Getting In: A Novel (30 page)

She addressed Katie with an eager venom, slowly, so that no one missed her point. “But, Katie,” she said, “I thought you were dying to go to Yale. Lauren, didn’t you say Katie was so mad at her parents for…”

Katie took a long sip of water, long enough to glare at Chloe and then turn and glare at Lauren through the bottom of the bottle.

“I considered it last fall,” she said. “It may be right for some people. Not me.”

“I don’t get it,” said Mike, who had been idly figuring the odds of getting Katie to himself, and beyond that, of determining exactly where that dress undid. He knew that his chances of getting past the dress improved with the appearance of interest in something other than sex, so he made the occasional comment to preclude being dismissed as a boy who had but one thing on his mind. “I don’t get it” was not one of his best, but it implied at least that he was listening, while he figured out whether that little gray knot on the side of the dress was decorative or functional.

“I mean,” he continued, leaning toward his date to get a closer look, “once you’re talking Williams and Yale, how can there be a wrong school?”

Katie rustled herself into a more authoritative posture. “Reputations change. Policies change. Schools make decisions that don’t
work out in the long run and maybe that school ends up not the great place it was in its heyday.”

“Heyday,” said Lauren. “There’s a word you don’t hear much.”

Katie turned her laser gaze on Lauren. “My father uses it,” she said, “and I think it’s appropriate. Look at Yale, if we’re going to play this out.”

“Oh,” said Brad, in a low, warning voice, “let’s not.”

“Look at Yale,” said Katie, ignoring him. “One of the top three schools in the country forever, and like everyone else they’re facing an upheaval…”

“Hey, upheaval, watch out,” said Chloe, clutching at Paul as though to steady herself.

“Facing an upheaval in terms of numbers of applicants and quality of applicants and diversity…”

“Somebody stop her,” said Lauren. Brad reached under the table and patted Katie’s knee as quietly as he could, but he might as well have set the tablecloth on fire.

“You know,” Katie went on, ignoring all of them and picking up speed, “I’m sure everyone wants to do the right thing, but you cannot turn around, having evaluated applicants purely on the basis of quality forever, and suddenly you decide that what you need is a…a…a
buffet
of students. As though variety matters more than excellence.”

“There’s nobody at this table who isn’t quality,” said Chloe, “except maybe me, who is not who you’re talking about.”

Katie grabbed a roll from the basket, swiped a point off the star-shaped butter pat, slathered the butter on the roll, and took a ferociously big bite. The others waited while she chewed, all of them but Chloe hoping that the carbohydrates would slow her down, Chloe spoiling for the next outburst. No one spoke. Katie finished the roll and attacked the wild salmon in champagne sauce, and slowly, the others picked up their forks and began to
eat, one eye on their plates, one eye on the dormant volcano that was Katie. They talked about summer plans, about jobs and internships and family trips. When it was Liz’s turn, she said that she had a job at the Gap for the summer, but she was quitting a few weeks early because her father had decided to drive across the country to Yale.

“So that will be our summer vacation, the three of us,” she said. “Because my father loves to drive, and there is so much we have never seen. He found a service, we drive someone’s car across the country for them and then he and my mother can fly back, because they can’t take that much time off work, of course.”

“Right,” Katie muttered into the rim of her water bottle, “because every cab driver counts.”

“Shut the fuck up, Katie,” said Brad.

“You shut the fuck up,” she said. “But, see, this is what’s happening. A school like, say, like Yale, can take a freshman class from the top kids in the country. But no. They want one of everything. Suddenly how much does it matter that you’ve got perfect scores and perfect grades and all these activities and a great essay and terrific recommendations. Because if you’re me, say, if you’re this rich white girl, and it’s harder for girls…” She took another sip. “Anyhow, so you’re this rich white girl and all of a sudden that’s a disadvantage, and normally Yale would have begged me to come, but all of a sudden what if they need to diversify, you know, and I am in the position of being discriminated against for being not a minority. What kind of solution is that, what kind of affirmative action is that, if all it does is somebody new gets left out for no reason except for who they are.”

“That’s usually the reason someone gets left out,” said Chloe. “Guess it’s your turn.”

“Says who?” said Katie. “Says you?”

“Katie, you would’ve gotten into Yale, so what’s the big deal?” Lauren hoped to flatter her friend into submission. “You chose
Williams early, but you still would’ve gotten into Yale.”

Katie was not about to admit that she had caved in to pressure from her parents. She slid into fiction as easily as she had slipped into her prom dress, not a snag, not a hitch, a seamless internal rewrite that transformed a months-long power struggle into an informed consensus.

“I did a lot of research, and I chose Williams early because it seemed that anyone—
anyone
—might get turned down at Yale this year for no good reason. No good reason. Except that there might be a less qualified candidate who made a school feel, you know, like it was doing the right thing.”

“I am not a less qualified candidate.”

They all looked at Liz.

“I am the valedictorian at Ocean Heights,” she said. “I am as qualified as anyone at this table.”

“More,” said Chloe, trying to be helpful.

“And what you’ve said is very sad,” Liz went on, “because I am not to blame for what has happened to you, and because you seem unable to be happy about going to Williams, which would make a lot of people very happy. You’re embarrassing yourself. We ought to change the subject, I think.”

Brad considered blurting out the truth about his Harvard acceptance, to make himself the focus instead of Liz, but a confession, he realized, would play right into Katie’s hands. If Preston Bradley IV could not sustain the family line at Harvard without help, then clearly Harvard was using faulty criteria, which was exactly her point. The best he could do was to get Liz away from Katie before the next, inevitable outburst. He put down his fork, folded his napkin, and wished the band would start up again so that he could ask his date to dance.

Lauren stared at her hands. None of this sounded very funny when Katie said it, not half as funny as quoting from Chloe’s phony essay over ice cream, imagining a profile built out of fake
roadblocks that were only amusing to people who had never faced any. She glanced over at Jim, who had yet to say a word, but he was busy taking cell-phone pictures of the room to send to his girlfriend. Everyone else seemed suddenly obsessed with the pattern of their woven dinner napkins, mortified into silence by Katie’s behavior. Lauren was seized by the desire to speak up, to  say something that would make senior prom a watershed event in their lives. To make a statement about profound advantage and the equally profound shortsightedness that seemed to accompany it.

Wow, she thought. How pompous is that?

She wanted to challenge her friends to consider their obligation to a world that had always been awfully kind to them.

No better.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Trite. Each of her parents had said that within the last two weeks and had apologized almost immediately for sounding so dumb.

If only she could think of something to say that did not sound like the topic sentence of a bad five-paragraph essay. She was still working on the best way to share her feelings when Katie lurched halfway out of her seat and sat down again with a thud.

“Lauren,” she said, in a forcibly gay tone. “Come with me to the bathroom.”

Something in Katie’s voice said that this was not the traditional retreat, in which girls headed to the bathroom to criticize other girls’ dresses and calculate the likely trajectory of the hours after the dance was over. Lauren caught Chloe’s eye, and together the three girls peeled off like drill team members working a formation. A moment later, Liz got up and followed them down the hallway. Brad, who had no interest in listening to Mike’s post-prom agenda, caught up with Liz and propelled her toward the others.

The girls were at the door with the silhouette of a bathing beauty on it, when Lauren turned and beckoned to Brad and to Liz to hurry.

“C’mon,” she said.

“Inside?” Brad asked.

“You stand outside. Liz can come in. Don’t let anybody else.”

Lauren and Chloe stood on either side of Katie while Liz pushed open the door. Once they were safely inside, Katie sagged against Lauren, who tried to prop her up at arm’s length, motivated by a reflexive desire to save her dress from whatever was rumbling so loudly in Katie’s stomach. She inched around behind Katie without ever letting go of her entirely, and motioned to Chloe to do the same. Together they nudged Katie toward the row of sinks, arriving just in time for her to open her mouth and spew a stream of salmon in champagne sauce, buttered sourdough roll, and stomach acid into the nearest bowl.

“Bull’s-eye,” said Chloe, turning on the faucet full blast and wrinkling her nose. “Nice.”

“Think she’s done?” asked Lauren.

“How would I know?” Chloe replied. “Better question. What are we going to do with her?”

“She needs to go home,” said a low voice behind them. Liz took her cell phone out of her purse and laid it at the far end of the counter, out of Katie’s range.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” begged Lauren, who would not have blamed Liz if she had.

“I was only going to call my father,” said Liz. “I can ask him to…”

Katie waved a vague arm in Liz’s direction and looked as though she wanted to say something, but all that blood rushing to her vocal cords left her leg muscles without the will to go on. She did not quite faint. She crumpled in slow motion until she was
flat on her back on the floor, her dress splayed around her and one high-heeled sandal caught in her hem. She writhed back and forth to free herself until Chloe caught sight of the trapped shoe and eased it loose, and then Katie lay there, motionless—the only thing in her world, at that exact moment, that was not moving.

Chloe moistened a paper towel and held it out to Katie.

“Here,” she said. “Wipe your mouth.”

Listlessly, Katie placed the wet towel across her face and left it there.

“That’s effective,” said Chloe.

The three girls stood, frozen, silent, waiting to see what Katie would do next. After she had managed to hold still for an entire minute, Liz picked up her phone and hit her dad’s number on speed-dial.

As Liz began to talk, Katie propped herself up on her elbows and the damp towel slid to the floor. Her eyeliner and mascara had melted into two black crescents across her cheekbones, and her lipstick was a soggy half-inch wider than her mouth in all directions. Her hairline looked as though she had just finished a half-hour workout.

She moaned.

“My head,” she said, batting at Lauren’s hem with one vague arm.

“What is it?” Lauren knelt down next to Katie.

“My brain,” Katie said, with rising urgency. She tried to sit up and point at Liz, but she needed both hands on the floor to keep her balance, so she lay back down. Her voice rose in a wail. “I don’t understand what she’s saying! Nothing makes any sense. Oh my God. What’s wrong with me?” Her breath got fast and shallow, and then she burped, loudly. Instinctively, Lauren hiked her dress up and checked the floor.

“Katie. Listen. I don’t understand her either.”

“You don’t? Ask Chloe if she does. What’s wrong with us?”

“Katie, stop,” said Lauren. “You just understood me. None of us can understand her. She’s talking to her dad. In Korean. There’s nothing wrong with your brain.”

“Except that it’s pickled,” said Chloe, who was flicking little shreds of mascara off her cheeks and wishing that she had used her mother’s good stuff instead.

“You think?” Lauren asked.

“Or we’re all about to have salmonella,” Chloe replied. “Personally, I’m hoping for drunk.”

Katie sighed and turned her head so that her cheek rested against the cool tile. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly against the floor, as though she was trying to take hold of it.

“Floor’s moving,” she mumbled.

“Remember Brad?” Chloe asked, happily. “When he got drunk that one time? ‘Whoa, is that an earthquake?’” She leaned over Katie. “Floor’s not moving.”

“I remember,” Katie chirped. “I do. Where’s Brad? Want to go get Brad?”

“Outside. Sssh,” said Lauren, wishing that she could gauge the intonation in Liz’s voice. It was remarkable enough that Liz’s generosity had survived Katie’s monologue about who deserved what. It might not last through a round of Katie’s inflated reminiscences about her nonexistent romance with Brad. Lauren turned to Chloe.

“Let’s get her standing up.”

“I don’t think so, not until we have someplace for her to go.” Chloe peered at Katie. “Very pale, pretty sweaty. Leave her there.”

“I’m fine,” said Katie, who sat up too fast and vomited down the front of her dress.

Liz slapped her phone shut and turned to the other girls. “If you each hold her under one arm you can get her over to the sink,” she said. “We need to clean her up before it dries. But hold up her
hem or it will get on the floor.”

They did as they were told. Lauren stood at Katie’s left side, Chloe at her right, and they escorted her over to the counter, where Liz somehow separated the folds of Katie’s dress and got the soiled ones into the sink. She ran hot water straight through them, one leaf of fabric at a time, and after a few minutes the water in the sink ran clean.

“Chloe,” said Liz, still holding the fabric over the sink, “can you get Katie’s water bottle so she can rinse her mouth.”

Chloe tipped Katie toward Lauren and reached out with her foot to nudge Katie’s bag closer. She bent down without letting go, and with her free arm rooted around in the purse until she found a water bottle. Rather than hand it to Liz, she propped up her side of Katie with her hip, unscrewed the bottle top, and took a tiny sip.