Lucy and Linh Read Online Free

to sit on the dark brown leather chairs and wait. Then we heard a door open somewhere down the corridor. There were footsteps, and a tall, broad woman stepped into the reception area. “You must be Lucy Lam.” She smiled at me as if she wasn’t used to smiling, her white eggshell face cracking, her features scrambling around. Then she turned to my dad. “And you must be Mr. Lam. Welcome to our school.”
    Mrs. Grey had short hair dyed the color of rust and wore a wasabi-colored blouse. She towered over us, so I got a clear view of the sharp pyramid of her nasal cavity and also her mouth, with the maroon lipstick seeping through her tiny lip wrinkles. As she led us down a corridor of polished wooden doors, all closed, I felt like I was going to confession: against the wall outside each door was a wooden pew long enough to seat three girls.
    The first thing I noticed on entering Mrs. Grey’s office was how empty it was. There was a small shelf of books against one corner of the room, a fireplace in the other, and an enormous, shiny desk in the middle that seemed to be made of a single slab of wood picked up off a forest floor, sandpapered and polished. Mrs. Grey sat down behind the desk, which was completely bare except for a silver penholder. My father and I each took one of the two brocade-upholstered chairs on the other side.
    Mrs. Grey told my father that my results on the exam were very good, and that my essay was outstanding. “You must be tremendously proud of her.”
    “You are too kind,” my father said, “but my daughter Lucy here, she really isn’t so smart. We never knew she had smarts in her. We didn’t even think to get her extra tutoring. That’s why we were so surprised that she won the scholarship. Ha!”
    “At Laurinda, we are looking for well-rounded students,” explained Mrs. Grey. “And we frown upon coached students.”
    My father looked confused, and I knew he was wondering why I had been chosen if they preferred untutored fat girls.
    “At Laurinda, we pride ourselves on our diversity, hence this new Equal Access program,” Mrs. Grey continued. “We are looking for natural talent and leadership potential. A student who goes to cram school and rote-learns things to pass exams does not meet the criteria.”
    I was beginning to feel pretty good about myself.
    “We are very pleased that you will be joining our college, Lucy,” she told me. “In your letter with your application, you mentioned that you were very involved in voluntary activities, and that your hobbies include fashion design?”
    I did not tell her that this was because Mum sometimes sent me to church on the Sundays when she couldn’t make it, and that she made me do kitchen duty and visit the older ladies in the neighborhood who didn’t have grandchildren who could help them translate their mail. Or that by
fashion design
I meant helping Mum translate the designs of Coast & Co. fashions into tangibles that could be made for below minimum wage.
    “You also mentioned,” Mrs. Grey continued, “that you were a representative on your student council last year.”
    I looked down at my hands.
    “Here we don’t have a student representative body, as we feel there is no need for one. The girls are engaged in all types of enriching activities—debating, music, theater, musical theater, sports. We do hope that you will be able to partake in many of these activities while you are here.”
    I nodded, hoping to indicate that I would be an upstanding Laurinda citizen.
    She told us about the history of the school, how it was one of the oldest ladies’ colleges in the state, and how it was a Christian institution, so we would have to go to church once every term.
    Once every term! Back at Christ Our Savior, church was once a week. Here the girls focused on Latin and art history. I had come too late to learn the latter, Mrs. Grey told me, but it was something I might have liked.
    She handed me a navy blue book and matching folder.