Pushing Perfect(79)

It sounded like they were in the same place I was with Becca. Trust was everything in friendship, I’d come to realize. And now it was time for me to accept that, for real.

“Can you give me a couple of minutes?” I asked. “I want to show you something.”

“I’ve got nowhere to be,” she said. “Take your time.”

The easiest way to do this was to take a shower. I put my hair in a bun so I didn’t have to wash it and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it. I scrubbed my face and body until I felt squeaky clean and then got out, toweled off, and threw on my clothes. Then I looked in the mirror.

Another day with no improvement whatsoever.

Be brave, Kara.

I walked out of the bathroom and back into my bedroom. Alex was still sitting at the desk, turned away from me. “Turn around,” I said.

She did.

I don’t know what I was expecting—some sort of horrified gasp, or for her to crack up, or even to pretend she wasn’t seeing what I knew she was seeing right now. But she didn’t do any of that. Instead, she looked at me. Just looked. But really looked, like she was seeing me for the first time.

“Okay,” she said.

“Is that all you’ve got? You realize I’m kind of baring my soul to you here.” My face turned red, and I knew she could see it.

“It’s really nice to see the real you,” she said. Which was pretty much the best thing she could have said, under the circumstances.

“Don’t even ask if I’ve ever considered going without makeup. It’s not going to happen. You know you’re the fourth person in the world to even see this.”

“The fourth?”

“Mom. Dad. My doctor. You.” I ticked them off on my fingers.

Alex pointed to me.

“What?”

“I’m the fifth person,” she said. “You’re not counting yourself.”

“Ugh, is that supposed to be some kind of metaphor?”

“No, I meant it literally. You didn’t count yourself as a person there.”

She was right. I hadn’t. But it was time to start.

Alex went home to start on some big cooking project with her dad. She invited me over for dinner, but Mom had left a note saying she and Dad wouldn’t be working too late and asking if I wanted to have a takeout-and-TV night. After everything that had gone on, that sounded kind of nice. I wished they’d been home to meet Alex, but there would be time for that. There would be time for a lot of things.

They came home earlier than I expected and brought Indian food. I remembered Raj’s skepticism about Indian food in America, how it was nothing like real Indian food. Maybe someday I’d have a chance to find out. Maybe even sooner than I expected.

“You look tired, honey,” Mom said as we dished the food onto paper plates. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s good,” I said. “Can I ask you guys something?”

“Of course,” Dad said.

We took our food into the living room, plates settled on the coffee table. “What would you think if I said I wanted to put off college for a year?”

“That’s kind of sudden,” Mom said. “Is that what you really want?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wanted to know if that was something we could talk about, someday.”

“We can talk about anything,” Dad said. “You know that.”

Not anything, I wanted to say, but maybe from now on that wouldn’t be the case. Maybe I’d have to commit to being honest with everyone. “It doesn’t have to be now,” I said. “I still have some things to figure out.”

“Well, we’re here whenever you want,” Mom said. “Now, let’s decide what to watch.”

“CSI reruns?” Dad asked.

“Cute boys solving crimes?” I said. “Sure.”

There was a marathon on cable, of course, so we watched episode after episode as we ate way too much food and sank deeper and deeper into the couch cushions. I closed my eyes for a while; I’d seen the show so many times, I could guess which cute boy would be solving the crime from just a few lines of dialogue. I didn’t need to see it to know what was going on.

A scene ended, and commercials started, loud and blaring as always. I hated how the commercials were always at such a higher volume than the shows—it was jarring every time. But this woman’s voice was so soothing, I almost didn’t mind hearing her talk about some random drug and its scary side effects.

Then I heard the tagline.

“A new life. With Novalert.”

I froze for a minute, as if the TV was speaking to me directly.

I thought about everything that had happened in the last few months, the last few years, and really, the last few days. How much things had changed. How much I’d changed, or at least how much I wanted to.

I didn’t yet know that Ms. Davenport wouldn’t show up for school on Monday, or ever again; that my parents would agree to let me spend a year traveling so I didn’t have to stress out so much about school; that Alex would get into MIT early and Raj would get into Boston University late, and I’d make them promise to show me around when I did finally decide to go out east to college, since I finally had a legitimate reason to be there; that Raj and I would spend the rest of senior year together; that my new group of friends would include the reconciled Alex and Justin but also Becca and Isabel; that we’d spend the rest of our time in high school making up for all the fun I didn’t have before.