Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [115]
“You were gone all the time,” he whined when I questioned him about the black thong I found in the folds of his unwashed sheets. I'm aware that this is just so cliché. So excruciatingly uncreative and cliché it made me want to take a long, slow drag on a tailpipe. “I missed you, and you weren't around so . . .”
“So it's my fault you fucked your ex-girlfriend!” I screeched loud enough for everyone in Morningside Heights to hear.
“According to your take on monogamy, I was just fulfilling my human instincts. Don't blame me. Blame the traditional model of relationships.” His face was the picture of newborn baby guilelessness. The only thing missing was his mommy's teat in his wanting mouth. It's this put-on innocence that has allowed him to get away with such bratty, self-absorbed behavior his entire life. All I could do was shut up and storm out because I was afraid of saying something equally stupid that would somehow come back to haunt me in the future.
So ended my relationship with Kieran. The relationship I never would've had if I'd stuck to my first impression. I have long acknowledged that my first impressions are always for shit, so I figured I was safe. But no. This time I was right all along. He really was a pompous, pretentious assclown who used the oh-so-sensitive trappings of emo to mask his sadism. I was so right when I told Bridget that he was nothing, nothing like Marcus. Marcus never hurt me on purpose.
With no boyfriend and, more significantly, nowhere to stay in the city, I'm back in Pineville with my parents. This is appropriate punishment for a semester-long lapse in judgment. I am trying very hard to look on the positive side of things. For example, I was grateful that when I opened the door to my parents' condo, they weren't bumping elderly uglies on the couch. That was good.
I guess another good thing is that I've got a job here that actually pays better than anything I could get in the city. I've been working for ACCEPT!, the Accelerated College Coaching and Educational Preparedness Tutorial! ACCEPT!'s motto: YOU ARE YOUR APPLICATION.
The awkwardly named strip-mall institution conducts a series of get-into-college classes during the school year, followed by a longer get-into-college camp in the summer. Test prep, AP class counseling, campus tours, mock admission interviews—none of this is unusual in this übercompetitive college market. But ACCEPT! doesn't leave anything to chance. For example, a skill that high schoolers should have mastered in first grade—Perfecting Your Penmanship!—is part of the curriculum now that handwritten essays count for one-third of the new SAT. Every lesson is intended to give an edge to those who are already considered the best and the brightest. And at almost $3,000 per session, the richest. Five years ago, Pineville was too blue-collar (okay, white-trash) for ACCEPT! to set up shop around here. But times have changed and Pineville is—however improbably—becoming a bedroom community for new-money families from Manhattan who are buying up all the waterfront property. So my mom was right, the new house is an investment that will make me very wealthy thirty years from now—if I survive that long on the streets.
I'm still in training, but in five days I start working with a small group who signed up for the presummer minisession. This is the three-week-long after-school presummer-session session for those who want a jump start on their jump start. In other words, the most neurotic nutcases of all.
My teaching credentials? I got into Columbia. I am who they want to be. Of course, they'd demand a