Pushing Perfect

Ever since everything went down with Becca and Isabel, I’d buried myself in schoolwork, spending all my time writing papers and studying for tests and making sure I did as well as I possibly could. It was all I had left. I was still hiding my face with makeup, but sometimes it felt like I was hiding my whole self, too. Or that I didn’t have much self left to hide. By my count, it had been over a year since I’d talked to anyone about anything except school. Even at home, all my parents talked about was how well I was doing, how proud they were of my hard work; they didn’t seem concerned that I was always alone. Sure, Mom had asked about Becca and Isabel at first, but I’d mumbled something about people changing in high school and she’d let it go. I’d convinced myself that everything would be different if I went to the right college.

But I could only do that if I killed it on the SAT.

I’d always been good at taking tests, but the SAT was different. I don’t know if it was just the pressure of how much was riding on it, or if some secret part of me was convinced that standardized tests would somehow reveal how very not perfect I was, but I’d had a full-on panic attack when I took the PSAT—I hadn’t even finished it. I’d left the room before people could see me freaking out. I was so spooked by the thought of the SAT that I’d put it off until this year, rather than taking it as a junior like everyone else in my classes.

The Brain Trust was a group of kids I’d met in the Gifted and Talented Program back in grade school. We weren’t friends, exactly, but we had all our classes together, and we all shared the common goal of wanting to go to college on the East Coast. Harvard, specifically. Arthur Cho was a classical violinist whose parents didn’t want him to go to Juilliard because they thought it would limit his options; David Singer dreamed of being an entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg, even though I kept telling him what my parents told me, which was that Silicon Valley was full of Stanford grads who looked down on people from Harvard. Julia Jackson, my nemesis, was gunning for a particular science scholarship and wanted to go straight from undergrad to Harvard Med.

As for me, I just wanted to get as far away from Marbella as possible. I liked the idea of Harvard because it seemed like the kind of place I could start over, where everything might be different. No one would know me as Perfect Kara there; at a place like Harvard, it would be normal to love math and to care about academics more than anything else. It didn’t necessarily have to be Harvard; any good school out east would do. My last name was Winter and I’d only ever seen snow in Tahoe. I wanted red and orange leaves in the fall, tulips in spring, baking heat in summer. I wanted change.

“The National Merit Semifinalist list came out today,” Julia said, her voice all sugary. “Didn’t see your name on there.” Julia and I had been in classes together since kindergarten and teachers had been pitting us against each other the whole time. Handwriting competitions in first grade, speed-reading contests in second, multiplication table races in third—by then it had gotten old for me, but it never had for her. Now I was first in the class, but she was right on my heels, and I knew she’d made it her mission to pass me by.

“Nope,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “I assume congratulations are in order?”

Julia nodded, as did the other two. Great. So I was the only one. “Well, I’m really happy for you guys.” And I was, but I could also feel the anxiety kicking in. It had become a familiar feeling—I’d get this wave of nausea, then a weird thumping in my head, and then my pulse would start to race. I’d feel cold but get sweaty, which was usually the point when I’d take a walk or something to calm myself down. They were sort of my friends, but they were also my competition, as my guidance counselor kept reminding me. The problem was that they each knew exactly what they wanted, and everything they did was in service of their goals. I had no idea what I wanted, other than knowing it had something to do with math, and that put me at a disadvantage. The only way to make myself stand out—the only way to have a real chance at a new life—was to be valedictorian at one of the most competitive public high schools in the country, which Marbella High was. And to nail the SATs.

Basically, I had to be perfect.

I had to put the SATs out of my head if I wanted to avoid an actual panic attack, though, so I turned to the immediate task, which was staying at the top of the class. Which meant acing next week’s calc and econ exams. “We should get out of here,” I said. “I don’t want to be late for class.”

We all had calculus next, which was my favorite class, with Ms. Davenport, who was my favorite teacher. Today was a review session for a test we had coming up, and I was actually looking forward to it.

The thing I loved about math was that you could usually tell when you got the right answer. Like the logic puzzles I used to do with my mom that I now did on my own, for fun: if seven girls go to a birthday sleepover and each one brings different gifts and snacks and has to leave at a different time the next morning, how do you figure out which is which, given a list of clues? There was something so satisfying about creating a chart, with little boxes for Xs and check marks, and drawing inferences from the clues that let you put all the pieces together. Calculus, with its graphs and equations, was similar enough to be fun.

I finished the practice test quickly, secure in the knowledge that I’d gotten all the answers right. It took another ten minutes or so for everyone else to get done, and then Ms. Davenport started going over the answers. She was such a great teacher—she walked through everything so carefully, I couldn’t imagine how anyone didn’t get it after that. She’d been the same way when I had her for geometry as a freshman, a class I found much harder than calculus. And she was cool, too—she dyed her hair auburn and wore it in fancy rolls like she was from the twenties, with vintage dresses and cowboy boots. She seemed so much younger than the other teachers, though I knew she couldn’t be as young as I thought she was, given how long she’d been teaching.

“Ready for the test?” she asked me, on my way out of class.

“Ready enough, I hope,” I said.

“I’m so not,” a voice said from behind me. “Ready, that is.”

I turned to see Alex Nguyen, a girl who was in my calculus and econ classes. I didn’t know her very well; she didn’t talk much in class unless Ms. Davenport made her, and we’d never done more than say hi in the hallway once in a while. Last year she used to fall asleep in class a lot but this year she’d gotten it together.

“It won’t be so bad,” I said.

“Oh, you’re just humoring me. This stuff is totally easy for you.”

I hated when people said things like that. They had no idea how hard I worked, how much pressure I was under. Sometimes it felt like I was treading water all the time, working as hard as I could to stay afloat. I just wanted to swim. Alex didn’t seem to mean anything by it, though. “I’m going to have to study all weekend,” I said.

“Want to study together? You can come to my house. I can even bribe you with food—my dad is a really good cook.”

My first instinct was to say no; my study habits were pretty set, and it wasn’t likely that working with her would help me. But then I remembered how my dad would make me teach the class materials back to him when he helped me study, and how much better I understood things once I could explain them. Maybe it would be good for both of us. And then I remembered something else.

“How are you doing in econ?” I asked.

“Oh, econ,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “Nothing to it.”

“Can we study for that too?”

“Really? You want my help?” Alex clapped her hands. “Totally! It’ll be fun. How about tomorrow?”

I had nothing but time. “Sure.”

“Give me your number and I’ll text you the address.”

We traded info as we walked to econ. I couldn’t help but feel kind of excited—the thought of going over to Alex’s to study actually sounded fun. I hadn’t gone over to anyone’s house in more than a year, and it had been even longer than that since I’d studied with someone else. Maybe we’d even talk about something other than classes, though the thought of it made me a little nervous. What did I have to talk about these days? I only hung out with the Brain Trust, and almost always at school—I hardly ever saw them outside it. Once in a while I went to the movies or the mall with Julia, but we both knew it was because we didn’t have anyone else to go with. Every time I swore I’d never hang out with her again; all she wanted to talk about was school, even after she and David started hooking up. I refused to ever study with her. The only person I’d ever had fun studying with besides my dad was Becca, and that was way back in middle school, before we got put in all different classes.

Of course, the minute I thought of Becca, there she was. It had been over a year since we’d last spoken, but I still missed her all the time. Isabel too, though not in the same way. Becca looked striking, like she always did; she wore smoky makeup around her green eyes and her dark skin was as clear and perfect as ever. She’d started to let her hair grow back, but just barely, so her head was covered in tight little black curls.

I still remembered the day she’d cut off her braids. I’d just gotten back from Tahoe, and as promised, she’d made us appointments at the same time. When she first suggested the haircuts, I thought it was a great idea; I liked the idea of us doing something together, something that would publicly mark us as friends. And it wasn’t like my long hair was so fabulous; it was a washed-out brown and not particularly thick, and I never wore it down anyway.

But then there was the skin. When things got bad over the summer, I got in the habit of taking down my bun and wearing my hair over my face. There was something comforting about it, like I was doing a better job of hiding the problem even just by virtue of covering myself a little more. Mom had gently suggested that if I was going to wear it down, I might want to brighten it up a bit, so I’d gotten a trim and some super subtle highlights and started paying more attention to how I styled it. Becca hadn’t seen it yet. She hadn’t seen my new clothes, either, or how much makeup I was wearing regularly now. Mom said I looked like a new person, all grown up and ready for school. I was just happy not to look like myself, now that looking like myself had become so scary.

The appointment was scheduled for the day after I got back into town. “We need to do this like ripping off a Band-Aid,” she said. “No chickening out.”

I should have just told her then. Instead, I showed up at the hairdresser late. Becca was sitting in the chair covered in an apron, her braids already half gone. Even before the haircut was over, it was clear she could pull it off; she had a really great-shaped head.

“You’re back!” she said, as I approached the chair. “I’d get up and hug you, but you see what’s happening here.” She pointed at the hairdresser, who held up a big pair of scissors.

“I sure do,” I said. “You’re really going for it.”

“We’re really going for it,” she corrected. Then she paused and looked at me. “Come here.”

I came closer. She reached out and touched my hair. “You got highlights,” she said. “And layers.”

I nodded.

“You’re not going for it.”

“No,” I said, quietly.

“You’re kidding. What happened? We had a plan.”

The hairdresser moved the scissors away from Becca’s head. “I’m going to give you girls a minute,” she said, and went into the back.

“I know we did, and I’m really sorry,” I said. “But you know I’ve never had the same trouble with the swim cap thing as you, and I did that thing where you upload a picture and try out different hairstyles online, and I look awful with short hair.” That was only kind of a lie—I’d done it, and I didn’t look great with short hair, but that wasn’t the real reason. It was time for me to just tell her the truth. I hated keeping secrets, especially from Becca; I never had before. I opened my mouth to say more, but I thought about having to tell Isabel, and I wondered whether I could ask Becca to keep my secret for me. Was that too much to ask her? I wasn’t sure what to do.

I didn’t have to decide what to say next, though, because Becca had already made up her mind. “You should go,” she said. Her voice was cold, and I knew she was furious. Becca wasn’t like Isabel, who yelled and screamed whenever she was pissed off. When Becca was mad, she got very, very quiet. “If you’re not keeping your appointment, you don’t need to be here.”

That was the moment I should have said something. But I didn’t. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.” That was kind of a lie too, since I had no idea how, but I didn’t know what else to say. And I didn’t want to ask her to forgive me, because I was afraid she’d say no. So I just left.

We’d gotten over that eventually, just as we’d gotten over other things in the past. We hadn’t yet reached our limits; it would take nearly two years and a lot more than a haircut for our friendship to end. But eventually, it did. So when Becca and I made eye contact in the hall, I saw the flash of emotions that passed over her face whenever she saw me: sadness, confusion, a little bit of anger, resignation. I imagined mine probably weren’t all that different.

And then we both looked away.

3. (#u419ea94d-00de-5bfc-b5a5-9685f48735e5)

Alex lived in a subdivision not too far from mine. The only way to tell it was different was the style of the homes—in my neighborhood it was all ranch houses, but in hers there was a little bit of variation, though not much. Marbella didn’t have a lot of architectural range. Alex’s house was almost identical in layout to Becca’s; it felt familiar, which made me nostalgic.