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“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. (#u419ea94d-00de-5bfc-b5a5-9685f48735e5)
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.
I came home from school that day to find a brand-new treadmill in the guest bedroom. I had no idea how she’d made it happen that fast, but I recognized the gesture immediately. She wasn’t even home from work yet; she must have come home to let the delivery people in and then gone back. My eyes teared up with embarrassment—I’d been such a jerk that morning, and this was how she’d responded. I changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes right away.
Ever since then, I’d come to enjoy running on the treadmill, at least as much as anyone liked running on a treadmill, and I used it to get away from being in my own head all the time. I cranked the stereo when no one was home (or blasted music through my headphones when they were), and for an hour I was free.
A long run would be the perfect way to get the morning out of my system. I put on the happiest music I could find and ran until I could barely feel my legs and my clothes were soaked with sweat. The feeling was exhilarating, and by the time I’d gotten out of a blissfully cold shower, I was ready to put the day behind me.
6. (#u419ea94d-00de-5bfc-b5a5-9685f48735e5)
Alex was waiting for me outside the ice-cream place when I got there, and I could tell she desperately wanted to ask me what happened; she was practically twitching with curiosity. But to her credit she waited until we’d both gotten big waffle cones filled with ice cream and topped with sprinkles—sea-salt caramel for her; mint chip for me—and walked over to the park nearby. Fall in Silicon Valley was almost more like summer—it was in the low eighties, even though it was October—and the store had been filled with people with the same plan as ours. Thankfully, though, the park itself was quiet.
We sat on adjoining swings and started on our cones. I liked to lick all the sprinkles off, giving the ice cream a little time to melt, but Alex just stuck her face right in there and took a big bite. “Oh my god, that hurts my teeth SO BAD!” she yelled, once she’d swallowed.
“At least you didn’t get brain freeze,” I said, but she was already squeezing her eyes shut. “Did I speak too soon?”
“If we’re going to be friends, I mean real friends, you are going to have to teach me patience.”
“You think I have patience?”
She pointed to my cone. “You’re even patient with your ice cream. Not to mention that you haven’t started talking yet and I am dying over here.”
“I thought that was just the brain freeze,” I said. “Maybe I can teach you patience by waiting a little longer.”
She gave me a side-eye glare and I laughed.
“Come on,” she said. “It couldn’t have been that hard. Not for a member of”—she deepened her voice—“the Brain Trust.”
“Hard wasn’t the problem,” I said. “The face-plant. That was the problem.”
“The what now?”
“I totally blacked out. Fainted. In front of everyone.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, and took another giant bite of ice cream, wincing as it hit her teeth. “Tell me everything.”
And the funny thing was, I wanted to. Had it really been over a year since someone had been really, truly interested in what was happening to me? At lunch we talked about school, about our futures, but we almost never talked about ourselves. How we felt about things. That was what I’d had with Becca and Isabel, until I’d stopped wanting to tell them what was really going on with me. Or they’d stopped wanting to listen. Either way.
“Well, this wasn’t my first panic attack,” I told Alex. I didn’t want to get into the specifics of the first one, but I told her there were some things that stressed me out and I’d started having these attacks, and then I told her about the PSAT.
“That sounds scary,” she said.
“Totally,” I agreed. “The thing is, there’s only one more SAT before college apps are due, and I just have to nail it. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I licked my ice cream, which was about two seconds away from dripping all over me. The perils of patience.
