Monkey Business by Sarah Mlynowski Page A

deceiving. Some of them are fifty pages long but have thirty pages of graphs, and others are thirty pages with only five pages of graphs.”
    â€œIt’s like fat-free food,” I say. “You have to eat twice asmuch to feel full and you end up consuming the same amount of calories anyway.”
    Everyone stares at me.
    I spend the next forty minutes executing my reinstated keep-your-mouth-shut plan while the rest of my group does the work. And as usual, even though Jamie hasn’t done the reading, either—he hasn’t even bought the books yet—he seems to be able to wing it.
    â€œI don’t think you all see the big picture,” he says, then launches into an explanation. The rest of the group nods. How is it that he can barely skim the case yet still have a deep understanding of it? He usually writes up the assignment as we’re discussing it. He’s a great writer. Used to be a journalist, I think.
    We’ve already gotten two assignments back, and we got B-pluses on both of them, no thanks to me. I contributed nada.
    It’s only Wednesday. Another whole day of boring classes. The weekends are more fun, because at night everyone gets wasted, but we still spend the days in this claustrophobic room.
    Every few hours, Jamie, Lauren and I get Cokes from the vending machines, and Nick and Russ disappear outside for a smoke. I think they might be smoking more than cigarettes, but I don’t ask. I did spot the Visine in Nick’s laptop bag. Not my problem. I don’t think I have the right to criticize, especially since I’m so useless.
    I repeat, I’m going to fail school. Besides the individual portion of the Accounting assignment, I handed in a Stats assignment today and I am one-hundred-percent sure it was all wrong. Jamie had offered to help me, but I was nervous he would try to molest me if we were alone together. I couldn’t ask Russ, since I don’t want him to think I’m more of an idiot than he thinks I am. Besides, he’s been ignoring me. He won’t even sit next to me. Today he came into the study room, saw the empty seat beside me, then sat on theother side of the table next to Lauren. What’s up with that? When school started he couldn’t get enough of me, and now I have SARS? He’s the one from Toronto.
    Lauren waves her hand in front of my face. “Hello? Do you have an opinion on question number five or not?”
    â€œSounds great,” I say.
    She rolls her eyes. Fuck off, I think but don’t say. Here’s one stat I’m sure of: she’s one-hundred-percent bitch.

Friday, October 3, 3:10 p.m.
layla finds her prince in a haystack
    M ore applications = more losers.
    Be nice, I reprimand myself. They’re not losers. They’re just not right for LWBS.
    More unacceptable candidates. More wistful looks from Dennis. I keep catching him staring, and it’s making me uncomfortable.
    Next one. Bradley Green.
    I skim through his file. Undergraduate degree from Harvard. Now that’s fancy. And he’s worked for the Lerner Investment Bank for the past two years. GMATs? Oh, my. Ninety-ninth percentile. That’s pretty brainy. That’s the highest you can get, since you can’t beat a hundred percent of the rest of the people. Although I suppose if you were the only person who got a perfect score, then you would have done better than everyone else. An issue to ponder another time.
    â€œThis guy scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on his GMATs,” I say, waving his paper in front of me like a flag.
    Dennis shrugs. “I got a ninety-eight.”
    â€œBut this is the ninety-ninth.”
    I flip through his application and see an article cut out from the New York Times. “Bradley Green III, son of Bradley Green II…” He’s that Bradley Green? As in Bradley Green, one of the wealthiest businessmen on the East Coast? “…CEO of the media conglomerate PAX Technology,