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interview or entrance exam.
    When she’s not pressuring me about colleges or homework, my mother is nudging me to follow in her epically charitable footsteps. (Though they don’t seem completely “charitable” to me; there’s something disingenuous about a bunch of rich ladies throwing fancy parties under the guise of raising money. Or worse, raising awareness! ) So even though she doesn’t fit the stay-at-home mom type, it’s all I’ve ever known, her always being there, helicopter parenting, forever in our business, making our organic lunches, shuttling us to and from school because she doubted Inga the au pair’s driving skills. It’s hard for me to imagine her as one of the rising strategy consultants at Bain two decades ago. But once in a while (like now), she comes to me with a look on her face that I’m sure she reserved for clients and I can see the hard-nosed businesswoman she once was.
    “What’re you doing?” she asks.
    “Nothing,” I say, trying to sound casual, my pulse quickening.
    “Any closer to a top choice?”
    “Um…. It’s tough because they’re all so good?” I say, my voice rising at the end like a question.
    “School year’s about to start,” my mom reminds me, stepping into my room, casually lifting things off my desk and inspecting them like a cop. “Then you’ll be busy with homework and extracurriculars and pretty soon those applications are going to be due and—”
    “I know, mom. I don’t want to rush into a decision, that’s all.”
    “It’s not like this is sneaking up on you, Rani. Your father and I have been talking to you about college since you were in eighth grade. Everyone at Fairwich seems to have made up their minds. Most choosing early action or early decision. Emily has known her first choice since freshman year.”
    “Before that ,” I mutter.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Mom. Please don’t worry about it. I’m fine. Really.”
    “It’s just… when I see you lying around reading horse magazines—”
    “I don’t—what?”
    “—while all of your friends are so driven and motivated—”
    “Mom. I’m never going to be like Emily, okay?”
    “I don’t want you to be like Emily. I’m just saying, a little… get up and go!”
    As if on cue, I hear a car skidding into our gravel driveway. “Speak of the devil,” I say.
    Even though I know who it is (no one else skids into our driveway like that), I hop off my bed and lean across my desk to peek out the window. I see Emily close the door to her Infiniti G convertible, her sweet sixteen reward for having the highest GPA sophomore year (and my ride to school every day, so thankfully she got it before the dreaded “B” in Mr. Harper’s class), and walk purposefully toward our front door.
    I shrug at my mom like, I’d reeeally love to chat more about my future, but… Emily’s here. Before I hit the hallway, Emily breezes in the front door downstairs, calling out, “Hello, Caldwells! Anybody home?”
    It’s always been Emily’s way to walk into our house without knocking as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a trait that would ordinarily irk my mother but one she somehow finds winning and charming in Emily—the daughter she wishes I were.
    “Up here,” my mother calls out as if Emily was here to see her. While Emily makes her way up the curving staircase, I lean against the railing and greet her with a casual, “What’s up, dude.”
    “Grab your Hunters and a rain coat,” Emily says, all business. “We’re driving to Cawdor.”
    “Um. What’s in Cawdor?”
    “Emily! Hello,” my mother gushes.
    “Oh, hey, Mira,” Emily says, strutting into my room. “Didn’t see you there.” Emily greets my mom with a hug and a vague kiss on the cheek, another habit my mother finds irksome except in Emily. She’s also the only one of my friends allowed to call my parents by their first names. With everyone else it’s Mr. Caldwell this, Mrs. Caldwell that. But Emily not only