worry,” Becca said. “Your freestyle is amazing, and we’ll keep working on your butterfly. We’ll be great. We just have to make sure we aren’t separated this summer. You have to sell it.”
“I will,” I said. “I promise.”
When I woke up the next morning, the horrible monster zit had multiplied by five. I asked my mother to go to the store and get me some benzoyl peroxide, like I’d seen advertised on TV. I didn’t ask her about staying with Becca; instead, I stayed in the bathroom and practiced putting makeup on by myself. It was a disaster.
The day after that, there were ten. They were hard and red and they hurt. I kept looking at myself in the mirror, hoping I was imagining them. But they didn’t go away. I got back in bed and stayed there all day, trying to avoid envisioning showing up for my first day of high school looking like this.
With every day came more angry red bumps, throbbing away under my skin. The benzoyl peroxide didn’t do anything. Becca called, and I told her I had a weird summer cold so I could avoid seeing her. I knew Becca probably wouldn’t think the zits were a big deal; she’d be sympathetic and supportive, like she always was. But behind her support would be that pity, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. And Isabel—Isabel wouldn’t want to hang out with a monster. Not if it would interfere with her social life. Becca would have to choose, and why would she choose me? She and Isabel had the history; all I had was swimming.
Maybe the monster face was just a summer thing. Or maybe Mom could help me find a doctor who could give me medicine to make the zits disappear. Or she could teach me enough about makeup that I could hide them myself. I just needed some time. I realized I wasn’t just avoiding asking Mom about staying with the Walkers; I’d decided I wasn’t going to ask at all.
Once I had so many red blotches on my face that my freckles had all but disappeared, I called Becca. “Mom said no,” I told her. “I tried as hard as I could.”
“That sucks,” she said, not bothering to hide her disappointment.
“I’m sure Isabel will be fine with it.”
“Don’t say that.” Becca knew I worried sometimes that Isabel just tolerated me. “She’ll miss you as much as I will. Have a great time, and make sure to find somewhere to practice. And I’ll make hair appointments for us when you get home.”
“Sounds great,” I said, though I couldn’t imagine cutting off all my hair with this face. I’d worry about that when the time came.
I got off the phone and told Mom I wanted to see a doctor before we went to Lake Tahoe. And that I wanted to go buy some makeup.
By the end of the summer I had a diagnosis: papulo-pustular acne, which basically meant that my whole face and neck were covered with zits. I had a dermatologist I would see every week who told me chlorine might have triggered the initial breakout and I should give some serious thought as to whether continuing to swim was a good idea. I didn’t get in the water all summer.
By the time school started, I had two new regimens: drugs and makeup. Every day I got up, took my pills, and counted the cysts to see if there were fewer than the day before, writing the numbers down in a notebook I kept in the bathroom. And then I slathered my face with foundation, along with a little eye shadow and lip gloss so the foundation didn’t look weird. Self-evaluation, cover-up, and makeup.
SCAM.
The Brain Trust was occupying its regular table when I came into the cafeteria with my brown bag lunch. As always, I had to walk by the drama table, where Isabel hung out with her theater friends, and the swim team table, where Becca sat. They didn’t look up when I passed them by. They never did.
Mom had made me spinach salad with quinoa and feta and a lemony dressing. Brain food. She’d done a ton of research into my skin condition and had made me try a million different diets that, just like everything else, did nothing. She’d amped up her game in anticipation of the SAT exam. The test was coming up in a little over a week, and though I’d studied so much I’d worn my Princeton Review guide to shreds, I was terrified to actually take it.
Ever since everything went down with Becca and Isabel, I’d buried myself in schoolwork, spending all my time writing papers and studying for tests and making sure I did as well as I possibly could. It was all I had left. I was still hiding my face with makeup, but sometimes it felt like I was hiding my whole self, too. Or that I didn’t have much self left to hide. By my count, it had been over a year since I’d talked to anyone about anything except school. Even at home, all my parents talked about was how well I was doing, how proud they were of my hard work; they didn’t seem concerned that I was always alone. Sure, Mom had asked about Becca and Isabel at first, but I’d mumbled something about people changing in high school and she’d let it go. I’d convinced myself that everything would be different if I went to the right college.
But I could only do that if I killed it on the SAT.
I’d always been good at taking tests, but the SAT was different. I don’t know if it was just the pressure of how much was riding on it, or if some secret part of me was convinced that standardized tests would somehow reveal how very not perfect I was, but I’d had a full-on panic attack when I took the PSAT—I hadn’t even finished it. I’d left the room before people could see me freaking out. I was so spooked by the thought of the SAT that I’d put it off until this year, rather than taking it as a junior like everyone else in my classes.
The Brain Trust was a group of kids I’d met in the Gifted and Talented Program back in grade school. We weren’t friends, exactly, but we had all our classes together, and we all shared the common goal of wanting to go to college on the East Coast. Harvard, specifically. Arthur Cho was a classical violinist whose parents didn’t want him to go to Juilliard because they thought it would limit his options; David Singer dreamed of being an entrepreneur like Mark Zuckerberg, even though I kept telling him what my parents told me, which was that Silicon Valley was full of Stanford grads who looked down on people from Harvard. Julia Jackson, my nemesis, was gunning for a particular science scholarship and wanted to go straight from undergrad to Harvard Med.
As for me, I just wanted to get as far away from Marbella as possible. I liked the idea of Harvard because it seemed like the kind of place I could start over, where everything might be different. No one would know me as Perfect Kara there; at a place like Harvard, it would be normal to love math and to care about academics more than anything else. It didn’t necessarily have to be Harvard; any good school out east would do. My last name was Winter and I’d only ever seen snow in Tahoe. I wanted red and orange leaves in the fall, tulips in spring, baking heat in summer. I wanted change.
“The National Merit Semifinalist list came out today,” Julia said, her voice all sugary. “Didn’t see your name on there.” Julia and I had been in classes together since kindergarten and teachers had been pitting us against each other the whole time. Handwriting competitions in first grade, speed-reading contests in second, multiplication table races in third—by then it had gotten old for me, but it never had for her. Now I was first in the class, but she was right on my heels, and I knew she’d made it her mission to pass me by.
“Nope,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “I assume congratulations are in order?”
Julia nodded, as did the other two. Great. So I was the only one. “Well, I’m really happy for you guys.” And I was,
