I Was Told It Would Get Easier(51)

“Liar,” she said, which was irritating. “Well, I have a friend who can be very helpful.”

“Like a college adviser person?”

She nodded. “Yes. He can make calls, pull strings, that kind of thing.”

I wondered why she was telling me. “Emily doesn’t even know where she wants to go to college.” And, I thought to myself, I don’t think you like me any more than I like you. Or was she so starved for friends that one bonding conversation over breakfast was enough to bring me into her secret inner circle? I was definitely overthinking this, as usual.

Dani snorted. “None of them know anything, they’re idiots. Alice is going to USC, we’ve already laid a lot of groundwork, but it wasn’t like we gave her much choice.”

I was surprised. “Alice strikes me as the kind of kid who doesn’t like to be told what to do.”

Dani shook her head. “She doesn’t like it, but in this case our interests aligned. Lots of influencers go to USC, apparently.” She smiled at me. “But anyway, if you need help, let me know. I’d be happy to introduce you to my friend. He knows everybody. There are back doors everywhere, and all you need is the right key.”

“Are you talking about cheating?”

She looked horrified and amused at the same time. “Jessica, wash out your mouth. Of course not!” She lowered her voice again. “I’m talking about taking advantage of the existing holes in the system. It’s not illegal to know people, right?”

I shook my head.

“And some kids need more help than others.” She suddenly sucked in her breath. “Oh my god, I completely forgot, did you hear about what happened at school?”

“No.” I remembered those emails from the head of eleventh grade and felt mildly guilty.

“They suspended several juniors for cheating. Or rather, planning to cheat. On their APs.”

“Really? Is that even possible?”

She laughed. “Of course, anything’s possible. Not sure what their plan was, exactly, but their parents weren’t involved, so I doubt it was that good.” She looked at me. “How are Emily’s grades?”

I frowned at her. “Emily’s grades are fine, she’ll be able to get into college.”

“A good college?”

Man, she was pushy. “Well, probably not an Ivy, but a good school.”

She shrugged. “Well, things have changed since your time. My husband’s personal assistant has a degree from Yale, and she’s fetching coffee for a living. He told me over a third of their interns this year are Ivy League graduates, and one of them has a master’s in chemical engineering.”

I frowned at her. “And now she’s an intern at a movie studio?”

Dani got to her feet. “I guess chemical engineering wasn’t as glamorous as she thought it would be.” She stepped into the aisle of the bus and looked down at me. “So nice to talk, Jessica.”

I smiled and lied. “Yes, lovely.”

“Let me know if you want to meet my friend.” She paused. “I think you’re so brave, letting the future take care of itself.” She smiled at me. “I think it’s my job to take care of my daughter.”

I said nothing, letting that piece of bullshit settle in my heart and watching her sway to the front of the bus. I guess she forgot she showed me her soft insides that morning. Then I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window, suddenly exhausted.



* * *



? ? ?

We finally arrived in Princeton, and Cassidy apologized for the traffic and told us we had fifteen minutes to change for dinner if we wanted to.

“Are jeans okay?” asked Chris.

Cassidy nodded her head. “Of course, it’s a math-themed restaurant. I simply thought some of you might need to freshen up after the journey.”

“I brought a special T-shirt,” I heard Geology Boy say to Emily. “With three thousand digits of pi on it.”

“Awesome,” replied my daughter, with apparent sincerity. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

“Oh,” said the boy, “I have one with Einstein, Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace, and Grace Hopper crossing Abbey Road, you know, like on the Beatles album cover. You can borrow it, if you like.”

There was a pause, and then Will, who was standing next to her, said, “Wait, can I borrow it? It’ll be too big for her, but I could totally rock it.”

The boy—his name is Casper, I remembered, brain like a steel trap—looked thrilled to share with Will, who was definitely cooler than he was, in the way teenagers view these things. But Emily frowned up at Will and shook her head.

“No, he offered it to me first.”

Casper got excited. “It’s okay, I have another one, too. I have one with a really nice unit circle on it, you can borrow that, if you like.”

Emily asked, “What’s a unit circle?”

And, I kid you not, Casper appeared surprised she didn’t know and said, “It’s the circle of radius one centered at the origin in the Cartesian coordinate system in the euclidean plane.” (In the interest of honesty, I had to go look it up on Wikipedia to make sure I got it right.)

Emily said, “I thought you said you brought a special shirt, like, a single shirt. Are all your shirts math related? I thought you liked geology?”