ALSO BY MEG MITCHELL MOORE
So Far Away
The Arrivals
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Meg Mitchell Moore
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Ltd., Toronto.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Cover photographs: table and chairs © Mostovyi Sergii Igorevich/Shutterstock; background © Johannes Kornelius/Shutterstock, © sirapob/Shutterstock
Photo composite by Carlos Paredes
Cover design by Emily Mahon
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Moore, Meg Mitchell.
The admissions : a novel / by Meg Mitchell Moore.—First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-385-54004-9 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-385-54005-6 (eBook)— i. Title.
ps3613.o5653a64 2015
813'.6—dc23
2015002117
eBook ISBN 9780385540056
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Also by Meg Mitchell Moore
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1: Angela
Chapter 2: Nora
Chapter 3: Gabe
Chapter 4: Cecily
Chapter 5: Nora
Chapter 6: Angela
Chapter 7: Nora
Chapter 8: Gabe
Chapter 9: Nora
Chapter 10: Angela
Chapter 11: Cecily
Chapter 12: Nora
Chapter 13: Gabe
Chapter 14: Angela
Chapter 15: Nora
Chapter 16: Cecily
Chapter 17: Angela
Chapter 18: Arthur
Chapter 19: Nora
Chapter 20: Gabe
Chapter 21: Nora
Chapter 22: Cecily
Chapter 23: Nora
Chapter 24: Angela
Chapter 25: Nora
Chapter 26: Nora
Chapter 27: Gabe
Chapter 28: Nora
Chapter 29: Angela
Chapter 30: Gabe
Chapter 31: Nora
Chapter 32: Angela
Chapter 33: Gabe
Chapter 34: Nora
Chapter 35: Angela
Chapter 36: Nora
Chapter 37: Gabe
Chapter 38: Melvin
Chapter 39: Nora
Chapter 40: Arthur
Chapter 41
Chapter 42: Angela
Chapter 43: Gabe
Chapter 44: Nora
Chapter 45: Gabe
Chapter 46: Angela
Chapter 47: Cecily
Chapter 48: Gabe
Chapter 49: Nora
Chapter 50: Gabe
Chapter 51: Nora
Chapter 52: Cecily
Chapter 53: Nora
Chapter 54: Gabe
Chapter 55: Angela
Chapter 56: Gabe
Chapter 57: Nora
Chapter 58: Angela
Chapter 59: Marianne
Chapter 60: Nora
Chapter 61: Melvin
Chapter 62: Nora
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For my parents
December
The phone.
Nora was trying not to worry. But she’d been a mother for nearly eighteen years now. She was going to worry.
It was a beautiful early-winter day in the Bay Area, which meant that it was sixty-five degrees and sunny, or would be until the fog rolled in later in the afternoon. No need for so much as a mitten. Christmas was nine days away.
She was reaching for her cell when the home phone rang.
Nobody ever called the home number. She’d threatened to have it disconnected so many times that it was now a standing joke in the Hawthorne family. Because she never had time to do anything she threatened to do, until now.
Mrs. Hawthorne?
Yes. Her hand shaking as she cradled the receiver.
A man’s voice, unfamiliar.
Nora hadn’t thought her heart could climb any farther up her throat than it had in recent weeks. But it could, it turned out, it could.
—
When Nora and her sister, Marianne, were young, growing up in Narragansett, Rhode Island, they used to play a game. One of them would say to the other: A genie grants you three wishes. What would you wish for?
They would say things like: I wish all the appliances in the house would turn to chocolate. Or: I wish I could have the gift of flight for twenty-four hours. Or: I wish we had pizza for dinner every night for three weeks. When they got older, they might say: I wish Jennifer Johnson would get a really bad perm that lasted for the rest of the school year. Or: I wish my breasts would grow (Nora) or stop growing (Marianne).
—
Mrs. Hawthorne?
Yes.
My name is Sergeant Stephen Campbell, California State Highway Patrol.
Stephen. Such an ordinary name, Nora would think later, for such an extraordinary phone call.
Three wishes, Genie, rapid-fire.
One. Say what you have to say, quickly.
Two. Tell me it’s going to be okay.
Three. Let me go back to the beginning and start over.
—
Mrs. Hawthorne. I’m in the security office at the Golden Gate Bridge.
The what?
Do you know how to get here, Mrs. Hawthorne?
She couldn’t say another thing. The room was whirling. She sat down on one of the kitchen stools.
Listen carefully, please. I’m going to tell you how to get here, and I want you to come right away. Do you understand me? We’re on the south side of the bridge. From where you are you have to cross the bridge to get to us.
She swallowed, tried to breathe. She watched a hand that didn’t seem like hers grasp at the edge of the counter. She watched the fingers try and fail to grip the edge. There was a sharp sound all around her, a high-pitched noise three octaves beyond glass breaking.
Mrs. Hawthorne?
Mmmmmmph. The only sound she could manage.
—
Later Nora would figure that it all started with her job. If she hadn’t been a working mother. If the situation with the Watkins home hadn’t happened, and then the horror show at the Millers’ house. If she’d been more available, more aware. If she’d been better. If if if.
Three months earlier…
CHAPTER 1
ANGELA
In the front of the house the rest of the family went about their business. It was early September, a shade past Labor Day. If Angela Hawthorne had to put the situation into words that her AP English teacher, Ms. Simmons, would appreciate, she might say that the moon was picking its way across the sky. The school year was still a virgin: barely touched, unsullied.
Above Angela’s desk, tacked to the colossal bulletin board, was a calendar. Circled with a red marker snatched from Maya’s room (seven-year-olds had a lot of markers) was the date. November first, fewer than eight weeks away. Her mother had added the rest for Angela with a black ballpoint in her neat, Catholic-girl-school hand, using exactly the words on the website: deadline for all early-action application
materials.
Eight weeks. Seven and a half, really. So much to do. Five AP classes this year: European History. English Literature and Composition. Chemistry. Statistics. Studio Art. (“Studio Art can be an AP class?” her father had asked. “That seems bogus.” Angela, in tacit agreement, said nothing.)
The battle for class rank was a bloody one. Its victims were laid out all across the campus of Oakville High and across much of Marin County. Figuratively, of course. Ms. Simmons might appreciate that metaphor. Sammy Marshall, felled by an ill-timed bout of mono the previous spring. (“Not his fault,” said Angela’s mother. “The poor thing.” Was she smiling when she said that?) Porter Webb, the school’s foremost scholar-athlete, already being scouted by the minors. Lots of time on the baseball diamond. (“Too much athlete, not enough scholar,” said Angela’s father ruefully, though it seemed to Angela that part of the rue was manufactured.)
At the moment Angela was first. Valedictorian. But the wolves were nipping at her heels. (Did this count as a cliché?)
The wolves were snapping at her feet. Better? Better.
One of the wolves was Maria Ortiz, poetess extraordinaire, already published in several journals, only some of them obscure, fluent in four languages. (Angela’s father: “Technically, are we counting the Spanish as a foreign language? Because she did grow up speaking it at home…”) Henrietta Faulkner (no relation, though if you didn’t ask, Henrietta didn’t offer), Angela’s erstwhile best friend. Erstwhile. SAT word.
Angela, are the class rankings out yet?
Ask Angela. Angela will know the answer. Angela knows everything.
Angela, did you do your homework?
Angela, did you practice?
And already, in the first week of school, a paper due in AP English Lit, as though the two novels Angela read in August for summer course work weren’t enough. It didn’t seem fair. “But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all,” said Cecily over dinner—an aphorism she’d picked up from The Princess Bride, which she’d spent countless hours of the summer watching with her best friend, Pinkie. At ten years old, Cecily and Pinkie seemed to have an unlimited supply of leisure time with which to watch movies and ride scooters and twist each other’s hair into unnatural shapes to see how long they held.
Where was Angela’s leisure time? Gone, vanished. Taken from her in the night by an invisible thief. Wait, a thief couldn’t actually be invisible.
Stolen in the night by an unknown assailant. Corny. Overwritten. And assailants didn’t necessarily steal, they might just attack.
Purloined. Better. Simple and elegant. SAT word.
Or, more likely, if memory served, Angela’s free time had never truly existed. Perhaps, eons ago, when she was an infant, reclining in the Moses basket that her mother kept in the attic, the only remaining relic of Angela’s and Cecily’s and Maya’s babyhoods. Maybe then Angela had had leisure time, though a foggy memory persisted of a swinging ball of red and black and white, something she was meant to study and perhaps learn from. “I’m saving it,” said Angela’s mother (about the Moses basket). “For one of you. For when you have your own.” And Angela nodded, absorbing this sentiment, while in truth she couldn’t imagine ever marrying or becoming a mother. Where, on earth, would she find the time?
They were expected to read all of Beloved and write a paper on its central theme. By tomorrow. Angela hadn’t begun the book yet, never mind the paper. Cross-country practice after school, the first meet only two weeks away, six-by-one-mile repeats through the woods and over the river.
Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house…Angela’s only living grandmother was her mother’s mother; she lived in Rhode Island, nowhere accessible by horse-drawn sleigh. (Was anywhere?)
Eight thirty. The fatigue was pulling at her eyelids. (Good? The fatigue was like a blanket…No. Too much. Pulling at the eyelids was better.) Again Angela looked at the calendar: November first. Not so long now, not so long.
Should she?
She never had before, hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t needed to, though she kept them at the ready. They all did—for emergencies, or not, as the case may be. Angela had gotten hers from Henrietta Faulkner, who had gotten them God-knows-where. A harmless little study aid, no big deal. A few of them secreted inside an Advil bottle, the bottle tucked inside her desk drawer, behind the pencil sharpener, the old iPod, no longer working, long since replaced, the odd collection of shoelaces.
Angela pulled out the bottle and shook the capsule out into her hand. Five milligrams, not so much. Other kids used more. Lots more. Five was nothing, a baby dose. A warm-up, an appetizer.
She reached for the glass of water at the edge of her desk. Hydration was super-important after a workout like the one they’d had today. Were the varsity cross-country teams at Novato and Redwood and all across the county working as hard as they were, as hard as the mighty Warriors? It was difficult to say. They would find out when they went head to head in November, at the regional meet. Foot to foot.
She lifted the glass, drank. The capsule was so small she scarcely noticed it going down. It was a blip, a hiccup.
She waited. Nothing. She waited some more. And more. And longer.
There it was. Her head cleared. It all faded to the background: the screech-scritch of Cecily’s bow across the strings (“Practice makes perfect,” Cecily said cheerfully, though there was little evidence that Angela could find to confirm the veracity of that statement, at least in Cecily’s case. Although those same words had been repeated to Angela ad nauseam for the past seventeen years), the sounds of the television, the neighbor’s dog barking at the back door to be let in or out.
There it was. Tunnel focus, that’s what they called it. And for good reason. Angela Hawthorne, valedictorian, was staring down a tunnel, no stopping, no sleep until Cambridge.
You get there, and then you can rest. Then you can rest.
But not yet, not now. Now she would work until it was done, and then she would sleep under a crimson moon.
CHAPTER 2
NORA
4:44 a.m.
Dear Marianne:
Do you know I thought about seeing a therapist? There: I said it. I haven’t told a single soul, not even Gabe. Don’t tell Mom, okay? Seriously.
I was going to go because of stress and sleeplessness. I thought, what have I got to lose?
I looked into it, and I even wrote down some numbers and checked with my insurance. Which didn’t cover any of it, of course. Though Elpis is ridiculously proud of its insurance. And then I looked at my schedule, and I thought: Ha. When? It turned out that what I had to lose was time I don’t have.
I changed my mind. I didn’t call. I decided you can be my therapist instead. So pardon, in advance, the long emails.
Insomnia is new to me, and on the one hand upsetting, but on the other hand I’m finding that I can really be productive when I put my mind to it. Just before I began this email to you I sent three requests for prices for the booths for the Spring Fling for the elementary school. I got the booth job again, ha, look at that, the first time I typed “booth” it autocorrected to “boob.” (I wish.) I drafted some language for the ad for my next open house and I made a list of all the appointments everyone in the house needs in the next six months: teeth, flu shots, general physicals, etc. Maya needs to see an ophthalmologist even though she’s only seven. Cecily has to go to the orthodontist. I need a mammogram. For healthy people, Marianne, we’re alarmingly busy just taking care of our bodies.
Lucky you, Dr. Sister! You’re hired, and you never even applied for the job.
Two showings in Sausalito went late, but then one in Belvedere was canceled, so Nora arrived home not so long after she’d told the sitter, Maddie, she’d be there. Unfortunately, the showing that was canceled was the only one Nora wanted not to be canceled: the Watkins property, which had been a thorn in Nora’s side all summer—a thorn that showe
d no signs of being removed. The property was priced too high, in Nora’s opinion. But the sellers were firm, and they were difficult, and because they wouldn’t budge Nora knew that all sorts of potential buyers were walking right by and not asking for a showing.
You wouldn’t think, maybe, that two girls with a seventeen-year-old sister would need an after-school babysitter, but not only was Angela supremely busy every day after school but so were her friends and the friends of her friends. They had glee club and band practice and varsity sports. They had recycling club (true story) and Best Buddies (partnering up with kids with disabilities) and French Club or Spanish Club, or sometimes both, and if they weren’t acting in the school plays they were directing them or painting scenery for them or sewing costumes for them. They were preparing for Mock Trial or Speech and Debate; they were applying to be pages at the state General Assembly. They were organizing their twenty-five hours of community service for the National Honor Society. And when they weren’t doing all of that, they were doing homework, homework, homework.
All of the high school students Nora knew were so busy, in fact, that when Nora had gone back to work two years ago she’d had to cast the net far and wide to find someone to shuffle Cecily from school and to her Irish dancing lessons and back home after. Maya, in second grade, traveled along for the rides like a barnacle tucked into a car seat.
The Admissions Page 1