Read Online Carpool Confidential by Jessica Benson - Free Book Online

ability to breathe kicked in again.
    Ken had wrestled the air conditioner into reluctant cooperation—it was now spewing fetid, lukewarm air and dust—and turned around just in time to witness me sucking down his cold coffee. His eyebrow lifted behind his smeary glasses.
    Everyone, including Randy, was staring at me. I smiled weakly.
    â€œThat was mine.” Poor Ken sounded baffled, and rightly so. “I bought it.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I’ll reimburse you. It just looked so…good.” I was desperately attempting to get a grip. Lose it here , I reminded myself, and you’ll end up explaining last night to greater Brooklyn Heights, which in turn means clueing in Park Slope, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, DUMBO, Williamsburg, lower Manhattan, and a few areas of Red Hook. Because this is going to make one hell of a did-you-hear? at Starbucks . “What did you put in it, Ken?”
    â€œMilk.” He looked suspicious now. “And Splenda.” He pulled a vial from his pocket. “I buy it in bulk at Costco. You can bake with it, you know.”
    â€œWell now that the pressing issue of Cassie’s coffee is settled, perhaps we could return to the matter at hand?” Sue suggested.
    Randy was still looking at me like I was insane.
    â€œMy Robert took to Latin like the proverbial duck to water when I introduced it at home when he was three,” Ken said.
    â€œBut surely this should be curricular, not left to the discretion of the individual parent?” Sue said.
    Ailsa nodded. “For what we’re paying…” She didn’t need to finish, having trotted out the motto of the New York private school parent.
    â€œAlthough”—Betsy smiled brightly—“maybe St. Stanley’s does have the right idea about tracking which kids do it and which don’t. I mean, Poppy, well, she could handle it—she loves to learn!—but it’s not exactly a secret that not all of them can.”
    â€œHas anyone besides me noticed that the children in the pre-school here seem to spend an awful lot of their time”—Ailsa lowered her voice—“well, playing ?”
    I looked down at my watch. I’d now been a single parent for twenty minutes and one near-death experience longer than the last time I’d checked. The bad news was that I wasn’t any more used to it.
    â€œSt. Stanley’s,” Sue said. “Remember last year? They were going to adopt British spellings and turn the roof into an organic farming co-op where the kids would raise their own food? It never amounts to anything.”
    â€œTheir ivy acceptance rate is twice ours.” Ailsa was obviously too new to know the rule: never admit any possibility of superiority on St. Stanley’s part.
    â€œThat,” Sue said in the kind of tone you might employ if you were discussing drug trafficking or child labor, “is because they have connections .”
    Would my children even go to college? Or would they end up too broken and scarred, now that their happy, secure lives had been trashed?
    Betsy leaned toward Ailsa, her voice low. “The headmaster there”—Ken, always the gentleman, knowing what she was going to say, looked away so as not to embarrass her—“ sleeps with admissions directors.”
    Ailsa laughed. She thought it was a joke. “But surely some of them are male?”
    â€œHe doesn’t care.” Sue was whispering too.
    Now Randy laughed. “And if their acceptance rate is a reflection, he’s damned good with both.”
    â€œWell”—Ailsa had gathered herself—“that makes it all the more imperative we raise the educational bar, don’t you think?”
    â€œI’m so glad you said that!” Betsy beamed.
    There was no way this meeting was winding up soon. My head was buzzing, I was starting to get that choked feeling again. I couldn’t stay. “Sorry.” I jumped