Free Been There, Done That by Carol Snow Page A

eighteen-year-olds that you’re one of them?” He looked to Richard for backup. Richard merely frowned at one of his molded plastic chairs, as if willing Tim to move his butt to someplace other than the prized desk.
    “Lying to the kids is different,” I said. “I haven’t met them before. They never bought me lunch.”
    Tim stared at me. “The time you interviewed this guy, you let him pick up the lunch tab?”
    “Long story. At any rate, he’s a nice man. He already knows me as the adult me. It’s an ethics thing.” I smirked at him. “If you can imagine it.”
    I stared at the familiar tableau behind Richard’s desk: an assortment of his favorite Salad covers, expensively framed. Blurbs hinted at the crucial information within: “New England’s Best B&B’s,” “Taking the Confusion out of Countertops,” “What Your Child’s Test Scores Really Mean.”
    Richard’s enthusiasm for the story had already begun to wane. Perhaps he didn’t think we could pull it off. Or maybe, after his initial excitement, he just couldn’t think of a single advertiser to woo with the story. Also, he was starting to wonder how he was going to fill an entire magazine without my contributions. “Kathy’s going to have all that time at Mercer, pretending to write papers,” Tim assured him. “She can be cranking out articles instead.”
    So much for my complete focus on the story.
    “How much time are we talking about?” Richard asked. “A week? Two?”
    “It will take significantly longer than that for Kathy to establish herself and turn up any meaningful leads,” Tim said. “I think four months is a more reasonable time frame.”
    Richard gawked at him (as did I). “I guess we could get it done in three months. Though it would be tight.”
    “Four weeks,” Richard said.
    “Nine.”
    “Five.”
    “Eight.”
    “Six.”
    “Okay,” Tim sighed, crossing his arms. “Seven.”
    Seven it was. But there was still the issue of talking Dr. Archer into the plan. I hoped he was made of stronger stuff than Richard, or at least than me.
    Finally, Tim made the call. Passing himself off as the “assistant executive editor,” he phoned Dr. Archer. The dean didn’t like the idea; it seemed sneaky. He said no, and Tim hung up, looking defeated.
    I enjoyed maybe three minutes of relative inner peace before Cara, Richard’s assistant, buzzed him to say that there was a phone call for an assistant executive editor named Tim, and did Richard know what he was talking about, and if there were an editorial job opening, why hadn’t Richard considered her because she’d been a journalism major in college and didn’t intend to stay a secretary for the rest of her life.
    Archer had changed his mind. Applications had been falling for years, and the free publicity was tantalizing. “Just between you and me” he told Tim (and the rest of us who were listening on the speaker phone), his job could be on the line if he didn’t turn things around. Finally, he agreed to let me go undercover on the condition that no one know he was involved.
    Tim proposed a plan involving forged transcripts and SAT records (white-out played a key role, as computer hacking was, you know, “unethical”), an exemplary personal essay (he offered to write it), and glowing fake letters of recommendation.
    “That might work,” Dr. Archer said. “Or, I could just send Kathy’s name to the registrar.”
    It was the end of July. In a month, I would be entering college. I buried myself in an article about French language schools for preschoolers and tried not to think about it.

eleven
    Her name was Tiffany Weaver. She was an Aries from Buffalo, New York, who loved her collie (Mr. Big), cookie dough ice cream (“Sometimes I dig right around the ice cream and just scoop out the dough!”), and talking on the telephone (“So you might want to bring ear plugs!”). She had already bought her bedspread (“I hope you like pink! Because that’s my favorite