“Annabelle. Are you—” You can’t let her get the question out, no matter what you do. Another part of you begs her to say it. Just say it, so that she can help you. Sabrina always knows what to do.
“Later,” you say. “I can talk later.” Later later later. That same refrain that’s been running through your mind for weeks.
The doorbell sounds again. You want to stay and tell Sabrina everything. Want to throw yourself at her feet. But instead you look past her, your face burning. She grabs your wrist.
“Annabelle. This is serious.” Her perfume so intense close up,you feel the ache already collecting at your temples. You can’t risk it, can’t show up to the test not feeling good. You need this, need to concentrate. You’ve paid the fee, you’ve studied, and now it’s time to measure your worth.
You pull yourself free, with such force that Sabrina stumbles backward.
“Leave me alone!” you scream. Sabrina’s eyes go wide but you ignore her, grab your bag—number 2 pencils sharpened to fine points, a granola bar, scrap paper—and run for the door.
“How are youdoing?” Miss Hamilton asks brightly, as you walk to the car.
“Good,” you say. You turn back toward the house. There’s no one in the window but you can feel Sabrina’s eyes on you, that she was watching just a moment ago.
“Don’t be nervous. You’ve worked so hard. I’ve seen your workbooks. You’ve done all the practice tests. Now it’s time to trust yourself.”
Her car smells like peppermint. There’s a Kate Bush cassette case in the center console. You wonder what it is like to be an adult. To have the freedom and the means to put together a life, any life you want. Who would you be, given the choice? College seemed like a way of answering that question, once. But now it hurts to ask.
You’ve been assigneda test room at random and you file into the gym behind the proctor, an honors English teacher for the eleventh grade who has a habit of rubbing his thumb and pointer finger together, like he’s pinching something you can’t see. Rows of desks have been arranged in the middle of the floor and as you settle in there are some kids you recognize and others from neighboring schools who you don’t know, who are just here to take the test. It feels like a relief, to be around people who don’t know you, who haven’t heard the cheersthat the girls in homeroom continue to chant whenever they see you.Annabelle the prude, Sabrina the slut…
You think of Sabrina waiting for you back at home. About the questions in her face. Because as much as you can hide from yourself, you can’t hide it from your sister. And so you begin to count.
The proctor instructs all of you to break the seal on the first section of your test booklet. Faced with the first question—What is the closest synonym to the wordabysmal?—you make hatch marks on the edge of your test book. The last time you remember bleeding was in June. It’s November now, the halls of the school lined with Thanksgiving decorations. You make a small line for every month that has passed since then. Five tally marks. Now it’s no longer about counting back, but counting toward, in the direction of a future that makes your mind go black.
You let your pencil fall to your desk. It rolls off the ledge, across the freshly waxed basketball court. You recall standing on the free-throw line during gym class last year, your classmates pressed on either side of you, the gym teacher, Mr. Barrington, yelling.Shoot the damn ball, Riley! Now! Come on, Riley!You knew the only way out of the moment was to do what he told you. To go through the drill just as everyone else in class had. But still you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. To raise the ball and push it through the air. Mr. Barrington was yelling so hard by then a clot of spittle collected at the corner of his mouth.
In the end, the bell rang and saved you, broke the tension, broke everyone’s stares. And you realize that is what you have been waiting for now. For a bell to ring somewhere. To be rescued. But no one can help you. Not anymore.
You don’t answer any more questions, even though you have an extra pencil on your desk. You feel the tumbling in your stomach and a sudden thrust so insistent you have to bite your lip to keep from crying out. You watch the big circle of the clock on the wall, its twitchy second hand, and still you don’t know how much time passes before the proctor tells everyone to put their pencils down.
You wait untileveryone else filters out of the room, eyes on the free-throw line the whole time. Not meeting the proctor’s gaze when he collects your test booklet. When you feel his stare on you. “You’ll have another chance,” he says, softly, so softly, so that none of the other kids can hear. Tears burn behind your eyes. You are so desperate for kindness and yet when you receive it, it feels so much like pain.
Miss Hamilton told you to wait for her in the front of the school by the flagpole after the test let out. She’s there when you leave the school building, bright patches of color in her cheeks that make her look cheerful and young. Younger even, than you feel, when you think about all that she doesn’t know about you, all that’s right there that she can’t see. Her eyes catch on you and you know she is measuring something in you, the way she did after she told that Halloween story about Mother Leeds and the devil, the child screaming through the woods.
“Let’s get in the car, it’s freezing as hell out here!”
You can tell she’s used the wordhellto soften you, relax you, and maybe before it would have worked. This paling around, but now it only feels insulting. “We could stop at Wawa for some hot chocolates. What do you think?”
You shrug. You feel exhausted, as though you’ve expended a great amount of concentration, the way you sometimes would after working through one of the three-hour practice tests. Empty.
She waits to ask about it until after she’s pulled out of the parking lot. Technically, she doesn’t ask at all. Only says a single word. “So.”
You shake your head.
“I’m sure you didn’t do as badly as you think. You’re hard on yourself, Annabelle.”
“I screwed up,” you say. It feels surprisingly good to say it. To release a little bit of this huge, hidden feeling you’ve been holding on to.I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up.
“Well, even if that’s true, you’ll have another opportunity to take the test, once you get your scores back and you understand where your strengths are and where you need to do some more work. Ifyou really aren’t happy with your scores, we’ll get you registered for another test in March. You have time to figure it out.”
“I don’t think I do,” you say.
“Look. I’ve asked if you’re okay several times, and you blow me off every time. So now I’m not going to give you that chance. I know there’s some stuff at home, and that your dad isn’t there a lot. That your sister has dropped out.”
“What?”
It’s the first time you’ve heard it put that way. You have thought of it as a break. As Sabrina staying home, not going. All of it temporary. Something that can still be fixed.
