Getting In: A Novel (36 page)

“Just go. Take first quarter off if you don’t want to go to Prague.”

Lauren took a deep breath, and then another, as though she had to push the next words out.

“I didn’t get in anywhere else,” she said. “Not anywhere I wanted. Just Santa Barbara and Irvine.”

Brad whistled. “You’re fucking with me.”

“I am not. Don’t you tell anybody either, okay?”

“Deal. But then you really have to go to Northwestern. That’s so wrong.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” said Lauren. She walked over to the windows and spoke without turning around. “You going to give it to her?”

Brad bent over to wipe some imaginary dust off the front door of the model.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Liz’s prom dress hung in its dry-cleaning bag, the hanger hooked over the closet door, the plastic bag providing a synthetic rendition of leaves rustling in the breeze. She told her mother that it took up too much space in the closet, but in fact she preferred to hang it on the door, where she could see it. At some point between now and packing for college, Liz would have to decide its
fate. Chloe had said, “Find a dress you can cut the bottom off, so you can wear it someplace else,” not that Liz ever asked for her opinion on anything, but Chloe did tend to spew, particularly when it came to fashion. Liz had picked the most practical dress she could find, a sleeveless, boat-neck dress in what the sales-woman emphasized was cornflower blue raw silk, as though calling it cornflower made it more special than generic medium blue, but it had so far resisted her attempts to revise it into a regular dress.

More than once, she had held a pair of scissors at what would be calf length, what would be knee length, what would be very short, and waited for inspiration to tell her what looked best. It did not come. She might have tried it on for Chloe, might have risked opening the floodgates of wardrobe advice, but Chloe had stopped bothering with calc tutoring once all of her acceptances came in, which was one of the reasons Liz had spare time to speculate on the dress’s fate. She visited Yale’s website, scoured the photographs, and found not a single girl in a dress, which made her wonder why she would want to take up room in a tiny dorm closet for a dress she would never wear, regardless of length.

Abandoning the dress was trickier. It made no sense to leave the dress in her closet, as she could not imagine any scenario in which she came home and had cause to wear it again. Giving it away to a charity that supplied prom dresses to poor kids meant that her parents had spent $149 for four hours of what hardly could be called fun. So the dress hung, and rustled gently, while Liz scoured the Internet for information she could use in her valedictory address. Yoonie had convinced Steve to join her for a Sunday afternoon walk, and had tried to make it a family outing, but Liz had turned them down in favor of doing research. The three of them had never before gone for a walk on the beach together, and it seemed like a bad idea to create new things for her parents to miss in the fall.

She was halfway through the list of references she wanted to include in the speech, so she took a break, after “fair trade coffee” and before “carbon footprint,” and typed “prom dress” into Google’s search lozenge. The answer was sitting right there in the sponsored-links column: Liz could sell the prom dress on eBay.

It felt just right. Someone else would get a pretty dress at a relative bargain and Liz would make back some of the money her parents had spent. Her father would be impressed by her initiative, and she would joke with her mother about having rented the dress for the evening, a nicely dismissive close to the whole awkward episode. She went on eBay and looked at the first six dresses, to see what virtues seemed to be the most popular among prom-dress shoppers. When she was done, she opened her desk drawer and felt around in the back until her hand closed on a tiny safety pin, which she extracted and held at eye level, a profitable bounty of authenticity hanging from it on three silken strings.

Forget Chloe’s advice about length. The most useful thing she had ever said to Liz was “Keep the tags.”

With Ted on the speaker phone, Joel taking notes, and Nora taking notes on Joel’s notes, Lauren recited a list of questions about her first-quarter options. Ted wrote them down on the back of a flyer about the benefits of variable-stride workouts, abandoned his planned half-hour in the weight room at the sports club, and ran out to his car in the parking lot to call Bob, whose personal cell phone number he had extracted at the end of their previous conversation about Lauren. Bob ticked off the answers, Ted called the Chaikens back, and he was on the phone again with Bob, confirming Lauren’s intention to attend Northwestern, before Nora remembered the inadvertently blackened chicken in the oven.

Lauren Chaiken was going to spend what would have been the first quarter of her freshman year working at her mother’s
bakery, and if she still felt defensive when she arrived for second quarter, she could concoct a story about taking a gap quarter while she debated pursuing life as a pastry chef. It was all up to her; for the first time in months, she was in charge. After a celebratory pizza with her parents, the chicken in the garbage and the torched roasting pan bobbing serenely in a sink full of suds, Lauren went to sleep relieved for the first time in ten months. Her parents stayed up until after midnight, their mutual insomnia fueled by the fact that there seemed to be nothing more they needed to do, beyond writing four years’ worth of very large checks.

At exactly 3:59, the Ocean Heights facilities manager
nodded to the security guard, who had already closed the left-hand side of the big iron gate that sealed off the athletic fields. Manny returned the nod, swung the right-hand side closed, and secured the gate. He tugged to make sure that the handle had clicked into place, and then he turned his back on the graduation ceremony. The few students who had ever bothered to be pleasant to him had already sought him out to say good-bye. The majority of the 982 graduates had either ignored him or given him varying degrees of trouble for four years, so he had little interest in what they were about to do or say. All he cared about was keeping the families in and disruptions out. He eyed the sweaty, red-faced man who was rushing toward him and instinctively widened his stance. He put his hands on his hips and pulled his shoulders back.

The man kept coming. He rushed up right next to Manny, rather than stand at a respectful distance in front of him, as though it were the guard’s job to open the gate and let him in. He waved at the graduates. Manny stared straight ahead.

Dave flashed a big smile and pointed to his watch.

“Just under the wire.”

Manny held up his own watch and pointed to it. Exactly how dumb did this guy think he was?

“I’m sorry, sir, but graduation begins promptly at four.”

“My daughter’s in there,” said Dave, knowing that the longer
he argued with the guard, the less of a chance he had of success. He looked the man up and down. Random leather cases attached to his belt, none of them gun-shaped, but one of them large enough to hold a weapon that would hurt if aimed with full force at Dave’s arm, and, speaking of arms, that was some scar on the guard’s left forearm. Bullying was out of the question, and something about the guard’s stance told Dave that bribery was not a good idea, either, despite the ten that Dave always carried in his left front pants pocket to smooth the way with a random service employee.

He had to make the guard feel sorry for him.

“Look, you got a wife?” he asked.

“Ex,” said Manny, who was perfectly happy to talk about anything but being late for graduation.

“Me, too,” said Dave. “I’m telling you, I didn’t know how many things I could do wrong until she started telling me.”

“You got that,” Manny replied. “I said to her, if I’m so bad how come you were dumb enough to marry me in the first place?”

“I start out half an hour early,” said Dave, which was a lie, “I check the computer to see how’s the traffic, and by the time I get to the 405, I’m coming up the 101…”

“The Valley, man, that’s never good.”

“A spilled truck full of tomatoes,” also a lie, “three lanes gone. And my ex is going to make it my fault unless I get in there. I know you’ve got a job to do. I’ll stand in the back if somebody’s talking. I won’t move until there’s music…” Dave peered through the bars of the gate and pointed to the far right side of the rows of seats.

“Right down there, I don’t even have to step in front of anybody.”

The guard turned to look.

“See? Way over there. C’mon.”

The seniors were singing some song that was not on the program, so no one would notice a latecomer. Manny opened the gate
just far enough for Dave to squeeze through.

“Hey, man, thanks.”

“No problem,” said Manny.

Dave plastered himself against the fence and sidled down to Deena’s row. He slipped into the empty seat next to her just as the football coach walked to the podium.

“Nice,” said Deena.

“Have they started?” Dave bristled. “I don’t think so.”

“No,” she said. “The ceremony didn’t start on time. Your good luck.”

He searched for Chloe in the bleachers, mouthed the words, “I’m right here,” and blew her a kiss.

Chloe had seen her father at the gate and leaned toward the boy sitting next to her, whose name was either Guillermo or not. The only time she saw him was during graduation rehearsals, when their identical heights, given her graduation pumps, brought them together, or when she was leaving Liz’s house. He walked a nasty-looking dog down Liz’s block every day at about five o’clock, even in the rain. Chloe figured it was either to keep the dog in fighting trim or to keep it too exhausted to want to kill someone, but whatever the reason, she had never been inclined to talk to Guillermo until this moment.

She studied his inexpressive expression. Chloe told herself that her taste of the real world, during her brief tenure at Ocean Heights, had broadened her horizons beyond what she liked to call Crestview’s carefully vetted, handpicked rainbow coalition. She had no idea where her new world view sat on the continuum of world views; knowing enough to needle her Crestview pals might still be less than half of what a truly enlightened person knew. But she prided herself on her willingness to consider the boy a potential confidant, what with the dog and the sullen gaze and
the silence, while her old friends would certainly be too quick to categorize and dismiss him. She did not judge. Besides, he was all she had. The girl on her other side was going to Oberlin with her flute, which was all she had ever wanted to do. She was far too fortunate to be sympathetic.

“I think that’s my dad,” she whispered to Guillermo or not. “Out at the gate. Nice. Misses his only kid’s graduation.”

“No shit. Want me to go get Manny to let him in?”

“Like you could do that.”

“Hey. I’ll do it.” He started to get up, and Chloe put a restraining hand on his arm.

“No,” said Chloe. “He’s late. Gates closed at four. But thanks.”

“Man, that’s tough,” he said. “You don’t care your own dad doesn’t get to see you?”

Chloe cocked her head and shrugged. “He doesn’t care enough to get here on time. Fuck him.”

“Okay, then.”

Chloe smiled and began to sing in a tiny voice, loud enough for her immediate neighbors to hear, a line of melody and a whispered exclamation:

“Let’s get it started—Hah.

“Let’s get it started—in here.

“Let’s get it started—Hah.

“Let’s get it started—in here.”

That was all it took. The song ran down the bleachers like a flame along a gas spill, and suddenly the 982 members of the graduating class at Ocean Heights High School started singing, stamping their feet to punctuate the rhythm, the shuddering bleachers laying in the bass.

The boys sang, “Let’s get it started,” stomped their feet, and 982 voices hollered, “
HAH!
”

The girls sang back, “Let’s get it started,” stomped their feet, and 982 voices hollered, “
IN HERE!
”

“Let’s get it started,” stomp, “
HAH!
”

“Let’s get it started,” stomp, “
IN HERE!
”

Before the members of the administration could figure out whose job it was to squelch the revolt, Bill Midden leapt to his feet, turned his back on the crowd to face his classmates, and raised his arms like a conductor. For four years he had been invisible, friendless save for the cafeteria worker who took pity on his spindly frame and gave him an extra scoop of everything. He played chess with a computer, left the math curriculum in the dust, and fully despised every teacher who had ever voiced concern over what they perceived as his shyness, which only proved how clueless they were. He was not shy. He simply had standards, and had yet to find anyone he could stand to talk to for more than fifteen minutes. Bill Midden had a full ride at MIT, an ardent crush on the girl who sang with the Black-Eyed Peas, and the expectation that he would live his entire life without ever meeting anyone even remotely like her. He was as fed up as an eighteen-year-old could be. It was time for graduation to start and high school to be over.

“Everybody,” he yelled, and the senior class replied as one, “
YEAH
.”

“Everybody.”

“
YEAH
.”

“Let’s get into it.”

“
YEAH
.”

Now he raised his arms above his head and became a rap master, his wrists torqued, his fingers pointed at the ground. Bill was in the middle of the middle row. He was untouchable and he knew it. He had his congregation, and they knew their reading by heart.

“Get stupid.”

“
COME ON.
”

“Get it started.”

“
COME ON.
”

“Get it started, get it started, let’s get it started.”

“
HAH!”

“Let’s get it started.”

“
IN HERE!
”

That was where they got stuck. No one remembered the rest of the song, so they started repeating “Let’s get it started,” followed by a dwindling “Hah!” or “In here!” until finally the football coach, who had Googled the lyrics on his iPhone as soon as the singing started, stepped past his paralyzed colleagues to the podium. He grabbed the microphone, glanced once more at his phone screen, pointed an accusing finger at the seniors, and started to sing.

“‘And the bass keeps runnin’, runnin’, runnin’, runnin’…’ Am I right here? Yes, surprising as it may seem, somebody older than you outspoken young men and women knows the lyrics to this song. But we have heard your message loud and clear, so I ask you, Fergie asks you, the Peas ask you, as the song says, ‘simply to follow your intuition, free your inner soul and break away from tradition.’ An excellent theme for a commencement exercise, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s take our seats, restore silence, and we will, in fact, commence.”

The seniors sat down, chastened. There was nothing worse than having one’s rebellion co-opted by an adult who must have memorized the lyrics just so that he could be cool at a moment like this. They folded onto the bleachers as one for a final hour of scripted obedience.

The sequence of speakers was the same as it always was, and attentive parents of older siblings found that entire segments of the speeches sounded vaguely familiar. The dean of faculty reflected on the lessons that she and her colleagues had learned from the seniors, “because education is a two-way street.” The senior-
class president talked about how thankful the members of the Ocean Heights senior class were for the myriad lessons they had learned, about life as well as academics, and when he uttered the word “myriad” a senior in the back row yelled, “Kiss-ass.” The president of the Parents Association congratulated Ocean Heights on sending two-thirds of its graduates to college, a small increase built on the illusion that two dozen seniors who had not yet gotten around to registering at a community college might be seized by the desire to do so. The principal delivered the homily of human potential, his favorite topic because it was absolutely safe. As long as he stuck to what the class might do, he could say whatever he wanted. It was when he was limited to what the class had done that he found it difficult to defend the inspirational superlatives a principal’s speech required.

By the time it was Liz’s turn, the sun had baked fault lines into the women’s makeup and raised sweat crescents under the men’s arms, though several of them were no longer awake to notice. The seniors flapped the hems of their gowns to raise a breeze, and more than one unzipped the front, daring anyone to deny them their diplomas for fighting heatstroke. Hidden bottles of water and cans of Red Bull emerged from under the gowns. The crowd, parents and seniors alike, was reduced by the breezeless heat to cranky unrest, except for Liz and Steve and Yoonie, for whom the valedictory had been a beckoning point on the horizon for years.

Liz thanked everyone a valedictorian was supposed to thank, and then she stood at the podium, silent, looking out at the crowd. She was trying to register the way she felt, to slow down a day that was moving far too quickly, but she waited so long that some of the adults began to squirm in apprehension, fearful that the smartest student in the Ocean Heights graduating class was going to blow her big moment.

The principal nudged the assistant principal, and the assis
tant principal was about to stand, when Liz began to speak.

“I am standing here thinking how proud all of you parents must be today,” she began, “and thinking that probably you have felt lots of emotions during our senior year.” She paused.

“Not all of them proud,” she said, to an amused murmur.

“Not all of them even close,” she said, and the murmur broke into a laugh.

“There were days,” she said, “and you know it’s true, when you couldn’t wait for us to go to college, or get a job, whatever we were going to do, because at least you would have some peace and quiet. We have not been our best selves this year, and on behalf of the senior class I would like to apologize to you for every terrible thing we said or did.”

The crowd applauded, and Liz flipped her first index card to the back of the stack and waited until they were done.

“But I also thought I should take this opportunity to defend some of our behavior, or at least to explain it. It’s hard to be the American Dream. You remember what it was like, don’t you? Your parents wanted everything for you that they didn’t have, just like you’re sitting there wanting everything for us that you don’t have. The one thing you have in common—whether you came here as adults, like my parents, or your grandparents were born here—the one thing that’s true of all of you is that you’ve pretty much already made the big decisions you’re going to make in life. So you know what you’re not going to do.

“There might be a midlife crisis or two. Maybe one of you will give up selling insurance and become a ballroom dancer, or go back to school at forty-five to become a psychologist, but for the most part, you’ve made your choices. And I bet they’re not quite what you imagined when you were our age. That’s okay, that’s not a criticism, that’s real life, not everyone grows up to be Steven Spielberg, and if they do their kids are probably over at Crestview, not here. It’s fun for you to imagine things that we might
do, because we have more options.”

She gestured at the members of the graduating class. “So when it’s our turn to sit on folding chairs, and our kids are up here in the bleachers, we’ll be hoping that they have a bigger life than we do, just like you’re hoping for that now. That’s how it works.”