Point Me to Tomorrow (3 page)

THE NEXT MORNING
, Alicia walked into the kitchen to find Maribelle, the cook, making a feast: chocolate-chip waffles, bacon, banana bread with pecan-and-brown-sugar glaze, fruit salad, and fresh papaya smoothies. Maribelle had been with the Cruz family since Alicia was a baby and was less an employee and more a bonus
abuela
.

“Whoa, whoa, who's coming to breakfast?” Alicia asked as she surveyed the counters and the ever so slightly frazzled Maribelle. It had been only three weeks since Alicia's older brother, Alex, had gone off to college, but Maribelle, more than Alicia's parents, even, seemed to be experiencing a bad case of empty-nest syndrome. She still set the table for four at dinnertime, still picked up a six-pack of coconut water every time she went grocery-shopping, even though the unopened cartons now crowded the second shelf of the pantry.

Alicia walked over to Maribelle and gave her a hug. “Alex is at college. Who are you cooking for?”

Maribelle wagged her finger and said, “I'm not senile yet! I know Alex is at college. I light a candle for him at church every week. But this breakfast is for you,
niña
. Isn't today the big college-fair day?”

Alicia gulped. In all the excitement over Carmela Ortega's
quinceañera
, she'd completely forgotten that today was the day when college reps from around the country descended on C. G. High. The reps were there, allegedly, to distribute information and to give students a flesh-and-blood representation of their respective schools. But everybody knew that college day was the academic equivalent of a record company label coming to see your band—the reps were there scouting talent, and a good meeting could do more for your chances of getting into your dream school than even the most pristine application or gushing recommendation.

Alicia looked down at her outfit. The black silk romper with cuffed shorts, the patterned tights and T-strap heels had been perfectly fine for a regular Tuesday. But this wasn't a regular Tuesday. “I'd better change,” she mumbled.

In the hallway, she bumped into her mother, who looked shocked to see her in glittery tights. “You're not wearing those for college day, are you?”

Alicia fought the temptation to roll her eyes. “Nope, Mom, I'm changing.”

Her father was just coming out of the bathroom and caught a glimpse of her outfit. “Shorts, Lici?” he said.

Alicia grimaced, “No,
Papi
, I'm changing.”

Then, just in case any of her friends might have been as absentminded as she was, she sent a text to her whole crew:
Heads up, people. College day. Dress to Impress.

Right away, her phone started buzzing.

Jamie wrote back:
Thanks for looking out for us, Lici. Changing now.

Carmen texted:
I was asleep. Audrey Hepburn marathon on AMC last night. Gracias for the wake-up call.

Maxo wrote:
Breaking out my special occasion Converses.

And Gaz sent a picture of himself wearing a tie and a note that said:
GQ enough 4U?

Alicia laughed and quickly changed into one of her mother's hand-me-downs, a respectable, but fun, cherry red wrap dress. She added a pair of black tights, a pair of black leather boots, and her lucky charm: a silver letter
A
on a chain, which her parents had gotten her for Christmas the year before.

Returning to the kitchen, she helped herself to a chocolate-chip waffle, heaped a pile of strawberries on it, and covered the whole concoction with whipped cream. She was about to fold the waffle in half to eat as a sandwich at the bus stop when her mother said, “Whoa,
chica
, slow down. I'll drive you to school. Sit down and eat like a sane person.”

Relieved, Alicia took a seat at the dining table with her parents.

“You look very nice, Lici,” her father commented, a twinkle in his eyes. He was the city's deputy mayor; he'd left a thriving law practice for public service. Alicia knew that it was from her father that she had gotten her gift for gab and the desire to help people, or as Gaz jokingly called it, her buttinsky gene.

Alicia's mom was a judge, and she had the take-charge mentality that was needed in order to preside over the largest district court in Miami. Alicia wasn't sure if she'd inherited her mother's gift for organization or if it had just been drilled into her since the age of six, but having to buy her own school supplies and submit to weekly inspections of her pencil box, her backpack, and her lunch box, she, like her brother, Alex, had learned how to make lists and budgets, and to maintain their personal belongings with neatness and precision.

It was certainly from her mother that Alicia had inherited her love of style. Every year, over the Christmas holiday, she and her mom picked a night to stay up late and watch their favorite movie,
Celestial Clockwork
. And in the scene where Ariel D. sings “
La ropa, la ropa, la ropa
” (clothes, clothes, clothes), they always got up to sing along. A few years back,
Miami
magazine had even named her mother on its list of best-dressed Floridians, praising her for wearing suits made by up-and-coming local South Beach designers.

Alicia's parents had met at Harvard Law School, and the question of whether she would follow in their footsteps was always in the air. Her parents never pushed, they merely suggested. But for an overachiever like Alicia, the difference between a push and a suggestion was not always so easily discerned. Alicia's brother had cleverly sidestepped the issue by getting into a superprestigious engineering program at McGill University in Montreal, which her parents proudly told friends was the Harvard of the North.

“So, remind me of the schools that you're meeting with today,” her father asked, helping himself to another slice of banana bread.

“Columbia, Brown, Penn, Yale, and Harvard,” Alicia replied.

“
Hmmm
, Harvard. I think I've heard of that school.”

Alicia smiled. Dad humor—never subtle, always cheery. She wondered if it were part of the deal before a dad could bring his child home from the hospital: if he had to promise never to tell a joke that was actually funny.

Her mother, as usual, was much more businesslike. “Do we know the name of the Harvard rep who's visiting the school today?”

Alicia shook her head.

Her father smiled. “Gosh, I hope it's not my freshman-year roommate, David Lawrence. I still owe that guy five dollars.”

Alicia grinned at her father. “Don't quit your day job, Dad. Stand-up's not your thing. On an entirely different subject, we've figured out who our mystery
quince
is.”

Her parents exchanged glances, which Alicia took to mean that they wanted to talk college, not
quinces
.

“Come on, you guys. Guess,” she pleaded.

“Is she famous?” her mother asked.

“Does she go to your school?” her father wondered.

“Oh, you're both hopeless,” Alicia said. “It's Carmela Ortega.”

Her parents looked at each other blankly.

“Daughter of Yesenia Ortega, the US ambassador to Mexico,” Alicia said, beaming. “Pretty impressive, don't you think?”

“Wow, that is impressive,” her father said. “And do your friends agree?”

Alicia nodded, “Absolutely. It all fits. She turns fifteen on December seventeenth, two days after the requested party day. She's originally from Miami. And she has to keep any event a secret—it's a matter of national security. This
quince
is going to be swarming with Secret Service men—and women. There're Secret Service women, too.”

Her dad let out a little laugh.

“What?” Alicia asked.

“Secret Service women?” he said. “That's funny. I mean, in my day, we said women could do anything, but nobody really believed it. We just said it so they wouldn't whomp us over the heads with their pocketbooks.”

Alicia looked at her mother. “Tell me he's kidding, right?”

Marisol stood up. “Of course he's kidding. Now, let me drive you to school before we're both late.”

“Next thing you know, you're going to tell me women can play pro basketball and run for president.” Her father winked at Alicia.

“I love you, Dad,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.

Her father hugged her. “You know we're proud, regardless of where you go to school.” Then he took five dollars out of his wallet. “But just in case, take this, in case you happen to run into that Lawrence guy from Harvard.”

DOZENS OF SENIORS
gathered nervously in front of the giant bulletin board outside the principal's office. The sign said:
C. G. HIGH COLLEGE FAIR
, and beneath it was a printout of every student's name and his or her assignment. Alicia tried to get close enough to see her name and schedule, but the students in front of her blocked her view. Her crew was nowhere in sight, so she assumed that they had either already been to the board or were running later than she was.

“
Hola
, Alicia!”

She turned to see Patricia Reinoso, one of C. G. High's star basketball players. Amigas Inc. had planned a double
quince
for Patricia and her cousin Carolina the year before, and they'd all ended up becoming good friends.

Patricia kissed Alicia on both cheeks and gestured to the crowd. “It doesn't happen often, but this is one of those days when I'm happy to be a junior, not a senior.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Alicia said, feeling all of a sudden much older than her seventeen years.

Of course, what with running Amigas Inc., spending time with Gaz, and maintaining a 4.0 GPA, Alicia's junior year had seemed a marathon of deadlines and obligations. But now, with a little distance, she could see that being a junior had been particularly sweet. She had been an upperclassman, with none of the anxiety or fears that accompanied freshman or even sophomore year. At the time, the prospect of choosing a college—the institution that would define her grown-up life and career—was a million miles away. This year, she had all the cachet of being a senior, but all of the anxiety, too. And of course, next year, she'd be a freshman all over again. Unless fate intervened, she wouldn't be going to the same college or even living in the same city as Jamie and Carmen, or even her sweetheart, Gaz.

“Promise me you'll go to lots of parties,” Alicia told Patricia. “School dances, school trips—before you know it, it will all be over.”

Patricia looked ever so slightly worried. “Okay, Lici, if you say so.”

“Hey, relax a little, drama queen,” Jamie said, tapping Alicia on the shoulder. “It's the end of high school, not
The End of the Affair
.”

The End of the Affair
was one of Alicia's favorite old movies, and she had made all of her friends sit through at least two screenings of it—especially since they inevitably fell asleep during the first one.

“Who's having an affair?” Carmen asked, joining them. She held a sheet of paper that had her schedule typed out on it.

“No one,” Alicia said. “How'd you get your appointments typed out all nice and neat?”

Carmen smiled, “I went to see my adviser, Ms. Ingber.”

“Oooh, good thinking,” Jamie said. “It's like a roller derby trying to get to that board. People are throwing elbows, jabbing you with pens and whatnot.”

Maxo and Gaz walked over, each with pristine copies of their schedules.

“You guys went to see your advisers, too?” Alicia asked. “That's where I'm heading.”

Maxo shook his head, “Too late; you missed the window. The trick was to get in before the list went up. Now the advisers' offices are filled with people complaining.”

“Complaining about what?” Jamie asked.

“Not every student got their first pick. It all depended on which reps showed up and how many time slots they had.”

Gaz held up his schedule. “MIT wasn't on my list. I don't have the grades or the money. But apparently there're a lot of musicians among the geek ranks, and the rep wants to meet me.”

“That's pretty impressive, babe, being singled out by MIT,” said Alicia. She was proud of him—cute, talented, and nice. Gaz was the boyfriend trifecta.

Turning to Jamie, she said, “The crowd's thinning; let's check out our schedules.”

“Can we meet later for dinner?” Gaz asked.

“Sure. Señora Eng's?” Alicia asked.

“Where else?” Gaz kissed her sweetly on the cheek.

“
Buena suerte
, peeps!” Alicia said, waving to Gaz, Carmen, and Maxo as they walked away. She stood next to Jamie at the nearly empty board. “Okay, what have we got?” she asked.

“You've got: Brown at ten fifteen, Harvard at eleven, Yale at eleven thirty, Columbia at twelve, and Penn at twelve thirty,” Jamie replied.

“Those were all my picks,” Alicia noted as she scribbled them down. “What have you got?”

Jamie read off the list: “Columbia at ten thirty, Cooper Union at ten forty-five, Brown and RISD at eleven thirty, Savannah College of Design at twelve, and NYU at twelve thirty.”

“This is nuts,” Alicia said, staring at her schedule. “It's like speed dating.”

“Kind of,” Jamie said. “Except your entire future depends on it.”

Alicia turned to give her friend a hug,
“Buena suerte, chica.”

Jamie smiled. “Right back atcha.”

Alicia's first appointment was in the gym. She found the Brown University rep and took a seat at the small table across from the woman.

“Hi, I'm Alicia,” she said, reaching to shake the woman's hand.

The rep, Melinda Davies, was younger than Alicia had expected. She was in her twenties, African American, and dressed in a khaki shift and blazer.

“So, Alicia,” Melinda began, “how would you describe yourself in one word?”

Alicia panicked. She was good at talking to adults. She had the ability to convince parents to entrust hundreds, even thousands of dollars to a business run by teenagers who weren't old enough to vote. But somehow this question stumped her.

Without any idea of what the right answer was, she told the Brown rep that if she had had to describe herself in one word, she would have had to say
lucky
.

Melinda Davies raised an eyebrow and scribbled something down on her pad. “Tell me what you mean by that,” she said.

“I feel really fortunate that my grandparents came to this country with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and yet through hard work they were able to send my parents to school, and my parents have done so well. My mom is a kick-butt lawyer, and my dad…”

Ms. Davies cut her off: “So, do you feel like you've been coasting on your family's success?”

Alicia turned red. “Not at all. My friends and I have our own business—Amigas Inc.”

Ms. Davies looked down at her notes. “It's a party-planning business?”

Alicia tried not to sound defensive. “Oh, no, it's more than a party-planning business. A
quinceañera
is a major rite of passage in the life of any Latina—it's a way to honor your culture, your heritage, your community.”

The Brown rep seemed pleased with the answer and asked, “So, did this business start with your own
quinceañera
?”

Alicia shook her head. “I actually didn't have one. I took a trip instead.”

Ms. Davies looked at her watch and said, “Well, our time is almost up. Anything I can tell you about Brown?”

Flustered, Alicia asked, “Is it true that you don't have any grades?”

Ms. Davies looked displeased. “Yes, that is true. And if your GPA is the only way you know to measure success, then Brown is probably not the place for you.”

The rep stood up and extended her hand, and Alicia shook it. “Nice meeting you, Alicia,” she said.

Alicia smiled back, but it was all she could do to keep from saying,
Oh, yeah? Well, it kinda sucked meeting you.

Her next appointment—with Harvard—was in the auditorium. In the hallway, she passed a glowing Carmen.

“The rep from FIT spent the whole time oohing and aahing over my portfolio,” Carmen gushed. “How's it going for you?”

Alicia was desperate to keep up appearances, mostly because she'd never had any academic disappointments to share. She was Alicia “Straight A” Cruz. She had struggled on the boy front, at least before she got together with Gaz. Her Spanish-language skills were fair to middling at best. But she had never struggled at school—yet part of what worried her was that college would require abilities she didn't have.

Alicia gave Carmen a thumbs-up and said, “It's all good in the C.G. hood.”

Walking into the auditorium, she thought maybe she could borrow a page from Carmen's book. She didn't have a portfolio like Carmen's for her designs, but she did have a gallery of the
quinces
she'd planned. And she needed all the help she could get. She
couldn't
blow this one.

Serena Shih, the Harvard rep, was a petite Korean American in her thirties with what Alicia thought of as New York hair—the kind of crisp New York bob that looked as if it had been cut in one easy go, but which actually involved elaborate layering to give it its perfect fullness and swing.

Ms. Shih, too, asked Alicia the dreaded describe-yourself-in-one-word question, but this time, instead of panicking, Alicia said, “I'd use two words:
entrepreneurial
and
cultural
.” Then she took out her iPad and told Ms. Shih all about Amigas Inc.—how she herself had never had a
quince
, because she had thought it was an expensive, over-the-top party thrown by girls who simply longed to spend one night in a big, poufy dress.

“The thing is that a
quince
is about so much more than the dress,” Alicia went on. “Along with my best friends, who are also my business partners, we help girls plan celebrations that exemplify who they are and who they want to be as Latinas today.”

Ms. Shih smiled, “I have to tell you, I'm very impressed. I see a lot of businesses and foundations allegedly run by teenagers, but the parents are often doing all the work. This is something you truly own.”

“It is,” Alicia said proudly.

“Have you heard of the two plus two program at Harvard?”

Alicia shook her head.

“It's a program we developed a few years ago to encourage liberal arts undergraduates to pursue MBAs. Companies like Google and McKinsey don't want straight engineers and numbers crunchers. They want creative managers—people like you.”

Ms. Shih explained that if Alicia came to Harvard, she could apply for the two plus two program at the end of her junior year. She handed Alicia her card. “I work here in Miami. This meeting schedule doesn't give me enough time to talk about something this important with a candidate as promising as you. Call my office, and we'll meet for coffee one day after school.”

Alicia practically floated toward the next meeting. The two interviews she'd had couldn't have been more different. It was strange to do so poorly, then so well. She hadn't changed in the half hour between the two interviews. But what was really trippy was how perfect the two plus two program at Harvard sounded to her. Alicia went to the other meetings and did her iPad presentations, but really all she could think of was Harvard, Harvard, Harvard.

She ran to the cafeteria to grab a sandwich before her afternoon class and was surprised to see Carmen and Jamie there, leisurely eating. She knew they both had one o'clock classes, too.

“Aren't you guys worried about being late for class?” Alicia asked as she took a big bite of her tuna sandwich.

“It's college day,” Carmen explained, holding up a late pass. “You can get a pass from your adviser.”

“That works,” Alicia said. “In that case, I'm going to get some fro yo.”

She returned to the table with a bowl of chocolate soft-serve and laughed at the worn-out expressions on her friends' faces. “Do I look as beat up as you two do?”

“No, and it's annoying,” Jamie said, resting her head on the cafeteria table.

“Describe yourself in one word,” Carmen said to Jamie.

“Exhausted,” Jamie said.

“Now, somebody, ask me,” Carmen said.

Alicia smiled, happy to discover that she wasn't the only one who'd found the question annoying.

“Describe yourself in one word, Carmen,” Alicia said.

“Confused,” Carmen replied.

The bell rang for the next class, and Jamie said, “Let's all have dinner tonight.”

“Can't,” Alicia replied. “I have a date with Gaz.”

Jamie shook her head. “No way. It's college day, and I need my
chicas
. Pass me your phone.”

Alicia handed Jamie her cell.

Jamie dialed a stored number and winked at Alicia. “Hello?” she said.

Gaz must have said something sweet on the other end of the line, because Jamie laughed out loud. “Does your girlfriend know you call me
baby
?

“Look, Gazissimo,” Jamie continued. “That little speed round of college
Jeopardy
just about kicked my butt. And sadly, Dash, my go-to source for TLC is hitting the books at Duke and not available, so I'm inviting myself on your date tonight. Does that work for you?” She smiled into the phone. “Thanks. You're a good guy, Gaz. Can Carmen and Maxo come, too?” She paused. “
Excelente, mi jefe.
We'll see you for dinner 'round six.”