We’re packed tight, lambs to the slaughter. No, that’s too good for us, we’re even lower on the devolutionary scale. We are paramecia, we are pond scum. For there’s nothing more pathetic than a first-semester senior, except for a first-semester senior with his or her parents about to have their collective illusions shattered. And there are at least twenty of the aforementioned sweating it out in one cramped institutional space. You can cut the desperation with an X-Acto knife.
The door to Strack’s office gapes open. Tricia Prindle staggers out, sobbing. Tears flowing, snot running—I mean, just wailing. We hastily clear a path to avoid her bad karma.
Ten minutes with Strack has rendered Tricia Prindle into quivering cafeteria Jell-O. Tricia Prindle. The name may not register with you, but boy, it sure does with me. Tricia Prindle’s Little Miss Perfect, first-class brownnose, all-around suck-up. You know, straight-A student, signs up for every activity there is to pad the resume. Of course, she’s not taking any AP or honors courses, nothing too challenging that might actually threaten the precious GPA. But still, all things considered, I must concede, an extremely solid candidate for higher learning.
Tricia’s parents straggle after her, trying to keep it together. Mom’s all limp and needs to be physically supported, Dad’s biting on his hand so hard he’s drawing blood. I gulp. This does not bode well.
“Next!” snarls Regina Severance, Strack’s evil secretary. Severance could be Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS’s twin, that is, if you add forty pounds and thirty years to the mix. “Have your questionnaire ready, and your answers had better be legible!”
I happen to know my head’s next on the chopping block, but I look around along with the others, playing innocent, stalling for time.
You see, it’s ten after twelve and Asshole’s not here.
Severance squints through her scary-thick bifocals at my name pulsating on her computer screen.
“RATTIGAN!”
Miserably I grip my many painfully completed sheets, documenting in mind-numbing detail seventeen years of modest achievement. Although I try to be invisible, I’m like a flashing neon sign in the shape of an arrow pointing down at me, the only kid without a parent. Plus, I’m squirming. Severance, sensing weakness, zooms right in.
“Well?” she glowers. “Where is your parent? Why are you parentless?”
“Have a heart,” I plead. “He’ll be here. Just give me another minute . . .”
“Going once!” she crows.
There are over six hundred kids in my class and only two guidance counselors, and the other one’s been on maternity leave for like five years. I have to see Strack. I have to make an Indelible Impression on her. I must get her to give me a Glowing Recommendation. It’s Now or Never.
“Another minute, please. I have to get my Glowing Recommendation!”
“Going twice!”
I sink to my knees, groveling. “For the love of all that is good and holy, I beseech you! Beseech, verb, to beg, to demean oneself completely!”
“Going, going . . . ,” she says, eyes gleaming, index finger poised above the chopping block.
“No, don’t delete me from the System!” I yelp, “I’ll never get back in!”
And then, just as I’m about to become history, Asshole strolls in, mellow as can be. He notes the heavy silence, the somber kids, the angst-ridden parents.
“Jesus, who died? This place is like a funeral parlor.”
Leaping to my feet, I grab Charlie by the collar and drag him bodily back to Severance’s desk.
“One bona fide parent!” I proclaim in quivering triumph. I’m heaving, sweating, soaking through my new button-down Gap shirt, an utter embarrassment to myself. But I do have the small consolation of ruining Severance’s day. Her bloodlust has gone unsated, her kill denied. Scowling, she allows us passage. But I know and she knows this will not be forgotten. From now on, I am on Severance’s permanent shit list. Thanks, Charlie.
He smiles at me, most likely already baked. “Guess I just made it, huh?”
I want to strangle him, but gathering what’s left of my dignity, I merely propel him through the inner door to Stack’s lair. Suddenly we are plunged into darkness. My flesh goes clammy in the rank, stagnant air. It’s like entering a crypt.
“Sorry, Brooks, traffic sucked,” Charlie whispers.
“This is Jersey. Traffic always sucks!” I hiss back at him. “The one time I ask you to do something for me.”
In the gloom, yellowed files are piled high on the floors, on shelves, everywhere. Each folder a hopeful future, with big plans and unrealistic aspirations. The numbers are staggering. If the waiting room wasn’t traumatic enough, I am now crushed under the true immensity of my insignificance.
“Mrs. Strack?” I venture.
Dwarfed by rusty, overstuffed file cabinets, a small figure hunches behind a large drab government-issue desk, stacked high with more folders. She slowly looks up from a bulky computer that should have been junked decades ago. Her eyes are sunken, her skin waxen and pale. We’re talking Crypt Keeper. Again, not a promising sign. I tremulously deposit my file on her desk. Up close, she looks way too shrink-wrapped for someone I happen to know is in her mid-thirties.
“It’s Ms. Strack, not Missus. Ms. Strack.” The pencil she’s gripping snaps in half in her hand. “I’ve never been married. I have no personal life.”
She giggles. Not knowing what else to do, I chortle along with her. Charlie, giving me the wary eye, chuckles nervously.
“It’s all such crap!” she laughs uproariously. “Jimmy’s potential is unlimited, Janie’s surface is barely scratched, Bobby would be a tremendous asset to any institution. I know it’s crap, and the colleges know it’s crap. Nobody reads what I write, but I have to write it anyway. Do you have any comprehension what it’s like to crank out six hundred student recommendations by myself on antiquated equipment for peanuts, year after year after year?”
“Crap?” Charlie ventures.
“Such crap!” Strack howls, obviously not a well woman. “Sit!” she grunts, pointing.
There’s a small clear space between teetering stacks of files on the couch. Charlie and I wedge ourselves into it. I give him the once-over for the first time. He’s marginally presentable, clean-shaven for once, hair tied back in a ponytail, and in a relatively clean uniform. And not uniform in the metaphorical sense. An actual bona fide blue postal one. Yes, I’m the son of a mailman.
Strack gravely peruses my vitals with a jaundiced eye as she unscrews a gigantic thermos of what has to be, by the way her hands are vibrating, her tenth cup of coffee.
“There’s no Mrs. Rattigan?”
“My mom’s kind of out of the picture.”
Strack’s expression actually flickers with interest, appraising Charlie. Then he speaks.
“He means my old lady split on us nine years ago. Not a word since. Not even a stinkin’ Christmas card . . .”
Way to pour on the charm, Asshole. Charlie’s suitability as a mate is instantly rejected and dismissed, as well it should be. Pouring into a truck-sized mug, Strack spills coffee all over my pristine, hand-printed questionnaire. She blots it dry with some other student files.
“Only two schools?” she notes, as I knew she would. Two schools, while not unheard of, is a little off the beaten path.
It’s either Columbia Early Decision or Rutgers. My choices couldn’t be more stark or extreme—am I to be one of the rarefied few or one of the common rabble? Those, I’ve decided, are my only two real options. So I’m going for it. Columbia Early Decision means I can hear in December and have to commit to go if I’m accepted, which statistically is supposed to improve the odds a few decimals. But Columbia Early Decision’s a dangerous roll of dice, because Columbia can also turn you down flat, which means then I’m out of the derby for good. There’s no Late March, when in the Greater Applicant Pool I might possibly shine. I’m done, over. The strategy’s Do or Die.
“The Ivy League,” Strack continues. “Aiming rather high, don’t you think, Brad?”
“Brooks,” I correct meekly.
Aiming high? I’m shooting for the stratosphere. Last year, Columbia received 33,531 applications and accepted 2,311. That’s a 6.89 percent acceptance rate. Seven out of a hundred. That’s way, way up there, just after Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Daunting as they are, the numbers only tell a small part of the story. Because these aren’t 33,531 anybodies applying, these are 33,531 super-high achievers. The valedictorians, class presidents, all-everythings; the offspring of zillionaires, of celebrities; the legacies, the kids who invented some huge new app in their bedrooms. But, like I said, at least if I go down in flames, I’ll go in style.
“Columbia,” Strack sighs.
Yes, Columbia. Because it’s close by, in the City that I love. But mostly because, unlike the Big Four, Columbia might actually, possibly, really be doable for me.
“There are many other excellent institutions besides those in the Ivy League,” Strack says, which is what I expect her to say.
“That’s what I keep telling him,” Charlie interjects. “Who needs a degree from some fancy bullshit school? You can get a great education anywhere.”
I glare. Charlie shifts sheepishly. “Besides, I don’t have the bread.”
“Columbia is very expensive, Brad,” Strack says, as if I need her or anyone else to remind me. Tuition runs almost forty-seven grand. That’s one year, not four, without room and board.
“I figure if I live at home and keep working part-time, I can swing it. I already have almost three thousand dollars saved up. I mean, I know it’s not much, but I should qualify for some kind of financial aid . . .”
“With your grades and scores,” Strack says, telling me what I already know, “you’re a cinch for a full ride at Rutgers.”
“Exactly. That’s what I said,” Charlie jumps in again. “Rutgers. A perfectly fine institution of higher learning!”
I know where he’s going with this. Where he always ends up going. I shoot him a warning look.
“I mean, I went to Harvard,” Asshole proclaims. “Lotta good it did me!”
“You went to Harvard?” Strack’s aghast at the senseless waste of it all, as any normal person would be.
Harvard. A day doesn’t go by when he doesn’t mention it at least fifty times.
“Ms. Strack,” I persist, desperate to stay on subject. “All I want to know is if I have a chance at Columbia. And if I do, will you go to bat for me?”
“Your GPA’s right up there, Brad,” Strack says, re-scrutinizing my sheet. “Your extracurriculars are a little exotic and more than slightly suspect, but abundant.”
“Brooks,” I correct again, shifting in my seat uneasily. Here comes the stretch of the profile I’ve especially been dreading.
“Co-captain of the Pritchard High School fencing team?” she asks rhetorically. “In the twenty-three years I’ve been here, I wasn’t aware we even had a fencing team.”
The Pritchard High School fencing team consists of me and The Murf. Our foils are wire hangers. No wimpy pads or helmets or officials for us. It’s balls-out, anything goes, no holds barred. A great after-school activity. I highly recommend it. Mostly ’cause, since I outweigh him by a good forty pounds, I flail The Murf’s ass raw every time.
“President of the Pritchard High School Greco-Roman Association?”
The Pritchard High School Greco-Roman Association also consists of just The Murf and me. Another of my many innovations, a nifty excuse for us to imbibe while wearing bedsheets as togas. So far, it’s convened once.
“Also new,” I maintain.
“Secretary-General of the Pritchard High School Ethno-Percussion Society?”
Charlie bursts out laughing, confirming to me he’s most definitely baked. I elbow him in the side.
“Secretary-General?” she repeats.
I wince guiltily at the vision of me and The Murf by the Reservoir, both of us totally fried, hair flying, joyfully thumping in savage jungle cadence on industrial-sized overturned plastic buckets that we liberated one night from a Dumpster. Probably pushing the envelope, but I’d figured it was worth a shot.
“I suggest you try again with something a tad less creative,” Strack says wryly, though not unkindly.
“Hey, I’ve got one,” Charlie cracks. “Grand Poobah of the Fellowship of Flatulence.”
He guffaws, thoroughly entertained by himself. Neither Strack nor I is amused. Giving him another look, she resumes her summation of my paltry life.
“Unfortunately, your SATs, excellent as they are in the larger scheme of things, are at the low end of the range for Columbia. Especially your Verbal.”
Verbal. I flinch at the dreaded mention of my nemesis. My heart pounds. I get that familiar churning pit in my stomach.
“I’m retaking them again!” I squeak.
“Again?” she repines, registering my multiple columns.
“Again-again.”
“Again-again?” She raises a skeptical brow.
“Well, again-again-again,” I admit, reduced to a puddle.
Meanwhile, Charlie, he just keeps snickering at his lame joke, which he thinks nobody gets but him because he went to Harvard.
I have made an Indelible Impression, just not the one I intended. Strack looks at Charlie, sizes up my pitiful situation. I can tell she feels sorry for me having a burnout pothead like Charlie as a parent. Degrading and depressing as that is, hey, I’ll take what I can get. I look at her abjectly.
“Columbia, Brad?” she sighs once more, closing my file, my interview, as far as she’s concerned, over. “I don’t think you fully comprehend what you’re up against. Last year, the University of California, Santa Cruz rejected sixty-three applicants with scores of twenty-two hundred or above. This for a school, Brad, whose mascot is Sammy the Banana Slug!”
I swallow hard. This is truly disturbing news.
“It’s Brooks,” I say firmly. “If you’re just going to blow me off, at least get my name right.”
She gives me a long look, then reopens my file and clicks her pen to jot notes. “Any minorities in the family tree? Aleutian, American Samoan, Creole . . .”
I shrug, glance inquiringly at Charlie, who just continues to snigger.
“None that I can think of,” I reluctantly, but honestly, answer.
“Foreign travels? Rich relatives? Triumphs over adversity?”
“Only defeats,” I glumly conclude.
“Physical handicaps? Learning disabilities? Congenital defects?”
“My second toe’s longer than my big one!” I declare, brightening.
Strack clicks her pen again, puts it down, and rubs her temples. “Why does it always have to be the Ivy League?” she asks the ceiling. “Why?”
Then, suddenly, she bolts into action. Assigning a numerical value to every aspect of my application, she punches the keys of an ancient adding machine with the skill and dexterity of a crazed accountant during the height of tax season. Nobody knows her formula, only that it’s an algorithm of such complexity and top secrecy it would do a hedge-fund manager proud. And she’s never wrong. If she says you’re out, you’re out. Strack’s like Pritchard High’s very own Oracle of Delphi.
Finally, she rips off my sum worth from the spool of paper. A long beat. I brace myself for The Cold Dose of Reality.
“Bring your Verbal up seventy-five points and write a killer personal essay, and maybe, just maybe, you might be in the hunt,” she concedes at last. “But I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”