Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [112]
I am dreading the Williams letter. My final non-Columbia acceptance could come any day now, and I’ve run out of stalling tactics. I’m no Scheherazade, that’s for sure. My parents are still so pissed about Piedmont that they will not tolerate any more ifs, ands, or buts. As their reaction to my recent visit proves, they will never be in a New York state of mind. They are the only people in the tristate area who did not run out and buy I NY paraphernalia after 9/11.
Why do I do this to myself? Why do I always want what I can’t have? And why do I never want what I can get?
Because I, my friend, am a moron. I don’t need an Ivy League degree to know that much. Now I must go and celebrate the holiday that is specifically targeted at fools like me.
Masochistically yours,
J.
april
the twelfth
In homeroom this morning, Sara was showing off the thick envelope she received in the mail from someone who, according to the return address, is named S. Jones. S. Jones had stapled it more than a dozen times, requiring Sara to wrench it open with brute force. This was the desired effect. With one quick pull, Sara told me, the envelope exploded, showering the D’Abruzzis’ plush carpet with glittery, multicolored shrapnel. Sara had been letter-bombed with beach-themed confetti: green palm trees, yellow suns, blue ocean waves. Her living-room couch had taken the harshest hit, and I knew her stepmother would be unamused. No matter how thoroughly the housekeeper vacuums, years from now, long after Sara’s college days are over, she will still be finding tiny, shiny coconuts or beach umbrellas in the cushions.
But nothing could dampen Sara’s excitement. Apparently she had gotten over the fact that she hadn’t scored high enough on her SATs to attend Rutgers with Manda.
“OMIGOD! THIS! IS! SO! COOL!”
S. Jones is Sandi Jones, a senior at Harrington College and Sara’s “Freshman Initiation Counselor.” Sandi had cleverly turned a favorite picture of herself into a sticker and attached it to the bottom of her greeting letter. She had beauty queen beauty, the kind of perfection found in Miss America pageants back when the swimsuit competition was worth more points than the interview. She had shoulder-length blond hair, no bangs, blown-dry smooth and curled under. She was wearing a silver lamé strapless gown and a toothpaste-commercial smile. A disembodied male hand rested on her shoulder.
“OMIGOD! SHE! IS! SO! BEAUTIFUL!”
In her letter, Sandi revealed that the manly hand was attached to a Sigma Chi brother—as she was designated the fraternity’s official “sweetheart.” This entitled her to a plastic cup of beer fetched at a moment’s notice. No keg lines for the sweetheart of Sigma Chi. No siree.
The letter itself was a marvel. Each word of the two-page document was written in a different-colored Magic Marker. The pattern: pink, blue, purple, teal, yellow, red, orange. Repeat. This wasn’t colored-copied at Kinkos. It was done by hand. Multiply this by, say, ten others in Sandi’s Freshman Initiation group, and that meant approximately one bizillion Magic Marker switches. I couldn’t imagine Sandi getting ink on her soft, paraffin-treated hands. She must have had someone else do it— an assembly line of Delta Gammas each designated her own Magic Marker color to trace Sandi’s faint pencil letters into a rainbow of welcoming. A sorority sweatshop.
“OMIGOD! I! WANT! TO! BE! HER!”
What Sara didn’t realize, but I did, was that Sara and Sandi Jones were already the same person. In fact, I would bet that Harrington College was comprised entirely of Saras. A college full of superficial, moneyed daddy’s girls who weren’t smart enough to get into better schools, all of whom would bring out each other’s worst eating-disordered, stucco-butt fears.
The letter also clued Sara into all the bizarre Southern rituals she’d have to know by heart before she attended the Freshman Induction Ceremony. According to Sandi, a white dress topped the list of must-brings. This was the