My mom’s eyes can’t stop tearing up as she hugs me tightly. “Iris! Do you understand what you just did? One bad decision and it could have been game over! No reset button!”
“We would never see you again!” my dad says. “How can you be so selfish?”
“I love you guys,” I sniffle, and then I start crying from intense guilt. My dad is right. Not even realizing that the car engine was on was probably one of my most terrible, riskiest life mistakes. More careless than when I accidentally shaved off an eyebrow, and way more dangerous than when Samira and I didn’t have any cab fare after a two a.m. party. Instead of calling our parents, we decided to hitchhike on the side of a near-empty highway. Luckily, no one picked us up and we found our way to the bus station.
My parents are so worried about me that I dread driving home with them. I won’t even know how to apologize for the destruction and mess. I’ll see the extreme disappointment and I’ll feel like a bad daughter.
The drive home from the hospital is uncomfortably silent; normally, I’d ask them about their trip, and they’d tell me about the hotel and their waterskiing excursions and describe their meals in Food Network detail. They might even ask me about Samira and Peter. My mom has always liked Samira as much as she’s liked Peter. “She’s not a nice girl,” my mom would always criticize when Samira came over to hang out with me. But she always tolerated her because Samira’s parents went to the same country club as her and my dad.
Maybe my mom was right all along about Samira. A blister of worry bubbles in my gut and I accidentally belch from nervousness. Thinking too much about life is bad for the digestive system.
When we turn into our cul-de-sac, I see my mom stiffen like a zombie, and my dad actually looks horrified. His mouth plops open and closed like a dying fish. Their new car is still parked askew, the trunk completely wrecked, and our beautiful house is missing a garage door.
“What happened?” my dad yell-asks. I can see his face transform into the color of morgue gray. “We thought you had a car accident! Not a house accident!”
“It was a mistake,” I say in a hushed voice.
We go inside. And then there’s more shock and disappointment to fill the entire state of New Jersey.
Normally, Samira and Peter help me clean up the bottles and crumbs of crunched-up potato chips and dirty plastic cups. Inside my parents’ house, though, is really a mess. A dumpyard in our typically pristine living room and marble-countertop kitchen. Mounds of garbage and shards of broken glass everywhere.
Someone has even left a pile of orange-gray vomit in our stainless steel sink.
Oh wait, that was me.
“You had … a party?” my mom asks, incredulous. “We said you could have friends over, but what is this mess?”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I say miserably.
“We trusted you!” my mom shouts. “How could you do this?”
“What happened?” my dad says, looking stunned. He sits down on the floor and touches an empty bottle. He sniffs his fingers, almost disbelievingly. Like he doesn’t want to admit that his seventeen-year-old daughter had a party in his house. “Is this … beer!? Alcohol? You drink alcohol, Iris?”
“Of course she drinks!” my mom snaps. “Our daughter is obviously a deviant. Iris, go to your room this instant. The damage is coming out of your allowance!”
Slinking to my bedroom, I spend the rest of the day crying until my eyes are red and puffy and swell to the size of golf balls. For once, I don’t care that I resemble a monster. I hear my parents arguing downstairs; my mom is on the phone nonstop with the insurance company.
I spend all of Saturday and Sunday in my room. Except to scold me endlessly about my life choices, my parents don’t really bother me until early Sunday afternoon.
I keep waiting for an attack of stress-induced facial hair.
Nothing comes.
Just a bulbous Rudolph-size nose zit.
It makes me hopeful that I’ve outgrown my childhood affliction.
* * *
Later, I don’t know what time, but my mom doesn’t even knock when she interrupts my sad-girl crying. Despite still being furious and disappointed at me, she seems to not be able to help it when she prances in like she’s Samira with some hot gossip about a first date or some random boy that she’s been crushing on. She’s holding a giant pile of envelopes. Her mouth twitches, like she’s not sure whether to scream in anger or with roller-coaster excitement. I hope it’s the latter.
“Iris?” my mom finally yell-asks. “Have you checked the mail? College letters have arrived! Mrs. Chu at the country club was just asking me last week about what colleges you got into. I said I was sure that you got into all of them! You know her son only got into Harvard and three other Ivies?”
For a moment, she seems genuinely pleased and expectant. It’s almost as if she’s completely forgotten about the wrecked car and house. She’s still clutching the envelopes like they’re a winning lottery ticket for a brand-new house and luxury SUV.
Oh.
“I don’t feel well enough to be opening letters,” I lie. My voice is small and sounds funny.
And here I thought that by ignoring emails sent from colleges, I could actually pretend that I never received any of them.
I mean, who actually uses the United States Postal Service anymore?
I thought snail mail was practically an urban legend. An American myth.
My mom calls my dad to come upstairs.
“Iris has some very big news!” she shouts.
My dad actually looks excited when he hurries into my bedroom. “I have been waiting for this moment for seventeen years!” he announces, clapping his hands. He looks like I’m about to perform some well-rehearsed magic trick.
If I can get into a top-tier college, I know my parents might eventually forgive me for the humongous mess downstairs and our busted garage door. Since I’m their only child, I am practically their main responsibility, so they will never be able to fully forget when I go away to college (unless they replace me with some kind of medium-size pet). But if I get into one of the Ivies, they might stop lecturing me about how “irresponsible” and “unbelievably reckless” I am.
Which part of the country will I even be in next year? Who will be part of my ever-expanding entourage? TV shows and movies always show that characters who make it to any type of postsecondary education suddenly become smarter, better-looking, and less average than who they once were in high school. If this transformation is true, I’m seriously excited about the future.
Okay, admittedly, the SATs were a bit difficult to finish in my semi-drunk, practically comatose state, and maybe I should have asked my tutor to proofread all those application essays. Maybe I shouldn’t have just randomly clicked the SUBMIT button on the Common App and then raced downstairs when Peter picked me up for a drawn-out make-out session.
Holding my breath, I open the first extremely thin envelope from NYU.
A horrible flulike feeling overcomes me, but I force myself to ignore it.
If I think positively enough, the letter could possibly say that I’ve been accepted into NYU with a generous financial aid package. In fact, the amazing, prestigious scholarship that I’ll win means my parents won’t even have to pay a single cent for four entire years. The letter could possibly include a nice congratulatory note from the dean of admissions, who will want to meet me for a fancy lunch on campus, and he or she will even ask me to give an inspiring speech at freshman orientation. I already know what I’ll be wearing. I bought my sleeveless floral knee-length dress from J. Crew and matching cream-colored sandals ages ago.