Getting In (Amanda's Trilogy) Read online

  My friends describe me as one cool customer. I rarely get rattled. Nothing gets under my skin, and if it does, I’m good at convincing everyone it didn’t. Like the time one of my boarding school friends threw a party while her parents were out of town, and some townie showed up with cases of booze and baggies of pot. And when the police dropped by, who was down at the security gate, convincing them everything is okay, officers, I’ve got it under control, here’s my dad’s number if you want to check in with him, blah-blah-blah? Yeah, me, cool-headed Amanda, although my big blue eyes and undone buttons on my blouse helped distract them from the insanity going on up at the house. Those cops didn’t so much as offer me a breathalyzer, they were out of there so fast, practically bowing and scraping their apologies. And by the way, I don’t do drugs and only drink on occasion. I don’t like losing control. At all.

  But this whole college prep thing has me unnerved. I even find myself wishing that I’d studied a little harder and partied a little less at Miss Porter’s so that I could tell Valerie Gowan to suck it: I have lots of college options to consider.

  But I don’t. And she knows it.

  I’m not in control. This stupid little card in my hand has the power.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Town Car pulls up to the curb as our doorman opens the door for me.

  “Nice night for some fun,” George says with a wink. He’s been our doorman for ages, and over the years, he’s gotten me out of some sticky situations. Really embarrassing stuff, and he’s totally covered my ass afterwards. He glances over at the black vehicle idling in front of our apartment building. “For you, Miss Amanda?”

  “For me,” I reply cheerfully, although inside I’m feeling a bit apprehensive. I keep thinking, though, there’s no way a college admissions officer would send me somewhere dangerous, as much as Valerie Gowan would probably love to send me to the den of a crazed Colombian coke dealer with a blonde fetish. I assure myself that this chick is probably getting kickbacks from referring rich kids to this counseling outfit, and that’s why she wants me to keep my mouth shut. Tonight they’ll ask me for an outrageous deposit, which I can make on my Platinum Card, blah-blah-blah. It’s such a racket, ripping off the wealthy of the world, it’s not even funny. Not that I expect you to feel sorry for me.

  George opens the car door for me, and I slide in across the leather seat. George tells me to have fun, closes the door, and indicates to the driver it’s safe to pull away by thumping the trunk a few times with his hand.

  “Miss Prescott?” a deep male voice asks from the front seat. His hair is silver gray, neatly cut above the collar of his white shirt.

  “Yes, I’m, uh, she. Or her. Or whatever.”

  He chuckles at my grammar stumble as he pulls away from the curb, and we start off down my tree-lined street.

  “Miss Prescott, you’ll notice a small bag on the seat next to you.”

  It’s less of a question and more of an order. I glance down. A black bag cinched with gold cord seems to have magically appeared, although I know it’s just something I didn’t notice because of how dark these cars can be inside. I pick the bag up.

  “Inside you’ll find an eye mask. Would you kindly slip that on before we go any farther?”

  The driver is stopped at the end of my quiet street, and though there’s a green light, he doesn’t move. Luckily for him, nobody’s behind us hammering on their horn. I pull the black eye mask out of the bag and dangle it from my fingers as if it’s contaminated.

  “Why on earth do I need to wear a mask?” I snap. “Am I booked on the red-eye to Hell tonight?”

  The driver looks back at me in his rear-view mirror. For the first time I see his eyes, a piercing blue. Cold. But his voice is smooth, almost warm as he responds. “My employers like their privacy. Their clients are mostly students, and sometimes students can get … too dependent. The eye mask is a precautionary measure.”

  “A precautionary measure, is it?” I toss the mask on the seat beside me. “It’s stupid. I’ve never heard of something so idiotic.”

  “No, I suppose you haven’t.” I can see by the way his eyes crinkle that he’s amused. It pisses me off.

  “I’m out of here.” I grab the handle of the door, but just as I do, I hear the thunk of electronic locks engaging. “Hey, let me out. Now.”

  The driver turns in his seat to look at me. His eyes, which a few moments ago looked hard and cold in the mirror, suddenly seem sympathetic, almost kind.

  “Miss Prescott, I assure you there’s nothing nefarious going on here. My employers work from their apartment in the city. Students tend to get such excellent results, they’re tempted to share the program with other students without my employers’ permission, and that’s not how the business works. Their program is exclusive. They don’t want a bunch of college kids—or worse, their parents—banging on their front door, begging for admittance. Everything’s done through recommendations from trusted associates.”

  Like greasy-palmed admissions officers.

  “I locked the doors so you wouldn’t dart out in front of a cab and get yourself killed. But if you’re sure you’d like to return home, I will drive around the block and return you to your apartment building.”

  The driver watches me intently. Common sense urges me to go home. It’s still early. I have dozens of friends I could call and in a few hours we could be up to no good, as my father would say.

  But then there’s that word exclusive. Exclusive is my world. I’ve been bred for exclusive. When I know an object is rare or an experience is one few others get, it sets off a Pavlovian reaction in my limbic system I can’t control. I want it. I want it now. I want it before anyone else grabs it.

  So I slowly push myself back into my seat, sigh, pull the eye mask over my face, and cross my arms against my chest.

  “This is silly,” I say, then I heave out an even bigger sigh to punctuate my irritation.

  I hear the rustle of the driver turning back to the steering wheel.

  “Just sit back, Miss Prescott, and enjoy the ride.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After what feels like hundreds of right turns and left dodges, the car stops and I hear the driver’s door open and close. The rear door opens, and as I start to lift the eye mask away from my face, I feel a hand firmly slide it back into place.

  “Please keep that on, Miss Prescott. I’ll walk you inside. You’re safe.”

  I fumble for the gold chain attached to the small Chanel bag on the seat next to me, and then take the driver’s arm, thinking about how ridiculous this will look to anyone walking down the street. Although in New York City, a blindfolded blonde being led into a building is pretty mild stuff compared to the other shit you see on a daily basis.

  The driver warns me that we’ll be heading down some steps. What I don’t tell him is that I can see my feet because the eye mask doesn’t completely block my vision when I look down. Still, I pretend I’m helpless, and he carefully guides me into a stairwell and I hear him ring a buzzer. In seconds, a buzzer rings back, there’s a squeal of a door opening, and he says, “I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up.”

  It’s weird, but I almost feel like throwing my arms around him and begging him not to leave me here alone, but then I hear the Asian woman’s voice.

  “Miss Prescott, this way.”

  The driver and the Asian woman make a smooth passenger transfer. I hear the thud of steel behind me, and the driver’s footsteps grow fainter as he moves up and away from of the stairwell.

  “You may remove the mask now,” the woman says.

  I flip it off over my forehead, and blink—not from the light, which is actually dim, but from the release of pressure on my eyelids. I shake out my hair and look down at the woman, who is, indeed, Japanese. She could be twenty-five or she could be fifty. Her dark hair is pulled back in a severe chignon, and her blood-red lips gash across her porcelain complexion. A black peplum blazer and pencil skirt hug her slender figure, but she ap
pears oddly unfeminine. She offers me her bird-like hand and a cool, limp shake.

  “I am Naoko,” she says with a slight bow of her head. “Before I bring you in to meet the mistress, may I request that you remove your street shoes?” She sweeps her hand to indicate a sisal mat set against the dark paneled wall with an assortment of white slippers carefully lined up on it. I notice no street shoes on the rug. Tonight I must be the only appointment.

  I slip off my orange Tod’s, walk barefoot over to the mat, and choose a pair of slippers that look like they’ll fit my size nine feet. I notice that Naoko follows behind me and removes my shoes from the mat where I’ve tossed them.

  “I will take care of these, Miss Prescott,” she says. “The mistress doesn’t like anything out of harmony.”

  My mouth opens to tell Naoko to keep her mitts off my moccasins, but I glance around the wood-paneled room and see there is a certain order to it, a symmetry that seems practiced and rigorously followed. I’ve been to Japan many times and I know how much the Japanese value their order, so I let Naoko dart away with my shoes to place them behind a small security counter next to the door I’ve entered, sleek and crafted of expensive walnut. Definitely too upscale for rent-a-cops.

  Naoko is back at my side, and this time she’s urging me to the end of the room, bowing again, her outstretched hand pointing me to what I can now see is a door, cleverly concealed in the wood paneling.

  “This way,” she says. “The mistress is waiting.”

  Mistress. An odd way to refer to your boss, but I chalk it up to a cultural difference.

  Naoko pushes the panel and the door swings open silently. She guides me into a large room, but unlike the austere entryway we’ve passed through, this room is decorated … Well, the best I can come up with is decorated like the boudoir of one of Louis XIV’s mistresses, but without a bed. I sink into the pale blue carpet underfoot, noticing that the matching side chairs and sofas around the room look tortured under the weight of their gilt. I glance up at the portraits on the walls, dozens of them, looking like they were looted from Versailles. Tarty eighteenth-century courtesans with massive pompadours, red lips, and cherry-stained cheeks stare down at me with their secretive, nasty smiles. A massive chandelier presides over an equally massive marble-and-gilt desk and casts a harsh, crystalline glare over the room. Instead of feeling rich and luxurious, the space feels … cheap. Cheesy. It looks like the room of poor schmuck with zero taste who just won the Powerball and hired Dollywood to decorate.

  A door at the other end of the room opens, and a woman enters. The door seems to close by itself behind her.

  “Amanda,” she says, walking toward us. “A pleasure to meet you.” She offers me a firm handshake and leads me one of the sofas in the room. “I’m Jennifer Angstrom. Please have a seat.” Her attention turns to my companion. “Naoko, do bring us tea.”

  Naoko bows assent and leaves the room, silently. I sit down and observe Jennifer, who sits across from me on a matching (unfortunately) gilt-and-velvet upholstered sofa. She’s attractive in an odd, elfin way—short, dark hair razor cut in a severe style that was at the height of chic two seasons ago, a long slim neck, exquisite bone structure, and full lips. However, she’s dressed like one of my English teachers at prep school. Her brown tweed skirt hits an inch below her knees; her blouse, cream silk, is buttoned up to reveal nothing of her femininity; and over her blouse, she’s wearing an unflattering cabled beige sweater that looks like it was hand-knit by Granny. It’s even pilling, which I notice as she reaches for a folder that’s sitting on table between us.

  Then again, what was I expecting with a college preparatory program: Alexander McQueen in Elle Decor?

  Jennifer slides back in her seat and flips through the folder. She doesn’t seem to be reading it too closely, just skimming for the highlights. I continue to gaze around the monstrosity of a salon, taking everything in: the ocean of gilt, the garish sparkle of the chandelier reflecting back at me from one of the gold-framed mirrors on the wall, the horrid flocked wallpaper. Then my gaze alights upon a small porcelain figurine on the side table next to Jennifer Angstrom’s sofa. I’m not sure if it would technically be called a figurine, since it depicts two figures: the first, a woman, bent over, her voluminous skirts pulled up around her waist—and the second figure, a man, fucking her from behind. The figurine woman’s face is contorted into a look of shock and surprise, while the man’s face is strangely blank.

  “A gift from my husband,” Jennifer says. “It’s German.”

  Even though she’s caught me staring, I’m not embarrassed. Nudity and sex don’t bother me a bit, probably because of my liberal upbringing. We’ve got nude statuary all over our Manhattan apartment, although none of it as tasteless as this trashy figurine. “It’s … interesting,” I offer.

  “The whole room was a gift from him,” she says. Her English is slightly accented, from what European country I can’t place, but it’s a common accent, an affected style one hears when in St. Tropez or Gstaad.

  “That should be grounds for divorce,” I reply before I can catch myself, but instead of taking offense, Jennifer laughs.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she says, and I find myself laughing, too. “It is a little much, isn’t it?”

  “It’s pretty bad.”

  Naoko returns with a tea tray, which she places on the table between us, and leaves without Jennifer thanking her. Since Jennifer makes no offer of tea, I sit back and wait.

  “So, you want to attend Lexington College,” she says. It’s less of a question and more of a statement. She doesn’t look up from what she’s reading.

  “I guess.” I think better of my half-hearted response. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “It sounds like your parents are very much in favor of your attending Lexington. They’ve done quite a bit to ensure you get in.”

  “My mother went there,” I say, a little too defensively. “I’m a legacy.”

  “Let me ask you something. What have you done to warrant an acceptance besides being lucky enough to be born to an alumna who happens to be sitting on a fortune? Scratch that,” she says, closing the folder and placing it on the seat next to her. “What are you willing to do to get in?”

  I hear a clock ticking at the far side of the room. Jennifer is watching me, her expression placid, not at all hostile like the look that admissions officer was giving me yesterday.

  Suddenly Jennifer starts to shrug off the horrible beige sweater she’s wearing. “Good lord, it’s hot in here.”

  It’s obvious she’s not wearing a bra. As she pulls her arms out of the sweater’s sleeves, the cream charmeuse of her blouse slithers over her perfectly shaped breasts: full, round, and high, not too large, but what one of my boyfriends in high school would crudely refer to as “more than a mouthful.” I casually wonder if those perfect breasts are a Manhattan plastic surgeon’s handiwork; while Jennifer isn’t old, she’s certainly not fresh out of her teens. And despite her announcement of it being hot, I can clearly see her nipples straining against the silk, dark and erect.

  “That’s better,” she says, her voice husky. I glance up and Jennifer is looking straight at me. This time, I do blush because it’s one thing not to be embarrassed by nudity, but another to be caught secretly assessing a woman’s tits.

  “So, any ideas?” she asks.

  I swallow. I’m finding it hard to meet Jennifer Angstrom’s eyes because I know she knows I was just ogling her like a sixteen-year-old boy. And let’s get something straight: I’m not a lesbian. Have I fooled around with girls before? Sure. In my social circle it’s something you do to blow off steam—get drunk, kiss your friends on the dance floor, feel their boobs, and hope a pap isn’t in the corner, squeezing off shots on his Nikon to feed to a gossip columnist back in New York. Women’s bodies are mysterious, soft, and beautiful, and if I can be honest, they’re a hell of a lot better looking than male bodies. But when it comes to feeling deeply satisfied, it’s a male body I need: h
ard and powerful, a solidity to complement my softness.

  “I guess I could do another internship,” I offer. “A serious one this time. Like somewhere in Africa, maybe.”

  Jennifer continues to hold me in her gaze.

  “You like control, don’t you, Amanda?”

  Her question confuses me. “Control?”

  “You like to be in charge. Call the shots. Be the boss.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “No, not everyone.” Jennifer presses her full lips together. “Many of us … many people are willing to give up control; in fact, they’re quite happy doing so, just as you are happy to take control. But sometimes it does a person good to suppress his or her true nature for a short period of time. It teaches them trust and empathy, which I suspect are two qualities lacking in your life. It gives them purpose. Or for lack of a better term, some soul.”

  I’m not offended that Jennifer thinks I’m untrusting and lack empathy because she’s right: I am and I do. “So you’re saying maybe an internship, working with AIDS babies or in a refugee camp, would give me some soul?” I shrug. “I could do that. Could you set that up for me?” As long as I could get out of there on weekends. Maybe her organization can find me something near Cape Town, which has a hopping nightlife.

  “Amanda, are you willing to do exactly as I tell you?”

  If I don’t get admitted to Lexington, who knows what I’ll have to do to finance my lifestyle. “I guess.”

  “You don’t guess,” she says sharply. “You either say yes or you say no.”

  I consider her words for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I’ll do what you say. My father will kill me if I blow getting in to college.”

  She pauses and licks her lips. “Part of developing trust means we … I … can trust you not to divulge what is required of you during your visits here. Our methods are somewhat unique. Exclusivity reigns supreme.”