Free Getting In: A Novel by Karen Stabiner

safe.”
    “Right,” came Chloe’s voice from behind the door. “Wouldn’t want that lettuce to get cold.”
    Deena bit her lip, walked back into the kitchen, and drowned the salad with bottled no-calorie Italian dressing, knowing that Chloe often required a third call these days, knowing that Chloe hated soggy lettuce. Too bad. Salad night was Deena’s thinly veiled attempt to get Chloe’s weight down and make it seem like fun, with a different combination of veggies and protein each time, and all she got for her trouble was sarcasm and resentment. She was not about to sit here and wait until Chloe deigned to appear. Deena piled salad on her plate, poured herself a glass of iced tea, and tried to focus on the first delicious and virtuous bite even as she listened for the doorknob turning.
    She took a second helping that she did not really want, to make it look as though she had a good reason for sitting with Chloe while she ate, and worked hard to ignore the melodramatic sigh as Chloe hoisted her first swampy forkful. Deena poked at her food until Chloe’s plate was half-empty, to ensure that her daughter had a healthy meal even if she stormed out of the room once Deena said what she had to say.
    “Your father and I had a talk,” she began.
    “That always works well,” Chloe shot back.
    “Do not use that tone of voice—”
    “Any more olives?”
    Deena got up to retrieve them from the fridge.
    “I’m going to finish my sentence. Your father and I had a talk about these ten schools on your list…”
    Chloe smiled, which Deena took as encouragement, though it was in fact amusement. Her parents had managed to have a conversation about the ten schools on her list without ever realizing that each one of them had a different list, that there were twenty schools, not ten, that so far her search for a school resembled nothing so much as a Saturday afternoon spent on random shoe-shopping sites. It included the top five private schools from the U.S. News & World Report list, on the off chance that one of them might consider an applicant with premillennial SAT scores; Berkeley and Michigan, because they were big enough to disappear in; five schools close to big cities from the book about schools that made a difference; six from the deep double digits on the U.S. News list, because who was she kidding; and two UCs, in case her parents’ endless arguments about money caught fire.
    In the single most profitable consequence of her parents’ separation, she had a Jet Blue American Express card from her mom and an iTunes Visa card from her dad, so she could charge half the applications on each and perpetuate the illusion of thoroughness, not wantonness. Her mom shopped to fill the vacant space that was her life. Chloe shopped, in this case, to pave the road away from home. She saw this as a crucial distinction.
    Deena reached over to pat Chloe’s hand. “And we wondered why you’re not applying early to some special school. If it’s a reasonable choice you could get all of this over with before Christmas, and not have to spend time you don’t have on all those essays.”
    Chloe stood up so suddenly that Deena flinched.
    “That is so insulting,” said Chloe. “What you really mean is why don’t I pick someplace easy that no one else wants to go to. Why don’t you just say so? Let’s sign me up for City College and spare ourselves the disappointment. And spare you and Daddy all that money. I ought to bug the house, and then if you and Daddy ever decide to worry about my self-esteem, which I doubt, but if you ever do, you can just listen to the things you say to me. Then you’ll know why I don’t have any.”
    “Chloe. I was just asking. If we can’t ask simple questions…”
    “But they’re not simple questions. I picked out ten schools because I thought they gave me a really good range of options.” Suddenly she recalled something useful Ted had said at the one Crestview college workshop she had attended