by Ned Vizzini
I began to list my accomplishments and found them lacking. Dr. Arnold wasn’t fazed. “I’ll emphasize the things that will help you and ignore the things that won’t,” he said, dismissing me from his office. “Just worry about the SATs—and see if you can do something over the summer.”
Right, the SATs.* On May 15, I took them, which brings me to the final demon of the application process: the College Board. See, the SATs, Achievements, and whatnot are created and administered by a private organization that makes gobs of money off the misery of high school students. The College Board schedules the tests, tells you where to take them, and proceeds to charge fees. First, you pay a fee for taking the exams. Then you pay a fee if you register “late” for the exams (late being an abstract period determined by the College Board). Once you’ve taken your tests, you pay a fee for sending your scores to the appropriate colleges, and, of course, if you send these “late,” you pay an additional “rush” fee. Want to change your test date? Fee. Cancel your scores? Fee. I’d say the College Board sucked three hundred dollars out of my family. I’m waiting for the IPO.
In June, I resolved to clear up all my college stuff: fill out the forms, register for the tests, apply for scholarships. None of that happened, though. I was too busy playing dominoes in the street and inhaling noxious fumes as an apprentice housepainter. The only thing I did do was buy the Princeton Review’s Best 311 Colleges, which informed me that Harvard was really, really hard to get into. By then, it was time to go back to school.
Now, as I was beginning senior year, I had one important decision to make. Should I apply early? Early admission allows a student to commit to a “dream school” and avoid the hassle of applying elsewhere. Here’s how it works: in November of your senior year, you apply to your favorite college. The admissions office reviews your application quickly, handing down its decision within a month. The school does one of three things: accepts you, in which case you’re legally obligated to attend; rejects you; or defers you, putting off the question of your admission until the following April.
I wanted to apply early to Harvard. I didn’t even want to go there anymore—when I visited the school I saw too many eyebrow rings and not enough human activity. But, oh man, I wanted to get in. I wanted that grand intellectual bitch slap, like Dad said. Besides, Harvard had a special clause: I could refuse the school even after getting in early. That’s what I really wanted.
I filled out the Harvard forms the night before they were due. There were two parts, inspiringly titled Part I and Part II. Part I was basic information: age, gender, intended major—it was easy to complete. Part II, however, requested an essay and more detailed personal information—it was a killer. Part II had a whole page for extracurricular activities, which I was hard-pressed to fill, and at the bottom of the page it suggested: “If you have participated in other activities that you would like us to know about, feel free to attach another sheet.” Right.
By 6:00 A.M. I’d written in two different-colored pens and smudged Whiteout everywhere, but I’d finished the form. I showed it to Mom. She had a fit.
“You cannot send this to Harvard!” We were in the kitchen, huddled over the application as if it were an eviction notice. “Ned, it looks like it was written on a moving train!”
“I know, sorry.”
“And you didn’t even mention church! How could you not say that you were president of your church youth group?”
“Mom, that was in eighth grade!”
“Oh, they don’t care. Gimme that Whiteout.” Within an hour, Mom had completely redone the application. There were now two kinds of handwriting on it, in three different colors of ink, and, apparently, I was a volunteer in the Parks Department and a student coordinator for Meals on Wheels.*
“There,” she summed up, “that’s how you fill out an application.”
I mailed it on my way to school.
Two weeks later, I got a letter.
I showed the letter to Mom, and she delivered her usual words of encouragement, “My goodness, Ned, we’ve really done it this time, huh? We sent in an application that looked like the handiwork of a six-year-old, and we forgot to include the check. Harvard won’t even look at you.”
But they did. Two weeks later, I had the interview.
It was an utter disaster. I showed up an hour late because I thought it was on Thirty-fourth Street instead of Forty-fourth.* My interviewers, two young women named Suzie and Ann, sat me down in a plush room, introduced themselves as Harvard grads, and grilled me gently for an hour. Mostly, we talked about stocks, but near the end of the interview, I made the grave error of pulling out the Uncle Tumba comic.
Uncle Tumba, my foray into self-publishing, was a comic book about an elderly vagrant from ancient Tibet who roamed the countryside seeking adventure. I had started it with a friend, Adam, and we’d sold nearly two hundred copies at our school.
“Cool, I love comics!” Suzie said, when I told her about it. “May I see?”**
I handed over issue number one. She began to read it. Her face immediately clouded.
“There are curses in here.”
“Well, yeah,” I explained. “I could always tone down the cursing, though. In future issues.”
“Can we keep copies?” Ann asked.
“Sure,” I said. “One dollar each.”
Suzie and Ann gaped at me. “You’re going to charge us?”
“Well, uh, I wouldn’t want it to seem like I was trying to bribe my way into Harvard!” It was a lame joke, but there was no way I was giving away those issues for free. I needed the money for orange Hostess cupcakes on the way home.
From that moment on, the college process moved pretty quickly. In December, Harvard deferred me. I applied to my other schools—with a bit more care—in January. The final tally came in April: rejected by Harvard and Yale, accepted everywhere else.
There must have been a moment where I kissed the big schools good-bye—a split second spent watching late-night television, instead of studying, that pushed me into rejection territory. Who knows when it was? I’d like to think I spent it doing something fun.
*Details of the award are given in “Horrible Mention” (this page–this page).
**Sample problem from math team: “Find the smallest prime that is the fifth term of an increasing arithmetic sequence, all four of the preceding terms also being prime.”
*A book by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, RIP.
*I got a 1530, a score I lied about almost as much as my virginity. I found that if I told people I got higher than a 1400, they’d get angry.
*“That’s not lying,” Mom said. “Just emphasizing.”
*The Harvard lady really said “Thirty-fourth” on the phone. I think she knew, even then, that I wasn’t going to get in and was just messing with me.
**She really said that—“May I.” My interviewers were perfect.
FUN IN THE SUN
The setup was perfect. Too perfect. On April 4, I was going to turn eighteen. On that same date, I was scheduled to be in Cancún, Mexico, on my high school senior trip. That deserved its own rock song; I’d be sitting on the beach at noon, waking up to face the tropical sun, with a gorgeous brunette on a towel by my side. She’d hand me a Corona with a wedge of lime and say, “Happy birthday, Ned. You’re eighteen.” And then she’d smile.
Didn’t exactly work out that way.
I heard about the Cancún trip in the fall of senior year. I didn’t have any idea what it was. I was ignorant of the whole senior trip ritual, where wealthy teenagers with lenient parents escape to warm climates to get drunk and have casual sexual encounters. I’d just hear it whispered, “Cancún.” “Man, this homework sucks. I can’t wait to go to Cancún.” “I hate school. The only reason I’m still here is for Cancún.”
One day, Owen, my bug-eyed Russian friend, approached me in the hall and asked outright, “Dude, are you going to Cancún?”
“Probably,” I said. That was good. “Probab
ly” made me sound cool—like I’d known about the trip all along—but it was noncommittal. I didn’t want to commit to this before I knew what it was.
“All right,” Owen said, throwing his arm around me.
I broke his mood by asking the nerdiest possible question. “Uh, what is Cancún? Exactly?”
“Stupid, it’s the senior trip. We fly down to Mexico to party for a week.”
“Oh. How many people?”
“Whoever can afford it, like forty, fifty people. Lots of girls is the important thing.”
“How much does it cost?”
“Eight hundred bucks.”
“Damn.”
“Dude, are you going or not? And don’t tell me you can’t afford it. You’re probably the only guy in the school who can afford it, since you’ve got your own money. What do you have by now? A hundred thousand dollars?” Owen was exaggerating. I had about ten thousand dollars saved up at this time; no way was I spending 8 percent on some trip.
“I’m just saying, eight hundred bucks is a lot of money.”
“Ned, you want to do this. I know you do. I’m telling you now so you can room with me and Josh and Alex.”
I sighed.
“Dude, we need somebody else to room with us.”
I knew this could be trouble.
“I’ll go.”
“Okay!” Owen grinned. “So go talk to Emily! She’s, like, the coordinator. She has sheets for you to fill out.”
“Cool.”
Talking to Emily wasn’t going to be fun. She was one of those criminally gorgeous high school girls; she made me feel about eight years old. If she found out I was going on her trip, she’d laugh in my face. I sought her out a couple of days later.
“Hey, Emily?” She was sitting with the other preppy seniors in their segregated area by the Snapple machine. “I’m, uh, going to Cancún, and I need some literature?”
“Oh, Ned, you’re going?” Her smile was too wide. And she had said my name, which was suspect—I didn’t even think she knew my name. “Here, let me give you the sheet.”
She handed me a colorful piece of paper. “This,” she bubbled, “has all the info! About the trip! See! The name of the company is Student Travel Services; the trip costs eight hundred fifty dollars; we leave on April second …”
I wasn’t looking where Emily was pointing, though. I was checking out the flyer’s photo: a row of thonged butts under the caption, “Fun in the Sun.”
“Okay?” Emily summed up whatever she’d been telling me.
“Yeah.” I folded the flyer neatly, tucked it in my pocket, and took it home to show my mother. “Mom,” I said, closing the door and throwing my backpack on the dining room table. She was sitting with her feet up, doing a crossword puzzle.
“Hi, honey,” she said, looking at me. “How was your day?”
“Good, good … ah, Mom, I have to show you this.” I pushed the “Fun in the Sun” flyer in front of her. “I’m going to Cancún in April.”
“Whaaat?” Mom jumped from her chair, clutching her crossword like a shield. The flyer dropped to the ground. “Whaaaaat?!”
“It’s spring break! I’ve done very well in school. I deserve a reward, right? It’s just, you know, a vacation. To Cancún.”
“Vacation? Ha! It’s an orgy of sex and drugs!” She grabbed the flyer off the floor and inspected it.
“It’s not an orgy of sex and drugs.” I was wistful. “It won’t be for me, anyway.”
But now Mom had seen the thongs. “Look at this!” she howled. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Uh-oh, the Seven Nos. Those were always a bad sign. “You are absolutely—”
For the next few minutes, we had an interesting scene. Mom yelled at me about Cancún and I yelled back, but the problem was, she was right. The place was a seedy hole, and when I tried to describe it as anything else (“There are ruins, Mom, I’ll see the Cancún ruins!”), she would burst out laughing. Then I would chuckle, despite myself, until our shouting degenerated into laughter. At some point, I noticed that our apartment door was open; it always opened while we fought, delivering the action in stereo to our neighbors.
I closed the door and gave in. “Okay, fine, Mom,” I smiled. “You won’t let me have a wholesome time in Cancún. I guess I’ll have to suffer.”
She sat back down. “Don’t try to pull one over on me, Ned,” she said. “I was young once, too.”
I walked to my room, plopped down on my bed, and started strategizing. How could I get to Cancún without Mom finding out?
It wasn’t such a stretch. I’d snuck out on my parents before and lied about my whereabouts to stay at parties. The method was always the same:
Me: “Mom, I’m sleeping over at James’s house tonight.”
Mom: “You are? Oh, how is James? Is he doing okay?”
Me: “He’s fine, Mom. I’m sure he says hi.”
Mom: “Well, if you’re going there, leave the phone number by the stove so I don’t have to look it up if I want to call.”
Then I’d leave the phone number—James’s legitimate phone number—and head out, knowing she’d never call. We had a tacit pact—if I showed enough respect to give her a phone number, she’d show enough respect not to check on me.
Cancún would operate on the same principle, but for a week, instead of a night. I’d tell Mom and Dad that I was staying at James’s country house this time. The plan was airtight; I actually had stayed there a year before so the element of parental trust was in place. I’d give my parents a phone number, and they wouldn’t call. I’d be home free—eighteen, on the blanket with my beach babe, as planned.
I went to school the next day with an eight-hundred-fifty-dollar Cancún deposit. I handed it to Emily by the Snapple machine.
“You know, it’s so great that you’re going, Ned,” she said earnestly.
Emily’s act was beginning to bother me. If she liked me—which would be unthinkably cool—I needed to move fast. I’d found that girls, when they developed crushes, were never receptive for more than two weeks. Sure, they’d remember a crush for two years and then tell you, “Ned, back in sophomore year, I thought you were sooo cute.” But they were only open for two weeks—you needed to act quick.
“You’re really glad I’m going?” I asked Emily. “I mean, glad glad?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “You round out a whole room. It’s you, Owen, Alex, and Josh. And I get paid by the room.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. It’s a sponsorship. The company sending everyone to Cancún pays me based on how many people go. I am making so much money. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Oh.” Glad I got that cleared up.
• • •
I went through the dark months—November, December, January—without any changes on the Cancún front. My escape plan stayed the same: (1) leisurely tell my parents I was going to spend the week at James’s country house; (2) get on the plane; (3) party; (4) pray for no phone calls. But at the end of January, two things happened: I took on the role of Jesus, and I got a girlfriend.
Jesus first, though I assure you, I was more surprised to get the girlfriend. My church, St. John’s, which Mom had made me attend all through adolescence, held an annual Easter Passion, a reenactment of Christ’s crucifixion, with congregation members playing the major characters. St. John’s liked to cast teenagers* in the Jesus role—I don’t know why; we were singularly unqualified to play the pure-minded son of God, but whatever. For two years, my friend John had played Jesus, but that year, he declined. Because there was no one else to play the part and (much more significantly) because Mom pressured me, I took it.
As for the girlfriend, wow. Her name was Judith, and she was everything I’d missed in high school—love, status, constant physical attention—wrapped up and delivered in a slick, beautiful package. I met her at a party at Alex’s around Thanksgiving. She was there with a guy. She had on a dark top with a silver skirt, showing off her midriff. I had shlubby pan
ts, a collared shirt with a T-shirt under it, and my calculator in my pocket.** I’d drunk three beers, which was enough to get me to talk to people.
I needed to call Mom (to tell her I’d arrived safely at “James’s”), but I couldn’t make the call on Alex’s phone because the party was too noisy. So I began cruising for a cell phone. I figured I’d find some cool guy, borrow his phone, and huddle in a closet to talk with Mom. Instead, I ran into Judith; she was just finishing up a call out on Alex’s porch.
“Excuse me, ah, hello, my name’s Ned, and I was wondering if I could use that, your cell phone, for a second.”
“Hi!” she said. She had such a happy little hi. It had a lot to do with my falling in love with her later on.
“Um, hello.”
“Are you a friend of Alex’s?” she asked.
“Since grade school.”
“Oh! Well here, sure. The buttons work like this …” She drew herself close and showed me.
She was a gorgeous girl, and we talked for a while. Afterward, as I walked off the porch, Alex himself asked me if she was my girlfriend. I smiled. “I wish.”
In the next two months, Judith dumped her boyfriend, got my phone number, and seeped into my life by showing up at events that I showed up at. It was confusing because she was so cool. Capital C Cool. It wasn’t her money or her cell phone; it was the way she carried herself. She was a member in good standing of the Cool People. She went to another specialized public high school, but if she had gone to Stuy, I knew she’d be hanging out with Emily by the Snapple machine.
Our first date was a self-guided tour of a college both of us were looking at for next year. I don’t know how I did it but, at some point, I got Judith into a secluded room, asked her out, and kissed her, all in rapid succession—all of which she was receptive to. Really.* I was James Bond for a day. Once the relationship began, though, I reverted to my bumbling self.
Physically, Judith was all smile. Her smile could thaw snowdrifts: perfectly spaced teeth, wide without being too wide, innocent, and enthusiastic, like she really wanted to see me, which was something I’d never experienced. She had brown eyes and brown hair; she duped me into thinking she was five feet five, with her sharp posture and high-heeled shoes, but she was actually five two. I got used to it. She had small glasses, small hands, small breasts—only her temper, as I came to learn, was ponderously massive.