Getting In (Amanda's Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jennifer’s cheeks, which were pale, almost ghostly, when we first met, are now flushed pink. She seems to be in a trance.
    “Very nice. You can put your blouse back on.”
    The most awkward part of all this is putting my bra and shirt on in front of her, but Jennifer turns back to my folder, seemingly unaware of my dressing. When I’m finished I sit back down, and she closes the folder and gives it an efficient pat.
    “One more question before we call it a night. What do you think of me?”
    “What do I think of you?”
    “Do you think I’m beautiful?” she asks.
    I pause, not sure how to answer. So in an instant, I decide to tell the truth. “No. But you’re interesting to look at.”
    “Interesting,” she says. I’ve hurt her feelings.
    “I think you’re very pretty. But your clothes are all wrong.”
    “Are they?” she says, looking down at her blouse and sad schoolmarm skirt.
    “A style makeover …” I start to say, but Jennifer interrupts me.
    “You liked my breasts.”
    I blink with the rapid shifts in conversational direction. “I was wondering if they were surgically enhanced,” I say truthfully. And part of me is wondering—wishing, even—that she’d take off her blouse so I could get a better look.  
    “They’re not,” she snaps, and with that, she gathers up her ratty sweater, the folder, and stands up. As if on cue, Naoko enters the room, and Jennifer shrinks back from me, as if I’m a cobra.
    “Naoko, we’re done here. You can show Miss Prescott out.” Jennifer fumbles to reach her hand out to me and in a formal tone says, “Amanda, it was a pleasure meeting you. I look forward to working with you in the coming weeks.”
    I take her hand. “Thank you. Me too.” I’m actually kind of proud she wants to work with me. Why? I haven’t quite figured out yet.
    Then she slips back out of the room, using the same door as before, and Naoko touches my elbow, ushering me out of the God-awful boudoir of a sitting room. I wonder if she’ll be hurt we didn’t even touch the tea she brought in, but given how strange this place is, I doubt unsipped tea is the worst thing Naoko has ever dealt with around here.
    She hands me my Tod’s, which, oddly enough, look as though they’ve been cleaned during my visit, and I hand her the slippers, which Naoko brings behind the security counter. She slips me the eye mask.
    “For your ride home, miss,” she says with a slight bow. Then the buzzer rings, and I hear Naoko greet the driver as I pull the eye mask over my head.
    “Ready?” the slightly familiar male voice asks me.
    “Ready,” I respond, and I’m surprised when tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes as he leads me up the stairs, my arm in his, to the waiting Town Car. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy and relieved to hear someone’s voice in my life.

CHAPTER FIVE

    “Mom, do you know a Jennifer Angstrom?” I ask as I walk into the kitchen the morning after my previous night’s I-show-you-mine-now-you-show-me-yours. “She may have been at Lexington when you were there.”
    My mother is fussing over the eggs she’s trying to make for my father, since our housekeeper is off for the day visiting a new grandson. On her good days, my mother is a helpless cook. On her bad ones, it’s all firemen and insurance claims.
    I notice my mother’s eyes widen a bit as she attempts to crack an egg against the edge of the gray granite countertop. “Jennifer Angstrom? The name isn’t familiar. Why? Does she say she knows me?” The egg cracks and the insides slide down the front of the cupboard below. “Oh, fudge!” she exclaims, looking around for something to wipe the mess up. “How come there are no towels around here?”
    “Because you told Clara not to leave them out because they ruin your aesthetic,” my sixteen-year-old sister Anne intones from the breakfast nook. Anne’s got what looks like a mountain of homework piled up on the table. The kid is always chasing a