Getting In: A Novel

by Karen Stabiner

  Steve smiled at his bewilderment. “I was an engineer in Korea,” he said. “I like puzzles, patterns, grids.”

  Brad smiled back and looked around, hoping that a change of subject would present itself. He pointed at a three-panel bamboo screen, the kind Pier 1 had been selling since long before bamboo became the darling of eco-decor, that blocked off what Brad imagined to be a dining area. Whatever was behind it was the reason for the card table wedged into the kitchen, which, according to Brad’s tape-measure brain, made it impossible to open the refrigerator and the oven simultaneously.

  “What’s back there? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

  Steve stood, folded the screen, and leaned it against the refrigerator. He gestured at the contents of the alcove with the pride of a game-show host showing off a new car to eager contestants. A big whiteboard labeled “Summer/Fall,” with a list of deadlines, Harvard’s in red and the rest in black, sat on a small dining-room table that was pushed against the wall; next to it, a smaller whiteboard labeled “Financial Aid” with a similar set of color-coded deadlines; next to the table, a set of plastic file boxes, one red and the rest black, stacked alongside a two-drawer steel file cabinet. On a small sideboard, an orderly display of all the office supplies Liz could possibly need to complete her applications: stamps, letter-size and manila envelopes, erasers, tape, a coffee mug filled with sharpened pencils, another filled with pens and highlighters, and a saucer stacked with multicolored tabs of the sort that Brad’s father used to indicate signature lines.

  Brad whistled. “That’s some operation,” he said. “Liz files everything hard copy?”

  Steve, who had not traveled this far to be pitied by a kid for whom geography was not destiny but an amusement park, took a moment to collect himself. He monitored his irritations carefully and never allowed himself to speak until they had subsided.

  “She has a PowerBook to file,” he said. “But she makes these copies for her mother and me to read. You do not show your applications to your parents?”

  “Sometimes,” said Brad, who never did. He stepped forward to read the entries on the bigger whiteboard: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Penn, Swarthmore, Cornell, Chicago, Stanford, Berkeley.

  “Wait,” said Brad. “What’s her safe school, Berkeley?”

  “Yes,” said Steve.

  “I was joking. They turn down California valedictorians. It was in the paper.”

  “They will not turn down Elizabeth,” said Steve. “Of course, all the California campuses can review her application and accept her, so I suppose we have a network of very safe schools she has no interest in attending. But in terms of real options, Berkeley would be her fallback.”

  All of a sudden, Brad wanted Liz’s father to like him, or at least to respect him.

  “Her first choice is Harvard, though,” said Brad. “I applied to Harvard.”

  “Applied,” came Chloe’s drawling voice behind him. “Oh, please. I thought your dad just called up to let them know when to have your room ready.”

  Brad spun around and willed her dead, to no avail.

  Chloe smiled, emboldened by Steve’s sudden look of interest, because usually he ignored her. “Brad’s fourth generation to go to Harvard in his family,” she said, turning to Liz. “You guys’ve met, I hear.”

  “You know Chloe’s friend?” Steve asked his daughter.

  “He was at the financial aid meeting,” said Liz.

  Steve pondered for an instant. “Why would a boy fourth generation need money?”

  Chloe’s laugh was too big for the house. “Exactly, Mr. Chang,” she said. “His dad runs the meeting. Please. Preston Bradley the Third could pay for everyone in this room to go to college and still keep his golf membership.”

  “Chloe exaggerates,” said Lauren, who caught the pinched look on Brad’s face. “Or she doesn’t, but she makes it sound worse than it is.”

  Brad instructed his facial muscles to smile, squeezed Chloe’s elbow too hard, and guided Lauren and her toward the door.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Chang. Sorry we have to rush, but my parents have dinner waiting.” He had no idea if his parents were home, with or without food, but this sounded to Brad like the sort of thing a boy worthy of Mr. Chang’s respect might say.

  Steve nodded his approval. “And perhaps next year you and Liz will see each other on campus.”

  “Well,” said Brad, “who knows. I mean, it would be nice. I’m not, I’m thinking, it might be…”

  “C’mon,” said Chloe, “subject, verb, object, you can do it.”

  Brad blurted his confession. “I haven’t decided that’s where I want to go,” he said.

  Steve shook his head and put the screen back in place.

  The best and worst thing about Chloe was that, like her mother, she made no distinction between monologue and dialogue. Once she got going, it was hard to chime in, but remarkably easy to hold up the other end of what she considered to be a conversation. An occasional monosyllabic response was all she needed to feel that an intimate exchange had taken place.

  She had learned far more than math during her weekly tutoring sessions, all of which she was eager to share in her new role as matchmaker.

  Money: “Liz buys her shoes at Payless, and not because it’s a fashion statement, I promise you.”

  Outside interests: “She’s got a whole shelf of what’s-her-name, the one who wrote, we saw the movie, Italy, the girl almost marries the wrong guy but she’s in love with someone else. Edith Wharton.”

  “No,” said Lauren, “that’s E. M. Forster. Edith Wharton’s the guy who does marry the wrong girl but he’s in love with someone else. Or the girl who doesn’t marry the right guy or the wrong guy and she ruins her life, that’s the other one.”

  “Right,” said Chloe. “I mean, why read that stuff if you don’t have to?” She continued with her list.

  Home life: “Lauren saw it, but Brad, her room I swear is the size of the pantry in your kitchen, and her dad’s got a drawer in her desk because he pays the bills there. How glad is she going to be to be in a dorm and have a little privacy?”

  Parents: “My mom may be a total ditz, but at least she’s fun sometimes, and my dad’s about a month away from being really bored with his girlfriend. I’d go crazy if they were on my case all the time like Liz’s parents.”

  By the time she had critiqued the snacks Liz offered during their tutoring sessions, they were in front of Brad’s house.

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Brad, fingering the cell phone in his pocket.

  “Hey, you could fall in love and take her away from everything.” Chloe laughed, such an easy, liquid laugh. Brad envied her that.

  “Leave him alone.” Lauren reached forward to pat him on the shoulder. “Remind me why we like her.”

  “Oh, please,” said Chloe. “Can you see Brad’s parents having dinner with the in-laws? I’m only saying what you’re both thinking.”

  Brad laughed and got out of the car. He took a deep breath at the front door to steady himself, but he need not have bothered. The house was empty, and there was the usual bag from his mother’s favorite cheese shop on the counter. Brad poured himself a half glass of orange juice, carried it and the bag into his bedroom, and set out his meal as he always did: he spread a towel on the bed as though it were a place mat, to avoid getting Brie or cranberry relish—it was always Brie and cranberry relish on a whole-wheat baguette, a bag of Sun Chips, and an apple—on the bedspread. He retrieved a mini-bottle of Stoli from his sock drawer, emptied it into the orange juice, screwed the top back on tight, and stashed the empty bottle in the bag where he carried his laptop charger and Ethernet cord so that he could throw it out on the way to school in the morning.

  It was that easy to stay under the radar. All he had to do was buy those little airplane-service bottles from the display at the gourmet market and remember to throw away the itemized receipt before he got in the car. His parents assumed that a $15.95 charge m
eant San Daniele prosciutto and sottocenere cheese on an olive roll and a bottle of imported mineral water, but in fact it paid for a generic hero sandwich with extra peppers and three mini-bottles, rung up by a clerk who was far more interested in Brad’s smile than in asking him for a picture ID. He kept the bottles buried in his sock drawer in mute collaboration with the housekeeper, who occasionally took a mini-tequila for herself and never turned him in.

  Since the beginning of senior year, he had allowed himself one bottle before turning out the light each night, never two, not even on the night after the clarinet lecture. Brad had a built-in sensor that kept him from ever going too far, developed at a tenth-grade party when he lost count of his refills and suddenly felt the room torque, ever so slightly.

  “Whoa,” he had yelled, to cover the possibility that he was wobbling enough for people to notice. “Was that an earthquake?” His equally woozy friends had muddled to their feet to stand in the doorway, or was it anyplace but the doorway, away from the windows, under a desk or never under anything, outside but watch the power lines and the palm trees, who could remember? Brad had slunk into the bathroom and hid there with a cold, wet guest towel over his face while he waited for the moment to pass. He never again forgot to keep track.

  He sighed and took a bite of the sandwich. He figured he ought to be grateful for the cheese, at least. Alexandra Bradley went for the healthy alternative whenever possible, but she made nice exceptions for any imported cheese or cured meat that cost over $20 per pound, as though expensive fats and nitrates posed less of a threat than cheap ones.

  Brad took a long drink, inhaled the rest of the sandwich, took out his cell phone, and started a text message to Liz.

  “Great to see you,” he wrote. “Want to have coffee tomorrow? I can meet you at four at the Coffee Bean near school.”

  “Near your school.”

  “Near Ocean Heights.”

  “Your Coffee Bean.”

  He stared at the message.

  “Nice, fuckhead,” he said. “Don’t bother to tell her who it is or anything.”

  He hit CANCEL. Too enthusiastic or too bullshit, depending on how she interpreted it. Where was the balance of desire and indifference he was looking for?

  He tried again. “Hi, it’s Brad. Coffee tomorrow. Four at your Coffee Bean?” He hit CANCEL a second time. He left the phone on his bed while he rinsed his plate and glass and loaded them in the dishwasher, and then he banished the phone to the bathroom to be recharged, to show that he did not care. Not that he needed proof.

  Brad was finding it increasingly difficult to do much of anything, especially anything new. He got into bed, turned on the flat-screen, an early Christmas gift from his parents, and surfed the directory for a movie, any movie, that was being broadcast in HD.

  When Alexandra got home, she found him asleep in his clothes with the Discovery Channel playing on mute. She had to look away and point the remote control over her shoulder to turn off the set. Insects were so frightening in HD; Alexandra could not understand how anyone could look at them right before they went to sleep, and she hoped that her brief glimpse of a spider the size of a seat cushion would not haunt her dreams. For a moment, she debated whether to wake Brad up to get him to brush and floss, but surely his teeth would survive a single night of neglect, and she would be spared the possibility that he would snap at her for being a nag. Nothing made her feel older than being called a nag, except perhaps the puppet lines starting to bracket the row of vertical hash marks above her upper lip, which she fought with every emollient and procedure this side of anesthesia.

  chapter 10

  Brad finally sent Liz a text message two weeks into second semester, on the day he saw Katie coming down the hall at lunchtime wearing a brand-new Williams sweatshirt. He had no expectation of love, and certainly not of sex, not with a girl who presided over an entire room devoted to college applications, not in his own bleached state of mind. He had almost talked himself out of bothering at all, but the sight of Katie in that sweatshirt made him send the text. Suddenly it seemed very important to Brad to have a conversation with someone who knew next to nothing about him, including the fact that his father had purchased a Harvard sweatshirt a year earlier and put it in his bottom desk drawer, where Brad discovered it one afternoon when he was looking for a ream of printer paper.

  He ducked into the bathroom and texted, “Hi, it’s Brad, Chloe’s friend. Can you meet me at the Ocean Heights Coffee Bean today at four?”

  A moment later, she texted back, “Sure.”

  He felt like an idiot for not having asked sooner. As soon as class got out he hurried toward the parking lot—or rather, toward Katie, who stepped out from behind an Escalade as he turned the corner, requiring him either to stop or to knock her over.

  “I’m really in a hurry,” he said.

  She ignored him. “Did you get all As first semester?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So did I.”

  “Okay,” said Brad, computing the odds of still being able to get to the Coffee Bean ten minutes early if he spent five minutes listening to Katie, or of Katie trailing him in a rage if he didn’t hang around long enough to wrap this up, whatever this was. “Congrats. Makes you valedictorian, right?”

  “I’m not sure. I had that A minus in honors geometry. Sophomore year,” Katie confessed in a tone of voice more appropriate to a disclosure of chlamydia or herpes.

  “I had an A minus in AP chem,” said Brad, trying to be helpful. “Exactly,” said Katie. “Which is worth more than my A minus because mine was only honors. And I took ceramics. What other A minuses did you get?”

  “Katie, I’m late for a doctor’s appointment,” said Brad.

  “I don’t think so, but never mind.”

  She waited. Did he really think he could tell Lauren where he was going after school without Lauren calling Chloe from the bathroom? To be fair, Lauren had been more discreet than that. She had texted Chloe from the bathroom. It was Chloe who called back instead of texting, to press for details. Lauren’s only mistake was failing to look for feet in the stalls before she replied.

  “Whatever,” said Brad. “What do you want?”

  Katie gave a furtive glance left and right. “I want to be valedictorian,” she said. “If I’m going to be stuck at Williams—”

  “That’s hardly stuck.”

  “If I don’t get to go to Yale, then I want something that I want, not something my parents want for me. I want to be valedictorian. I mean, my parents want me to be, too, but I do and that’s all that matters. If you get an A minus in anything this semester, then I will be.”

  “Assuming you get all As.”

  “We’re both going to get all As. It’s our reward for working so hard.”

  “Says who?”

  “My brother. Never mind. No teacher wants to be the one who keeps a kid from being valedictorian, trust me. We’re going to get all As unless we do something really bad. Something they can’t ignore.”

  “You want me to what, tank a test on purpose?”

  “It’s better than writing a bad paper. Somebody could pretend not to notice a dumb paper, but, you know, you can forget part of a bio lab or leave something blank on a calc test. You don’t have to blow it entirely. Just enough.”

  When he hesitated, Katie leaned in close. “You’ve got everything you want. You can always fight with your dad in April when you get in everywhere. I have no choice. So you should let me be valedictorian. What do you care?”

  Brad was surprised, and slightly dismayed, but he did care. He felt a little knot of resistance in his throat, a prideful lump that made him worry about his resolve for the first time. A guy who really wanted to turn his back on Harvard would not care about being valedictorian. In fact, he would welcome Katie’s suggestion. Crestview submitted third-quarter grades, and the Ivies took them seriously. Get a B on a test—get a C, do it right—and he might lose his place in line at Harvard. Blowing a single math test was a m
inor revolt compared to what Roger had done. Why was he so reluctant?

  Because he could not quell the fear that a single test grade might actually be enough to tip the odds against him. As long as he believed that his Harvard acceptance was at stake, there were only two possible explanations for his hesitancy: either he lacked the resolve to walk away from his legacy, despite all his big talk about wanting to do exactly that, or he had let a prospective coffee date alter his world view and make Harvard seem appealing. He was either a coward or a romantic idiot, and whichever it was, it was not good.

  What if his dad had ignored his protests, all these months, because he knew that eventually Brad would cave in?

  Like anyone confronted by the limits of his own bravery, Brad got belligerent.

  “And if I do step aside? What do I get in return?”

  Katie smiled flirtatiously.

  “I won’t tell the doctor you’re meeting at four, right, that you’ve slept with half the senior class, you slut.”

  Brad spun away from her so fast that he rammed his thigh into the fins of the basketball coach’s 1969 Caddie, and screamed “Shit!” loud enough to draw the attention of the uniformed security guard, who emerged from his kiosk to make sure that the source of the expressed torment was psychological, not physical. He saw a boy crumpled on the ground next to his backpack, but the girl with him had a big smile on her face, so clearly there was no need to intervene. A moment later the boy straightened up, rubbed his leg, slung the backpack over one shoulder, and hobbled away, and the girl hustled off in the opposite direction.

  The security guard returned to the kiosk and the unfinished spoils of the Crestview trustees’ luncheon, a chicken quesadilla made with breast meat only, which he knew because the mother who brought it to him insisted on lifting up the corner of the whole-wheat flour tortilla so that he could have a peek at the ingredients, washed down with one of Mexico’s true contributions to fine dining, a bottled Coca-Cola made with real sugar instead of corn syrup, which he bought every morning on his way in, at the little taqueria near his house. He glanced toward the parking lot once more to make sure that the girl and the boy were headed for their cars, but he did not expect a problem. His brother, who worked at Ocean Heights, had a diagonal scar four inches long on his forearm, the souvenir of a knife fight he had broken up the first week of school, but Crestview students lived in their heads. Most of the torture was self-inflicted—kids seemed determined to suffer one way or another, so if they had no worries they looked for ways to make them up—which left him with not a lot to do.