Getting In: A Novel

by Karen Stabiner

As soon as she got upstairs she closed her bedroom door and called Lauren.

  “You’re sure her name is Carol?” Lauren asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a shame. The one I met had a weird name. L’Anitra. That’s it.” Lauren mimicked the girl’s rhythm. “‘I’m L’Aneeetra, glad ta meeetcha.’ Your mom would have died, I’m not kidding.”

  “Well, this one better stay out of my way. Listen. You come over on Friday and we’ll do prom stuff.”

  “I wasn’t planning on getting dressed until Saturday.”

  “Funny. I am not going to spend ditch day watching Ron and his girlfriend do whatever they…I’m not kidding, you have to come over.”

  “Okay. We should ask Chloe, too.”

  “She’s coming?”

  “Paul asked her.”

  “Well, he’s been in love with her since sixth grade. I assume she’s just using him to get to a decent prom.”

  “Nice, Katie.”

  “Thank you,” said Katie, preening. “Do we have to invite what’s-her-name who’s going with Brad? Liz. Do we have to invite Liz? In the name of absolute democracy?”

  “Not a chance,” said Lauren, laughing. “I wouldn’t be that mean to her.”

  Ron’s flight arrived at around one on Friday, so Katie invented an entire day of activities and laid in a stock of magazines, in case the girls needed the latest information on trends in nail polish or a tutorial in the application of liquid eyeliner. The only difference between their day before prom and their mothers’ was the politically correct ambivalence they expressed as they debated the relative merits of toenails that ran the color scale from infant pink to ebony. Girls who had been raised to believe that they could do anything sometimes had trouble figuring out if anything properly included a fleeting obsession with gel blush and strapless bras.

  They were finishing up an extra-large pizza and a liter of Diet Coke when the front door opened and Ron called out, “Anybody home?”

  Katie yelled, “Coming,” and turned to Lauren and Chloe. “Do I have pizza in my teeth?”

  “Yep,” said Chloe.

  “Where?”

  “Fooling,” said Chloe, reaching for another slice.

  “Why did you bring her?” Katie asked Lauren. She stood up, straightened her shoulders, and headed downstairs with Lauren and Chloe trailing behind.

  Ron and the girl were standing in the front hallway, and when they looked up, Lauren wished that he had stuck with L’Anitra, at least for Katie’s sake. The new girl had the same basic build—tall and slim—but everything else was different. L’Anitra’s hair had fuchsia stripes and no sense of direction; Carol’s hair was shiny and deep brown, and it rippled in beautiful, thick waves. L’Anitra had raccoon eyes and a dead mouth; Carol had liquid eyeliner nailed, and she wore one of those pale lipsticks that managed not to look fake. L’Anitra had the kind of jerky, nervous energy that made Lauren wonder about drugs, but Carol was so at ease. Katie’s mom was going to love her.

  And then Lauren noticed two more things: a tiny mole at the crest of the girl’s waxed left eyebrow and a dot of purple that peeked out of her boatneck T-shirt when she reached to shake hands with Katie. L’Anitra had a mole above her eyebrow and a purple butterfly tattoo in exactly that spot. Lauren stared at the girl, and the mole, and the purple dot, until Carol reached out again to shake hands with Chloe, this time exposing an entire butterfly wing.

  Carol was L’Anitra in disguise, or the other way around. Lauren had no idea which, or why, but this definitely was the same girl.

  “Katie, let’s go upstairs, c’mon, we have so much to do,” said Lauren.

  “I thought you were the one who said we had nothing to do today.” Katie was giving Carol a severe once-over, looking for the single flaw that would enable her to feel superior, and not finding it.

  “No, really…” Lauren gave Ron and Carol her best smile. “You don’t mind if we abandon you, do you?”

  Carol smiled exactly the same smile she had smiled when she—when L’Anitra—had hooked her hand into Ron’s waistband. Lauren hustled her friends upstairs and shut the door as soon as Katie and Chloe were inside.

  “That’s her,” she whispered. “That’s L’Anitra.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Katie, who was not in the mood for intrigue.

  “Who’s L’Anitra?” asked Chloe.

  “Ron’s wacko sex fiend poet girlfriend.”

  “I don’t think so, either,” said Chloe. “That girl’s Katie’s mom, give or take a generation.”

  “Shut up,” said Katie.

  “Look at her shoulder. By her collarbone on the left side. Purple butterfly tattoo. And that little mole over her eyebrow. I’m telling you, it’s her. I don’t understand why she looks so different.”

  “Because she’s not the same girl,” said Katie. “Besides, this is prom weekend. Are we going to try the dresses on or what?”

  “I’m going first,” said Chloe, who over the last two years had become all too adept at drawing fire from a quarreling duet. She took her dress down from where it hung on Katie’s closet door, untied the plastic bag at the bottom, and pulled the bag up over the hanger with a flourish. It took the girls a moment to respond, which was exactly what Chloe had hoped for. No one else was going to show up at prom in a sleeveless white dress decorated with bubble grids.

  “Where on earth did you get that?” asked Katie, vowing silently not to stand next to Chloe in any of the group photographs.

  Lauren stepped behind Chloe to look at the back of the dress. “I don’t get it. It’s all real stuff filled in, your name, your address, Ocean Heights.”

  Chloe yanked her T-shirt over her head, pulled down her jeans, pulled the dress over her head, and stood on tiptoe to approximate her mother’s four-inch heels.

  “Ta-da,” she said, taking a slow turn. “It’s a Chloe Haber design, thank you very much. A kid at the Art Center did the lettering for me with a Sharpie, and he has a friend who sewed it, I mean it’s nothing, two seams and a couple of darts, but c’mon. Nobody is going to have as cool a dress as this.” She struck a pose. “I was their senior project. They got an A.”

  It was the only Chloe Haber design ever to have been produced, and it was nothing like the drawings Deena had found in the hidden sketchbook. Chloe usually drew to prove to herself—and with luck, to an employer someday—that she was dependable, consistent, capable, all the things she doubted herself to be. But this dress was meant to make the opposite point, to remind every single member of the Crestview senior class that Chloe was special, a renegade, not a reject.

  “I think it’s great,” said Lauren.

  “Lauren next,” said Katie, dismissively.

  Lauren’s dress had a plain ivory top, a slim gray skirt, and a thin rose-colored velvet ribbon uniting the two. When she put it on she looked happier than she had in a while.

  “Where’d you get it?” asked Katie, who had not seen anything like it at the stores she had gone to.

  Lauren smiled.

  “It’s my mom’s prom dress,” she said. “I kind of like it.”

  Chloe walked a slow circle around Lauren, reaching out to adjust the skirt slightly, and then she stood back for another look.

  “You look beautiful,” she said. “I don’t think I’d wear a thing of my mom’s except shoes.”

  Lauren twirled. “Nobody’s going to show up in the same dress, that’s for sure.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Katie, with a slightly different intonation. “Well. Ready for mine?”

  She stepped past Lauren, stepped into the closet, and, for maximum impact, turned her back on the others as she took the dress out of the bag, so that they could not get a good look until she spun around. It was strapless and fitted and the color of a cloud, made of layers of silk so fine it made chiffon feel like mayonnaise. A cascading column of pleated plumes ran down the front, held against the dress by a single stitch here and there. It was a dress designed to destro
y the self-image of any girl within a five-mile radius.

  “Does it come with its own spotlight?” asked Chloe.

  “Are you going to try it on?” asked Lauren.

  With barely a gesture, Katie slipped out of everything but a silvery thong, slipped into the dress, and stepped into a pair of silk high-heeled sandals. She turned toward her friends and struck the sidelong pose that celebrities used to make two hips look like one and a half.

  “So what’d you do?” asked Chloe, unscrewing the top on a bottle of nail polish. “Buy the thong to match the dress or the dress to match the thong?”

  “It’s gorgeous,” said Lauren, in just the awed tone of voice Katie had wanted to hear.

  She lifted the dress over her head, settled it carefully on its velvet hanger, and climbed back into her jeans and T-shirt, lost in imagining the look on Mike’s face—for that matter, the look on Brad’s face—when he saw her in that dress. She had almost succeeded in forgetting about Ron and Carol, or Ron and L’Anitra, until a slamming door, followed by loud laughter and a boyish whoop, reminded her.

  “Nice,” said Chloe. “Hope you’re not planning to get a lot of sleep tonight.”

  Katie got very busy piling paper plates and dirty napkins in the empty pizza box. “Anybody want a latte? Help me throw this out and let’s go get one.”

  Despite Katie’s entreaties, Lauren and Chloe went home an hour later, having run out of enthusiasm halfway through ten great ways to incorporate a braid into an up-do. Katie was alone with her beautiful dress, her hateful brother, the duplicitous girl, her imagination, and hours to kill before her parents got home. She called her mother and happened to mention that Ron and his girlfriend had arrived at around two and had been in the guest room ever since, but her mother missed the implication of impropriety. So Katie sat in her room, stewing, logging every groan or sigh that wafted down the hall, convinced that Lauren was right. This was the same girl. Anyone who could stand to spend a whole afternoon in a closed room with Ron was, by definition, crazy.

  Katie felt compelled to tell her mother. It would break Joy’s heart to think that she had known and chosen not to tell. Katie had a moral obligation to out the girl, whatever her name was, and to do it quickly, before her mother fell under the spell of Carol’s pageboy.

  The logistics were tricky, because her parents were coming home only long enough to change clothes and head out to dinner with friends. Katie bided her time through the requisite introductions and small talk and her parents’ wardrobe change, hovering near her mother the entire time. As soon as her father left to get the car out of the garage, and Ron and Carol pretended to retreat to separate rooms to pretend to get ready for a movie, Katie pounced on Joy.

  “Mom, I have to talk to you about Carol. It’ll just take a second.”

  “Ron seems very happy, don’t you think? It’s nice to see him—”

  “Mom, she’s not who you think. Lauren saw her in New York, she’s crazy, I mean it, she thinks she’s a poet, she does these crazy performance things, and she has a tattoo and that’s not how her hair really is. You have to talk to him.”

  “Honestly, Katie, I’m a bit surprised at you.”

  “You and Daddy can’t let yourselves be taken in…”

  “Katie, that’s enough. I frankly don’t understand why you feel the need to make up such a story about Carol. She’s quite a lovely girl. You should be happy for your brother.”

  “Her name isn’t Carol. It’s L’Anitra. Lauren thought she was a nut case when she met her. You have to make him stop seeing her.”

  Her father sat on the horn, once, twice, three times, and Joy turned to check her appearance in the hall mirror.

  “I have to go. I think it’s time for you to focus on the big day tomorrow and let your brother—who is not as comfortable socially as you are—enjoy this little relationship.” Her lips almost made contact with Katie’s cheek, and she was gone.

  “Great.” Katie spun and ran upstairs just in time to see her brother cross the hall from his room to the guest room with a bottle in his hand. She retreated to her own room and methodically rubbed cuticle cream around each toenail, twice. Finally, she heard a door open.

  She marched into the hall as Carol reached the head of the stairs, clad in nothing but an old Wilco T-shirt that one of the rowers had given Ron for his birthday, as though Ron had any idea who Wilco was, as though Ron had any idea, period.

  “Hey,” Carol said.

  “Hey, Carol,” said Katie. “Or maybe L’Anitra. Would you rather I called you that?”

  Carol smiled. “That friend of yours, she’s the one we saw in New York, isn’t she?”

  “She is. I told my mother.”

  “Really? Did she believe you?”

  “No.”

  “There you are, then. Want anything from the fridge?”

  That was it. Katie could not stand the idea that this interloper, this phony, thought she could take whatever she wanted out of the refrigerator without addressing Katie’s accusation.

  “I think you have bigger worries than the fridge right now.”

  Carol’s smile curdled into a smirk. “Oh, now I’m scared. Look, here’s the deal. This is me, Carol. Greenwich, Connecticut, Miss Porter’s before Barnard, old money, I mean really old, like my parents would think of your parents as working class. Okay? If I’m somebody more fun than this when I’m at school, what business is it of yours? You think I’d be stupid enough to show up here looking the way I do at school?”

  “Your parents don’t know?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “So you lie about all this stuff.”

  Carol rolled her eyes. “Right. And you’ve always told your parents absolutely everything you’ve ever done, haven’t you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not. You’re just more limited in what you can get away with because you’re still at home. My parents know what I tell them, and what I don’t tell them they don’t know, and as long as I go to class and keep my grades up, they honestly don’t care, no matter how much they pretend they do.” She regarded Katie with a new interest. “So if you get tired of being Miss Perfection, you can give it up the day you get to Williams. You can dye your hair and get a tattoo and sleep with the TA in your French class and be any old thing at all you want.”

  With that, she trotted down the stairs, and Katie, who was trying very hard not to cry, backed into her own room, shut the door, and leaned against it, gnawing on her thumbnail until she realized what she was doing and dove for an emery board to repair the damage. She put her dress back in its bag and the bag back in the closet, she stuffed her sandals with tissue and tucked each one into a felt bag, and she folded up all the magazines that Lauren and Chloe really could have helped to stack before they left. She lay down on the bed and put a pillow over her head, which was not enough to muffle the sound of Carol’s footsteps coming back up the stairs and the door to the guest room opening and closing.

  Who was happy? Ron and his schizo girlfriend, her parents who were out to dinner with their boring friends, Lauren and Chloe and Brad and even Liz, who probably got her prom dress on sale at Ross Dress for Less or Loehmann’s, even though none of them had as much reason as Katie to be pleased with life. Who was unhappy? Katie, which made no sense at all. Without moving the pillow, she reached over and felt her way along her night table: hair elastic, nail file, lip balm, pad and pen, Tweezerman, scented candle, cell phone, back to the Tweezerman. She picked it up and spun it around like a miniature cheerleader’s baton, poked her head out from under the pillow, and held it still, poised, pointing at the zipper of her jeans.

  “Hah,” she said, and put the tweezers back on the night table. She was not unhappy, she was exasperated, which was different. Exasperated was a good thing because it meant she was impatient with her high school life and ready for a new one. She glared at the tweezers. She was as done with puncture wounds as she was with biting her nails.

  It
was always a struggle to find an acceptable venue for the Crestview senior prom. This year’s class had already attended bar mitzvahs on movie soundstages, sweet sixteens at private clubs taken over for the occasion, and a quinceanera at the biggest country club in town. They had eaten lobster tacos and white-truffle mini-pizzas; with the swipe of a handmade rosemary cracker, they had decapitated molded swans made of duck pâté, salmon mousse, or goat cheese, each one with a black-truffle beak, all the while pretending that what they really wanted was quesadilla, which was their way of saying that luxury was commonplace in their lives. They had danced to up-and-coming disc jockeys and famous bands on the decline, and they disdained the look-at-me Hummer stretch limos that the kids at Ocean Heights rented for their prom, preferring a discreet town car and a driver or a six-seater, tops.

  This year, prom was at the Marbella, a doubly oppressed downtown art deco hotel that had been abandoned for the first time in the beach hejira of the 1950s, and ignored again in the recent redevelopment craze whose epicenter was a deserted half mile from the property. The Marbella had been a signed offer away from becoming a parking structure and a big-box store when it caught the eye of a New York hotelier who had made his fortune on what he called vintage real estate. Two years and an Italian interior designer later, the Marbella was back, dignified by a press agent who used phrases like “recycling panache,” made accessible to the rest of the new downtown by a fleet of shuttle buses designed to look like the city’s long-dead Red Car trolley fleet. The entire block behind the hotel—a Spanish-language movie theater, a Laundromat, a single-room-occupancy hotel, and a taco stand—was demolished to make way for an authentic reproduction of the type of gardens that had never existed downtown in the first place.

  The Crestview faculty chaperones gathered at the entrance to the ballroom to form a corridor of flattery for the celebrating seniors, and Ted positioned himself discreetly toward the back of the group in the hope that students would drift the other way before they got to him. By prom night, most of them were perfectly happy to avoid him. The seniors who had gotten into their first-choice schools were dismissive, satisfied with a smug smile and a little wave, because of course they had gotten in on their own merit, with no outside help. The kids who had been disappointed steered clear of Ted because they blamed him. The ones who were still in play on a wait list somewhere avoided him like the plague, in case he had heard something earlier in the day that would wreck their evening. Short of graduation, this was as safe as Ted felt all year.