Prep Read online

  My meeting with Mrs. Stanchak was the last period of the day. I had met with her before‑at Ault, college counseling started in the spring of your junior year‑but this was supposed to be a definitive meeting, the one at which I presented her with the list of colleges where I was applying.

  When I was seated in the chair beside her desk, she opened a manila folder, pulled her glasses down on her nose‑the lenses were rectangular, with blue plastic frames, and they were attached to a chain around her neck‑and peered at the top piece of paper. Still looking down, she said, “How’s this year going for you, Lee? Off to a good start?”

  “Pretty good.”

  “How’s math?”

  “I have a B minus right now.”

  “No kidding?” She looked up and smiled. “That’s fantastic. You’re still meeting with Aubrey?”

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Stanchak was in her early sixties, married to Dr. Stanchak, who was head of the classics department. She had the kind of hair I wanted when I was her age‑it was about three inches long, almost white, and fanned off her head as if she’d been riding in a convertible, though it appeared she used no gel. She was a little plump, and her face was deeply lined and tan, even in the winter. During vacations, she and Dr. Stanchak traveled to places like China or the Galápagos Islands. They’d had three sons go through Ault‑the youngest had graduated at least ten years before‑and in the pictures I’d seen, the sons were all fair‑haired and incredibly handsome. I liked Mrs. Stanchak, in fact there was something about her I liked quite a bit, but whenever I was in her office, I thought almost continuously, even during the times I myself was speaking, of how people always said that she was who you got assigned to if Ault wasn’t planning to get behind your college application. The other counselor, Mr. Hessard, was in his forties, a tall, sardonic English teacher‑Mrs. Stanchak didn’t teach any classes and worked only part‑time as a counselor‑and he himself had gone to Harvard, while Mrs. Stanchak had gone to the College of Charleston in South Carolina, which was not a place Ault ever sent anyone. (You knew where all the faculty had graduated from, and what degrees they’d received, because it was listed in the school catalog.) Apparently, the talk about Mr. Hessard versus Mrs. Stanchak circulated every spring, just before juniors found out which counselors they’d been assigned to, and every spring, the other teachers tried to squelch it; in history class, when Dean Fletcher heard people discussing it, he said, “Not that bullcrap again,” and Aspeth, who was in the class, said, “Fletchy, I’m shocked by your language.”

  But then, when we got divided, Martha got Mr. Hessard, as did Cross, as did Jonathan Trenga, as did pretty much all the other kids in our class who seemed either smart or adored. The only remotely smart person who got Mrs. Stanchak was Sin‑Jun, but I wasn’t sure Ault cared where Sin‑Jun went to college just as long as she didn’t try to off herself again before graduation. The weird part of the assignments was that it actually surprised me not to get Mr. Hessard. Sure, I believed the worst of myself but‑not really. I was always waiting to be proven wrong.

  Mrs. Stanchak jotted something down before turning to me. “Let’s have a look at your list.”

  I passed it to her, and she scanned it. She didn’t make any affirming noises as she read.

  Finally, she said, “My main concern is that you’re not giving yourself a whole lot of safeties. A place like Hamilton, I’d say that’s a good bet for you. But when we’re talking about Middlebury or Bowdoin, those could be trickier.”

  “What about Brown?”

  “Lee.” She reached forward, touched my forearm, then leaned back and pushed her glasses up on her head, nestling them in her fluffy hair. “You’re going to love college. Do you know that? Love it. And that’s because there are more wonderful schools out there than either of us can count. But if you listened to some of the people here, you’d think there were about eight good schools. Am I right?”

  She was exactly right. The number was eight because Penn and Cornell were barely Ivies, but Stanford and Duke might as well have been.

  “That’s just silly,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “I know you know it’s silly, too.”

  “So you don’t think I can get into Brown?”

  “You know what I’ll say? I’ll say apply to Brown. Go ahead. Why not? But I want you to look at other places, too. Did you order a catalog from Grinnell like we talked about? Grinnell’s a fabulous school. And Beloit, too.”

  “What state is that in again?”

  “Grinnell is in Iowa, and Beloit’s in Wisconsin.”

  “I don’t want to go to school in the Midwest,” I said. “I like it better here.”

  “Lee, I want you to feel comfortable with the decisions we make. But I need you to work with me, and that might mean taking a second look at some places.”

  “What if I write a really good essay for Brown?”

  She sighed. “Lee,” she said‑never had my name been uttered with more sympathy‑and I could feel a hardness form in my throat, a welling behind my eyes. “You almost flunked precalculus,” she said. “You’re up against kids from here, your own classmates, who have straight As and board scores of 1600. And then you’re up against the top students from schools across the country. And we haven’t even touched the issue of financial aid. I’m not going to set you up for disappointment. Lee?”

  I didn’t speak.

  “Wherever you go, that school will be lucky to have you,” she said, and I burst into tears. In the first gush, I thought of Cross‑I had been thinking of him for most of the day anyway, for most of the time since he’d left my room a little less than thirty‑six hours before‑and it felt like I was crying, simultaneously, because I hadn’t heard from him, because maybe our interaction had been random and singular and he’d never touch my hair again or lie on top of me, because I hadn’t even really appreciated it while it was happening, and, finally, because Cross, being a prefect, would probably go to Harvard and Mrs. Stanchak was trying to separate us by sending me far away to Wisconsin. Desperately, I thought that I just needed one more chance from Cross and that if he gave it to me, I’d understand the situation. I’d be grateful to him without showing my gratitude in a way that was sickening.

  Mrs. Stanchak passed me a box of tissues and said, “Take as many as you like.” My tears did not appear to faze her at all. (Later, when I told Martha about crying in Mrs. Stanchak’s office, she said, “Oh, I’ve already cried twice with Mrs. Hessard. It’s like a rite of passage.”) “It’s a tough time,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “I know.”

  For at least a minute, we sat there listening to me sniffle. During this time, I managed to have a fantasy that Mrs. Stanchak would ask what I was really upset about, and when I told her, she would respond by saying something about Cross, and the situation, that was wise and true. I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable. But then, outside Mrs. Stanchak’s window, I saw Tig Oltman and Diana Trueblood walking with their hockey sticks to the gym, and I remembered how it was probably unwise to confide in anyone at Ault besides Martha. There wasn’t anything in particular about Tig and Diana that reminded me of this fact, nothing about them I especially didn’t trust, it was just that‑they existed. They wouldn’t literally be able to hear, but if you had a moment of vulnerability at Ault, someone always found out. Once a thing left your head, you lost your privacy.

  I glanced again at Mrs. Stanchak, who was waiting patiently, and I suddenly doubted that she had great truths to impart. “Sorry for this,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. What I want you to think about is you.”

  It occurred to me to tell her that I did little else.

  She passed me the list of colleges. “I want you to rework this,” she said. “Take a few days, and give it some thought. Talk it over with your parents. Take a long walk. And let’s try
not to get too hung up on labels. Will you try that for me?”

  “It’s not like I want to go to Brown just because it’s prestigious,” I said.

  The expression on her face implied both that she did not believe me and that she did not fault me for lying. But I was lying only partially. “I want to go to Brown because it attracts interesting people,” I said. “And because it’s in the Northeast and it doesn’t have distribution requirements.” I wanted to go to Brown because if I went to Brown, it would mean I was a person who deserved to be there. And also: because if I was a person who deserved to be there and if this was somehow official, then it would mean everything was going to turn out okay.

  “Those are great reasons,” Mrs. Stanchak said. “And you know what I want you to do, and I’m giving myself the same assignment? I want you to come up with five other schools that also fit that description. Now, remember that the federal financial aid forms will be available in November, and your parents need to get them in, in January. And you know you’re not applying anywhere early‑we’re clear on that?”

  I nodded. It was slightly surreal to speak so openly about money when I was accustomed to considering it the worst possible topic. It was like going to the gynecologist, which I started doing in college‑how embarrassed and apologetic I’d feel about the fact that my vagina was in the doctor’s face and how it was both liberating and just weird to remember that there really wasn’t anything to hide, that exposing my vagina was why I was there.

  “You can sit here awhile if you want to get collected,” Mrs. Stanchak said.

  “That’s all right.” I stood. In equal parts, I was mortified that I had started crying, and I wanted to leave her office while I still looked teary, because maybe Cross would see me and think I had been crying about something that mattered and then I would seem intriguing. “Thank you, Mrs. Stanchak,” I said.

  “Thank you, Lee. Do you know why I’m thanking you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because you’re the one who’s going to get yourself into college.”

  That morning, I’d received a note in my mailbox from Dean Fletcher reprimanding me for missing Sunday chapel and instructing me to report to the dining hall at five p.m. for table wipes, which was basically predinner cleanup. After soccer practice, I walked with wet hair from the gym to the dining hall. I’d never received table wipes before, and I was possibly the only senior who could make this claim, including Martha. As I headed around the circle, the air smelled like burning leaves and the campus was shot with that amber light you see only in the fall, and I felt, as I often did at Ault, both as if I were undeserving and as if the beauty around me was not really mine.

  Just before I stepped from the outer hall into the dining room, I heard Cross’s voice, felt a wave of shock, and considered turning around. I shouldn’t have been shocked at all‑in addition to being the senior prefect, Cross was one of the three dining hall prefects, and apparently this was his night on duty.

  I entered the dining room, where about twenty students were wiping the tables and setting down cloths. Cross was holding a sheet of paper and a pen and laughing while he spoke to two sophomore guys. Even when I was three or four feet away, he did not seem to notice me. “Excuse me, Cross,” I said.

  He looked over, and so did the two sophomores. “What can I do for you?” Cross asked, and his voice was not entirely friendly.

  “I have table wipes.” I gestured toward his piece of paper. “At least I think I do. I got a notice from Fletcher.”

  Cross looked at the paper. “I didn’t realize you were a delinquent,” he said, and his tone was more relaxed. “You guys should get to work,” he said to the two boys. “And no sloppiness.” One of them made that jerking‑off gesture as they walked away. “Hey!” Cross said. “A little respect there, Davis.” But he was laughing with them.

  When they were gone, he said, “You wanted an excuse to talk to me?”

  “No! I skipped chapel.”

  “I was just kidding.” He glanced down at his watch. His hair was wet, too, and as we stood there, I had the bizarre notion that we’d just showered together. My face flushed. “Listen,” he said. “Dinner doesn’t start for forty minutes, and we already have plenty of people here. You can leave.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll check your name off the list if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “So I just go?”

  “Unless you don’t want to.”

  “No, I do. I mean, I don’t not want to. Thank you.” I turned, and as I did, he touched me very lightly in that place between your hip and your back, and I knew something more would happen between us. Not just that I wanted it to, but that it would come to pass. It was because he set his hand so low. If it had been higher, it might have meant, No hard feelings? or even merely, See you around. But like that, at the base of my spine, even I could recognize in it something prospective and vaguely territorial. I looked back, but he was already talking to someone else.

  “The fact that he let you leave isn’t a bad sign.” Martha was standing in front of the full‑length mirror, brushing her hair, while I sat on the futon. “You don’t understand this because you’ve never had table wipes, but they’re kind of humiliating. Especially for seniors. So it’s not like, oh, he didn’t want to be around you so he told you to go. It’s more like he was being nice.”

  “He didn’t say anything about the other night,” I said. “Not a word.”

  “What was he supposed to say? Other people were there.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t remember since he was drunk.”

  “He remembers.” Martha set down her brush and lifted her perfume bottle. She squirted some into the air in front of her, then walked through the mist‑it was a trick I’d picked up from Dede freshman year and passed on to Martha. “It actually doesn’t sound like he was all that drunk. A lot of guys can’t, you know, get it up when they’ve had a lot to drink.”

  “Really?”

  “Alcohol depresses your central nervous system.”

  “Has that ever happened with Colby?” Martha and Colby had been together for more than a year. He was a junior at UVM, and they spoke once a week on the phone, on Mondays, and wrote to each other and spent time together on vacations and she’d had sex with him (her first time) six months into the relationship, after they’d gone to a clinic for him to get tested for AIDS because he’d had sex with two previous girlfriends. He was tall and nice and liked Martha, but he was also pale and had a beaky nose and was, at least in my opinion, rather humorless. When Martha was home, they did things together like go for fifty‑mile bike rides, or take turns reading aloud their favorite parts from The Odyssey. I did not feel jealous.

  “Colby doesn’t drink that much because of crew,” Martha said. She looked at me. “You really shouldn’t be stressing.”

  “I’m not.” I propped my legs on the trunk and looked at my calves in black opaque tights and my feet in black dress shoes. I wondered if my shoes were cheesy. Lately, a lot of girls were wearing chunkier heels.

  “What do you want to happen?” Martha asked. “Seriously.”

  I wanted to be the person Cross told things to. I wanted him to think I was pretty, I wanted him to be reminded of me by stuff I liked‑pistachios and hooded sweatshirts and the Dylan song “Girl from the North Country”‑and I wanted him to miss me when we were apart. I wanted him to feel, when we were lying in bed together, like he couldn’t imagine anywhere better.

  “Can you picture him being my boyfriend?” I asked.

  Martha was putting on her jacket, with her back to me, when she said, “No,” and because she couldn’t see my face, I don’t think she realized how startled I was. By the time she turned around, I was straining not to seem surprised or hurt. “I’m sure if you want to hook up with him again, you can,” she said. “But the sense I get, just from little comments he makes, is that he’s really into this being his senior year. I doubt he wants to be tied down. An
d also, just, you and Cross?” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad. “Do you see it happening?”

  “If you can’t imagine Cross and me going out, why’d you just tell me to think about what I want?” I tried to speak in a normal, curious voice. These were, hands down, the worst things Martha had ever said to me, but if she knew I thought so, she’d feel terrible and stop being honest.

  “I’m not saying to be passive. That’s what makes me worry about you, that it seems like you’re leaving it all in his hands. You definitely should express what you want, and if he can’t deal with it, it’s his problem.”

  “But why should I go after something you’re so sure I won’t get?”

  “I’m not sure of anything. How could I be? But you’ve had a huge crush on Sug for almost the entire time you’ve been here. He came over, you guys fooled around, and now there’s an opportunity, and you owe it to yourself to see what happens. And it’s not like I’m skeptical because I don’t think you’re good enough for him. If anything, you’re too good. I’m just not sure he realizes that.”

  “So what should I say to him? And when?”

  “He’s not that hard to find. Go to his room during visitation.”

  “I would never go to Cross’s room.”

  “Then wait until you see him around campus, and tell him you want to talk to him.”

  “To say what?”

  “Lee, there aren’t magical words.” Martha stepped into shoes exactly like mine, and my resentment of her flared. Most of the time I loved having her as my roommate, I loved the clarity and closeness of one single best friend. But at rare moments, for exactly the same reason, I felt trapped by my reliance on her, flattened by her pragmatism and bluntness. If I had ever made Dede into my best friend and if I’d then had this conversation with her (and if, of course, Dede herself hadn’t harbored a crush on Cross for years), then in this moment Dede would scheme and bolster. She wouldn’t deflate me like Martha was doing.