If I'm Being Honest(88)

The Friday before winter break, I come home and hurriedly reread the essay one final time before I submit it to Kowalski. Without giving myself time to overthink the decision, I open a new email and write to Andrew. I attach the document and invite him to read my essay and to go on a run this week.

Andrew’s a good guy. He’s not Petruchio. But the way he judged me, the way he threw that word around, I want him to understand what it really does.

I hope this will be the beginning of a more honest friendship between us. I have a feeling it will.

I’m closing my email inbox when one unread message appears in the window. Your Application to the University of Pennsylvania. I open the email, feeling an unnatural calm come over me, and read.

I got in.

I wait for the rush of relief, the explosion of triumph. They don’t come. I read the whole email once, then twice, then a third time, trying to imagine myself under UPenn’s stone arches and in wood-paneled lecture halls. I don’t know what I expected to feel in this moment, but it wasn’t nothing.

I wanted this. I wanted this. Didn’t I? I told myself I did. I’ve told myself for years I’d be happy if I could succeed in my father’s world, if I could earn a place close to him, if I could prove myself. Now that I’m finally accomplishing those things, I don’t feel happy. I feel empty.

It’s impossible to know whether I got in because my name is Bright and my dad’s an important donor. I know it helped, but I didn’t think I’d care. I thought I’d pounce on the opportunity no matter how or why. Instead, I feel a near-magnetic repulsion, the instinct to avoid even the association of our names that the UPenn rep made.

Everything I did, everything I planned was to chase my dad. Knowing I have my mom, though—knowing I no longer have to chase him—I can finally stop running.

I can finally explore who I want to be.

Not who I’m pretending to be. The thought hits me like a punch. I’ve prided myself on being honest with everyone. With cheerleaders dumped by idiot boyfriends. With Elle when she’s unreasonable, with Andrew when he’s obtuse. With Paige, with Brendan, with my mom.

The only person I haven’t been honest with is myself.

But now I have to be. It’s the hardest form of honesty, but it’s the most important. Not the endless criticisms my dad taught me.

Every Econ class I took pretending I cared what collateralized debt obligations and demand curves were. The Economist subscription I got from my dad. The conversation with UPenn’s rep not even two months ago—they were lies. They were careful concealments of who I really am, a protective pretense profound and impenetrable enough I forgot it was there.

If I’m being honest, I don’t want those things.

I close the email on my computer. Without thinking twice, I pull the UCLA Design and Media Arts brochure from under the notebook on my desk. Unfolding the brochure, I read the course descriptions, the curriculum, the opportunities for work with media and entertainment-industry companies in the city. I feel my heart quicken with a certain rightness. The feeling of finding what I didn’t know I wanted. I can imagine myself in the classes and the computer rooms pictured, gazing for inspiration out the floor-to-ceiling windows onto UCLA’s pine trees.

While I’m reading, Mom wanders into the doorway, holding a glass of what I recognize ruefully to be a juice cleanse—and in the other hand, a folded Eggo waffle.

I open my mouth to point out this incongruity. But I guess she catches the confused consternation of my expression, because she cuts me off. “I’m not doing a cleanse,” she says, continuing sheepishly, “I just like the taste of the juice.”

I close my mouth again. And because it’s such a blissfully honest confession, I laugh. Mom’s grin widens.

She’s passing my door when she doubles back, a hand on the frame. “Hey, um,” she begins. Her voice takes on an unfamiliar formality, even and hopeful. “Do you think you could design a website for me? A professional one, for acting?”

I drop the pamphlet. “Yes!” I don’t hide my excitement. “Of course!” I’ve been telling her on our runs about the websites I’ve designed. She didn’t really know I’d done websites before, which hurt, but, I reminded myself, she knows now. She’s trying now.

She flushes, looking pleased. “I figured I could go on a few auditions. Why not, right? In between teaching, of course.” She took a teaching job with the acting institute down the block. She got her first paycheck this week, and we celebrated with a dinner date Dad didn’t pay for.

I nod, beaming. “I’m proud of you, Mom,” I say, because honesty doesn’t have to hurt. “Dad was really wrong about you.”

“He’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” she says with a flippant shrug, but her eyes are glittering when she leaves the doorway.

I’m about to keep reading the UCLA pamphlet when I remember the box.

The box of my mother’s costumes that I’ve hidden under my bed to keep her from throwing it out. I put the pamphlet down and crouch on the carpet, pulling the beaten cardboard box in front of me.

I heft the costumes into the hallway, my eyes catching on the jacket from my Rocky outfit folded on top. Placing the box in front of her bedroom door, I walk back to my room, remembering the wild magic of the night. The rituals, kissing Paige. Grant and Hannah, who post utterly adorable photos from Utah, where they’re spending winter break with Hannah’s family. Brendan in his ridiculous, wonderful “costume,” and—