Getting In: A Novel

by Karen Stabiner

  “Oh, yes, I can imagine all sorts of misbehavior. Alcohol consumption in public. Fellatio in the school bathroom. Methamphetamines in her locker. That’s our Katie. Honestly, Joy.”

  Chastened, Joy did her best to match Dan’s obstinate faith in his daughter. “I’m sure that Katie didn’t want to embarrass the boy by pointing out the mistake,” she said, even though random empathy was as unlikely an explanation for Katie’s behavior as any of the ones her husband had suggested.

  “Then what explains Brad?” said Dan. “I’m telling you, Mike is not supposed to be the valedictorian.” He got up suddenly. “I will be right back.”

  He headed for the aisle and made his way toward Trey, who stood up as Dan approached. Joy watched the two of them and started to relax. They shared a common set of mannerisms, Trey’s inherited, Dan’s acquired by assiduous study: one hand in a pants pocket to show how beautifully an expensive wool jacket draped up and over that hand, the other resting on a friend’s elbow or shoulder, or straightening one’s own tie. They drew closer and tipped their heads ever so slightly, like birds, to convey that this was a private, not a social, conversation, to ward off intruders.

  A more insecure man might have made good on his threat to inquire about the valedictorian, but in the end Dan would not, because such a challenge betrayed a man’s need, and he worked hard to convince himself that he had none. He settled instead for sharing his frustration with Trey. As far as Dan could tell, the only people happier than he and Joy were Trey and Alexandra, happier only because they were more used to it, having been successful for generations back. There was no way to rewrite his own history, but Dan took some pleasure from being the kind of guy, now, who could saunter over to Trey for a confidential chat about a shared slight of no lasting consequence.

  “Can it be that the same secretary who wrecked Katie’s chances had her way with Brad’s transcript as well?” Dan wondered, with a smile. “I see a conspiracy here. We might want to subpoena Mike’s dad’s bank records, don’t you think, to look for a pattern of large donations to Crestview.”

  Trey smiled. He couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Dan, who probably was not aware of how hard he scrabbled for position.

  “Well, what can I say?” Trey replied. “I never quite know with Four. He might have thought, Harvard, fourth generation, everything going my way, I can afford a little…”

  “…noblesse oblige?”

  Trey shrugged, patted Dan on the shoulder, and turned back to his seat. He had not said that Brad had stepped aside to give Mike a treat, but he was perfectly comfortable if Dan drew that conclusion.

  Joy, watching, mistook Dan’s purposeful stride for restored confidence and the glint in his eyes for clarity. It was only when he sat down next to her that she felt the slight angry vibration of a man who had just been put in his place by a pro.

  “Smug bastard,” he whispered to her. In predictable situations, Dan was a master of his own carefully crafted image, but in unexpected moments, to his endless frustration, his instincts failed him. Trey assumed. Dan still aspired. The closest he might ever get to a natural sense of entitlement was through his children.

  Mike strode purposefully across the stage, mindful of his mother’s reproachfully muttered “Don’t stand like your father” when he tried on the cap and gown for the first time. He shook hands with the diminutive head of school and stepped around him to the podium. Slowly, very slowly—as his father had instructed him—Mike raised the microphone six inches, paused, raised it another six inches, paused, and tugged at it just a bit more, until it was in range for a six-foot, four-inch valedictorian.

  He was amazed at how fast the laughter came. His father had sworn that all Mike had to do was take his sweet time adjusting the microphone, and the crowd would be his. Mike thought his father was a loser on topics ranging from what he wore to what he drove to his choice of a second wife, a woman who wore Juicy Couture as though it were. That last was his mom’s line, a funny person in her own right who would probably still be acting if his dad had not replaced her in the second season with the woman who would become wife number two. But no one argued with his dad about funny, not with two sitcoms winning their time slots week in and week out for four years running. Mike was prepared to be lavish in his thanks right after the ceremony ended, particularly because they had not yet resolved the issue of whether he could have his car at school.

  He retrieved his speech from the little shelf under the podium and took a deep breath, not to steady himself but to alert people that something important was coming.

  “Valedictorian,” he said, and then he paused. “Valedictorian.” Another pause. “Where does the word come from? People think it means the person with the best grade point average because that’s the person who gets to give the valedictory address. But in fact it’s derived from the Latin vale dicere, which means to say farewell, and I bet Dr. Johnston’s proud to hear me say that after all these years of Latin.

  “I’m not denying I have the best grade point in this year’s Crestview graduating class,” he said. “But the more interesting question, I think, is who I got a better grade point than.” He drew a wide arc with his right arm. “Who are the people on this stage? I’m saying farewell to all of you on behalf of all of them, and so I think it’s up to me to tell you a few things about them—about us—that you might not know.”

  His father had inserted another pause here, so he waited, one, two, three.

  “Of course,” he continued, “if you want to get the congratulations out of the way right now, for me being the chosen guy and all, I’m happy to wait while you get it out of your systems.”

  Mike’s father led a smattering of applause, primarily from parents whose children had either gotten into their first-choice schools or had not applied to the same schools as Mike. The others sat on their hands. To them, Mike was a spoiler, one of those seniors with impressive records who had racked up acceptances to a dozen schools simply to show that he could, even if it meant knocking their children out of the running.

  “Okay,” said Mike. “Let’s look at this year’s graduating class and see what we’ve managed to accomplish.” He turned to his second page, a list of bullet points, and began to recite.

  “Let’s look at sports other than soccer, so that nobody can accuse me of only thinking about myself. Crestview’s varsity tennis team was first in its division, first in the region, and, no surprise, first in the state for the second year in a row. TiVo that U.S. Open in a couple of years, and I think you’re going to see Wayne and Jim going head to head in the final. On the women’s side, a second-place finish statewide, to a school in central California that’s been in first place for seven years. I think they have a breeding program, if you want to know the truth, so let’s say we’re first among people with normal DNA.”

  His dad’s line.

  “First in the southern California conference in football, third statewide for the women swimmers and fourth for the guys but first for both of them in the region, and did I mention soccer?” He smiled. “First in the state, for the first time in Crestview’s history. So let’s give it up for Crestview athletes, none better.”

  He rattled off the seniors’ accomplishments in national language competitions, in the Scholastic art contest, as Intel science finalists and National Merit semifinalists, finalists, and winners, thanks to the list that what’s-her-name in the college counseling office had provided him.

  “But being first is not enough,” he said, though he hardly believed it. “If it was, I could just rattle off that list and sit down….”

  “If it were, not if it was,” muttered Joel. “Some valedictorian.”

  “Shhh,” said Nora, who had not taken her eyes off Lauren’s faraway face.

  Mike slowed down for emphasis. “The real question is, what does it take to be first? It boils down to this: We never give up. We know what we have to do to excel, we know how hard it is to do it, and we never give up. If you think I’m exag
gerating, look at Frannie Rose. We all remember when Frannie’s dad died, but was Frannie going to sit around and mope? She knew her dad wouldn’t want her to do that, and she knew the people at UCLA, at the med center, from all the time they had to spend there when Frannie was in ninth grade.”

  “My God,” whispered Nora, leaning toward Joel. “It’s the heartfelt human-interest story. He’s running for president.”

  “Shhh,” hissed a voice behind her. “And can you sit still? I can’t see.”

  “So she went to them and said, ‘Let me work in the lab. I’m going to make sure that someday this doesn’t happen to another ninth-grader.’ And every year since, in the summers, for four years, Frannie’s helped out in the lab when she could’ve been having fun. Maybe that’s the key to the Crestview seniors: We don’t hang out at the beach or the mall. We know there’s important work to be done.”

  Frannie Rose, who barely knew Mike and had not known he intended to co-opt her life to make a point, stared at her clenched hands and let people assume that she was overcome by grief. She hated every classmate who had avoided her for four years, as though bad news were contagious, and she looked forward to attending Bates College primarily because no one else at Crestview was going there. This was the last day she would be Frannie Rose whose father had dropped dead on the golf course at forty-five. Next fall she would be Frannie Rose, period. She could not wait to leave.

  “Crestview teaches us to step up, more than it teaches us AP Calculus BC, though aren’t there more of us in that class this year than ever before? It teaches us to step into the world and claim our destiny, whether it be as a heart researcher like Frannie, or a famous director, which may be my fate, or…”

  Trey never heard the final component of the holy trinity, after altruism and artistry, because he was on his feet, heading toward the building, as soon as Mike launched into the business about that poor girl whose father had died. People who did not know Trey assumed that he had been overcome by emotion. People who did know him gave him a free pass for this kind of behavior, because he was Preston Bradley III, and his responsibilities did not end at family time, not even on graduation day. He slipped through the building and out to the front courtyard, leaned against the nearest pillar, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw Ted standing three pillars down, in much the same when-will-it-end posture. Trey walked over to him, wordlessly lit a cigarette, and blew as perfect a smoke ring as his grandfather ever had. For eighteen years, ever since Four was born, Trey had limited himself to one cigarette a week, always smoked out of range of his boy’s lungs. He enjoyed them far more than he ever had during his chain-smoking college days.

  Ted watched the smoke ring dissolve in midair and made an appreciative little snort, even as he wondered if there was a prep school anywhere in the continental United States that allowed its faculty and staff such a public vice.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “Years of practice,” Trey replied.

  They had struck a cautious truce since resolving the mess about Brad’s slot. Ted referred to it that way, as Brad’s slot, as though it had mistakenly been assigned to another student before being returned to its rightful owner. Trey might be disappointed that Ted had been unable to close the deal without a $350,000 boost, but he had to know that there had been a couple of dozen college counselors around the country fighting for the space.

  Trey nodded in the direction of the ceremony.

  “Not an interesting boy, I have to tell you,” said Trey. “Brad would have done a better job up there.”

  Ted nodded. “Mike,” he said. “He knows exactly what he needs to do to get what he wants. A pragmatic kid.”

  “And nothing more.”

  “Well, that’s between him and his god,” said Ted.

  “Five years from now his dad’ll give him a production job,” said Trey, dismissively.

  Ted smiled. “And Brad?”

  Trey blew another smoke ring. “Harvard Law, don’t you think?”

  He winked, stubbed out the cigarette, and headed back toward the tent. Ted felt every muscle in his body unwind. He should have known. Trey was never going to complain about Ted’s abilities as a college counselor. Trey was going to endorse Ted wholeheartedly, because people might start to wonder if he sounded anything less than enthused. Had there been a problem getting Brad into Harvard? Had the illustrious Four required some kind of special help? No, Preston Bradley III had to be very happy, and loud about it, to compensate for the truth. Ted was safer than safe.

  A good thing, for the usually compliant head of school, a man who in the past had done everything he could to accommodate and reward his director of college counseling, had taken an odd position in their initial conversation about the coming year, one that Ted was in the midst of sorting out. He had gone in to see Dr. Mullin a week earlier with what he thought was a very cagey proposal. He had decided to back off from his original notion of resigning, at least for the first year, because the chance to bank every penny of the private fees was irresistible and because Crestview gave him such great access to potential clients. Instead, he told Dr. Mullin that he wanted to take on a few private clients in his off hours, high-maintenance Crestview students who might otherwise siphon off his workday energies. He saw this as a good solution for everyone—certainly better for Crestview than if Ted had asked for the kind of raise that would be appropriate to his sixty-or seventy-hour workweek at the height of the application season. He saw no need to define how many students constituted his notion of a few.

  To his surprise, Dr. Mullin had responded with words like “clean break” and “conflict of interest,” and inquired as to whether Ted had considered all of the ramifications of being self-employed. Specifically, had Ted investigated the cost of the excellent health insurance that Crestview provided its teachers? Had he considered the employee benefits he would lose? Dr. Mullin was sure that private consulting seemed at first glance like a far more lucrative field than high school college counseling, even with Ted’s ample annual bonuses, but had he thought about how he would ride out a tight second year if the first-year acceptances did not go as he hoped they would?

  “Surely, Ted,” said Dr. Mullin, “you, of all people, know how difficult getting into college has become, even for the most qualified of students.”

  Dr. Mullin found himself in the unusual position of being able to throw his minimal weight around. He was riding on the unexpected receipt of resumés from directors of college counseling at two East Coast boarding schools, as well as an indiscreet comment by Joe’s father that Rita had dutifully reported to the head of school before Ted asked to come by for a chat. As he had never before had the upper hand with Ted, he quite enjoyed himself. He urged Ted to take a week or two, no more, to think over the pluses and minuses, and he hoped that Ted would abandon this freelance idea and return to his post next year. He made no mention of the shared directorship that one of the East Coast counselors had suggested, or of Rita’s promotion to junior counselor.

  Everyone at Crestview would miss Ted terribly, said Dr. Mullin, if he decided to strike out on his own.

  Ted’s initial reaction was to leave the little guy in the dust; let him promote everyone once Ted was gone, including Rita, and hire the woman from Ocean Heights who had sent him her resumé, to answer the phones. He would not give any of them a second thought, because he would be too busy making bank deposits and looking at larger condos. Ted hoped to stick to his resolve for another week, print up his letter of resignation, and pack up his office. All he had to do was squelch the worried voice that had begun to speak to him, usually at about five o’clock in the morning, asking him if he was ready to make such a big move, suggesting that the real risks outweighed the imagined benefits, reminding him that Brad and Lauren and drunken Katie had come this close to not working out, reminding him further that he worked in a world where getting into Penn and Williams and Cornell and Wesleyan and Princeton and Berkeley and even Northwestern by way of Pra
gue somehow qualified as coming this close to not working out.

  For ten months, the seniors and their parents had acted as though all they wanted was to be done with Crestview and college applications. As the afternoon and Mike’s speech wore on, they started to drift, to wonder what life might be like in an hour, over the summer, once college started. The unknown, as it turned out, was larger and more mysterious than they had ever realized, back when their days were full of the distractions of process, of paperwork and deposits and questionnaires and essays. What came next was huge and unfamiliar, and many of them wished a small, private wish for time to slow down a bit while they got used to having no idea of what was coming, which only made time toss its head and run faster.

  Parents wondered what they would do if an assigned roommate had a live-in boyfriend or a drinking problem or both, whether their own children had the potential to turn into troublemakers, and how they might find out before they got a call from a school official. Children wondered if they had a large enough wardrobe to last from one visit home to the next without having to do laundry, whether college really was easier than Crestview had been, and how to acquire a fake ID. Random thoughts filled the air like radio static. Few people would later be able to recall Mike’s anecdote about Crestview’s Model United Nations team.

  Mike, for his part, did not notice the mood change because he was headed for his big close, the only part of the speech his father had not heard him rehearse, his own original idea—not quite original in concept, as he had heard about the Ocean Heights graduation, but certainly original in execution, which had to count for something.

  “Since I speak for every member of the senior class, I gave great thought to what I want to say, in parting, representing everybody up here as we head off for adventures all over the country,” he said. He squared his shoulders, gamely searched for the right pitch, missed it, and began to sing anyhow.

  “I will, I will rock you.” He thumped hard on the podium, twice, stamped his foot, twice, and sang again, “I will, I will rock you.” Thumps, stamps, silence. The goalie on the Ocean Heights soccer team had sworn that the class went crazy for that Black-Eyed Peas song, and Mike figured he had nailed it with Queen, particularly with the funny swap from plural to singular pronoun, as he was the only one singing. He had expected to have everyone on their feet.