Pushing Perfect

6.

Alex was waiting for me outside the ice-cream place when I got there, and I could tell she desperately wanted to ask me what happened; she was practically twitching with curiosity. But to her credit she waited until we’d both gotten big waffle cones filled with ice cream and topped with sprinkles—sea-salt caramel for her; mint chip for me—and walked over to the park nearby. Fall in Silicon Valley was almost more like summer—it was in the low eighties, even though it was October—and the store had been filled with people with the same plan as ours. Thankfully, though, the park itself was quiet.

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.

“No problem. But listen, seriously, you won’t tell anyone, right? I just want to help.”

“Of course not. Who would I tell?”

She started swinging back and forth, kicking her legs higher and higher in the air. “I’m so glad we’re hanging out!” she yelled. “Swing with me!”

I hadn’t actually swung on a swing set since I was a little kid, but this one seemed sturdy enough. “Sure, why not?” I kicked my legs until it almost felt like swimming, the breeze on my face almost like water. And I felt a whole lot better. For real this time. Alex was right—she was fun, and I was beginning to see how hanging out with her might make me fun too.

“You didn’t call,” Mom said, as soon as I opened the front door. “I was worried. Did everything go okay?” She was in the living room, watching TV on the couch, but she muted it once I came in.

“Not even a little bit okay.” I flopped down in an armchair. I knew I should have called, probably even from school, but I’d wanted to put off the inevitable as long as possible. “It was awful.”

“Awful as in difficult, or awful as in …”

“I fainted,” I said. “That kind of awful.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” she said. “You should have called me at work. I would have come right away.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t call.”

Mom looked confused. “Why wouldn’t you want me there?”

How did she not understand? “It’s not that I didn’t want you there. I didn’t want me there. It was so humiliating. I can’t do this.”

“Of course you can,” she said. “You can do anything you—”

“—set your mind to. I know. You’ve always said that. And that eating organic food would help with the anxiety. Or meditating. Or whatever. I don’t buy it anymore. I can’t do this. I need help.”

Mom’s mouth tightened. “What kind of help are we talking about?”

I knew that look. This wasn’t going to go well. “Forget it.”

“No, tell me. Do you want to talk to someone? I’m sure we can find you a good therapist.”

“Talking won’t do anything,” I said. “It’s not enough. And I’ve talked to people already. I’ve talked to you, I’ve talked to Ms. Davenport, I’ve even talked to—” I was about to say Alex, but I didn’t want her to ask me the details of that conversation.

“Honey, I know what you want me to say. But your issues are mental, not medical. And you don’t want to get dependent on something that could affect your brain chemistry. You’re too smart for that.”

“Dad tried medication,” I reminded her.

“And he reacted terribly to it,” she reminded me in return. “I don’t want to see you go through that. I’ll try anything else you want. Just not that.”

“I don’t get it. The whole point of medication is to help people like me.”

“Not people like you,” she said. “People who really need it. You’re trivializing a very serious issue here.”

“How do you know I don’t really need it? Why are you so sure?”

“Because you’re just like your father,” she said. “You get anxious about some things, but you can work through them. Without drugs. I know you can.”

I couldn’t believe she was being so stubborn. Just because Dad and I were similar didn’t mean we had to handle everything the same way. Mom wasn’t a doctor; who was she to say that therapy was better than medication? And even if she was right, there was no way a therapist could fix me in time for the next test. I was running out of time. I felt the nausea starting as I contemplated trying to get through yet another SAT without doing anything differently. “I don’t know how you can be so sure about everything,” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “I can’t believe you’re willing to risk my whole future on your opinion. You know how important the SAT is. This is the second time I’ve tried to take one of these tests and haven’t even made it through the whole thing. I’ve done everything you suggested, and it’s only getting worse. I have to try something.”

“I’ll do some research,” she said. “I’ll look at other alternative stress relief techniques. We’ll try a different diet. We’ll get you a therapist. There are lots of things we can still look at. And if the therapist thinks you need medication, then maybe we can get you a referral to a psychiatrist.”

“There’s no time for that,” I said. The anxiety was subsiding, but I felt deflated. “Forget it.” I didn’t have the energy to fight with her anymore. She wasn’t going to change her mind.

But maybe I would change mine.

7.

I’d been worried about going to school after the whole SAT debacle, nervous about what people might say, whether I’d hear whispers as I walked down the hall about how Perfect Kara wasn’t so perfect after all, but I guess people had better things to do. If they were making fun of me, they were doing a good job of keeping it behind my back.

Which left me time to think about Novalert. I couldn’t get it out of my head—I was completely out of ideas about how to handle my final shot at the SATs, and though I hadn’t bought in to Mom’s whole fear of drugs, I was still nervous. I peppered Alex with questions during our study sessions at her house: Were there side effects? Did people get addicted? How expensive was it, exactly?

“You’re really making me work on this patience thing,” she said, but she answered every question I had, and everything she told me worked toward convincing me that trying it might be a good idea. The only idea. “You know that the more nervous and freaked out you seem about all this, the more it seems like you should try it, right?”

I saw her point. Sort of.

Still, I was having trouble making a decision. It was one thing to get a prescription from a doctor, an expert who’d decided something was really wrong, but it was a whole other thing to make that decision for myself, and to do something illegal. I’d never done anything like that before; when Isabel had gone through her stealing-lipstick-from-Walgreen’s phase, I’d refused to even go into the store with her, let alone participate. I didn’t get a rush from that kind of rebellion; I really was kind of a goody-goody, even if I didn’t want to admit it.

I admitted it to Alex, though. “Okay, so that’s not your idea of fun,” she said. “What is?”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people get off on doing the bad stuff—I think I’d still love poker even if it weren’t a little off the morality scale, but I do get a kick out of having a secret. Lots of people do.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” I said, but I had to look at my econ textbook while I said it. I hated lying, even though I basically did it every day.

“Everyone has secrets,” she said. “I’m not asking you to tell me yours; I’m just trying to figure out what makes you tick. Let me show you something.” She got up from her desk and walked to the other side of her bedroom. “Come on.”

I followed her over, where, like at Becca’s, there was an enormous closet next to a tiny bathroom. Alex opened the door and turned on the light, and I was shocked to see rows of shirts and pants and skirts and dresses, organized by color. “I’m so confused,” I said as she flipped through the clothes, pulling things out to show me. “Did you rob Forever 21 or something? Where do you even wear this stuff?” Then I looked closer and saw some of the labels. This wasn’t junk from the mall; all the clothes were designer. I ran my hands over one of the rows, stopping on a satin bandage dress in varying shades of silver, a crinkly black jumpsuit that felt soft as I rubbed it between my fingers, a minidress with a bright pattern that seemed to be made out of the same material as scuba gear. I couldn’t picture Alex in any of them.

“The beauty of the internet,” Alex said, holding a sequined sheath up to her body. “And I wear this stuff to parties, when I feel like it.”

The only parties I’d ever heard about were keggers in people’s backyards, and these outfits would be way out of place there. “It seems a little … fancy,” I said.

“When I go out, I like to do it up right. It’s kind of fun to dress up every once in a while. It’s kind of like I play a boy online when I play poker, and I play a girl at night when I go out.”

“And what are you during the day?”

“I’m just me,” she said. “And besides, who cares what we look like at school? School isn’t where the fun happens.”

“That much I know.” I was saving up my fun for college, where there would be more people like me, where it wasn’t nerdy to care about school, where boys weren’t the most important thing. Though they’d be important.

“You still haven’t told me what you do for fun, and I’m getting the feeling that that’s because either you’re not having any, or else whatever you think is fun is not even a little bit fun.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I like to do logic puzzles. They’re fun.”

“Logic puzzles? Like extra homework?”

“No, they’re like games.” I explained about the graphs and the clues and how they were basically like figuring out mysteries.

“You’re proving my point,” Alex said, pulling more dresses out of the closet, shaking her head, and throwing them on her bed. “You need to be around other people. And not at school. And not just me.” She picked out a dress and held it up against me and frowned. “You’re just too tall. Or I’m too short.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a party this weekend,” she said. “My friends have kind of an underground thing once a month, and we’re going. It’s what all the fancy clothes are for.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I remembered the last time I’d gone to a party. It hadn’t ended well.

“It’s the best idea! You need to blow off some steam. Maybe that’s why you’re so stressed out—you don’t have an outlet.”

“That’s not the problem,” I said.

“Then what is?”

I didn’t really have an answer to that. “I just … Being in situations like that makes me anxious.”

“Then the party is the answer,” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to give you a Novalert to try, just to relax you. If it works, the friend I get it from will be at the party, and I’ll make sure he has more for you.”

I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea.

“Don’t give me that look,” Alex said. “You know I’m right. We’ll have so much fun getting ready—I’ll find something that fits you so we can get all dressed up, and you can help me with my makeup, since you’re obviously way better at it than I am.”

I’d never seen Alex wear makeup. Her skin was perfect; giving her a makeover would be kind of fun. Like painting on a totally clean canvas. “You really think I should try this?”

“It worked for me. Loosened me up, too. Much easier to flirt when you’re not worried about whether it’ll work.”

“That might be going a little too far.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “So, are you in?”

Maybe Alex was right. Maybe I did need to relax. Besides, I’d already fainted in front of a bunch of people, so whatever happened at this party couldn’t be any worse than that. And it was all in service of the most important thing, which was the SAT. If I didn’t fix that problem, then I might as well trash any hope I ever had of getting into a good school and having a real future. When I thought about it like that, I knew I had no choice. I’d try anything.

“I’m in,” I said.

The night of the party I told Mom I was staying over at Alex’s, and I packed up a train case of makeup to take with me. I’d done the basic SCAM so she wouldn’t see what my blank canvas looked like, but I saved the rest of it to do at her house, once we’d decided what I would wear. It would have been easier just to pick something out of my own closet, but I didn’t have anything like Alex’s Closet of Wonders, and she’d made it clear that this party was going to be capital-F Fancy.

Alex had already started decimating her closet by the time I got to her house. Her bed was covered with dresses in nearly every color. “I have to find the perfect thing,” she said.

“For you or for me?”

“Both!” She picked up two dresses and held them out at her sides. “Me first. What do you think?”

One was a black cocktail dress, simple and beautifully cut. The other looked like a flapper dress from the twenties, short and spangly and adorable. “What are you going for?”

“Well, the plan was to be wingwoman for you. But I’ve got my eye on someone there too.”

“Who?”

“Let’s just call him the Prospect,” she said. “I like to have nicknames when I’m on a mission.”

“Gotcha,” I said. “Okay, the black one isn’t sexy enough. The other one’s cute, but it’s so short I think you’ll be pulling on it constantly, which is probably not what you want.”

“You’re so practical,” she said, but she sounded impressed. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“Do you mind if I—” I nodded at the dress pile on the bed. She gave me the okay and I started sorting through the mess, luxuriating in the fabrics: the soft-but-bristly feel of suede, the near-liquid sensation of running my hands through a dress made almost entirely out of fringe. I kind of wanted to just jump in the pile and roll around in it, everything felt so good. Finally I saw a silky red slip dress. It was short, but not as short as the flapper dress, and it had thin straps and a little swirl in the skirt. “What about this one?”

Alex squealed her approval. “Oh, I forgot about that one!”

Given how many dresses were on the bed, I could understand how. She shimmied out of her jeans and T-shirt before I had a chance to say I’d happily go into another room. Now that I’d seen her out-of-school wardrobe, I wasn’t surprised she was wearing a matching set of black lace lingerie. I, as usual, was wearing faded blue briefs and a bra I’d owned for years that probably needed replacing. Alex slid the dress over her head, and it fell down her body as if it had always wanted to be there. The spaghetti straps emphasized her thin shoulders, the color was flawless against her skin, and the cut of the dress showed just enough cleavage and created the illusion of hips, which she didn’t really have.

She slipped on a pair of shockingly high-heeled black shoes with bright red soles—I had no idea how she could walk in them—and twirled around. The skirt flared a bit, but not too much. “Yes?” she asked.

“Hell yes,” I said.

“Now you.” She kicked off the shoes and started going through the dresses again. “The height thing is going to be a problem. We might be better off with a skirt-shirt combo here—I’ve got some stretchy skirts that might do it.”

“I’m putting myself in your hands,” I said.

“I know! Isn’t it exciting?” She grabbed a black pencil skirt with a slit in the back and threw it at me. “Try this. It’s knee-length on me so it will be totally hot on you.”

I didn’t really want Alex seeing my old underwear, but she was so busy digging through the clothes for a top that I figured she probably wouldn’t notice. I pulled off my jeans as fast as I could and put on the skirt. It was tight, but the material had some stretch so it fit okay, and she was right about the length—it hit me just below midthigh.

Before I could even look in the mirror she’d tossed me a black camisole and a sheer silvery sweater. The camisole was Lycra, skintight and low-cut, and made it look like I actually had boobs, which was inaccurate, and the sweater was lightweight and kind of slinky and amazing.

Alex looked me up and down. It reminded me of Isabel, but without the judgment. “Yup. Go look.”

There was a full-length mirror hanging on the bathroom door. Alex had a good eye—the silver of the sweater made my gray eyes look almost silver too, an effect I could emphasize with good shadow, and the skirt made my legs seem super long. Except I was barefoot. “I didn’t bring the right shoes,” I said.

“Not a problem. Go in the closet and pick something. We’re about the same size, aren’t we?”

I wouldn’t have thought so, given the height difference, but she was right—if anything, her feet were a little bigger, so I rolled up some Kleenex in the toes of a pair of metallic platforms and practiced walking around. “You won’t let me fall over, right?”

“I’ve got you,” she said. “Nothing to worry about. Your turn now—make me gorgeous.” She pointed to the train case.

I’d never actually put makeup on another person before, but I figured it was just like putting it on myself, only mirrored. That turned out to be wrong—I knew how to keep my eyes still when putting on liner, for example, but with Alex I had to get more aggressive, using my thumb to hold her lid flat. I gave her a modified cat eye that emphasized the fabulous shape of her eyes. “Open,” I said, and checked my work, just like in calculus.

Perfect.

“Can I see?”

“Not yet. Close again.”

“You’re so bossy,” she said with admiration.

White liner on the bottom to make her eyes pop, gold powder in the corners for emphasis, several layers of mascara for her almost-nonexistent lashes, and the finishing touch: red lip stain, covered with gloss.

“All done?”

“All done. Stand up.” I stepped back to look at the full picture.

Nailed it. If I didn’t get into Harvard, maybe I could get a job at a MAC counter.

“You’re smiling! Show me!”

“Go look,” I said. “But in the full-length, with the shoes—it’s about the overall effect.”