Pushing Perfect(14)

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.

Alex had powered through hers and was now chewing on the last bits of cone. “So is it more about fear or focus?”

“Does it matter? I’m kind of screwed either way.”

“Humor me,” she said. “I might have some ideas.”

I had to think about it. “I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s more about fear, but this time I got through that first bit, and then it turned into focus. It was like I forgot how to read—I finished the first section, math, but then when I got to reading comp it was like I couldn’t see, and then I couldn’t breathe, and then I was back to fear.”

Alex kicked at some of the gravel under the swing. “So, I don’t know if this is something you’d be into, but I kind of had some similar problems last year. It started out more as a focus thing—I was staying up all night playing poker, and I kept falling asleep in class. But then I was having trouble playing because my head just wasn’t in it, and it started affecting school. And when it was clear the focus was gone, the fear kicked in—I didn’t know if I’d ever get the focus back, and I was scared it was going to ruin everything. It was like this horrible cycle.”

“But you got over it? And don’t tell me it was like meditation or yoga—I’ve tried all that already. Total fail.”

“No, I’m not into any of that crap. I’m more into better living through chemistry.”

“I tried that,” I said. “Well, I didn’t actually try anything. But I asked my mom about getting some sort of medication. Adderall or Xanax or whatever.”

“That’s rookie stuff,” she said. “I found something better. It’s this new thing—it just got FDA approval, so not that many people know about it yet, but it’s all over Canada and Europe.”

I noticed she hadn’t said the word “drug.” “What does it do?”

“Everything! It’s kind of a miracle. It keeps me focused and steady, but not hyper or jittery, and I know people who’ve taken it for anxiety who said it makes them totally calm. It’s even helping my poker game—it’s like I can keep more information in my head all at once without getting distracted.”

“What’s it called?”

“Novalert. And it’s incredible.”

It sounded like it. “I guess I can ask Mom about it. I don’t think she’ll go for it, though. How’d you get your mom to let you take it? Did you just have the right doctor?”

Alex laughed. “Oh, my mom has no idea. They’re super antipoker—if she found out I was taking something because I was staying up too late playing, she’d kill me. I got it from some friends. I can hook you up if you want.”

I didn’t get why Alex’s parents were so antipoker if her uncle was a professional, but I was way more interested in Novalert. “Let me think about it,” I said. It did sound kind of like a miracle, and I really needed a miracle.