by Abbi Waxman
“Because she’s paid to.”
“Or because she knows I know what I’m talking about and appreciates my advice.”
“She doesn’t know you as well.” Wow, that was a little harsh, Emily. I suddenly felt too tired to have this fight. I wish I knew why I lost my temper like this. I understand I’m a hormonal mess, that my brain is bathed in a soup of conflict, but it would be nice to be able to rise above it. “Never mind,” I said, shooting for conciliatory and ending up with huffy. “I’m going to watch a show and go to sleep.”
I put my earbuds in and pretended to be super focused on the screen. Luckily I don’t think Mom could see it from where she was, because she might have wondered why I was watching Monster Truck Rally with such commitment.
JESSICA
I had no idea what had just happened, but it seemed to be over. Why Emily was so interested in monster trucks was beyond me, though. I’m too tired and old for this. I decided to go to sleep.
Tuesday
Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia
8:00 a.m.: Theme breakfast: Dreams!
10:00 a.m.: American University
Drive 1 hour and 4 minutes on the E3 College Coach—packed lunch included! (Please advise us of dietary restrictions, allergies, etc. E3 is a nut-free company!)
2:00 p.m.: Johns Hopkins University
Drive 1 hour and 43 minutes to Philadelphia on the E3 College Coach—snack included!
5:00 p.m.: Check into hotel in Philadelphia
6:00 p.m.: Optional group visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a chance to run up the Rocky Steps and take photos! (Tag us and win a tote!) Note: The museum itself will be closed.
7:30 p.m.: Dinner at the hotel
Overnight in Philadelphia
8
JESSICA
The next morning E3 was hosting breakfast in the same small conference room as the day before, and according to the itinerary, there was a theme.
“A theme?” asked Emily, pulling on her socks. They might have been my socks; she was a little furtive about it.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Dreams.”
“Dreams is the theme?”
“Yes.” Not sure why she’s struggling with this, but I woke up ever so slightly hungover and she needs to stop asking questions. I felt as if a pillowcase had been filled with dirty socks and tied around my head, and if I didn’t get a cup of tea soon I was going to cry.
Emily reached under the bed for her sneaker and started untying it. Slowly. “Huh. I dread to think what teenage boys dream about. It could get pretty steamy in there.”
I frowned, wishing she would hurry up. “I don’t think they literally mean dreams. I think they mean it in the aspirational sense.”
“Okay.” Both shoes on now, Emily stood. “Shall we make stuff up? I could say I dream of being a jet pilot or a firefighter.”
“You could.”
“Or a mountaineer or fashion model.”
“Sure.”
She looked at me as I held the hotel room door open for her. “Are you feeling alright? You seem a little cranky.”
“I’m not cranky.”
“Maybe you’re hungry?”
I checked that the door was closed all the way. “I’m not hungry.”
“Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.”
Oh my god, I was turning into my daughter.
* * *
• • •
Instead of pastries there were bagels, and the chairs were different, arranged around small tables. People grabbed their breakfast and drifted to chairs, looking slightly nervous. Several of us looked a little worse for wear, which made me feel better, and the mom who’d fallen on the dance floor didn’t show up at all. Her son was there, still slightly red from the embarrassment of the night before, and I felt bad for him. If teenagers were anything like they used to be, it was going to take a while to live that down. Especially now, because it was permanently recorded and instantly shared, making a brief moment of shame something you had to live down over and over again. He’d probably said as much to his mother through the bathroom door as she’d thrown up, and I couldn’t decide whom to feel more sympathy for.
EMILY
I saw the kid whose mom fell on the dance floor last night and decided to delete the clip I had. He looked like crap, even though no one blamed him for his mom’s deeply embarrassing behavior. You can’t blame kids for their parents, any more than you can blame parents for their kids, though they all seem to feel responsible for everything we do. We do have autonomy, you know.
Will and Alice were chatting next to the coffee machine. They were probably discussing the variety of pods available, but I wasn’t convinced Alice needed to touch Will quite so frequently in order to choose between French roast and hot chocolate. I couldn’t decide whether to go over there or not, and then I reminded myself that I was allowed to get coffee, too, for crying out loud. I was losing my mind. I needed to text the group chat and get talked off the ledge.
JESSICA
With shaking hands, I looked at the itinerary—Emily said she’d get me tea, but she was talking to the other kids and I AM DYING HERE—and prayed I wouldn’t throw up on the bus. If I’m driving I’m fine, but several family vacations with my parents were paused for me to throw up on the side of the road, much to Emily’s horror. I made a mental note to get Dramamine. And Advil. And possibly a hip flask.
“Emily?” I tried to keep my voice reasonable, but from the way she jumped I guess I sounded more desperate than I felt. Actually, I was pretty desperate. She came over with the tea, which was delightfully strong and sweet, but then she went right back to the other kids. I sipped my tea and ruminated on getting old.
I’ve become painfully aware of my age lately. I’m not springing back the way I once did, and if I’ve been sitting for a while, I make sad noises when I stand and start walking. People I grew up with are starting to die of cancer; the children of celebrities I’d loved in my teens are becoming famous. Is this what aging is? A gradual loss of the faces you remembered, and as gradual a replacement of those faces with ones whose names you can’t be bothered to discover.
Just as I was sinking into a genuine decline, Cassidy blew into the room, moving with determination, verve, and the accompanying scent of coconut shampoo.
“Good morning, people!” Cassidy was clearly a morning person. “Quick housekeeping: Any minibar or video purchases you made are your responsibility, so be sure to settle up with the hotel before we all check out. I see all the bills, and I don’t want to chase you for a packet of M&M’s.” She grinned mischievously, but none of us wanted to see Cassidy’s dark side. I wondered if any of the parents had bought embarrassing movies they suddenly realized Cassidy would know about, or decimated the minibar because they thought it would be their secret. Huh, Cassidy would say to herself, Mrs. BlahBlah and her son Barry BlahBlah bought Air Bud, Air Bud: Golden Receiver, AND Air Bud: World Pup while completely emptying the minibar. Yet they seemed so normal.
Cassidy had moved on, even if I couldn’t. “We’ll be leaving to visit American University at nine, the tour starts at ten, so please gather in the lobby. If you’re not there on time, we will leave without you, so consider yourself warned.” She looked as if she hoped her smile conveyed the friendliness of the warning, but the glint in her eye made it very clear to everyone that getting left behind was not an option. “After American we’ll be getting on the E3 bus and driving an hour or so to Johns Hopkins. The tour there finishes with a question-and-answer session with current students, so please bring at least one question each. Last year nobody wanted to know anything, and it was pretty embarrassing. Then we will be boarding the bus again to drive to Philadelphia, where we will check into the hotel.”
I was exhausted simply hearing about the day to come and tottered over to the bagel selection in the hopes that a sudden spike in blood sugar wo
uld propel me through the darkness.
Cassidy beamed around. “In order to foster closer friendships, breakfasts from now on are going to be in small groups. I’m going to switch the seating around every morning so we get to meet as many of our fellow parents and kids as possible during the week. Won’t that be fun?”
A short but heavy silence, interrupted by a mother who’d clearly not been listening, and who suddenly said, loudly, “Fantastic.” Then she clapped a few times before sinking back into silence. Her child got to his feet and left the room and, for all we know, the country. That’s not true. He just wanted to.
Then Cassidy read off the morning’s happy little groupings, and Emily and I were with a boy and his mother I hadn’t spoken to yet. The boy was fairly nondescript, apart from his T-shirt, which featured the table of elements. His mother was slender and small, with pale golden hair curving under her chin. She looked like a fourteen-year-old pretending to be a librarian, but she probably wasn’t.
“And to break the ice, I’m going to pose a question for discussion: What are your dreams for college?” Cassidy beamed around. “Take it away.”
EMILY
Mom and I ended up sitting with Casper and his mom, who honestly didn’t look old enough to be on a college tour for herself, let alone her son.
“I’m Jessica,” said my mom, reaching across the table. “And this is Emily.”
Casper’s mom nodded. “You failed to qualify for the Olympics and she folds origami.” She smiled at us. “My name is Jennifer, and this is Casper.”
“We met last night,” mumbled Casper. “Well, Emily and I did.”
“At dinner,” I added, in case they thought we’d had a secret assignation by the ice machine.
“That’s nice,” said Casper’s mom.
“And so, Casper, what are your dreams for college?” Mom sounded chirpy, but I could tell she wasn’t quite sure how to handle being reminded of competitive failure this early in the morning.
“To graduate with honors, to get an exciting job, and live a life of exploration and discovery,” replied Casper. He turned to me. “What about you?”
I shrugged. “No clue.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No clue?”
“Nope. No idea what subject, what college, what time frame, what anything.”
He didn’t look critical. Just puzzled. “Huh.”
There was a pause. My mom tried again, turning to Jennifer. “So, do you feel ready for the whole college application process?”
Jennifer nodded. “Yes, it’s all taken care of. We create a schedule for the children several months in advance, so I know we’ll have time for everything. We put it in a Gantt chart, of course.”
“What’s that?” I asked. Might as well keep the ignoramus theme going.
Casper was surprised. “Oh, you’d know one if you saw one. It’s a chart project managers use to organize work and time, represented visually. It allows you to see how one job leads into another, and therefore, how one thing is dependent on another.”
“Really?” said Mom politely. “That sounds helpful.” She added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, which was unusual, seeing as she’d drunk half of it already.
“It is,” said Jennifer enthusiastically. “We use it all the time, for all of us. We plug in the kids’ schedules, my husband’s work schedule, mine, everything. Then we can see how it’s all going to come together and we don’t need to worry about any of it.” She smiled serenely at my mom, and I suddenly wondered if she was stoned. “It’s very efficient.”
I looked at Casper. “And you use it, too?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, it’s good. It has my school schedule, right, and it estimates homework times, keeps track of due dates, etc. I input everything throughout the day, and the system automatically updates.”
My mom took a really long drink of her tea. “And you created this?”
Casper muttered, “Mom works at Caltech.” He smiled at me and mouthed, Super nerd.
I laughed but shut it off when Mom shot me a look.
“Yes,” Jennifer said, nodding. “When Casper was a toddler my husband and I read an article in Scientific American about children not having sufficient downtime for their intellectual growth.” Her eyes widened. “So we wrote a program and have been refining it ever since.” She nodded. “Having a second child really helped, obviously.”
My mom nodded back. “Because you get more relaxed about everything?”
Jennifer frowned. “No . . . because you get a whole new data set.”
“Right,” said Mom, “that’s what I meant.”
“The chart even has blocks of time set aside for doing nothing, for playing Magic: The Gathering, for practicing the piano . . . everything.” Casper grinned. “Sometimes I think it’s developed a mind of its own. I noticed it started scheduling ‘room cleaning.’”
His mom laughed. “And made everything else a dependency!”
They cracked up. Nerds.
“Wow,” I said. “Do you ever do anything unscheduled?”
“Sure,” said Casper, “there are blocks of free time at regular intervals.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You schedule unscheduled time?”
Casper and his mom both nodded. I didn’t dare look at my mom, but luckily she’s tough.
“That sounds fantastic,” she said. “Do you know what you want to study in school, Casper?”
“I want to be a geologist,” he replied earnestly. “My grandmother gave me some iron pyrite when I was, like, three or four, and it was like a lightbulb went off over my head. Since then it’s always been my dream.” He smiled around. “I’m the president of the Minerals and Gems Club at school.”
I gazed at him, not quite sure what to do with that information. I couldn’t tell if I was amazed at how truly nerdy he was, or jealous that he’d achieved such power and influence in his school’s semiprecious and igneous subculture.
He added, “And I’m the president of the California Young Geologists Association. We meet twice a year to compare samples.”
I said nothing because, frankly, what can be said to that?
I was jealous, though, because I really, really wish I had half his certainty. When the college counselor at school asks me what I’m interested in studying, I go completely blank. I’d love to tell her the truth—I’m interested in studying how to get out of school, but I doubt she has a leaflet or podcast recommendation for that. I mean, I know what I’m supposed to do, we all do: I’m supposed to finish high school and go to college. In college I’m supposed to make several romantic errors and have one meaningful relationship and maybe question my orientation.
Then, having amassed the appropriate mix of rueful/hilarious memories and life experience, I’m supposed to take a job in a field related to my degree, struggle for a few years to perfect my adulting skills, then launch a real career (this can be related to my degree or an interesting change of direction, either is acceptable), get married, have kids, grow old, and push my kids through the whole cycle all over again. This is how capitalism perpetuates itself; I learned it on Khan Academy.
JESSICA
I need more caffeine. Those people are insane.
9
JESSICA
We arrived at American University. I’d tell you all about it, but honestly, you can google it. It’s a university. It’s pretty. I had a headache.
Ignoring Cassidy’s warning, Dani shamelessly flirted with the admissions director, who appeared to be doing his best to get away. She literally had her hand on his arm, and the poor sap was leaning back at an angle of at least forty-five degrees. I looked up their admissions numbers on my phone (yes, I have an app). They got about twenty thousand applicants last year—did Dani really think she could flirt her way into memorability against that kind of overwhelming competition? The poo
r man looked dazed; Dani’s charm is of the high-wattage-bulb variety. I’ve seen it take down fathers, grandfathers, and teenage boys indiscriminately.
I’m very aware that there are parents who have files on the admissions teams at particular colleges, who work their LinkedIn networks and alumni connections in order to gain any small purchase on the solid wall of incorruptible entry. I can’t play that game. I’m not good at it; I’m more likely to mess it up than help. What if you paid for a library and your kid still didn’t get in? Not to mention the horror of cheating the system and getting caught: Sorry, honey, I didn’t think you could make it on your own, so I bribed someone and now I’m going to jail. I’ll probably get released in time for your wedding. As if the relationship between mothers and teenagers wasn’t hard enough. I text Frances, hoping she’s awake.
“Dani Ackerman is trying to sleep with the admissions director. Do you think I should throw my hat in the ring, too? Do you think it would help?”
There was a pause. “Not sure it would help or hurt.”
“Ouch.”
“No offense. But if Dani is flirting outrageously, which is the only way she does it, then a more subtle approach might be more effective. Cheese of the month club, maybe?”
I grinned and wished Frances had come on the trip; it would have been so much better. My phone rang. Emily looked at me and arched her eyebrow. It’s an unfortunate side effect of busting her hump for being on the phone all the time that every time I’m on my phone she takes the opportunity to bust mine.
“Really?” she said softly. “You left the ringer on?”
I narrowed my eyes at her and stood up to take the call outside. I could see it was the office.
“Hi,” I said, walking over to a bench and sitting. Work calls are rarely short.