Pushing Perfect

I couldn’t help it—I started cracking up. She was so different than she came across at school. She wouldn’t be the kind of friend Becca had been, but that was okay. “I’m not into girls. It’s more that my experience with guys is kind of … limited.” I was flattered that she thought I was pretty enough to have dealt with guy issues before, but of course she had no idea what I really looked like. Then again, no one did.

“Well, then, we’ve got some work to do. We’ll have to strategize. Let’s hang out next weekend.”

“Saturday’s the SAT,” I said.

“You didn’t take it yet? I got it out of the way at the end of last year,” she said. “Such a relief.”

I didn’t feel like explaining about the whole panic attack thing. Besides, I’d studied my ass off and read a bunch of meditation books and eaten my mom’s brain food for weeks. I’d be okay this time. “I put it off,” I said. “I really need to do well.” That much was true, anyway. So much for telling each other everything, though.

“Just come over after,” she said. “We can keep it low key. We’ll just hang out.”

“That would be great.” If all went as planned, I’d be in a good mood, and it would be fun to talk about it with a friend. Now that we were friends.

4.

The morning of the SAT I stumbled out of bed bleary-eyed and in desperate need of coffee. I’d resolved to get a good night’s sleep to prepare, had even tried the stupid meditation techniques from the books I’d read, but nothing worked. I’d stayed up most of the night remembering that disastrous attempt at the PSAT, the one that had kept me from taking the test last year, when I should have. This time had to be different—if I didn’t manage to get through it, I only had one more shot.

Mom was in the kitchen by the time I got downstairs, coffee brewed, a plate of what looked like green eggs at my seat. “Are we channeling Dr. Seuss today?” I asked.

“Scrambled eggs blended with spinach, kale, spirulina, and hemp seeds,” Mom said, coming over and kissing my forehead. “That plus coffee should help you focus. I packed some baggies of almonds and blueberries for you to bring in with you. You’re going to be terrific today.”

“Wow,” I said, picking at the eggs with my fork. They looked beyond disgusting. “Um, thank you?”

“I tasted them first,” Mom said. “They’re not as bad as they look. I added lots of salt and pepper. Give it a shot.”

I took a very, very small bite. They tasted … green. Which was fine. Other than that epic dinner at Alex’s, I’d eaten almost nothing but green food for a week in preparation for today. I was used to it. “Not bad,” I said, though I loaded up my coffee with cream and sugar, just to have something that tasted good. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s at work already.”

“On a Saturday?” I shouldn’t have bothered asking; lately he’d been working every weekend, and most of the time Mom had too, now that she was working with him. Weekends were irrelevant now that he was starting a new company.

“He’s stressed about the next round of funding,” Mom said.

“Should he be?”

“I don’t think it matters. He’d stress out either way. Just like you.”

And here we’d been doing so well. She was right, though; Dad and I did have a lot in common, and we both had a tendency to stress. But Dad’s stress always seemed tied to work, while I managed to get myself anxious about everything. At first I’d thought it started with the skin, but then I thought about all the things I’d worried about before that—my friendships, school, my parents. Really, I worried about everything, all the time; the only thing that had ever helped me relax was swimming, and that was gone now.

I’d tried to talk to my dad once about how he managed, hoping he’d have a suggestion that would help me, but he’d told me he just tried to convert his stress to energy and put the energy into work, which to me seemed kind of circular. “I did go to a doctor once,” he said. “He put me on some medication, but I had a really bad reaction to it.”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“You were really young. And that was a good thing, because it was a very scary time. I was hallucinating and stopped sleeping. It was awful for your mother. She still doesn’t like to think about it.”

That did explain a lot, especially her emphatic “No!” when I’d asked her about beta blockers or Xanax. I knew lots of kids at school were taking them, but she wasn’t having it. The whole brain food thing was her way of trying to make up for it, which I appreciated.

“When do you need to get going?” Mom asked, watching me pour myself another cup of coffee.

“Not for almost an hour,” I said. “Can you pass me the crossword?” Better to keep my brain busy than to think about what was coming, I figured.

“Oh, I don’t think it’s here yet,” she said, not looking at me.

“Mom. They drop the paper off in the middle of the night. You bring it in every day. The one time it wasn’t here when you woke up, you called them to complain. I know you have it, so where is it?” I didn’t mean to sound irritable, but I could hear the edge in my voice.

She sighed. “Can you just skip the crossword for today? You can do it when you get home. You have enough to think about as it is.”

“Which is exactly why I need it.” Why was she being so weird?

My question was answered as soon as she pulled the paper out from under a stack of magazines and handed it over. Marbella was small enough that the newspaper was half the size of a normal paper like the San Francisco Chronicle. And we had so little crime that the front cover was usually devoted to something related to local politics, or high school sports. Or good news.

JULIA JACKSON, NATIONAL MERIT SEMIFINALIST, WINS SCHOLARSHIP! the headline screamed at me.

Oh, great.

I skimmed the article. Julia had won the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship Society’s first annual prize, a ten-thousand-dollar-per-year scholarship to the school of her choosing. The prize was reserved for students of “exceptional promise,” the article read. “‘It’s a new award, but it’s a tremendous honor,’ said an admissions officer at UC Berkeley, who wished to remain anonymous. ‘It’s certainly the kind of thing we’d take into account when choosing between students.’”

It was like they’d written the article just to mess with my head.

“I think I can see the steam coming out of your ears,” Mom said. “That’s why—”

“—you didn’t want me to have the paper,” I said. “I get it. You were right. You’re right about everything.” I got up from the table and took my plate and cup over to the sink. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll see you when I get home.”

“Honey, I don’t care about being right,” Mom said. “I won’t be here this afternoon, but I’ll see you when I get home from work. Call and tell us how it went?”

Figures she’d go to work on a Saturday too. Bad enough when it was just Dad. “Yeah, I’ll call. I’m going out tonight anyway.”

“Really? With who?” Mom sounded excited.

“A new friend. No big deal.”

“Well, you can tell me all about that too, when you get home. Don’t stay out too late.”

“I won’t,” I said. When had I ever?

Outside, the sun was shining and the sky was perfectly blue and free of clouds and it was like the day had been sent to mock me. I had a terrible feeling about how things would go; it would have been more appropriate for it to be raining. I got in my car and cracked an energy drink for the ride. It would probably be too much on top of the coffee, but I was too tired to do without it. By the time I got to school I was wired; I hoped that was the primary explanation for the jangling of my nerves.

Ms. Davenport was the SAT proctor, so the test was in her classroom. That was a good sign in more ways than one—all my associations with that room were positive. I’d aced lots of tests there, and just seeing Ms. Davenport at the front of the room was comforting. Maybe my feeling of foreboding was wrong.

Of course, the room was also full of seniors, since it was too early for even the most enterprising juniors to be taking their first shot at the test. But most of the kids in the AP classes I took had already taken it last year, so as I looked around the room, there were only a couple of really familiar faces.

Becca and Isabel.

Both of them were in their workout clothes, not much makeup, Isabel’s long blond hair in a high ponytail. Both of them had big Starbucks cups in front of them and matching energy bars. They must have met up beforehand and come together. I wondered whether they still had the same favorite drinks: skinny vanilla latte for Isabel, and matcha green tea for Becca. Isabel and I used to tease her for that one; it smelled terrible, and though Becca insisted it tasted better than it smelled, we both refused to try.

I still missed them.

I couldn’t let them get me off track, though. I had to concentrate on the good things: the luck of getting to be in this room, with its comforting smell of chalk dust; the fact that my usual class seat was open, so I could pretend this was just another test instead of the thing that was going to decide my whole life; the meditation exercises I’d practiced last night and that I had time to do now. So what if they hadn’t worked before? Today would be different. It had to be.

I closed my eyes and breathed naturally, in and out, focusing on each breath. My pulse slowed; I could see patterns forming on the backs of my eyelids, white dots swirling like kaleidoscopes against a dark-red backdrop, and let them soothe me. Ms. Davenport’s voice came into focus as she read the directions. I opened my eyes to see her passing out the exam packets.

I was going to be fine. I was ready.

Ms. Davenport gave the signal, and we tore open the seals holding our packets together. The first section was math, thank goodness. I started working through the early problems, the easier ones, and managed to get through five questions before I started feeling thumping in my head. Breathe, I thought. Focus. I calmed myself down enough to finish the section, which wasn’t too hard. Just like I’d practiced.

I was relieved to know I could do this.

The second section was critical reading. Two fill-in questions, no problem. The words started to go blurry when I got to some analogies, but I reminded myself to think of them like ratios. I slowed down and concentrated, using the techniques I’d learned from the study guide to narrow my options. All fine.

Until.

The first paragraph took up the entire left-hand column of the page. I started reading it and got halfway through before I realized I’d only taken in maybe every third word. Something about global warming? Rain forests? Endangered species? I started over. I still wasn’t getting it.

I held my thumb to the left side of my chin to check my pulse. It was speeding up.

My stomach clenched.

Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, even though I was really, really cold.

I looked back down at the test booklet and started reading the passage again. This time it was like I couldn’t even see the words.

Come on, I thought.

My lungs were getting smaller, making it almost impossible to squeeze breaths in and out of them.

I had to get out of here.

I looked up to see Ms. Davenport watching me, brows lowered. She tilted her head as if asking me a question. I stood up to tell her I had to go to the bathroom, but I’d waited too long. The patterns from the backs of my eyes were back, the white dots and the maroon behind them, except this time my eyes weren’t closed.

Then everything went dark.

5.

I opened my eyes to white. White with little black dots that it took me a minute to recognize as ceiling tiles. I was lying on a bed—no, a cot. Brightly colored posters with warning signs for eating disorders and sexual abuse covered the walls.

I was in the nurse’s office.

I’d been here a couple of times, mostly to grab a tampon when I’d run out. The nurse was nice about making them easy to find, so we didn’t have to bug her when we needed them. But I’d never actually gotten far enough into the room to explore the cot situation. It was extremely uncomfortable, with springs that poked into my back, and I wondered if that was on purpose, to keep kids from using the nurse’s office to take naps.

I sat up and the springs creaked, loud enough to shock me, and apparently loud enough that they were audible outside the room because the nurse came rushing in.

“Kara, so glad you’re up,” she said. “You gave us a little scare but you’re going to be fine. Good thing I was here!”

“What happened?” I asked. I remembered standing up to leave the room, but that was about it.

“You fainted. Just for a minute, but you had us worried—you were very agitated when you woke up, so we brought you here for a little rest. We left a message at your house but we don’t seem to have your parents’ cell phone numbers.”

“I think I had a panic attack,” I said. It was the first time I’d said it out loud; even when I’d talked to my parents about the things that had happened in the past, I never used those words. “My parents are at work—I don’t want to call them.”

“You may be right about the panic attack,” the nurse said. “That’s something worth talking to your doctor about. Are you sure I can’t call your mom for you?”

I shook my head. No need to bring them into it. I wanted to manage my own disappointment in myself before I took on theirs. “I just want to go. My car’s in the lot.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that quite yet,” she said. “I don’t want you driving until I’m sure you’re okay, and your teacher wanted to come by and chat after the exam. Should be done in just a couple of minutes, and in the meantime I’ve got some juice and crackers for you. Just to get that blood sugar up.”

“But the test just started,” I said. “I don’t want to wait that long.”

“Oh, you’ve been asleep for a couple of hours. You must have been wiped out. Here, have a snack and Ms. Davenport will be by in just a few minutes. Okay if I go man the desk outside? There are bound to be some post-exam meltdowns.”

I nodded, and she handed me the plate of crackers and a little flowered paper cup of juice. The mix of carbs and sugar reactivated all the caffeine I’d had, and I started to feel less sleepy and more alert. Which brought the memory of blacking out in the middle of the classroom right to the surface. I started to shake as I realized that not only had I not managed to actually take the stupid SAT, but I’d fainted in front of Becca and Isabel. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so humiliated.

There was a light tapping on the open door of the nurse’s office and I looked up to see Ms. Davenport. “I came as soon as I could,” she said. “Are you okay?”

I couldn’t help it—as soon as I heard her voice, I started crying. Ugly crying, too, not just a few tears; I sobbed until I was almost hiccuping, burying my head in my arms. The cot creaked as Ms. Davenport sat down next to me and patted my back, waiting for me to calm down. Once I’d stopped crying long enough to try to breathe, she handed me a Kleenex. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I opened my mouth to say no, but instead all these words came pouring out, along with more tears. “I can’t believe this is happening. I worked so hard and now I’m so embarrassed and I’m never going to get into college and I’m never going to get out of here and everyone saw and now they’re all going to talk about me and my parents are going to be so disappointed and …” I started sobbing again, enough that I couldn’t talk.

I couldn’t believe I’d said all that to Ms. Davenport, but it made sense that if I said it to anyone, it would be her. She’d become more than just a teacher to me; we’d worked really closely together during geometry, and after a while I’d started telling her about all the pressure I was feeling, and she gave me advice on how to keep it from getting to me, reminding me that everything I was doing was for me, not for my parents, or for the competition. It didn’t always work, but I did try to keep my eyes on the future. My future. I was thrilled to get her for calculus, and sometimes I’d stay after class or even after school and talk to her about colleges. She gave me a list of some of the East Coast schools with good math programs and said she’d write a recommendation for me for wherever I wanted to go. All the students loved her, so it made me feel special that she’d taken a particular interest in me.

I hated that she’d seen me like this, but I knew she wouldn’t judge.

“All right, Kara, you’re all about logic, so let’s break this down together,” she said. “I know you, so I have no doubt that you worked hard. And I understand you’re embarrassed, but no one made fun of you; a couple of the girls asked if you were okay, but everyone else just went back to the test, because that’s what people do—they worry about themselves. No one’s paying as much attention to you as you think, and that’s okay.”

I wanted to believe her, but I also knew that the worst of it wouldn’t happen in front of her. That would come later. I wondered whether Becca and Isabel were the girls who’d asked about me.

“You’re also going to get into college, and you’ll get out of Marbella too, if that’s what you want. You’re right that the SATs matter to a lot of places, so that’s something you’ll have to figure out some other time, but there are also schools that don’t require them, and some of those schools are fantastic. You have options. And I met your parents at parent-teacher conference night back when you were a freshman, and they were very loving and supportive.”

I did my meditation breathing while I listened to her. I liked that she knew me well enough to know that logic was the best way through this—if she’d just been all sympathetic and sweet, I’d have never stopped crying. “Okay,” I said, and tried to blow my nose as discreetly as possible. I hoped my makeup hadn’t smeared all over the place. “That helps.”

“Now, do you want to tell me what happened in there?”

“Panic attack,” I said from behind the Kleenex. It was getting easier to say it out loud.

“I’ve given you lots of tests and never even seen you break a sweat,” she said. “What’s different about the SAT? Or is it just the SAT?”

“It’s not just the SAT, but it’s mostly that. I just get so stressed out about it, because my scores need to be perfect if I want to go to Harvard, since there’s, like, nothing else interesting about me. I used to swim, but I don’t anymore, so now all my extracurriculars are just filler, and all the schools will know it. I have to ace this test. But if I keep losing it every time I try to take it, I’ll never get in.”

“If you’ve convinced yourself that you need perfect scores, then it’s no wonder you’re panicking every time you think about this exam. Perfection is an unrealistic aspiration.”

“That’s what my mom says. I should ‘just do my best.’” I made air quotes. “But we both know that’s not always good enough. She just won’t say it. She and my dad were both great students, killed it at Stanford, killed it in grad school. She can pretend that she doesn’t want me to be perfect, but she doesn’t mean it.”

“Maybe she does,” Ms. Davenport said. “Maybe you should take what she says at face value. Do what you can. Take the pressure off. All this pushing for perfection is damaging, you know. You’ve heard about what’s happening in Palo Alto.”

Of course I had. Everyone had. The papers were calling them suicide clusters. Kids who were scared of not getting into the right colleges didn’t see any other futures for themselves. I bet a lot of them felt like me. I don’t know what kept me from reaching that level of despair, but I felt lucky that I’d been able to avoid those kinds of thoughts.

“That’s not happening in Marbella,” I said.

“It could. Same circumstances—public high school in an affluent town, parents putting pressure on their kids to go to elite schools. I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “Besides, I know I put a lot of the pressure on myself.” Which was true.

“Well, you need to find a way to let yourself off the hook, then.”

“I guess.” It was kind of a bummer to hear Ms. Davenport talking like a typical grown-up, which wasn’t usually her thing. She and Mom could say whatever they wanted about me not needing to be perfect, but I knew who I was competing with. My guidance counselor had basically admitted that if I didn’t make valedictorian and get near-perfect scores on the SATs, all the good East Coast schools would be out of reach. And all the best math departments were at research institutions, as Ms. Davenport well knew, and they all required the SATs. There was no getting around it.

“I hear the skepticism,” Ms. Davenport said. “Just tell me you’ll think about it. And that you’ll come talk to me if the pressure’s getting to be too much. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

“Now, can I call your mom to come get you?”

“She’s at work. I’m fine—I’ve got my car.”

“You sure you’re okay to drive?”

“I feel a lot better now,” I said. But it wasn’t true.

Alex texted as I was walking out to the parking lot: All done? How did it go? When are you coming over?

Good to know word hadn’t made it to her yet. Maybe Ms. Davenport was right; maybe people hadn’t been paying that much attention. I hated having to admit what had happened, but it was nice to have a friend checking up on me.

Disaster, I wrote. Tell you about it tonight. When do you want me?

Sounds like you need cheering up, she wrote. Let’s go for ice cream instead. Meet me downtown at seven.

I was about to suggest frozen yogurt, but then I figured, why bother? No need to keep up with the crazy health food diet if it wasn’t going to help anyway. Ice cream sounded awesome.

Now I just had to keep myself busy for the rest of the afternoon. If I kept thinking about the morning’s nightmare, I’d never stop crying. It was times like these when I really missed swimming. Being in the water, feeling the cool of it on my skin, concentrating on my arms and my legs and making them work together and nothing else—it was the perfect way to get out of my own head. My favorite stroke was freestyle, which had always come naturally to me; Becca was all about the butterfly, which made sense, given that she was more muscular than I was. She had so much power in her arms and shoulders, whereas I’d hit my growth spurt early and could use my long arms and legs to move through the water smoothly.

Swimming had been my only form of exercise. When I stopped, I missed the endorphins. I started getting depressed, though initially I’d assumed it was because high school was so hard and because Becca and Isabel and I were already growing apart.

Mom had seen what was going on. “Sweetie, you’re going to need to get some exercise,” she said one day, as I picked at my cereal, wishing I could just get back into bed instead of going to school.

“What, you think I’m gaining weight or something? Don’t I worry about my appearance enough as it is?” I was really not in the best mood.

“Not at all,” she said, unruffled. It took a lot to ruffle her. “You just seem unhappy, and I think you’d be surprised how much better you’d feel if you got in a workout.”

“Well, that’s impossible,” I snapped. “I can’t swim anymore, and I’m not about to go somewhere without the stupid makeup, and the stupid makeup is not sweat-friendly.”

Mom paused, trying to decide which aspect of what I’d said to take on. We hadn’t talked about my unwillingness to let anyone know about my skin problem, and back then she and Dad were just starting to work out their issues post-Tahoe, which I knew she hadn’t told anyone about either. It’s not like I’d have listened if she’d told me it was time to start sharing. “I understand,” she said finally, and I thought that was the end of it.