Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  “Tests are just about retained information. Information isn’t intelligence. You know that,” he says.

  “Well, yeah, but…”

  “You know who tests are good for?” he asks. “People who are good at taking tests. Those people have an unfair advantage, but if everyone were asked to write a play, you’d excel and they wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah…okay. Maybe,” I say.

  “School learning isn’t where you excel—”

  “Because I’m dumb.”

  “No, because you learn through experience, and that’s not the way we’re taught. The organizing principle behind our educational system is predicated upon one-dimensional thinking. Our system is based on teaching to the average person, not the individual. You’re an individual. I’m average.”

  “You are not average,” I tell him.

  “You know what I mean.” And, actually, I do.

  For the first time, here at the start of my senior year, I feel ready to really pay attention and try to be the person I’ve never been, the person I’ve been afraid I could never be, even with effort—the average person. But now, Eileen the Guidance Counselor is suddenly telling me, it’s too late. I’m always the last to figure things out. While I’ve been mooning over Paul and then Aram and hanging out with Taylor and doing free drugs and thinking I was cooler than everyone else by writing and performing plays, everyone else has been diligently studying, strategizing how their extracurricular choices might best represent them to the schools they desire. They go on college visits and weigh the pros and cons, talk things through with their parents, parents who probably help them with homework and essays, and know when they have tests coming up, unlike mine, who know nothing about my life in or outside of school. In my grade, I’m the one who makes a show of how school learning isn’t life learning and that if I already have the most important part covered, why bother with the other stuff? And now, when it’s too late, I finally start to understand why I should have bothered.

  The big plan that Eileen and my mom have made for me, to get around my terrible grades and test scores, is for me to take the SATs untimed. And, once again, I have to go get an IQ test to prove that I have a learning disability, because my mom is making me write my college essay about living with one. I don’t want to do this. Not the testing, and not the essay.

  I’m suddenly enraged. Out of nowhere, I start yelling that I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to get tested and I don’t want to write my essay on her dumb idea. Why do I have to constantly define myself according to these other ideas? I can barely get the words out; I am sobbing and hyperventilating, but my mother thinks I’m being difficult and bratty. I just want to be freed from this cage of identity other people made for me. I go to the roof and smoke cigarettes, sitting on the edge, dangling my legs over the side. I look down on the Houston Street playground and the lady on the corner. She looks so much more fragile from up here. I can see Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street. What did that cop do when he came up here to look for Etan Patz? What was he expecting to find, six-year-old Etan smoking his cares away? I wonder if Etan would have wanted to go to college. I wonder where he is now.

  I start chain-smoking. The more I think about it, the stupider and more insulting my mother’s plan feels. It suggests the only way I’ll get accepted into college is if the admissions office feels sorry for me. If they see that I have some hardship, they’ll take me in, like I’m some wounded, helpless bird, but I don’t want people to accept me for my weaknesses. That didn’t work when I tried it with Tatum, and I know it won’t work now. I want people to accept me because they are impressed with my abilities. If she thinks it’s fine to sell me as a victim to gain access, that means she really thinks I am a victim. Her way of dealing with hardship is not my way, but the problem is, I don’t have a way. Hers is all I know.

  Every time something hard happens, she swoops in to solve it, with phone calls, doctors, pills, but that is not helping me. In fact, I think it’s made me worse. Now I don’t know how to do anything, and I’m terrified of all the things I should know how to do by now, because she’s done them for me, or hired people to do them for me, my whole life. Any burden I’ve come up against, she’s tried to erase before I can feel its weight, which means I don’t know what to do when it comes. I don’t know the results of my own tests, or the name of whatever learning disability I have. Maybe I don’t even have a learning disability! Maybe I’m just crazy. Whatever the case, what I know is that who I am is being withheld from me. I know she probably did it out of love, but I no longer want someone to fix me. What I need is help naming, and facing, whatever is wrong with me.

  But despite my fury, my mother wins. Here I am again in the waiting room, waiting to be tested for the ten thousandth time, so I can be labeled worthy of a college’s pity. And really, what does “learning disabled” mean, anyway? Does learning differently automatically make me disabled? And if people can’t teach me in a way that’s easier for me to learn, then why aren’t they “teaching disabled”? Why is it all on me? Aram is right: It doesn’t actually make sense that schools expect the one way they teach to be the right way for all students. It’s like having only one option at a buffet table and telling those who are allergic to the option they have an eating disorder. Why can’t I be accepted as I am? Am I violating some code of humanity? I hate this waiting room, and I hate these tests, and the longer I wait, the more resentful I become.

  An uppity mother keeps looking nervously toward the door and jumps when it opens. A girl about my age walks out, past her mother, and leaves the office. I recognize her fury. The mother doesn’t follow her.

  “Did that go okay?” the mother asks the doctor.

  “Yes, Layla is lovely.”

  “Do you think she’ll get into college?”

  “Why don’t we talk about all this once we’ve completed testing.”

  “Of course, it’s just, she absolutely needs to get into college, and with her grades…you understand.”

  “Why don’t you phone me, and we’ll discuss this further,” Dr. Wallace says, looking over at me. “Amanda, I’ll be with you in one minute.”

  The mother grabs her things off her chair, pushing the door repeatedly before realizing she needs to pull. I hear her with her daughter in the hallway.

  “So, how was it? What did she ask you?”

  “I don’t remember. A lot of questions.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t remember? You were in there for an hour and a half. These tests are important.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Well, maybe that’s the problem,” the mother says.

  The elevator dings. “I’m not the problem,” the girl grumbles. “The system is the problem!”

  I can’t make out the rest, as the elevator slides them away. The system is the problem. That’s what Aram was talking about. Maybe I’ve been taking all the blame for a problem that’s not only mine to bear.

  Dr. Wallace retrieves me. I’m tired. Aram and I were out late at a concert and then stayed up talking and messing around. I’ve been awake for three hours. I slept for two, and obviously even the girl who just left is smarter than I am because she knows enough to talk about the system when I can’t even define “matchless” to Dr. Wallace, who is asking me vocabulary words.

  “Now I am going to ask you a series of questions, and I’d like you to answer as best you can.”

  “All right,” I say.

  “When is Washington’s birthday?”

  A cool breeze from inside my body. A surprise splash of heat across my face. “Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “His birthday?” I’m supposed to know this? “March twentieth,” I offer. It’s my own birthday.

  “Who wrote Hamlet?”

  “Shakespeare.”

  “How does yeast cause dough to rise?”

  “Yeast? I…I don’t know. I don’t cook. It swells?”

  “What is the population of the United States?�
��

  “I don’t know. Is it like a billion?”

  “Name three kinds of blood vessels.”

  This is just information. Information isn’t intelligence, so not knowing this information can’t mean a lack of intelligence.

  “Um…veins—”

  Why aren’t these tests questioned? If the tests stay the same, so will I, and the cycle will never end. Is this what the girl meant by the system?

  “Arteries?”

  “And the third?”

  “Aorta?”

  “How many senators are there in the United States Senate?”

  My entire life I’ve been trying to fit myself in. I know these tests are measuring me, trying to see how far from average I fall, but I don’t understand why it’s always on me to conform to some imagined ideal, some invisible normal. Why doesn’t the world ever try to conform itself to match me?

  “One hundred? I don’t know. Can you tell me?” I ask.

  No one ever tells me. They just ask and ask and ask, knowing all my answers are wrong without ever helping me to be right.

  * * *

  Aram and I have created a new level of love, and with it, a new level of grief. No one has ever felt this before. The least amount of happiness I feel with him is ecstasy. He is the organ I need most to survive.

  When we’re together, I feel sorry for everyone else, knowing their joy pales in comparison to ours. When he leaves for Stanford, all I can think is how lucky everyone else is, to be able to smile and laugh when I never will again, not when Aram is three thousand miles away. When I’m not sobbing, I’m catatonic. Everywhere I look I see his reflection, I feel his absence. My boyfriend is the ideal man, the man all men should be made from.

  We talk on the phone for hours and send each other packages and mixtapes. I tear his letters open hungrily, and tears spill on the words in the letters I write in return. I spend less time with Taylor, which Taylor doesn’t like, especially because all I do when we’re together is talk about Aram.

  “When will I meet this kid?” Taylor keeps asking me.

  “He was in my play at school. You met him,” I say.

  “I didn’t. I just saw him.”

  “Dunno. When he’s home for Christmas, I guess.”

  “We’ll have a party,” Taylor says. “Me and Gwen. You can invite him.”

  I can’t wait for Aram to meet Taylor and Gwen, who will impress on him how cool I am. So cool I have grown-ups for friends, grown-ups who are attractive and do drugs and buy us things.

  Meanwhile, at school, while I’ve been mooning about Aram, my friends have started getting accepted to colleges. I do not. I knew no admissions office was going to take a person whose main selling point is that she has a learning disability, and who uses it as an excuse for why she has done badly in school. The rejections pour in. The only school I care about is Hampshire, though, and of course that’s the one whose letter just doesn’t seem to arrive.

  Aram comes home for the holiday. At Taylor and Gwen’s party, I’m excited to show everyone off to one another. When we arrive, it’s smoky and crowded with acting kids but no other adults, the inverse of their normal parties. Gwen and Taylor are on the couch, their new baby, Hannah, sitting on Gwen’s lap while Taylor rolls a joint. I’m only her sister, but still, I’d never smoke anything with baby Nina nearby.

  “Aram, finally!” Taylor calls. “Hang on, pal, let me just get this thing off the ground.”

  I smile at Aram, who shoots me a confused look. I pull him over to the couch as Taylor lights the joint, stands, and shakes Aram’s hand.

  “Been looking forward to meeting you, man,” he says, handing him the joint. Aram accepts it without speaking, and he takes a tiny hit before handing it back to Taylor.

  “Where are your manners, kid? Give some to your girl.” Aram hands the joint to me. He seems to be on automatic. “So, Stanford, huh? You’re smart.”

  “Depends on your definition of ‘smart,’” Aram says.

  “Whoa, deep!” he says, elbowing Aram. Taylor and Aram are both acting strange.

  “Where are your friends?” Aram asks.

  My mouth drops.

  “Right here.” Taylor motions all around.

  “But these are kids,” Aram says.

  Taylor puts his arm around me. “She’s no kid. She’s my best friend.”

  Hearing him call me his best friend is disturbing, and I cringe. I’m embarrassed for him just then, in a way I never have been before. When I’m in my thirties, some high schooler is the last person I’d hope would be my best friend. Something is off about Taylor, and I’ve never been able to see it until right this second.

  “How old are you, man? Thirty? Thirty-five?”

  “Whoa. Easy, pal. If you have a problem with me, you’re not obligated to stay.”

  “Hadn’t planned on it,” Aram says and looks at me. “You ready?”

  “You want to leave?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Yeah, I want to leave,” he says. “You coming with me?”

  I look at Taylor, whose look tells me I’d better stay, and then back at Aram, whose look tells me my choice will have permanent consequences.

  “See you, Taylor. Thanks for the party.” I follow Aram out before Taylor can respond. On the street, he walks away quickly, his steps angry. I call to him. He doesn’t answer, but he’s heading toward my house. By the time we get there, he still hasn’t said a word to me, and he heads up to my bedroom, lies on my bed, and puts an arm over his eyes.

  “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “Those are the people you hang out with?”

  “Well, yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

  “That guy was rolling a joint next to his infant.” I look at him, not knowing what to say. “He was smoking pot with you,” Aram says.

  If Aram thinks smoking pot with me is bad, there’s no way I’m ever telling him what else we do. “Is that terrible?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking terrible. He’s your teacher. He’s supposed to be your role model, the ambassador of adulthood, and he thinks he’s your fucking best friend?”

  I don’t say anything, because I don’t know what to say. Everything that comes into my head sounds trite or hollow. I’ve been in over my head with Taylor for so long now, I can’t tell what’s wrong or right. Is Aram just too straight? Taylor’s cool. Paul is cool. Jonathan’s cool. The acting school kids are all cool. I’m cool. Aram is not cool, but he’s smart and wise, and I trust and love him, and now I don’t know what to say.

  “Is that how you spend your time when I’m not here?” he asks. “Is that who you spend all your time with?”

  “Well, sort of,” I say.

  Aram looks at me with disgust, the kind of expression I’ve lived in fear of seeing. One that says I’m worthless and shouldn’t exist.

  “So you smoke pot with him?” he asks.

  “Kind of, yeah.”

  “What else do you do?”

  “Nothing!” I say.

  “You do nothing? You sit there in silence?”

  “Well, no…”

  “Do you do drugs with him?” Aram asks.

  “Sort of?”

  “Sort of? What kind of an answer is ‘sort of’? What sort of drugs have you done with him?” He sits up now, angry. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming. He doesn’t think I’m cool for the reasons I think I’m cool. I’m embarrassed now by everything I’ve bragged about. When I don’t have an answer he stands up.

  “Did you have sex with him?” he asks.

  “NO! Of course not!” I yell. “Why are you standing up?”

  “I need to stand,” he says.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he says. Now I can’t breathe very well. I fold myself over and put my head in my knees until my face goes sweaty. “Has he made a pass at you?” he asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I mean, he’s said things to me, like, about my body and abou
t doing things to it.”

  “Doing what to it?” Aram asks. He glances out the window, in the direction of Taylor’s house, as though he’s going to go back there and beat him up.

  “Like how he can’t wait until I’m eighteen so he’ll be legal to fuck me,” I squeak out, and then bend over again and put my head back between my knees.

  “You ARE eighteen!” Aram shouts.

  “I know,” I say. “I haven’t told him.”

  “It’s wrong what he wants to do to you. You know that, right?”

  I nod my head yes.

  “And he hasn’t tried to do anything?”

  “Not yet,” I say. “I mean, he’s asked if I want him to show me how to give blow jobs. I say no every time.”

  “Do you want to fuck him?” Aram asks.

  “No! Aram, no! Not at all. I just…”

  “You just what?” Aram’s enraged. He grabs his jacket.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To fucking kill him.” I burst into tears. Aram sits down next to me and hugs me.

  “NO!” I say. “I’m ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of myself! I got myself into this situation. I did this.” He doesn’t say anything. “I was so young. I didn’t know what else to do but pretend all the things I didn’t like about my friendship with Taylor weren’t happening. And now I’m a different person. If I met him now, none of this would have happened.”

  “You have to decide what you want,” Aram says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it’s not right of me to say this, but I don’t want that guy in my life, and if he’s in your life, then he’s in mine, so I guess you need to decide which of us is more important.”

  I don’t know what to say. “I have to see him all the time. I have the play.”

  Aram is quiet for a bit. “Well, if you decide you want to be with me, then in three months, when the play is done, you need to end things with him, entirely. No seeing him, calling him, nothing. It’s got to be over. The guy is bad news. He doesn’t want the best for you; he wants what’s best for him. I think you know that. I am not saying ‘you can’t.’ You can. You can do whatever you want, but I get to choose who I want in my life. I want you, and I don’t want him.”