Read Online Getting In: A Novel by Karen Stabiner - Free Book Online

always got a laugh, which was pretty much all Chloe cared about these days—that, and being able for the first time in her life to give her old friends a hard time for being sheltered and spoiled, which was what she tried to convince herself they were.
    “You can’t be suffering that bad,” said Lauren. “Your mom doesn’t even work. I mean, if one of my parents stopped working, I’d be at Cal State Wherever.”
    “My mom is going to work a couple of mornings to trade for free Pilates,” said Chloe, and she began to giggle. “Big breadwinner.”
    “So what’d the counselor say?”
    “Haven’t seen her yet. Basically she answers the phone and alphabetizes brochures. I’m not holding out big hope for help there.”
    “But when do you pick?”
    “Maybe I have,” said Chloe. “Hampshire, Bard…”
    “I’ve heard of Bard.”
    “Well, now I’m back with the cool crowd.” Chloe regretted the jab immediately. “Never mind.”
    “Y’know, it’s not my fault your life’s a living hell.”
    “Right. I have my parents to thank for that. Anyhow, someplace where they don’t expect me to take fundamentals of everything before I can have any fun. Oh, but there’s Harvard right there. See that girl? Total perfection. She’s the spoiler. Good thing I don’t want to go to Harvard. Like that was ever going to happen.”
    Lauren glanced in the direction Chloe was pointing. There were two girls in line to order drinks, a tall blonde in her Ocean Heights High basketball uniform and an Asian girl who was tryingto pretend that the woman standing behind her was not her mother.
    “The jock or the nerd?”
    “Nerd, also known as my math tutor. Jock’s getting recruited at Stanford.” She made a polite wave, as opposed to a beckoning one, and got the same wave in return.
    “And Harvard?”
    “She got 2300 on her SATs, I asked her, straight As, she takes APs they haven’t even dreamed up yet.” Chloe shook her head. “Not a normal childhood if you ask me.”
    “Has she cured cancer?”
    “Next week. After the violin performance or the track meet, I’m not sure which, or tutoring five kids in South Central. Or saving me from failing calc. You’re taking calc, aren’t you?”
    “Like I had a choice.” Any girl who was halfway serious about college had to take more math classes than she could ever possibly need or want. It was the progressive choice. An A in AP calculus carried more weight for a girl than an A in AP American lit, no matter what anyone in the English department said.
    “Too bad for you,” said Chloe. “Reading is so yesterday.”
    Lauren got up suddenly. “I’ve got tons of homework. I’ll drive you home.” She had gotten out of bed that morning with a list of possibilities, and now all she had were downward arrows, stretch schools, and strategies designed to compensate for what Ted seemed to feel were her shortcomings. The airy feeling she recalled when she first composed the list had congealed into something heavier, an awareness that the future might end just shy of where she thought it would—that it was not quite as vast as she had imagined. She looked at the Asian girl and felt a jab of envy, even though she had no desire to play the violin, run track, or go to Harvard.
    She never quite trusted girls who seemed to know exactly where they were headed. Chloe liked to tell people that sheplanned either to go into politics or to write fiction, though Lauren’s dad said that choosing the former, given Chloe’s lack of interest in current events, indicated her talent for the latter. Katie told everyone it was Yale and Yale Law, while Lauren had trouble hanging on to a version of herself for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Her parents always said she was not supposed to know if she wanted to be a chef or an architect or a teacher, and she might want to be a psychologist once she got to college and took a psychology class. That was the whole point of going to college, they