Getting In: A Novel (28 page)

Katie was tired of being old news. The worst thing about
getting in early was that everyone ignored you in April and expected you to be as happy for them as you had expected them to be happy for you back in December. She looked forward to prom as a chance to reclaim her place center stage, and she was not pleased to find out that Ron intended to ruin everything. She picked a little green bit out of the penne and glared at her parents across the dinner table.

“I do not understand why Ron has to come home the weekend of prom,” she said. “And I don’t know what you mean, a girlfriend. Lauren saw him with somebody last fall, but her name wasn’t Carol.”

Joy and Dan exchanged a brief reproachful glance. If there had already been a girlfriend acquired and lost without their knowing about it, one of them was not doing a good enough job of asking leading questions.

“Perhaps Lauren misunderstood and she was just a classmate of his.”

“Yeah. Right. In New York and he goes to school in Massachusetts. Whatever. Can’t they come another weekend instead of ruining the most important day of senior year?”

“The girl has an interview for an internship.”

“Well, she’s not staying in my room.”

“She’ll stay in the guest room,” said Joy, “and I doubt that
ruining prom is high on their agenda. Ron remembers how important prom was.”

Katie sighed. “Ron only wishes his prom mattered.”

“I think she wants to be a writer,” said Joy. “Won’t you be embarrassed if she turns out to be terrific.”

“Yeah, embarrassed.” Katie pushed her plate away. “I’m done.”

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’A
neee
tra, glad ta
meee
tcha.’ 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 destroy 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?”