Pushing Perfect(25)

First quarter ended in the beginning of November, and second quarter was already flying by. Before I knew it, Thanksgiving had arrived, and with it came our annual trip to visit my grandparents, who’d retired to Palm Springs. Mom always got a little stressed out around her parents—I didn’t get it just from my dad, even if that’s what she thought—but my parents managed to relax and not talk about work for the day, which was great.

I couldn’t stop them from talking about me, though. “Kara is number one in her class,” Mom told Grandma.

“For now,” I said.

“For good,” she said. “You’ve been working so hard, I can’t imagine Julia’s going to be able to do better.”

“Your mom was number one in her class,” Grandma said.

“Believe me, I know.”

“There’s no reason you can’t hold your spot. You’re smart and dedicated and eminently capable. You just need to keep doing what you’re doing.”

“No pressure,” I muttered.

“What?” Grandma asked.

But Mom heard me. “I’m not pressuring you, Kara. I just want you to live up to your potential. Besides, I thought you wanted to be valedictorian. I thought that was important to you.”

“It is,” I said. That was the problem, in a way. “Can we talk about something else? Or can I be excused?”

“Aren’t you going to thank your grandmother for dinner?”

“Thanks for dinner, Grandma.” I got up and walked around the table to give her a kiss. “Everything was delicious.”

“Hey, I was in charge of the turkey,” Grandpa said. “Don’t I get a little credit?” He held out his cheek and I kissed him too.

“Of course you do. The turkey was perfect, and I’m totally stuffed.”

“Kara, you should go for a swim,” Dad said. “The pool won’t be too crowded today.”

“That’s the plan,” I said. I did love the pool in my grandparents’ apartment complex. It was an infinity pool, the kind that didn’t look like it had an edge, as if it had emerged organically in the middle of the concrete. The pool here was the only place I felt comfortable swimming these days; my grandparents knew about my skin problem, though I’d never let them see it, and I didn’t know anyone here except some friends of theirs I’d met. For just a little while I could go without makeup and immerse myself in the cool water. And one or two days a year of chlorine couldn’t make my skin any worse than it already was.

The nice thing about swimming laps, especially when I was so out of practice, was that it kept me from being able to think too much. I had to use all my brainpower to make my limbs do what used to happen more naturally. I practiced butterfly and backstroke before settling into the more comfortable rhythm of freestyle, which came back to me faster than the other strokes.

Once I’d exhausted myself, I went back to the apartment, took a shower, and did a quick SCAM before anyone saw me. Even the idea of strangers seeing me without makeup was horrifying; I imagined I’d be able to see their revulsion, the looks on their faces reflecting just how I felt about myself.

I went into the living room, where Dad and Grandpa were watching football while Mom and Grandma cleaned up in the kitchen. “This is totally gendered behavior,” I said, plopping down next to Dad on the couch.

“Not anymore,” he said with a smile. “Your presence here subverts the dominant paradigm.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said, laughing. I was glad Dad had come with us; he’d been threatening to stay behind because he had so much to do at the office, but Mom had shut that down pretty fast. She was right, too—he was relaxed here, more so than I’d seen him in a long time. I was, too. Maybe it was the swimming; maybe it was just being away from school, from the constant feeling of pressure I felt every time I walked through the front door of the building. In a way, I dreaded going back.

But I did have to go back. Thanksgiving ended, with not much time left before my last chance at the SAT. As test day got closer and closer, I started getting more and more nervous. What if the pill didn’t work? What if the pill worked and I tanked the exam anyway? Sure, I’d done well on the practice tests I’d been taking for over a year, but those were just practice. They weren’t the real thing.

“You need to calm down,” Alex said.

We were sitting at lunch. I’d convinced Mom to give up on the whole macrobiotic-green-food-whatever-it-was plan but was starting to regret it as I picked at a plate of limp spaghetti. “If I can’t pull this off, my life is over,” I said.

“God, you’re more dramatic than I am,” Justin said. “You’re being ridiculous. Your life won’t be over. Your current plan might get disrupted a little, that’s all. A little disruption never killed anyone.”

“This would be way more than a little disruption,” I said.

“He’s right, though,” Raj said. “Did you know that British kids often don’t even go to university right away? They take a gap year and work, or travel. It gives them time to figure out what they really want.”

“Are you going to take one?” I asked.

He put his hand over his heart. “I’m an American now,” he said. “Or I will be at some point. It would be unpatriotic of me not to conform. But you—you’re a native. You can do whatever you like.”