The academy guaranteed me a top placement for what we paid.”

I looked at the boy and felt something close to revulsion — not at him, I would understand later, but at what we had made of him.

I remembered him throwing a glass of water at a housekeeper for bringing the wrong brand of sparkling water.

I remembered the five-figure checks I had written to schools to make his failing grades quietly disappear.

He was a hollow vessel, filled only with the entitlement his mother poured into him.