spends her days in the theater department. Macie has hippie parents who started a health-food chain that’s gone international. Her hair is black, naturally curly, and twisted into artful perfection. She can pretty much buy whatever designer clothes she wants but instead wears overalls made out of hemp or flax seed or something.
I, on the other hand, can only afford consignment shops these days, but I do my best to get my hands on every Ralph Lauren label I can find. Macie thinks my oxfords and cardigans make me look like a politician’s wife. She might be right. Even my hair has gone a little Jackie O this semester.
Mom calls it “keeping up appearances,” which has only been necessary since my dad took off with a produce broker from Tampa right before my senior year of high school. Mom has refused to divorce him in the hope he’ll come home again, which means two things: (1) Mom is delusional, and (2) no divorce means no court-ordered financial support.
I’d be fine doing without cashmere sweaters for the rest of my life if it meant my dad sticking around. Basically, Mom and I have been living on a Ramen-noodle budget, but we do our best to sweep our broken noodles under the rug.
All of this makes it hard for me to justify living at the sorority house. It’s way more expensive than the dorms. But Mom says if you want to attract a rich man, you have to look like you’re accustomed to wealth. So my room and board is an investment on which she expects to get a big return.
I don’t share my mom’s obsession with me marrying “well,” so sometimes it’s like living in a modern-day Austen novel. Fortunately, Andrew’s the only man I’m interested in marrying, and he’s more than enough for my mom, so it’s all good.
I’m still standing in my bedroom doorway doing deep-breathing exercises when Macie slips in around me saying, “Girl, welcome home. Was it as nasty as you thought it’d be?”
I groan but give her a quick, one-armed hug around the neck. “The best I can say is that Econ is over.”
“Which probably means you did fine. I always get my best grades on the tests I think I blew.”
I stack my book and review notes neatly on the shelf and pull my long, dark brown hair into a supertight ponytail. Macie flops down on my bedspread, undoing the hospital corners. She knows how much this bugs me, so for good measure she rolls over on her back and sweeps her arms up and down like she’s making a snow angel on the blankets. She calls this “desensitizing me to chaos.” Or “Macie Therapy” for short.
I’ve learned not to say anything. I’ll fix it once she leaves.
“It’s freaking amazing to be done,” she says.
I can’t imagine that her final in History of American Film was as grueling as mine, but I let her have her moment because she’s my best friend and I love her.
“In thirteen days I’ll be doing my summer theater program in Tibet, and you’ll be dragging your ass out of bed for Professor Schumacher’s internship from hell. Then one more year of this place and we’re out of here,” she says with a sigh. Macie had an awesome freshman year (complete with an awesome older boyfriend), but after he graduated she totally cooled to college life. I’m going to miss her when she’s gone.
“It’s not an internship from hell,” I tell her (again). In fact, I worked all year to get into it. Andrew’s doing it, too, though he was a shoe-in based on his grades and the fact Professsor Schumacher is his dad’s old frat brother. I, on the other hand, had to get three faculty letters of recommendation, write an essay on the pros and cons of the European Union, plus take an extra three credits this semester so I had all the prerequisites checked off. It might not be the internship from hell, but I sure battled through hell to get it.
“Andrew says all the top law schools are demanding undergraduate work like this.” Macie isn’t listening; she’s chipping the nail polish off her big toe. “My GPA is likely going to dip after that econ final…not to mention poli-sci,” I add, biting my lip. “But the internship will make up for it on my law school application…assuming my LSATs are good.”
She makes jazz hands, wiggling her fingers at me as if to say she finds this