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“Phone!” Dorrit yells.
“Phone!” I scream, bursting out of the bathroom like a lit firecracker.
“Huh?” Sebastian says, sticking his head out my bedroom door.
“Could be Dorrit’s probation officer.”
“Dorrit has a probation officer? For stealing gum?” Sebastian says, but I can’t stop to explain.
I grab the phone in my father’s room just before Dorrit reaches it. “Hello?”
“Carrie? George here.”
“Oh, hi,” I say breathlessly, closing the door. What did you think of my story? I need to know. Now.
“How are you?” George asks. “How’s Dorrit?”
“She’s fine.” Did you read it? Did you hate it? If you hated it I’m going to kill myself.
“Is she doing her community service?”
“Yes, George.” The agony is killing me.
“What did they assign her to?”
Who cares? “Picking up litter on the side of the road.”
“Ah. The old litter routine. Works every time.”
“George.” I hesitate. “Did you read my story?”
“Yes, Carrie. As a matter of fact, I did.”
“And?”
A long silence during which I contemplate the practicalities of slitting my wrists with a safety razor.
“You’re definitely a writer.”
I am? I’m a writer? I imagine running around the room, jumping up and down and shouting, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer!”
“And you have talent.”
“Ah.” I fall back onto the bed in ecstasy.
“But—”
I sit right up again, clutching the phone in terror.
“Well, really, Carrie. This story about a girl who lives in a trailer park in Key West, Florida, and works in a Dairy Queen…Have you ever been to Key West?”
“For your information, I have. Several times,” I say primly.
“Did you live in a trailer? Did you work at the Dairy Queen?”
“No. But why can’t I pretend I did?”
“You’ve got plenty of imagination,” George says. “But I know a thing or two about these writing programs. They’re looking for something that smacks of personal experience and authenticity.”
“I don’t get it,” I mutter.
“Do you know how many stories they’re sent about a kid who dies? It doesn’t ring true. You need to write what you know.”
“But I don’t know anything!”
“Sure you do. And if you can’t think of something, find it.”
My joy dissipates like a morning mist.
“Carrie?” Sebastian knocks on the door.
“Can I call you tomorrow?” I ask quickly, cupping my hand around the receiver. “I have to go to this party for the swim team.”
“I’ll call you. We’ll make a plan to get together, okay?”
“Sure.” I put down the phone and hang my head in despair.
My career as a writer is over. Finished before it’s even begun.
“Carrie,” Sebastian’s voice, louder and more annoyed, comes from the other side of the door.
“Ready,” I say, opening it.
“Who was that?”
“Someone from Brown.”
“Are you going to go there?”
“I have to get in. Officially. But yeah. I guess I probably will.”
I feel like I’m being suffocated by thick green slime.
“What are you going to do about college?” I ask suddenly. Strange how I haven’t asked him about this before.
“I’m going to take a year off,” he says. “Last night, I was looking at the essay portion of my application to Amherst when it hit me. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be part of the system. That probably shocks you, doesn’t it?”
“No. It’s your life.”
“Yeah, but how are you going to feel about having a deadbeat boyfriend?”
“You’re not a deadbeat. You’re smart. Really smart.”
“I’m a regular genius,” he says. And after another second: “Do we have to go to this party?”
“Yes,” I insist. “Lali has it every year. If we don’t show up, she’ll be really hurt.”
“You’re the boss,” he says. I follow him out of the house, wishing we didn’t have to go to the party, either. Write what you know. That was the best George could come up with? A cliché? Damn him. Damn everything. Why is it all so goddamned hard?
“If it wasn’t difficult, everyone would do it,” Peter says, holding court to a small group of kids who are clustered around the couch. Peter has just been accepted to Harvard, early decision, and everyone is impressed. “Bioengineering is the hope of the future,” he continues as I drift away and find Maggie sitting in the corner with The Mouse.
The Mouse looks like she’s being held hostage. “Honestly, Maggie,” she says, “this is great for Peter. It makes us all look good if someone from Castlebury gets into Harvard.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with us,” Maggie counters.
“I can’t believe Peter got into Harvard,” Lali says, pausing on her way to the kitchen. “Isn’t it great?”
“No,” Maggie says firmly. Everyone is thrilled for Peter—everyone, it seems, but Maggie.
I understand her despair. Maggie is one of the millions of kids out there who have no idea what they want to do with their lives—like Sebastian, I suppose, and Lali. When someone close to you figures it out, it pulls you up short in front of your own wall of indecision.
“Harvard is only an hour and a half away,” I say soothingly, trying to distract Maggie from what’s really bothering her.
“It doesn’t matter how far it is,” she says glumly. “Harvard is not any old college. If you go to Harvard, you become someone who went to Harvard. For the rest of your life, it’s what people say about you: He went to Harvard—”
Maybe it’s because I’ll never go to Harvard and I’m jealous, but I hate all this elitist talk. Who you are shouldn’t be defined by where you go to college. It probably is, though.
“And if Peter is always going to be the guy who went to Harvard,” Maggie continues, “I’m always going to be the girl who didn’t.”
The Mouse and I exchange glances. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get a beer,”The Mouse says.
“What does she care?” Maggie says, looking after her. “She’s going to Yale. She’ll be the girl who went to Yale. Sometimes I think Peter and The Mouse should date. They’d be perfect for each other.” There’s an unexpected bitterness in her voice.
“The Mouse is dating someone,” I say gently. “Remember?”
“Right,” she says. “Some guy who doesn’t live around here.” She waves her arm in dismissal. She’s drunk, I realize.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
“It’s cold outside,” she protests.
“It’s good for us.”
On our way out, we pass Sebastian and Lali in the kitchen. Lali has put Sebastian to work, placing mini hot dogs from the oven onto a plate. “We’ll be right back,” I call out.
“Sure.” Lali barely glances in our direction. She says something to Sebastian and he laughs.
For a second I feel uneasy. Then I try to look on the bright side. At least my boyfriend and my best friend are getting along.
When we get outside, Maggie grabs my arm and whispers, “How far would you go to get what you wanted?”
“Huh?” I say. It’s freezing. Our breath envelops us like summer clouds.
“What if you really, really, really wanted something and you didn’t know how to get it—or you did know how to get it but you weren’t sure you should do it. How far would you go?”
For a second, I wonder if she’s talking about Lali and Sebastian. Then I realize she’s talking about Peter.
“Let’s go into the barn,” I suggest. “It’s warmer.”
The Kandesies keep a few cows, mostly for show, in an old barn behind the house. Above the cows is a hayloft, where Lali and I have retreated hundreds of times to spill our most important secrets. The loft is fragrant and warm, due to the heat from the cows below. I perch on a hay bale. “Maggie, what’s wrong?” I say, wondering how many times I’ve asked her this question in the last three months. It’s becoming disturbingly repetitive.
She takes out a pack of cigarettes.
“Don’t.” I stop her. “You can’t smoke up here. You could start a fire.”
“Let’s go outside, then.”
“It’s cold. And you can’t grab a cigarette every time you feel uncomfortable, Mags. It’s becoming a crutch.”
“So?” Maggie looks evil.
“What did you mean before—about how far you would go?” I ask. “You’re not thinking about Peter, are you? You’re not thinking about…are you taking the birth control pills?”
“Of course.” She looks away. “When I remember.”
“Mags.” I leap toward her. “Are you insane?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
I slide in next to her and fall back on a bale of hay, gathering my arguments. I stare up at the ceiling, which nature has decorated with swags of cobwebs, like a Halloween extravaganza. Nature and instinct versus morality and logic. That’s how my father would put this dilemma.
“Mags,” I begin. “I know you’re worried about losing him. But what you’re thinking about doing is not the way to keep him.”
“Why not?” she asks stubbornly.
“Because it’s wrong. You don’t want to be the girl who forced a guy to be with her by getting pregnant.”
“Women do it all the time.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“My mother did it,” she says. “No one’s supposed to know. But I counted backward, and my oldest sister was born six months after my parents were married.”
“That was years ago. They didn’t even have the pill back then.”
“Maybe it would be better if they didn’t now.”
“Maggie, what are you saying? You don’t want to have a baby at eighteen. Babies are a huge pain. All they do is eat and poop. You want to be changing diapers while everyone you know is out having fun? And what about Peter? It could ruin his life. That doesn’t seem very nice, does it?”
