I have glowing personal recommendations from four of my teachers for my app as well. I only needed two, but I always cover my bases. Glad I did—I sort of feel like Ms. DeMamp was being backhanded, “complimenting” my intensity and drive.
I worked with an admissions coach to answer the fill-in-the-blank portions of Princeton’s form. The coach explained that although Princeton wants me to be authentic, there’s honest and then there’s honest. Each answer paints a specific picture and it was his job to ensure my responses were in line with best presenting myself. For example, with Favorite Book, I couldn’t write, Who has time to read for fun? (or Pretty Little Liars) so instead he had me talk about Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I went all counterpoint, elaborating on the benefits of being an Alpha. I’m sure most people claim to side with the Savage because of his humanity, but given the choice, wouldn’t we prefer to be born superior?
My coach vetoed my original Favorite Line from a Book or a Movie. He said it’s cliché to pick Fitzgerald’s quote from The Great Gatsby about beating on, boats against the current, so I went with “‘Dear God,’ she prayed, ‘let me be something every minute of every hour of my life’” from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn because it’s apt and it is how I feel—really, it’s how I live.
I tied the quote in with an early memory of my mother reading this novel to me and how A Tree Grows in Brooklyn inspired a lifetime love of the written word.
Except that’s total BS.
The only thing my mother ever read to me was the label on a package of Chips Ahoy when she thought I was looking thick in seventh grade. “Sugar?” she’d shrieked. “High fructose corn syrup? Partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil? This is why you’re fat, Calorie Mallory.”
Is it any wonder I dieted myself out of that moniker right quick?
Speaking of, Jasper refuses to call any of his friends by their real names. Everyone he likes gets a nickname. A Jasper nickname is a badge of honor.
Try to guess what he calls me.
“Yo, Mallory!” he hollers. His cheeks are flushed red and his normally slicked-back brown curls are all over the place. He’s basically a big, drunken Labradoodle. Today his pants are embroidered with little pumpkins, presumably in honor of it being fall. His oxford shirt hangs open and he has a striped rep tie wrapped around his head like a sweatband, as though he’s a competing in the Preppy Hunger Games. “We’re doing body shots and we need a body—c’mere.”
“I’m good where I am,” I reply with a tight smile. I plant myself on the couch.
“Don’t be lame, the Knights need you! Your stomach is like, convex, and you’ll hold the most tequila.”
“Concave,” I correct.
He shrugs. “Same diff.”
“Nope, not even a little bit.”
“Mallory, you’re being a major buzzkill,” he says. “Didn’t you used to be fun?”
“Jas, I’m, like, the most clothed person here,” I argue, pointing to all my layers. “Go find someone less dressed. So, basically anyone else.”
“Pfft, be like that then,” Jasper replies. “Yo, Noell, My Belle! Body shots!”
Noell hops down from the coffee table and yanks off her tank, flaunting her new assets, housed in a Victoria’s Secret push-up bra. This evokes a spontaneous round of applause from the water polo Jaspers.
“What?” she says innocently, wrapping her shirt around her neck like a towel post-workout. “I don’t want it to get wet.”
Flo Rida’s “Wobble” comes on and Jasmine from the JV cheer team squeals. Her name is actually Margo, but she resembles the Disney princess so closely that it was inevitable that Jasper gave her this nickname. She hurls her arms up and out with the high-V of victory in someone finally playing her jam. (Which isn’t hard. Nine out of ten songs are her jam.) Her gesture knocks Dane’s beer out of his hands and I end up covered in foam and Natty Light dregs.
“Ohmigod, I’m like so sorry!” Jasmine says.
“No prob,” I reply, and it truly isn’t.
Because now I have the perfect excuse to leave.
I don’t bother looking for Liam to say goodbye. I’m sure he’s too wasted to drive me home at this point and I’m not into spending time with him anyway. I thought he’d be my rock over the last few weeks, but that hasn’t happened. Lately he’s been avoiding me, saying I have to let go, that I can’t keep going over the circumstances around Braden’s death, dissecting every piece of information in the hopes of finding some kind of clue.
Sometimes I wonder if he even knows me at all.
I order an Uber, which should be here by the time I make it to the end of Jasper’s driveway. Uber has been my mother’s most favorite invention ever. Before I had the LR4, setting me up with an account allowed her to not have to even pretend to be invested in my comings and goings.
I exit through the double front doors and head over to the giant three-tiered fountain Jasper’s folks imported from Milan. When we would come here for birthday parties as little kids, all of us would ask our parents for coins and we’d toss them into the water while making our wishes. Years later, Jasper admitted he’d fish out all the money and spend it on candy. That still makes me mad—it’s like he was stealing our hopes and dreams.
The fountain is illuminated by underwater spotlights, located in a circle of grass in the middle of Jasper’s driveway. I dip my hands in the freezing cold water and press them to my face, wiping away stray bits of froth from the beer. The water smells vaguely of algae. I’m tempted to toss in a coin but don’t because Jasper would probably swipe it anyway.
And wishes can’t bring back Braden.
I sprint down the drive and away from the house before someone can stop me from leaving the party. No one follows me. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.
At the bottom of the hill leading up to the house, the freshmen assigned to gate duty are huddled together with a fifth of peppermint schnapps. They’re watching YouTube videos on their phones—looks to be shouting goats.
“You outta here, Mallory?” one of them asks, putting his video on mute. I don’t know his name, but he knows mine. Whether that’s because of my own merits or due to dating the team’s star is undetermined.
“Someone spilled a beer on me. I smell like the Anheuser-Busch factory, so I’m leaving,” I reply.
“That sucks, man!” says the other freshman. He holds up the bottle of schnapps. “Hey, you didn’t happen to bring one of those beers with you, by any chance? This is like drinking mouthwash.”
“Unless you want to wring out my sweater, then no.”
I exit the pedestrian gate just as my Uber arrives. I open the door to the Audi and slide in back, and am immediately surrounded by the scent of new leather and luxury. “Hi, I’m the one who called. I’m going to 221 Morningstar, please.”
The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror. “That you, Mallory?”
“Um, yes?” Kind of a random question. I mean, didn’t he receive all my details when I placed the order?