Second Helpings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [25]
I shot Bridget a look.
“Well, Ash, like, asked me if you had boyfriend and I told her no, but then I told her about—”
“Never mind,” I said, cutting her off. I turned to Ashleigh. “For the record, I am not trying to emulate the heroine of a WB dramedy. I don’t watch those kinds of shows.”
“Whatever you say,” Ashleigh said in a singsongy tone that just made me want to clock her in that broccoli schnozz of hers.
“I. Don’t. Watch. Those. Shows.”
“Whatever.”
I’ve learned from years of experience with the Clueless Crew that it’s futile to have a constructive argument with people I hate. So I walked out of the room for the very last time, which sounds more dramatic than it really is because at the time there were only six days left in the program, anyway.
So you’re probably wondering what Mac’s letter says, right? You assumed I steamed it open and read it. Oh, ye of little faith. I didn’t— and won’t—open it. And it has little to do with respecting Mac’s wishes. The truth is, I’d rather not know what Mac said about me. I really can’t handle reading other people’s assessments of my intelligence. Like the quarterly accommodations from my teachers. They always say that they hope I learned as much from them as they did from me. Stuff like that. Excruciating. They go so overboard that I can’t believe one word of it. It’s hard to buy into all that crap when I know the chaos that’s really going on inside my head.
the eleventh
I’ve spent my last days in Mac’s class developing a strategy for breaking it to my parents that my final answer to the Question is one that they don’t want to hear. The four-step approach to solving my college conundrum is called The Perfection, Deception, Acception, Defection Plan. I will share my PDAD plan in the hopes that it will help others, who, like me, are unjustifiably stuck under the fat thumbs of parental totalitarianism.
Phase 1: Perfection
I will act like the daughter my parents have always wanted. By smiling a lot in their presence and offering up enough information about my life that they think I’m telling them everything, when I’m really sharing nothing of any genuine importance, they will believe that they have raised a happy, healthy, well-adjusted teen who has gotten over her growing pains and no longer needs parental policing of all her activities. This gives them permission to back off and leave me the hell alone so I can begin Phase 2.
Phase 2: Deception
Meanwhile, I will complete as much of the Columbia application process as possible without my parents’ knowledge. I’ve got Mac’s recommendation and can recycle the one Haviland wrote to get me into SPECIAL. All my parents’ financial stuff can be easily accessed on the computer, so I can even take care of that part, too. Applying on-line makes this easy—no paper trail!
Phase 3: Acception
This is the part when I get accepted to Columbia. If I don’t get accepted, I am screwed.
Phase 4: Defection
By the time I’m forced to inform my parents of my college plans, they will be so awed by my Perfection (see Phase 1) that even they will consider it unreasonable to bar me from the first-choice university that I have earned the right to attend.
I’m still working out the kinks. Phase 1 is particularly troublesome. Perfection is much easier to strive for in theory than in practice. Within five minutes of my parents’ arrival on the SPECIAL campus to pick me up and take me back to Pineville, my flawless veneer was already at risk of losing some of its luster.
Call Me Chantalle had already packed her toe shoes and Nutcrackers and douches by the time my parents walked into the room. But it was enough time to give the Darlings and the DePasquales an opportunity to do what all college-bound seniors’ parents do when they are in a room together: brag about their