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Overview
What happens when your life doesn't go according to plan?
Ryden Malby had a plan. Step One: do well in high school, thereby achieving Step Two: get a kick-butt college scholarship. Step Three – limit her beer pong in order to keep said scholarship – wasn't always easy. Now that she's finally graduated, it's time for Step Four: moving to LA to land her dream job at the city's best publishing house. So far, Ryden's three-for-three, but she's about to stumble on Step Four….
When Jessica Bard, Ryden's college nemesis—the prettiest, smartest, most ambitious girl at school—steals her perfect job, Ryden's forced to move back to her childhood home in the Valley. Stuck with her eccentric family – a karate-obsessed dad, a politically incorrect grandma, a spoiled-brat little brother – and a growing stack of rejected job applications, Ryden starts to feel like she's going nowhere. The only upside is spending time with her best friend Adam—and running into her hot next-door neighbor David. But if Ryden's going to survive life as a post-grad, it may be time to come up with a new plan…
Post Grad was made into a 2009 motion picture, starring Alexis Bledel, Zach Gilford, Carol Burnett, and Michael Keaton
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429935302 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/09/2009 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 217 KB |
About the Author
Emily Cassel is the pseudonym for a writer who lives in Santa Monica, CA, with her bulldog, Percy. She is at work on her next novel.
Emily Cassel is the pseudonym for a writer who lives in Santa Monica, CA, with her bulldog, Percy.
Read an Excerpt
Post Grad
By Emily Cassel
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film CorporationAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-3530-2
CHAPTER 1
"Okay, okay, next question. Would you rather be a mongoose or a platypus?" Adam Davies, my tall, green-eyed, only slightly goofy Best Friend in the World, gazed up at me intently from my dorm room floor, as if my answer to this question were a matter of earth-shattering importance.
I took a sip of the beer that I'd gotten from the keg down the hall and pretended to mull it over. "A mongoose ... Well, that's a bit weaselly for me. A bit too much on the rodent side of things. But honestly, what is a platypus anyway? It has a bill, it lays eggs, but apparently it's a mammal. I mean, how does that work? What does it do with its life?"
"I'm not really sure." Adam rolled over so that he was peering under my bed. "God," he said, "have you ever heard of a broom? You've got dust balls the size of cats under here."
I threw a pillow at him and it landed on his broad chest. "Hey, I'll be out of here any day now," I said. "I'm done with cleaning. I leave that to the paid employees of Clarendon University."
He picked the pillow up and tossed it back but missed me. He threw worse than a girl; he always had. "So a mongoose, then?" he asked. "You'd be a mongoose? You'd have to fight snakes. That's what mongooses do. Or is it mongeese?"
We'd been playing the Which Would You Rather Be? game for fifteen years, ever since we were seven years old and swinging next to each other in Jackson Park in Glendale, California, while our babysitters gossiped on the nearby benches, drinking Cokes and eating M&M's (which they wouldn't share with us because they claimed the sugar made us crazy — which it did). You'd think we'd be bored with it, and maybe we were. But it was so familiar that we couldn't help it. It was something to say when there was nothing else to talk about, for one. Something to calm our nerves before an exam or a blind date — things like that. We just fell into it.
Lately our game seemed to focus not on the animals themselves so much as on what they did. For instance, you wouldn't want to be a dog, because you'd have to do what people told you all day long. You wouldn't want to be an ox, either, because those yoke things looked really heavy. And you wouldn't want to be a monkey, because you'd have to pick bugs out of your friends' hair all the time. And then you'd probably have to eat the bugs so as not to seem rude.
This focus on the animals' activities was because we were seniors in college, and graduation was less than eighteen hours away, and we had our whole lives in front of us. We could be anything. That's what we told ourselves, anyway. We could be mules — forced by other people to do what they told us — or we could be tigers. Needless to say, the latter sounded much better.
Of course right now I'd have to pick platypus, since that was the question. And because I'm not afraid of being weird. I mean, just look at my family. They make an egg-laying mammal that looks like a duck seem completely normal. But I'll get to them in a minute.
Adam frowned at me playfully. "You still haven't answered."
"Well, you got all distracted by the dust cats. Which do you think I'd be?" I said.
"Platypus, of course," he answered instantly, leaning back and propping his feet up on my hamper (which, unsurprisingly, was overflowing with laundry).
See? He knew me, unlike the other 472 friends I have — or that Facebook says I have. The truth was that hardly any of those people meant anything to me, but I wasn't going to delete them from my friend list. I liked seeing their little profile pictures on my home page, and I enjoyed procrastinating on my English papers by reading their status updates. ("Sarah Adams is walking on sunshine!" "Brad Adkins is super stoked about his new wheels!")
Except for one. Jessica Bard. I had to admit, I didn't like seeing her on my Facebook page. You know Jessica's type: pretty, smart, supermotivated. Like, she'd stay up all night to study for a test and still show up to class freshly showered, her makeup perfect, with a plate of homemade muffins for the teacher. Barf. Of course she was valedictorian. (And her status updates were the worst. "Jessica Bard got an A! Again!" Double — or make that triple — barf.)
But I hadn't done badly for myself in school at all. I'd be getting one of those nice little Latin phrases on my diploma: cum laude. "With praise."
So I'd been planning for tomorrow my entire life. I was about to enter the real world, about to get a job where someone paid me to do what I love, which was not, contrary to how it might seem, drinking flat Budweiser from akeg and trying to figure out what sort of animal I should be. It was reading. I wanted, more than anything, to be an editor of big, wonderful books.
I devised the plan years ago. It was called, very cleverly, "the Plan," and it was pretty straightforward. One: I would do really well in high school. Two: I would get a good scholarship so my parents wouldn't have to bankrupt themselves sending me to college. Three: I'd limit my games of beer pong and Never Have I Ever at said college so as to keep said scholarship. And most importantly, number four: upon my graduation with a B.A. in English literature, I would land a sweet job at the finest publishing house in Los Angeles (Happerman & Browning, FYI), so I could discover the next Great American Novel and marry Jonathan Micah Miller, who had become a literary prodigy at the tender age of seventeen with his bestselling novel I Love Everyone and Everyone Loves Me.
Adam downed the last swig of his beer and sat up. "You want another?" he asked, holding up the cheap plastic cup that said TIJUANA RULES, a souvenir all the way from our freshman-year spring break. (It was my only souvenir from that trip, and for that I was thankful — my friend Julie had returned with a tattoo of Mario Lopez on her butt. Needless to say, she'd been very, very drunk when she'd picked it out.)
I shook my head. I didn't want a hangover and bags under my eyes on graduation day. "No on the beer, thanks. I need my beauty rest."
"You'd have to sleep a really long time to get beautiful," Adam countered. "I mean, you'd have to miss commencement and everything." But then he smiled. Because actually he thought I was pretty, and he told me so every time I needed a little ego boost. Because long auburn hair and blue eyes and good skin and a decent figure are nice, but everyone needs a little reassurance now and then.
"Well, good night," he said. "See you in the A.M., cum laude."
Adam let himself out, and I fell back onto my bed. I picked thoughtfully at the Ernest Hemingway poster on the wall and let moments of the past four years flicker in my mind in the form of a nostalgic film strip: getting lost in the library stacks, eating nachos in the dining hall, writing papers on Shakespeare and Faulkner, staying up late with Adam as we gorged ourselves on pizzas we'd micro-waved in the dorm kitchen. College had been great. But I was ready for it to be over; I was ready to live on my own. And I was as certain about the Plan as I'd ever been.
Granted, I was eleven when I came up with it, so some of it had changed. For instance, I no longer wanted to marry Jonathan Micah Miller because, in the words of one book critic, "two names is enough for the rest of us, you dick." And he would be twenty-eight by now — no longer a prodigy! But anyway, I was three for three on my goals, and, as I prepared to be shot from the cannon of my higher education into the battlefield of the real world, I felt sure number four was a given. I was ready for the world. So the question was: was the world ready for me?
CHAPTER 2Graduation Day dawned sunny and warm and golden. Of course, this was L.A., so the weather was not particularly unusual. What was unusual were the hordes of people who had descended upon our college. They trampled the grass, looking confusedly at their campus maps and yelling at their kids to stay close, and took pictures of everything, as if this chaos were something to be remembered and preserved instead of forgotten as quickly as possible with a very dry martini.
But the excitement was palpable in the air, and even Adam, who tried to be blasé about most everything, was giddy. He'd bought a new suit for the occasion, even though he'd known it would be hidden beneath one of the hideous maroon polyester gowns we all had to wear. In his silly cap, he looked like a boy playing dress-up.
"That's a good color on you, you know," I told him as we lingered in the shade of a large elm tree. "It really brings out the red in your eyes."
"Very funny," he said. He pulled out a camera from beneath the folds of his robe and took a picture of me trying to finish my chili relleno burrito before we had to file into the auditorium. "You've got beans in your teeth," he told me.
I waved this observation away. "I'll worry about that when I'm done eating. What I'm really concerned about is this ridiculous cap. It makes my head look potatoey, doesn't it?"
Adam laughed. "Potatoey? They're about to give you an English degree, and that's the best adjective you can come up with?"
I stood taller and puffed out my chest. "A cum laude English degree."
Adam knocked himself in the forehead theatrically. "Oh, of course, how could I forget?"
I couldn't help but feel proud — I'd worked hard for my grades, even if I couldn't think of a better adjective than "potatoey." As I finished the burrito and attempted to remove the beans from my teeth, I looked around at all of my fellow graduates and wondered if they, too, felt such satisfaction at the end of their college careers. I hoped so.
"So where's your family?" Adam asked. He pointed to my mouth. "Still one more little bean piece."
"Thanks," I said. "I don't know where they are. They're running late, they said. Which isn't really that unusual."
I was starting to get a little concerned, though. The ceremony was due to start in moments and they weren't anywhere in sight. I wasn't surprised — in my family, twenty minutes late is on time, and on time is considered early — but I'd thought they'd be able to organize themselves better than usual, seeing as how it was a pretty big occasion. They'd said they'd meet me by the administration building at four, but then they'd called to say that they were delayed because Hunter, my seven-year-old brother, had refused to put his clothes on right side out until he was bribed by a milkshake at In-N-Out Burger. (He claimed that wearing one's clothes the normal way was capitulating to the fashion-industrial complex. Actually those were my words. Hunter merely said he thought wearing clothes the normal way was boring. But doesn't my phrasing make him sound smarter?)
So as I scanned the sea of people, looking for my mom in her favorite dress (blue with white dots), my dad in his good tie (the only one without stains), Hunter with his clothes on correctly (hopefully), and my grandma in one ofher atrocious hats (she had a thing for crazy chapeaux), there was a tiny, tiny part of me that hoped they wouldn't show up at all. That they'd decide they were having such a nice time at In-N-Out they'd stay there for the afternoon. And that they would opt to pay $49.99 for the videotape of graduation, which they would then watch in the den with a big tub of popcorn. I mean, I love my family, but sometimes I love them better when I'm not around them.
As Adam and I walked into the auditorium I felt butterflies in my stomach, just like I'd felt the first day I ever set foot on campus. Even though I was ready to leave, I couldn't believe the time had gone by so quickly. Four years ago, I'd never even heard of Willa Cather or E. L. Doctorow, never read Turgenev or Wollstonecraft. I'd thought that George Orwell's most important work was 1984. Incidentally, I'd also never done a body shot, pulled an all-nighter, or lost my clothes in a game of strip poker, all of which were as important to my education as any of the books I'd read.
"Are you nervous?" I asked as I followed Adam down to our seats.
"Hardly," he said, tipping his cap at me. "In fact I'm already bored."
See what I mean? Congenitally blasé.
I felt a hand on my shoulder then, and I turned to see Jessica Bard's Whitestripped teeth gleaming as she smiled at Adam and me.
"How are we doing, graduates?" she chirped. I noticed that she'd purchased a pair of sandals that were the exact color of our graduation robes.
"Great," I said, offering her a rather insincere smile in return. "You got your speech all memorized?" I didn't care whether she did or not, of course — I was just trying to be polite.
"Oh, I don't really believe in preparing too much," she said breezily, squeezing my shoulder and then reaching over to do the same to Adam. "I think it sucks the energy and intensity out of things. Plus I read a lot and most of it just sticks. So I think it'll be good. I mean, everything else about this event is so canned. I want to be spontaneous. An extemporaneous speech is the true test of one's intelligence, don't you think?"
I looked over Jessica's head at Adam, who rolled his eyes and then made a gagging motion. I tried not to laugh.
"I'm sure you'll be fantastic," I said. And I was sure. Because Jessica Bard had a freakishly big brain, not to mention balls that would make a bull jealous. And did I mention that in addition to being pretty, she also had a really excellent sense of style? (Barring those ugly maroon sandals, of course.)
"Well," she said, "I've got to be off. They're waving for me to come up on stage."
"Break a leg," Adam said. "No, really."
Jessica was impervious to his sarcasm. "See you two later!" she cried and strode up to the stage.
"Well," Adam said, watching her retreating back, "her speech will either be brilliant or total bullshit."
"Probably the former," I said glumly. It's not that I didn't want my friends to do well — I was thrilled for my roommate when she graduated early and went off on a Fulbright to Africa — but Jessica Bard was not my friend. "Look at her. She's, like, dripping with confidence. And her posture is perfect."
"I'll bet you five bucks the speech is crap," Adam said, and I shook his hand and told him he was on.
We found our seats and pretty soon the ceremony began, only twenty minutes behind schedule. It was your standard commencement, from what I could tell — there was a band playing and balloons floating gaily around above the stage. And of course there were people who'd decorated their graduation caps (I saw an alligator, a stethoscope, and what looked like a beer bong, each affixed to a cap on someone in my row), and I'm pretty sure I heard champagne corks popping in the rows behind me. And then it was time for Jessica's speech.
She was introduced by the short, squat president of our college, and she stood behind the podium as confidently as if it were her very own. She beamed out at all of us, a single yellow rose pinned to her gown. (Of course she hadn't decorated her cap — she was far too sophisticated for that.) "Class of 2008. It is my great honor to welcome you to today's graduation ceremony." I could almost see her breathe deeply, taking in the pleasure of being the center of attention. "I stand before you, classmates and peers, with optimism in my heart and passion in my throat when I pronounce to you two age-old words: 'carpe diem.'"
Adam and I exchanged befuddled glances. He raised his eyebrows up until they almost vanished behind his sandy bangs. "Carpe diem? Are we on the set of Dead Poets Society or something?" he whispered. "You are so going to owe me five bucks."
"Shhh," I said, not because I cared what Jessica had to say but because I needed to figure out which one of us was going to win.
Jessica smiled happily and touched her cap. "You must not see this day, or the days that led up to it — your classes, your exams, the papers you wrote — as preparation for real life. Every moment of your life is real life. Real life isn't starting now, my friends; it already began. So you'd better make the most of every moment. When we walk out these doors, I challenge each of us to not only seize the day but to clutch it with both hands, squeeze it with all our strength, and drain the victory out of every last living moment ..."
"That's not horrible," I whispered. "The part about how every moment is your real life?"
Adam snorted. "Please. Cough up the money."
"I don't have it on me," I said. "In case you haven't noticed I'm not carrying a purse. And I don't have cash stuffed in my bra. That's my grandma's department."
"I thought she hid it in her hats?"
I giggled. "She keeps twenties in her hats, but any smaller bills go into her bra."
"What does she have against purses again?" Adam asked.
"Who knows." I sighed. "She's a strange old lady."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Post Grad by Emily Cassel. Copyright © 2009 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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