted to Amherst (80). Katrina interprets this as confirmation that Doug paid a bribe to get his daughter into college.

The chapter is an excerpt from Katrina’s childhood journal. She describes how she wrote a story for her writing club about her parents leaving her alone for three days when she was four years old.