On the Road to Find Out

by Rachel Toor

  She nodded her head. “It’s my favorite too. It has a touch of Georgina,” she said, referring to “the beautiful Georgina Chapman,” designer for Marchesa. It’s true Georgina Chapman, one of the judges on Project Runway All Stars, is gorgeous, but it bugs me that Heidi Klum always uses that adjective to refer to this woman who is smart, and creative, and a shrewd businessperson.

  Jenni scrutinized the sketch as if it had been done by someone else. She is able to separate herself from her work in a way that allows her to be self-critical. It’s something that we notice many of the Project Runway designers can’t do. They fall in love with their own ideas, get too attached, and don’t see how much trouble they’re getting into. It’s worst when Tim Gunn points out something. When he says, “This worries me,” and furrows his brow and cocks his left arm, they should know they’re headed for a crash. If he then says, “Carry on,” and walks away, and they keep doing what they were doing, we cringe.

  I feel like I’ve learned a lot from Project Runway about the importance of being able to take criticism.

  I also know I’m not so good at it.

  The only person I showed my college-application essay to was Walter-the-Man. After I finished, I was proud of it. Of course, I’m usually proud of whatever I do right after I do it. I’ve learned I generally need to let something sit for a while to be able to see its flaws and weaknesses, but I was confident I was going to get into Yale. I dashed off the essay, thought it was great, and then, because I wanted praise and not feedback, I brought it down to Walter-the-Man one day when he was watching a football game and said, “Read this.”

  He didn’t look up from the TV screen.

  “Halftime.”

  So I sat and flipped through The New Yorker, noticing for the zillionth time that I never think the cartoons are funny, and listened to him scream—at the referees and at the players on his team and at the players on the other team and at the TV cameraman and at the ad people who made the commercials—for about seven hours.

  After I had to listen to him recap the whole first half for me, I said, “Do I look like I care?”

  He said, “No, but you do look like someone who wants a favor and, if that’s the case, you might want to indulge the person from whom you want something.”

  Then he read the essay.

  When he finished, Walter-the-Man was quiet for a long time. He was almost never quiet. He put down the pages and looked at me.

  “What I understand from Deborah is that the essay isn’t an essential part of the application process. A bad essay won’t keep you out if you’ve got a lot of other things going for you. But a good essay can help illuminate aspects that don’t show up anywhere else. Deborah says most essays are bland and typical.”

  I waited for him to tell me how good it was and maybe to point out a typo or a missing word.

  He seemed uncomfortable. He said, “This essay is bland and typical. I don’t see enough of the Alice I know—and sometimes like—in it. It’s called a personal statement, but there’s nothing really and truly personal in it.”

  I sat for another minute, said, “Thank you for your opinion,” grabbed the paper back, and went up to my room.

  10

  Walter-the-Man acted like he had the inside scoop and was an expert on admissions. He tended to mansplain. That should be an SAT word. It means “to explain something with complete and utter confidence even if you don’t know what you’re talking about.” In fairness, it’s not only men who do this. I think sometimes I may be guilty of mansplaining.

  I don’t know why Walter-the-Man was so interested in the whole admissions thing—he didn’t have any kids and the only non-middle-aged person he knew was me. When I was younger, Mom kept saying we were going to need him “in a couple of years” and she’d tilt her head in my direction. I only half listened to the stories because they seemed so crazy.

  According to Deborah as channeled by Walter-the-Man, the numbers were stacked against the applicants and no one could count on getting in. She said although 80 percent of the kids could do the work if they were admitted, they accepted more like 20 percent. She said you could take the entire first-year class, wipe it out, and select one just as good from the pool of those who’d been rejected for the same class.

  She said all the kids looked alike. They all took the same courses, got the same grades and test scores. They were all at the top of their class, all National Merit Scholars; they all excelled and exhibited leadership in the same extracurricular activities, and they even wrote their essays on similar topics. The dead-grandma essay. The baseball = life riff.

  One of the things Deborah said, according to Walter-the-Man, was that top schools weren’t looking for well-rounded kids; they wanted a well-rounded class. This meant they were more inclined to take applicants who were “angular” or “well lopsided,” people who had gotten interested in something and pursued it to the nth degree.

  My application to Yale—and the applications I had submitted at the last minute to the other colleges that would no doubt REJECT me in April—probably made me look as typical as you could get. Except I was worse than typical. I lacked the expected laundry list of extracurricular activities. I had shown no leadership. I had founded no organizations. I had not written a novel or discovered a protein. I had not tried to broker a peace treaty between Israel and Palestine.

  And I wrote my essay about how much I hated The Catcher in the Rye. I thought it was ironic that Holden goes around calling everyone a phony when he’s the biggest phony of them all. He’s nice and polite to people but all he does is pass judgment on them. He’s a pissed-off little asshole. No one wants to hang out with someone who’s crabby all the time.

  I should know. These days I can’t even stand to be with myself.

  11

  It had been three weeks since the Red Dress Run, with no Miles/Potato sightings. So I decided to run along Quarrier toward downtown.

  Maybe it was the change in route, or maybe the wind was at my back, or maybe—could it be?—I was getting better, but OMG it felt effortless. My legs didn’t hurt and my breathing was normal and I was covering ground like I never had before. I was able to keep it up for a long time without slowing down, not like my short sprints where I’d run fast for a block and then have to pant bent over with my hands on my knees. I could keep up this pace for a while. It was amazing.

  After getting chased by a golden retriever for about two blocks—I didn’t feel threatened, since he was wagging his tail and carrying a rawhide bone—and having an old couple out walking tell me that I was a good girl for getting exercise, I ended up at Joan’s store. I figured I might take a look to see what kind of running equipment was available. It was after school, around 4:30 on Wednesday, and there weren’t many people around. When I walked in, the store was completely empty. The bell on the door jingled, but still, nothing.

  I waited for a few minutes and thought I’d open the door again, but then Joan popped out from behind a curtain carrying four boxes of shoes that rose above her head.

  I coughed, not wanting to scare her, and she dropped the boxes.

  “Sorry,” I said, and went to help her restack.

  “Alice! Great to see you! I didn’t hear you come in. I’ve been dealing with inventory that’s backing up because I lost—” And she stopped and looked at me.

  “You lost?” I let my question trail off, thinking about the conversation I’d overheard at the race and wondering what she was going to say next.

  “Hey,” she said, standing up straight and putting her hands on her tiny waist. I could see her thinking. “You got any spare time?”

  I lowered my head in a slow nod.

  “I lost one of my part-time employees—he decided to go live at altitude and train in Flagstaff, Arizona. He was only working a few hours a few days a week and I thought I’d be fine without him, but”—she swept an arm toward the boxes on the floor—“it turns out I was wrong. Interested in coming in Wednesday afternoons and Saturda
y mornings for a couple hours?”

  A job? In the summer I sometimes stopped in at my dad’s law office and helped out by filing papers and making copies and scanning materials. I hadn’t ever had a real job.

  “It’s not glamorous. Mostly unpacking merchandise, logging inventory, pricing things, restocking, and tidying up the store.” She looked at me apologetically and said, “Plus some vacuuming and taking out the trash.”

  I said, “Trash is something I can do.”

  “You’ll be able to pick up a lot of useful information. And you’ll get to know the local running community because, sooner or later, everyone comes into the store.”

  She stepped around the boxes, shoved the curtain aside, and showed me into the stockroom, which was stuffed with more boxes and clothes in plastic wrappers. “It’s a bit of a mess right now,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, and then I caught myself. “I mean, not yes it’s a mess,” though of course, it was. “Yes, I’d love to work here. I mean, I’ll have to ask my parents, but I’m sure it will be fine.”

  “Fabulous!” Joan said in her exclamation-pointed voice. “It will only be until June when my regulars come back from college. I promised the kids who’ve worked for me during high school they’ll always have a summer job here if they want it. But still, nothing will make you feel more like a runner than hanging around with other runners. That’s one of the things that separates us from the joggers. It’s not speed. It’s that—” and she pointed to the back wall of the store, which had all the pieces of paper with big block numbers on them.

  Then she looked at me with an impish smile and said, “Did you have fun with Miles at the Red Dress Run?”

  “Sure,” I said, and quickly pointed to the back wall to distract her from this sensitive territory. “So what’s up with that?”

  It worked. She turned and left the subject of Miles.

  “That’s my favorite part of the store. After we’d been open for a while, and people would come in and tell us about their races, I decided to create a place for them to share their achievements. I ask folks to bring in the bibs from their first race—or the race that made them start to think of themselves as runners, or the race where they ran their PR.”

  She must have seen my confusion because she said, “A PR is a personal record—the fastest time you’ve run in a given event. These are all from races customers have run. I encourage them to write their name on the number, to show everyone they’ve done it, they made it to the starting line. That’s what it’s all about as far as I’m concerned. Getting to the start. Once the gun goes off, experienced racers know anything can happen. You could have stomach problems. It can be crazy hot. Or start pouring rain. You might be getting a cold. Or getting over one. You could just have a bad day. Someone else could be having a great one. But if you can get yourself to the start line, you’ve made it. After that, there is no failure.”

  We had moved over to the wall, blanketed thick with these numbers. She said, “Some folks write down the words or phrases that helped get them through the race.”

  I saw lots of them:

  My sport is what yours does for punishment

  I did it!

  Do or Do Not. There is No Try

  Failure is not an option

  Tall and strong

  What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger

  Stay focused

  Kick butt

  Running is my happy hour

  Pain is temporary but pride is forever

  Never give up

  Hills are my friend

  Pain is what I have for breakfast

  Pain is weakness leaving the body

  Pain feels so much better than regret

  Pain now beer later

  Unbreakable

  This is exactly where I want to be

  Mitochondria, not hypochondria

  I’ll rest when I’m dead

  If it was easy everyone would do it

  A hero holds on one minute longer

  The body achieves what the mind believes

  When your legs give out, run with your heart

  Today is my day

  I think I can I think I can I think I can

  I will survive

  Dig deeper

  One mile at a time

  Fast feet

  Run like a girl

  Never back down

  I could do this all day long

  I run for chocolate

  I am a runner

  Believe

  Endure

  Flow

  Breathe

  Run

  Some of the numbers said, In memory of or In honor of and there were names. Mom. Dad. My uncle Tim. Aunt Mary. Grandma. Grandpa. Rusty. Jean. David. William. Michelle. Ricardo. There were lots and lots of numbers that said Ricardo.

  Joan saw me looking at them.

  “Ricardo, my late husband,” she said. “I’ll tell you about him sometime.”

  12

  Because I had run to the store, I had to run back home, and even though I was excited about my new job—we decided my first day would be Saturday morning—it was hard to start running again after standing around inside for so long. After my exultant (“triumphantly happy”) dash through downtown on the way there, I ended up having to switch off walking and running to get back and it took a long time.

  When I got home my father and Jenni were skittering around the kitchen. They had a zillion pots on the stove and Jenni wore cake batter on her cheek.

  Dad said, “Finally.”

  Jenni said, “Did you forget?”

  “Forget what?”

  “She forgot,” Jenni said to Dad, and he gave me a look that made me feel small. Dad doesn’t have to say much for me to know when I’ve disappointed him.

  “Your mom’s birthday? We’re making her favorite foods? You were supposed to pick up some bacon chocolate bars. That was your idea—what you thought you could contribute.”

  Crap. Double-triple-cherry-on-top crap. There had been a lot of discussion about what to do for my mother’s birthday. Jenni had a ton of ideas and she and Dad had been planning it for weeks. While they were having these conversations I wouldn’t really listen but would frequently point out that I had nothing to contribute.

  Jenni finally said I was being a pill and could I please at least pretend to be interested. Eventually I said since Mom liked bacon and chocolate, I would get her some of these fancy candy bars that combined them. And now I’d totally forgotten.

  I’d also forgotten to get her a gift.

  “Oops,” I said.

  Dad looked at me again for a minute, shook his head, and went back to his root vegetables. My mom loves this thing he makes that’s potatoes with parsnips and rutabagas mixed in. He bakes it with a crust of Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs on top. A mush of white vegetables with white cheese.

  Yummy.

  Not.

  “It’s okay,” said Jenni. “You can help me with the cake.”

  When Jenni and I first started watching the TV show Cake Boss, she was all about learning how to make fondant, the moldable icing the cake boss used like clay. We got the ingredients and she spent a lot of time messing around with them. You make it into a big sheet, and you can cut, roll, or shape it into whatever you want.

  For my birthday last year, she made a cake that looked like the bottom of Walter’s cage. It had a fondant replica of his sleeping hut, his food bowl, chunks of his pellets (made from ground nuts and honey, which he preferred to his real food), and a perfect likeness of the little dude himself. I brought him downstairs and allowed him to eat part of his fondant tail, which was:

  1. Cleaner than the real thing.

  2. Kind of gross to watch him eating something that looked so real.

  3. Delicious.

  “Gotta get Walter,” I said, and before Dad could turn around to look at me again, I ran upstairs. I heard Jenni calling after me but I pretended I didn’t.

  When I got to my room,
I stripped off my running clothes, opened Walter’s cage, and hopped into the shower. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten about my mother’s birthday because it was a big deal for her.

  She didn’t like getting older, but she did like a celebration and she loved it when my dad cooked.

  When I was a kid, I refused to eat my dad’s food. There’s usually too much going on. The potatoes are a perfect example. Why couldn’t he make plain old smashed potatoes like the ones they served in the school cafeteria? Why did he have to go and put in those other weird vegetables? I mean, have you seen a parsnip? It looks like a deformed albino carrot, pale and sickly.

  When I had a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese at Jenni’s house for the first time, I knew I’d found the foundation of my food pyramid. That’s what her father cooked for dinner nearly every night after her mom died, until Jenni learned to cook on her own. I envied her. Then I discovered Easy Mac—which Jenni says her dad says is too expensive—and that’s my go-to meal and snack. It drives Dad nuts. He offers to make me real mac and cheese, the kind with creamy béchamel goo and funky stinky Gruyère, and I respond by sticking a finger in my throat and making gagging noises. Dad doesn’t get too upset, but it bothers Mom. So she compensates by making a big deal of what a great cook he is and eating more than I know she wants. My dad measures how much you like his food by the quantity you eat.

  When I got out of the shower, Walter was waiting for me in the bathroom, doing laps around the toilet. He likes to lick my legs dry. He starts with the tops of my feet and works his way up my ankles. He has plenty of water in his cage, so it’s not like he’s thirsty.

  “Okay, that’s enough.” I dragged the towel in front of him and he chased it, and I slowed it down and he pounced and landed on it and I zoomed him around on the towel and said, “Sleigh ride!” He got bored with the game before I did and jumped off. Then he had a sneezing fit.

  I went into my closet—he followed right behind me—and put on my holey jeans and a sweatshirt that had a psycho bunny on it. I perched Walter on my shoulder and went back downstairs.

  When I came into the kitchen Jenni looked at me and said, “You’re going to change before dinner, right?” She knew how much Mom hated those Walter-enhanced jeans.