The Aqua Net Diaries (28 page)

We had seen
The Breakfast Club,
of course, and liked it, although neither of us loved it the way everyone else seemed to. We liked stories about people older than we were because we liked people and things we could aspire to. Little
did we know
St. Elmo's Fire
would become the most seminal movie we had ever seen and that it would change our lives. The scenery of Georgetown. Autumn in D.C. A close-knit group of friends that does everything together (and looks good doing it). Friends who understood each other and who always fit in with one another and their big-city school. Demi Moore's cool glasses and clothes and raspy voice. Her vodka. Her Jeep. Ally Sheedy's pearls. Judd Nelson's confidence. Andrew McCarthy's wit and coffin. All their crazy times, good and bad. The school itself. Rob Lowe. It was love at first sight.

That was the night we decided where we would go to college. It would be Georgetown. We would go there together and continue our great adventure, best friends forever. Jennifer and Joey. Joey and Jennifer. We had made up our minds.

“Don't you think you should apply to other schools?” my mom said.

“No. I'm going to Georgetown.” I was in my room, sitting at my sewing desk, working on my college essay. My mom was standing over me, frowning.

“I understand that, but it's a very competitive school, and while I'm sure you'll be accepted, I think it's a good idea to apply to some other schools just to have a backup.”

I sighed a little and laid down my pencil. She was, no doubt, thinking of my bad math grades (which, given my gene pool, couldn't be considered entirely my fault) and my low math SAT scores.

“Besides,” she said, “I thought you wanted to go to New York and be an actress and a writer. Georgetown seems like a detour from that.”

“Not really,” I said. Honestly, I wasn't sure if Georgetown even offered a theater program or writing classes. Did they even have an English department? I was applying to the College of Arts and Sciences. Joey was applying to the School of Foreign Service. I pictured college parties with me in my Demi Moore glasses, swilling vodka, and making out with guys who looked just like Rob Lowe.

“What about UCLA? You mentioned that before.”

“Too far for now.” As much as I wanted to go far, far away from Richmond, and as much as I loved Los Angeles, I didn't want to go to the other side of the country. “Maybe for graduate school. I guess I could apply to somewhere in New York.”

She said, “That sounds great. We can make a list.” My mom loved to make lists. She made lists of everything—chores, groceries, things to do, lists for her work, lists for my dad, lists for me.

I said, “Oh good,” but she missed the sarcasm.

In all, I applied to twelve schools because once I got started looking at brochures, I couldn't stop myself. Amherst, Princeton, Yale, Wake Forest, Davidson, William & Mary, a couple of New York schools, and a little liberal arts college just outside of New York City called Drew University, which my father told me about. My parents asked me to design my perfect college, apart from Georgetown, and I told them all the traits I was looking for: not too large, in or near a big city, a good liberal arts program. My dad had done some business at Drew (all these years later, I am still unclear what it was he did at Earlham), and he said he thought it fit my criteria.

One good thing about considering so many colleges was that I went to visit some—like the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (which threw fun parties but was
way too big) and tiny Davidson just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina (which was way too small and isolated, even though the boys were good-looking).

For my essays, I wrote from the heart.
This is your opportunity to tell us about yourself,
the instructions said.
What would you most like the Admissions Committee to know about you when reading your application?

Ever since we'd arrived in Richmond in my fourth-grade year, I had dreamed of the day I could leave. Now that moment was almost here. For the first time, I could practically see it.

I wrote:
In a town and place in which I have never felt quite at home, extracurricular activities and good friends have become very important to me. I seem always to need something which I can throw myself into wholeheartedly, and which will keep my spirits high during difficult times with school, peers, or other such problems …

My career adviser was Linda McRally, who was pleasant and attractive. She had been a counselor at the high school for fifteen years, working in a cubicle in the Advisement Center at the end of the long upstairs hallway, which was always hot and stuffy, no matter what season we were in. She was Joey's adviser, too.

We each visited her to talk about college and our lives beyond RHS. Of course, Joey and I were both planning to go to Georgetown. But as Joey sat beside her desk in a hard plastic chair, he saw an advertisement behind her head for Hillsdale College in Michigan. He liked the look of the advertisement—an embossed gold “H” on navy blue, and underneath it just one word, “Leadership.”

“Where do you plan to go to school?” Linda McRally asked Joey.

He said, “Georgetown.”

She said, “Where else have you applied?”

He said, “The University of Chicago. I'll probably apply to Hillsdale, too.” He decided it on the spot.

She said, “Where else?”

He said, “That's all. I want to get as far away from here as possible.”

“And what do you plan to study?”

“I'm going to be a Kremlinologist.” When she just stared at him, he said, “A Kremlinologist. An expert on the U.S.S.R. Either that or a lawyer. Or a playwright. Or a short story writer. In the big city.”

She sat back and started flipping through his file and read some things. She closed it and folded her hands and smiled at Joey, but the smile was tired, especially around the eyes. She said, “There are so many good schools in Indiana. You shouldn't look down your nose at them just because they aren't in some big city. I think you should consider applying somewhere closer to home.”

I sat in that same hard chair and had the same conversation with Mrs. McRally a few days later. She said, “Where do you plan to go to school?”

I said, “Georgetown.” And I also listed the eleven other schools I was applying to just in case I wasn't accepted at Georgetown, even though I was sure I didn't need to apply to them since I couldn't imagine why Georgetown wouldn't be happy to have me.

She said, “And what made you choose these schools?”

It was such a strange question. I had chosen Georgetown
because of
St. Elmo's Fire.
The other schools I had chosen because they were in or near big cities.

When I didn't say anything she said, “What do you plan to do in college or after college?”

I said, “Oh, I plan to be a writer and an actress, but most likely a writer.”

She sat there for a minute nodding. She said, “I think you should consider taking some secretarial classes in case the writing thing doesn't work out.”

There were so many things I wanted to say like,
What kind of an adviser are you? Shouldn't you be telling me to dream as big as possible? Shouldn't you be encouraging students to dream big since so few of them do? I think more of them could stand to, if you ask me. Maybe if you'd encourage them they would. And then who knows where they'd go and what they'd do! And if the writing doesn't work out, who says I need to be a secretary? Why is that my one choice? Why not an astronaut? Or a rock star? Or a private detective? Or a plumber? Or president?

But instead I smiled and stood up and walked out and never went back.

In February of our senior year, Joey and I drove to Dayton for an orientation about Georgetown University. By that time we had seen
St. Elmo's Fire
five hundred times and could recite entire passages. We traded lines back and forth as we drove and then we listened to the soundtrack, which, of course, we owned. We were quieter than usual on that trip because we were picturing ourselves in our new lives. There was a full moon, and I told Joey that Sue Weller had died.

For years he had worked at Morrisson-Reeves Library with her. She was the head of the Boys and Girls Department,
the one who read us stories, back when we were children, in her soft, even voice. She was like a little girl herself, with long brown hair curled at the bottom, a pretty smile, a pretty face. She took her job seriously. She worked very hard. She had been married, but didn't have children of her own. I remembered her as a nice person, a quiet person who kept to herself.

She had taught Joey to read books on the Bookmobile. He was a little in love with her then and always chose which Bookmobile he wanted to work on during summers based on where she was working.

Somehow I had heard the news first. Sue Weller had driven home to Liberty the day before and shut the garage door and left the car running.

Joey said, “I can't believe she's gone.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's so sad.”

The music was still playing—the same music we always listened to—but everything felt different.

Joey said, “I wonder why she did it.”

I said, “I don't know.”

My seventh-grade English teacher had committed suicide. She'd gone home one night and driven into the garage and left the car running and her husband had found her. Afterward, all my classmates talked about how much they loved her and missed her. Everybody felt as if it was their fault that she killed herself. Maybe if they hadn't talked in class, or if they'd made a better grade on the spelling test. I was the only one who remembered how unpleasant she had been, how mean she could be, how unhappy she had seemed. Sue Weller wasn't any of these things, as far as we could see.

Joey said, “I wonder if there were things she wanted to do that she knew she'd never get to do.”

I said, “Like dance with the New York City Ballet? Or be an archaeologist or a race car driver?”

“Or travel to Paris or see the pyramids.”

We drove, looking out the windows at the darkness all around. There was never anything so dark as the highway in Indiana or Ohio, surrounded by cornfields at night. It is nothing but blackness everywhere and the empty road ahead.

Joey said, “I don't ever want to grow old or sad or lonely.”

“We won't,” I said. “We'll be young forever.”

Orientation was at a hotel in downtown Dayton and for once we didn't get lost and nothing happened to the car. The room was packed. The only faces we recognized from Richmond were Beth Jennings and Mary Catherine Cox.

Beth was my friend and I liked her, but Joey was annoyed at seeing anyone we knew. “What are they doing here?” He was staring in particular at Mary.

I said, “Same as us I'm guessing.”

He sighed. Beth waved us over. Joey said, “Well, don't think they're getting in.”

We sat with them and wrote notes to each other and tried to be calm. We could feel the excitement in the air. Everyone seemed to feel it, not just us. But Joey and I knew that of all the people in that room, we were the ones who truly belonged there.

In March, we received our letters on the same day.
Dear Joe Kraemer, Dear Jennifer McJunkin,
they said.
The Committee on Admissions has completed its final review of applicants to the Class of '90 at Georgetown University. Following a careful consideration of all candidates, they have decided it will not
be possible to offer you a place in the freshman class this year. Please accept our appreciation for the interest you have shown in Georgetown. We wish you every success in planning your further education.

The next day Joey received an acceptance letter from Hillsdale College along with a full scholarship, and I received one from Drew University. We hadn't applied to any other schools together because it never occurred to us that we wouldn't actually get into Georgetown. We were shocked that we weren't accepted. We had been picturing ourselves there for so long that we couldn't imagine ourselves any other place. I would be Demi Moore. He would be Andrew McCarthy. We would ride around in Jeeps under brilliant autumn leaves and have cool friends and drink vodka and hang out at St. Elmo's Bar and always, always be together. Now just like that, the dream was gone.

That week, the Georgetown Hoyas lost to Michigan State, 80 to 68, in round two of the NCAA basketball tournament. For me, it was the last straw. The defeat was symbolic. They had lost. I had lost. I cried for an hour up in my green room watching the stupid game.

On Friday night, Joey and I packed up our Georgetown letters and a fifth of vodka he bought at the Liquor Barn and drove to Dayton. We climbed the steps of the Art Institute, long after closing, and sat huddled against the wind and the cold. The moon and the stars were almost too bright. There was something unfair about them. We unfolded our letters and read them out loud and then I tore mine into bits and watched them fly away into the air. We passed the bottle back and forth, back and forth until it was time to go home.