Pushing Perfect Page 3

  “I’m just sorry she didn’t teach me how to cook. You can be sure I won’t make the same mistake with Alex. Hi, honey! Come over here and give me a hand.”

  I turned around to see that Alex had just come into the kitchen. “You don’t really want my help,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the fun you’re having.” She said it with a completely straight face, so it took me a second to realize she was kidding.

  But her dad understood right away and stuck his tongue out at her. She stuck hers out right back. “Stop screwing around and help me,” he said. This was obviously not the first time they’d done this bit.

  “What do you need?” She gave me a nod to acknowledge she knew I was there and then went to read the cookbook over her dad’s shoulder. “I thought you were just going to do pho. You can make that in your sleep.”

  “I got ambitious,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “Shaking beef with red rice . . . it’s been a while since you had company.”

  Now it was Alex’s turn to look embarrassed. “I told you, this is not a big deal!” She glanced over at me. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” It was all pretty amusing. “Can I help?”

  “No!” they both yelled at the same time.

  Alex’s mom laughed. “Let me get you something to drink, and then we can sit at the table and watch the show. It’s usually entertaining, if messy. Last time they made shaking beef, I had to renovate the kitchen afterward.”

  I wondered whether she was joking. It was a really nice kitchen, with shiny sea-green tile that looked like little bricks lining the walls behind enormous stainless steel appliances. Even if she was serious, though, it didn’t sound like she minded. Though she was wearing the Marbella uniform, she didn’t seem as high-strung as some of the other moms. Mine included.

  She handed me a glass of iced tea and we sat at the table and watched Alex and her dad prepare the food. They worked well together, only talking occasionally, trading ingredients and utensils back and forth like people who did this all the time, which they clearly did. I couldn’t even imagine having that kind of a routine with my dad; he was so caught up in work that even my earliest memories were of him on his cell phone. The only time we’d really spent alone together was when he helped me study—he was really good at English and all the nonmath stuff that I wasn’t so into—but that hadn’t happened in a long time.

  “Almost there,” Alex said.

  Once they were done, they stuck big spoons right in the pots and handed out bowls so we could all serve ourselves. Then we sat at the kitchen table and completely pigged out. I liked how casual it all was, but that they all ate together. In my house we mostly fended for ourselves or ate in front of the television; we only ate at the dining room table when my parents were having people over. Which happened almost never.

  “This food tastes even better than it smells,” I said, fighting the urge to talk with my mouth full so I could keep eating.

  “He’s a better cook than his mother was,” Mrs. Nguyen said. “And he knows it, too.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mr. Nguyen waved her off, but he looked pleased. “Cooking is just a hobby.”

  “A likely story,” Alex said. “I keep waiting for you to tell us you’re ditching work to open a restaurant.”

  “It’s a great idea. Your mom can quit her job and take care of the books, and you can quit school to waitress.”

  Mrs. Nguyen laughed. “You’re welcome to trade software for soft-shell crabs, but you’d have to carry me out of the office bound and gagged. And don’t even joke about Alex dropping out of school.”

  There it was—that Marbella-mom edge to her voice. I wasn’t the only one at this table with high-pressure parents, then.

  “Speaking of school, we should probably get to work,” Alex said.

  I thanked her parents for dinner and then followed Alex to her room. Just as I’d expected, she had the same enormous bedroom setup that Becca had, though she’d done something completely different with the space. Her bed was in the same place, but instead of a lounge area she had a huge desk that ran the length of the entire back wall and then turned and tracked half of the rest of the room. That was where the computer monitors were. Three of them: one in the center and two at forty-five-degree angles on either side. Also huge.

  “Are you an air traffic controller or something?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I guess you could say I’m a programmer.” She sat down in a big fancy-looking desk chair and motioned to a smaller chair next to it for me.

  I sat down. “What kind of programming do you do?”

  She gave me a little smirk, like I’d caught her doing something she wasn’t supposed to. “Well, maybe I exaggerated a little. I told my parents I needed all this stuff for programming. Can you keep a secret?”

  If only she knew. “Sure.”

  “I need the screens for poker. I play online. Like, a lot.”

  “Isn’t it illegal? I mean, not to sound like a goody-goody or anything . . .”

  She shrugged. “It’s, like, dubious. The playing part isn’t so much illegal, but the money part isn’t something I want people to find out about, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “You make money? You must be good.”

  “Yeah, I am,” she said, but she didn’t sound arrogant. Just proud. “But that’s also where the programming comes in. I wrote a bunch of tracking programs to help with my game, to run statistics, that sort of thing. It gives me a real advantage over some of the idiots who play online.”

  I was impressed. I’d thought she was just this random girl in some classes with me; it turned out she had this totally other secret life. My secrets weren’t nearly as interesting as hers. “Why do you need so many screens?”

  “Because I usually play about five or six games at a time. That’s the nice thing about being online—you don’t have to sit at just one table. Your avatar can be in lots of places at once.” She clicked and her screen lit up with the image of a poker table covered in felt; she clicked again and I saw an image of a boy’s face, with short dark hair.

  “That’s your avatar?”

  “That’s virtual me. I pretend I’m a boy so they’ll take me more seriously. Sad, but poker’s pretty sexist. It’s weirdly not as racist, though—there are a lot of famous players with the same last name as me, so being Alex Nguyen is actually kind of helpful. Not that I use my real name, but some people I play with a lot know it. And they know my uncle, too—he was a professional poker player, a really famous one. Taught me everything I know.”

  “When do you have time to do all this?

  “At night. I don’t need much sleep.”

  I knew that couldn’t be true; I remembered last year, when she used to fall asleep in class every day. “Don’t you need a lot of math for programming? Do you really need my help? It sounds like you could help me more than I could help you—I’m way behind in AP Statistics, too.” I’d loaded up my schedule with math electives, mostly to avoid having to take more science classes.

  “Well . . .” She got that look again, like I’d busted her, and then started talking really fast. “I mean, yeah, calculus isn’t my best subject, but I get by. It’s just . . . most of my friends are guys, and you and I have been in classes together forever but we’ve never hung out, and I only see you with those Brain Trust kids, and in class you seem smart and funny and they’re smart but not even a little bit funny, and they can’t be a whole lot of fun, and you seem like someone who should maybe be having more fun than you are, and I thought maybe we should be friends.”

  She took a deep breath. I stared at her.

  “Well, are you going to say something? Did I just totally humiliate myself? We can just study. No problem. I’ve got stats down cold. Took it sophomore year.”

  “No, wait,” I said. “You just talk way faster than I can think. You’re right.”

  “Right about which part?”

  “Right about all of it. I do
pretty much only hang out with Julia and those guys, and only at school, because they’re not fun.”

  “I’m totally fun. We’re going to start getting you out more.”

  I’d never met anyone so direct. It was kind of amazing. “That would be great,” I said. I wanted to tell her that I used to have friends, that it wasn’t always like this, but that wouldn’t change anything.

  “Oh, that is so excellent. I have such a good feeling about you, you know? And we’re like twins.” She pointed to our outfits, which were both variations on the hoodie/tank top/jeans/tennis shoes combo.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. One minute into our friendship was too early to state the obvious.

  “Oh, yeah, except for the Asian thing,” she said.

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Even better.

  Alex started her fast talking again. “Isn’t it weird, how hard it is to make new girlfriends? It’s like you hang out with the same people forever, and at a certain point that’s all there is. Boys are so much easier. You can just go right up to them and say whatever you want, and either they’ll be friends with you or they won’t. Girls are so much more complicated.”

  “Is it really that easy?” I asked. “With boys, I mean?”

  “It has been so far. Except for if they get a thing for you. Then it gets complicated. But I bet you know how to deal with that, pretty as you are. God, it’s so great to have someone to talk to about this stuff! We should tell each other everything!” She must have seen the look on my face. “Uh-oh. Is this not a good topic? Are you not into guys? Girls are good too. I mean, I’ve only made out with a couple, just to see if it was my thing, but . . .”

  I couldn’t help it—I started cracking up. She was so different than she came across at school. She wouldn’t be the kind of friend Becca had been, but that was okay. “I’m not into girls. It’s more that my experience with guys is kind of . . . limited.” I was flattered that she thought I was pretty enough to have dealt with guy issues before, but of course she had no idea what I really looked like. Then again, no one did.

  “Well, then, we’ve got some work to do. We’ll have to strategize. Let’s hang out next weekend.”

  “Saturday’s the SAT,” I said.

  “You didn’t take it yet? I got it out of the way at the end of last year,” she said. “Such a relief.”

  I didn’t feel like explaining about the whole panic attack thing. Besides, I’d studied my ass off and read a bunch of meditation books and eaten my mom’s brain food for weeks. I’d be okay this time. “I put it off,” I said. “I really need to do well.” That much was true, anyway. So much for telling each other everything, though.

  “Just come over after,” she said. “We can keep it low key. We’ll just hang out.”

  “That would be great.” If all went as planned, I’d be in a good mood, and it would be fun to talk about it with a friend. Now that we were friends.

  4.

  The morning of the SAT I stumbled out of bed bleary-eyed and in desperate need of coffee. I’d resolved to get a good night’s sleep to prepare, had even tried the stupid meditation techniques from the books I’d read, but nothing worked. I’d stayed up most of the night remembering that disastrous attempt at the PSAT, the one that had kept me from taking the test last year, when I should have. This time had to be different—if I didn’t manage to get through it, I only had one more shot.

  Mom was in the kitchen by the time I got downstairs, coffee brewed, a plate of what looked like green eggs at my seat. “Are we channeling Dr. Seuss today?” I asked.

  “Scrambled eggs blended with spinach, kale, spirulina, and hemp seeds,” Mom said, coming over and kissing my forehead. “That plus coffee should help you focus. I packed some baggies of almonds and blueberries for you to bring in with you. You’re going to be terrific today.”

  “Wow,” I said, picking at the eggs with my fork. They looked beyond disgusting. “Um, thank you?”

  “I tasted them first,” Mom said. “They’re not as bad as they look. I added lots of salt and pepper. Give it a shot.”

  I took a very, very small bite. They tasted . . . green. Which was fine. Other than that epic dinner at Alex’s, I’d eaten almost nothing but green food for a week in preparation for today. I was used to it. “Not bad,” I said, though I loaded up my coffee with cream and sugar, just to have something that tasted good. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s at work already.”

  “On a Saturday?” I shouldn’t have bothered asking; lately he’d been working every weekend, and most of the time Mom had too, now that she was working with him. Weekends were irrelevant now that he was starting a new company.

  “He’s stressed about the next round of funding,” Mom said.

  “Should he be?”

  “I don’t think it matters. He’d stress out either way. Just like you.”

  And here we’d been doing so well. She was right, though; Dad and I did have a lot in common, and we both had a tendency to stress. But Dad’s stress always seemed tied to work, while I managed to get myself anxious about everything. At first I’d thought it started with the skin, but then I thought about all the things I’d worried about before that—my friendships, school, my parents. Really, I worried about everything, all the time; the only thing that had ever helped me relax was swimming, and that was gone now.

  I’d tried to talk to my dad once about how he managed, hoping he’d have a suggestion that would help me, but he’d told me he just tried to convert his stress to energy and put the energy into work, which to me seemed kind of circular. “I did go to a doctor once,” he said. “He put me on some medication, but I had a really bad reaction to it.”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said.

  “You were really young. And that was a good thing, because it was a very scary time. I was hallucinating and stopped sleeping. It was awful for your mother. She still doesn’t like to think about it.”

  That did explain a lot, especially her emphatic “No!” when I’d asked her about beta blockers or Xanax. I knew lots of kids at school were taking them, but she wasn’t having it. The whole brain food thing was her way of trying to make up for it, which I appreciated.

  “When do you need to get going?” Mom asked, watching me pour myself another cup of coffee.

  “Not for almost an hour,” I said. “Can you pass me the crossword?” Better to keep my brain busy than to think about what was coming, I figured.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s here yet,” she said, not looking at me.

  “Mom. They drop the paper off in the middle of the night. You bring it in every day. The one time it wasn’t here when you woke up, you called them to complain. I know you have it, so where is it?” I didn’t mean to sound irritable, but I could hear the edge in my voice.

  She sighed. “Can you just skip the crossword for today? You can do it when you get home. You have enough to think about as it is.”

  “Which is exactly why I need it.” Why was she being so weird?

  My question was answered as soon as she pulled the paper out from under a stack of magazines and handed it over. Marbella was small enough that the newspaper was half the size of a normal paper like the San Francisco Chronicle. And we had so little crime that the front cover was usually devoted to something related to local politics, or high school sports. Or good news.

  JULIA JACKSON, NATIONAL MERIT SEMIFINALIST, WINS SCHOLARSHIP! the headline screamed at me.

  Oh, great.

  I skimmed the article. Julia had won the Silicon Valley Entrepreneurship Society’s first annual prize, a ten-thousand-dollar-per-year scholarship to the school of her choosing. The prize was reserved for students of “exceptional promise,” the article read. “‘It’s a new award, but it’s a tremendous honor,’ said an admissions officer at UC Berkeley, who wished to remain anonymous. ‘It’s certainly the kind of thing we’d take into account when choosing between students.’”

  It was like they’d written the article just to m
ess with my head.

  “I think I can see the steam coming out of your ears,” Mom said. “That’s why—”

  “—you didn’t want me to have the paper,” I said. “I get it. You were right. You’re right about everything.” I got up from the table and took my plate and cup over to the sink. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  “Honey, I don’t care about being right,” Mom said. “I won’t be here this afternoon, but I’ll see you when I get home from work. Call and tell us how it went?”

  Figures she’d go to work on a Saturday too. Bad enough when it was just Dad. “Yeah, I’ll call. I’m going out tonight anyway.”

  “Really? With who?” Mom sounded excited.

  “A new friend. No big deal.”

  “Well, you can tell me all about that too, when you get home. Don’t stay out too late.”

  “I won’t,” I said. When had I ever?

  Outside, the sun was shining and the sky was perfectly blue and free of clouds and it was like the day had been sent to mock me. I had a terrible feeling about how things would go; it would have been more appropriate for it to be raining. I got in my car and cracked an energy drink for the ride. It would probably be too much on top of the coffee, but I was too tired to do without it. By the time I got to school I was wired; I hoped that was the primary explanation for the jangling of my nerves.

  Ms. Davenport was the SAT proctor, so the test was in her classroom. That was a good sign in more ways than one—all my associations with that room were positive. I’d aced lots of tests there, and just seeing Ms. Davenport at the front of the room was comforting. Maybe my feeling of foreboding was wrong.

  Of course, the room was also full of seniors, since it was too early for even the most enterprising juniors to be taking their first shot at the test. But most of the kids in the AP classes I took had already taken it last year, so as I looked around the room, there were only a couple of really familiar faces.

  Becca and Isabel.

  Both of them were in their workout clothes, not much makeup, Isabel’s long blond hair in a high ponytail. Both of them had big Starbucks cups in front of them and matching energy bars. They must have met up beforehand and come together. I wondered whether they still had the same favorite drinks: skinny vanilla latte for Isabel, and matcha green tea for Becca. Isabel and I used to tease her for that one; it smelled terrible, and though Becca insisted it tasted better than it smelled, we both refused to try.