The place was packed.
"Damn. " Angie started to walk down to the front. They could sit on the step if nothing else. Lauren grabbed her hand, led her to a seat in the back row.
On stage there were about fifteen people seated behind a long conference table. A moderator was facilitating a discussion of entrance requirements, school selectivity, in-state to out-of-state student ratios.
Lauren wrote down every word in her day planner.
Angie felt a strange sort of pride. If shed had a daughter, she would have wanted her to be just like Lauren. Smart. Ambitious. Dedicated.
For the next hour, Angie listened to one statistic after the other. By the end of the presentation she knew one thing for sure: She wouldnt have been accepted to UCLA these days. In her era, youd needed to be breathing without a respirator and have a 3. 0 grade point average. Now to get into Stanford you better have cured some disease or won the National Science Fair. Unless, of course, you were good at throwing leather balls. Then you needed a solid 1. 7 grade point.
Lauren closed her notebook. "Thats it," she said.
All around them, people were rising, moving toward the exit aisles. The combined conversation was a loud roar in the room.
"So, what did you find out?" Angie asked, staying in her seat. There was no point merging into the ambulatory traffic.
"That in the public schools almost ninety percent of the students come from in-state. And tuition is on its way up. "
"Well, youre definitely having one of those the-glassis-half-empty moments. Thats not like you. "
Lauren sighed. "Its tough sometimes . . . going to Fir-crest Academy. All my friends are picking the schools they like. I have to figure out how to get the schools to like me. "
"It sounds like the essay is a big part of that. "
"Yeah. "
"And recommendations. "
"Yeah. Too bad I cant get, like, Jerry Brown or Arnold Schwarzenegger to write one for me. As it is, I hope Mr. Baxter--my math teacher--can rock their socks off. Unfortunately, he forgets where the blackboard is half of the time. "
Angie glanced down at the stage. The folks from Loyola-Marymount, USC, and Santa Clara were still there. They were sitting at the tables, talking to one another.
"Whats your first choice?" she asked Lauren.
"USC, I guess. Its Davids second-choice school. "
"I am not even going to get into the conversation about following your boyfriend to school. Okay, I lied. Its a bad idea. Dont follow your boyfriend to college. Now come on. " She stood up.
Lauren put her day planner in her backpack and got up. "Where are you going?" she said when Angie headed downstairs instead of up.
She grabbed Laurens hand. "We did not drive all this way to be in the peanut gallery. "
Lauren tried to draw back, but Angie was a freight train. She went down the stairs, around the orchestra pit, and onto the stage. Dragging Lauren behind her, she marched up to the man from USC.
He looked up, smiled tiredly. No doubt he was used to mothers hauling their children on stage. There was no way for him to know that Angie wasnt a mom. "Hello. How can I help you?"
"Im Angela Malone," she said, offering her hand. When he shook it, she said, "Im a UCLA girl myself, but Lauren here has her heart set on SC. I cant imagine why. "
The man laughed. "Thats a new approach. Knocking my school. " He looked at Lauren. "And who are you?"
She blushed deeply. "L-Lauren Ribido. Fircrest Academy. "
"Ah. Good school. That helps. " He smiled at her. "Dont be nervous. Why SC?"
"J
ournalism. "