The Best Possible Answer(3)

“Thanks, Mila,” I say. “Right now, I just want to sleep a little.”

“Okay,” she says, but then she sits down next to me and continues to pet my head. I wish she’d leave the room, let me be.

I don’t say anything.

Instead, I close my eyes and try not to cry.





Habits of an Effective Test Taker #1

Find a study buddy, someone you can trust, someone who can really push you to do your best work. Have that person test you on the material so that you uncover your weaknesses. Make sure you return the favor!


We get home, and I immediately text Sammie to come down. She lives above us on the seventeenth floor, and I’m feeling especially grateful that the only fully normal human being I know lives a mere forty seconds away via an emergency stairwell.

She lets herself into our apartment with her key. We lock my bedroom door so my mom can’t nosy her way in. “What happened to you? I’ve been texting you all day.”

We climb into my bed and lean our backs against the window that overlooks all of Chicago. I fill her in on my accident, how my mom had to leave her Constitutional Law class and how obviously annoyed she was about all of it. How my dad, away on what has become a six-month business trip, hasn’t even returned my mom’s calls to see if I’m okay. “Once again, I’ve proved that I can’t do anything right.”

“I’m sorry.” Sammie reaches over to me and gives me a hug.

“The doctors say I need therapy.”

Sammie shrugs. “I went to group counseling after my dad died. It helped to talk to someone. It’s just talking.”

That’s easy for her to say, but my mom is skeptical of things like therapy and counseling. When the ER doctor handed her a printed list of local psychologists along with my discharge papers, my mom visibly winced. “It’s like one hundred and fifty bucks a session,” I say. “So, I don’t know. I mean, we probably can’t afford it anyway.”

“Well, you can always talk to me.”

“At least I’ll be out of here in a few weeks.” When I was in the eighth grade, I announced that I wanted to be an engineer, like my dad, so he immediately signed me up for the Illinois State Design and Engineering Summer Academy. I spent the last two summers in a downtown day camp program learning about things like computer modeling, design thinking, data acquisition, and structural analysis. This summer, since I’m going into my senior year, I’m going to be staying on campus two hours away as part of the residential program.

Sammie pouts. “I’m going to miss you.”

I lean my head on her shoulder. “I’m going to miss you more,” I say, though the truth is, I’m looking forward to getting away from home.

My mom knocks on the door. I slink down onto my pillow, and Sammie unlocks the door to let her in. My mom approaches the bed and places her hand on my forehead, as if I were a child with a slight fever and something as simple as a small dose of Tylenol would make me feel better, as if she could make all the discomfort go away. “You need to go to sleep.”

“Mama, I’ve been sleeping all day.”

My mom frowns. “The doctors said you work too hard, that you’ve made yourself sick.”

“Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But, Viviana, I don’t like how you—”

“Mama, I’m fine.” I tell her that I don’t need anything, that I have Sammie to watch over me, that I will go to sleep if she’d just leave me be. Sammie nods, and finally my mom leaves.

Sammie crawls into bed next to me. “She’s pretty upset.”

“Let’s not talk about it anymore?”

“Whatever you want.”

I roll over and look out the window at the city outside. “Tell me a story?”

“Sure,” Sammie says, and reaches for the binoculars, but then she stalls before she picks them up. “You want me to braid your hair?”

“No thanks,” I say, and point to my bandage. “Headache.”

“Right,” she says, and then she picks up my binoculars to peer into other people’s apartments.

I lean my forehead against the cold glass. Bennett Tower is shaped so that a whole section of it juts out, which means that we can peek into the windows of people we don’t know. We’ve been doing our Binocular and Braiding Sessions since we were kids, spying on our neighbors, making up stories about them, all the while braiding each other’s hair. Of course, it started as a way for us to see if we could see anyone naked (we were ten)—and for sure, we’ve seen plenty. In fact, we’ve seen many things over the years: drunken brawls, late-night parties, and, yes, even sex. (It was under the covers, so I didn’t really learn anything beyond what I could see on TV, and it was way more tame than anything on the Internet.) But now it’s evolved into a bit of a pastime, with Sammie giving them all names and filling in intricate details about their lives. It’s just the right distraction.

Sammie lifts her binoculars two stories above us. “The O’Briens are eating pizza again.”

“Again?” The O’Briens have four little kids who do nothing but play video games and eat frozen food. “They’re so boring.”

She scans down a few floors. “The Nut’s painting another self-portrait.”