3
Sam
Had anyone bothered to ask Samantha Prescott what she was doing with her sixteen-year-old life, she would have replied, matter-of-factly and with more than just a touch of bitterness, “Waiting.”
But waiting for what, she had no idea.
Ever since she was a child, she had understood—with a conviction that had sailed far beyond the realm of mere belief and landed finally upon the unassailable shores of hard, scientific fact—that every last scrap of popularity and power her classmates squabbled over, when measured on any meaningful scale whatsoever, added up to a sum total value of diddly-squat.
Every day she watched in both fascination and horror as the other sophomores scrabbled and spat their way through the merciless arena of high school drama, acting as though it were a matter of life and death which members of the slave-like masses came out on top for the day, as though the entire spectacle weren’t just going to repeat itself again tomorrow.
Really, why did they care? The boys were too childish to fight over. What dared to call itself fashion was hopelessly generic—no one had the guts to wear anything original in this boring, suburban quagmire. And what passed for ‘intelligent debate’ was just the parroted drivel of the previous generation, passed down from father to son and mother to daughter without any genuine reflection or even a token attempt at independent thought.
How had Sam arrived at this rather pessimistic view of the world? It had all started when she was only five years old. Her father had taken her to a ballet class, not because he had any desire to see his daughter grow into a debutante, but because she had very few friends her own age, and in the absurdly wealthy neighborhood they called home, a ballet class seemed the most logical place to find five-year-old girls.
Sam, however, had taken one look at the room full of leotard-and-tutu-clad miniature divas, twirling their pink-ribboned wands through the air in clumsy, frenetic swirls, turned to her father with her hands on her hips and announced, “Oh, hell no.”
Michael Prescott had swept the girl up in his arms immediately, making a beeline for the door and spluttering apologies to the town’s most prominent mothers as they stared in open disdain—any furtive, wistful hints of complicit defiance that might have stirred in one ladylike heart or another, yearning toward the sun with grasping tendrils of insurrection, all forlornly renounced under each other’s silent, disapproving gazes.
Then again, it might be traced back even farther still.
When Sam was only two, she had asked her mother to teach her how to read. Armed with safety scissors, construction paper, child-proof paste, a bouquet of markers, and more women’s magazines than any modern woman could reasonably be expected to consult in a lifetime, Sam’s mother had crafted stacks upon stacks of homemade flashcards under the child’s precise direction, every chosen phrase reflecting her daughter’s already eclectic interests, ranging from the somewhat predictable ‘good dog’ to the far more improbable ‘periwinkle raincoat.’
If Jennifer Prescott had expected her two-year-old daughter to ignore the mystical pull of the written alphabet and merely pore over the colorful illustrations for half of an afternoon before losing interest in the entire enterprise, she turned out to be sorely mistaken.
By the time young Samantha encountered the infamous troupe of kindergarten ballerinas, she was already reading The Wall Street Journal aloud every morning, perched on her father’s adoring (if all-too-transitory) knee. What she took from this exercise, among other things, was that the world seemed to be in serious danger a depressingly large part of the time and that she clearly had better things to do than learn to spin a pink-ribboned baton in ever more elegant circles.
As one might imagine, any hope she might have had of finding even an inkling of common ground with her own kind was doomed from the get-go.
And so it came to pass that although she was now sixteen years old, her general opinion of her peers had changed very little. It bothered her, feeling so alone within the swell of humanity that ebbed and flowed around her, but she tried not to dwell on it. She knew something important was coming down the road eventually—that her life was destined to be of greater significance than even she herself could possibly imagine—and she felt that somehow, deep in her gut, she would recognize this pivotal turn of events when it finally began to unfold.
She just didn’t know whether she would be eighteen or twenty-eight or eighty by the time it happened, and in the meantime, nothing she did felt as though it mattered.
She didn’t care about school. She certainly didn’t care about fitting in with the popular crowd. She didn’t even care much about other people’s feelings if she was being honest. But she did well in school anyway, because it was easy, and she tried not to provoke her classmates too badly—not because it seemed important in the grand scheme of things, but because it made her life that much less difficult at home.
Although both her parents had paid considerable attention to her pre-school education, everything changed once they shipped her off to the first grade, where they were not the least bit worried about her academic success. Ever since that fateful day, Sam’s parents had been unlikely to summon the time and energy to ‘deal with her’ unless they were upset about something.
Her father was a high-priced lawyer, commuting every day from their ocean-view mansion in New Jersey into ‘the city,’ by which Michael Prescott meant New York City, and more particularly Manhattan. He converted time into money for a living, and his daughter was not immune to these financial calculations. Her requests for his time were invariably weighed against the loss of potential income they represented, leading sadly to the conclusion that the family simply could not afford for him to pay her any significant attention.
This was why Sam tried to make do with what she had, rather than asking for anything special. She wore inexpensive jeans and even cheaper T-shirts to school. She had one pair of black motorcycle boots that she wore every single day. She did the two blue streaks near the front of her otherwise jet black hair herself, which she had learned to do from an online video—the Internet being, in her opinion, mankind’s greatest invention.
She certainly didn’t ask for a membership to the country club, or the yacht club, or the tennis club, or the beach club, or any other exclusive institution that the girls in her school district expected to attend as a matter of course.
She didn’t ask for these things because she didn’t want to wonder whether her father’s unwillingness to spend weekends at home might have anything to do with the added expense of raising a child. The only exceptions she made to this personal rule were a high-end laptop, a tablet, and a cell phone with a good data plan. If her father wasn’t going to spend time with her, he could at least provide her with something to do in all the spare hours he refused to fill with his company.
Not that her mother was any better.
Thanks to Michael Prescott’s significant income, Jennifer Prescott had no responsibilities in life beyond raising their only child, who at the age of sixteen was no longer, in Jennifer’s opinion, in need of her maternal services. Instead of asking Sam about her friends—of which she had none—or about her classes or her interests or her hopes and dreams and views of the world, Jennifer Prescott spent her time helping the ‘less fortunate,’ leaving Sam to her own devices as long as her grades were good and she stayed out of trouble.
In fact, it seemed to Sam as though she only ran into her mother by chance these days, as she had just now, both of them standing in their impossibly clean, uber-modern kitchen, which was, as usual, utterly devoid of any sign that anyone had ever cooked in it.
“I have an emergency meeting tonight at the women’s shelter.” Jennifer spoke these words to her daughter without looking up from the black calfskin handbag she was digging through with her perfectly manicured hands. “Where are my keys?”
This last bit she said to herself, which Sam couldn’t help but feel was more typical of their interactions than the alternative.
“You’re not seriously taking that bag to the homeless shelter, are you?” Sam settled onto one of the designer-selected bar stools at the high counter, staring at her mother across its glistening, Italian-marble surface.
Jennifer stopped short and looked up at Sam in confusion. “Why on Earth not?”
Sam raised one eyebrow and tilted her head as she made a show of looking her mother over from head to toe. Jennifer Prescott was, at all times, the very picture of elegance. All four of Sam’s great-grandparents on her mother’s side had been immigrants from China, and although Jennifer herself had been born in San Francisco and didn’t speak a word of Chinese, her lineage showed in the milky-smooth complexion that belied her age. Her thick, black hair was expertly coiffed, her make-up was artfully applied, and her long, gym-toned legs were shown off to maximum advantage by an Akris Punto leather and jersey miniskirt that would have been perfectly at home on a fashion model.
“Because it’s Chanel, Mom. You paid more for that bag than most of the women in that place have ever spent on a car.”
“I don’t appreciate your attitude, young lady.” She pronounced every syllable with irritated precision, but both her voice and her manner remained otherwise subdued. Even angry, Jennifer Prescott maintained an air of quiet sophistication. “We’ve donated a lot of money to that organization. Just because someone else is poor doesn’t mean we can’t have nice things.”
“I’m not saying you can’t have nice things. I’m saying you’re going to get yourself mugged.” Sam grabbed a handful of cherries out of a decorative bowl in the center of the counter and popped one into her mouth.
“Really, Sam. I put those out for guests. If you’re hungry, there are leftovers in the fridge from last night. Some brie, I think. And, of course, the duck.”
“Of course, the duck,” Sam said, rolling her eyes and getting up to spit the cherry pit directly into the trash. “Charity dinner last night, board meeting tonight… what’s tomorrow? Book club meeting on How to Live with a Wealthy Woman’s Guilt? If that isn’t a real book, you should write it, by the way.”
“Honestly, Sam, what would I possibly have to feel guilty about? Your father works hard for a living.”
Dad might, but you don’t, Sam thought to herself, but that was a line even Sam wasn’t willing to cross.
“I don’t know,” she said instead, “maybe the baby cow that died for your outfit?”
Jennifer’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but she replied without raising her voice in the slightest.
“I really don’t have time for this, Samantha.” She ended the conversation as abruptly as she had started it, dismissing her daughter by shutting the bag she had been digging through and sliding it brusquely over her shoulder as she turned toward the door.
“Of course, you don’t,” Sam muttered, but even if she had said it loudly enough to be heard over the sharp click of her mother’s heels, Jennifer Prescott was already out the door.
• • •
Ugh, what time is it?
5:17 a.m. The answer came to her mind unbidden, as it always did. Sam had an innate sense of time that defied all logic. Her alarm wasn’t set to go off for another hour and thirteen minutes, but she knew her father would be up by now, getting ready to leave for ‘the city.’ At least she could sit with him while he drank his coffee.
Stretching sleepily, she half-crawled and half-fell out of bed, grabbing one of the pairs of jeans that hung haphazardly about the room, yanking a sports bra on over her head, and choosing a T-shirt from the clean laundry she had ‘put away’ for her mother by dropping the entire pile in the middle of the floor. It was a fitted black tee with an adorable white kitten on the front—with miniature daggers lashed to its tiny claws and big white letters that said, “Don’t Even Try It.”
Sam grinned as she pulled it on. It was one of her favorites.
She padded downstairs in her bare feet to find her father in the kitchen, just as she had predicted. He was sitting at the black marble counter, already showered and shaved, reading the morning paper, his fresh cup of coffee resting in front of him, with a handful of cherries in his right hand. Sam grinned as he spit a cherry pit directly into the trash.
“Mom said those are for guests,” Sam warned him.
Her father rolled his eyes and slid the bowl toward his daughter, who grinned even wider and popped one into her own mouth.
“So what’s up, Buttercup? How goes the life of the twenty-first-century teenager?”
Sam shrugged. “Same old, same old.”
But Michael Prescott was not about to give up that easily.
“I’m sure you can think of one measly thing you can share with your father. It can be entirely insignificant. I’m not picky.”
It’s all insignificant, she thought, but she loved her moments with her father too much to ruin them.
“We’re taking some new test today,” she said instead, between cherry pits.
“Oh? On what?”
“It’s not on anything. Well, I mean, obviously it’s on something. But it’s not for a class. It’s some new standardized battery they’re trying out.”
“Really? What kind of battery?”
“No idea,” she replied, shrugging. “They’re just using us to test it. It won’t count this year.”
“So let me get this straight. You’re going to school to take a test to test a test that isn’t testing you on anything?”
“Pretty much. Welcome to my world.”
Her father chuckled. “You want out of it? Sounds like a ditch day, to me.”
Sam grinned. Michael Prescott looked at education the same way he viewed everything else: as a means to an end. As long as Sam was keeping her grades up, he saw no reason to adhere to the school’s attendance policy any more strictly than the law required.
She was about to leap at his offer when a sudden feeling in her gut brought her up short—a profound sense of… importance—and she paused, taking it in, her hand halfway to her mouth with another cherry.
“Sam? You OK?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” She placed the cherry back in the bowl. “It’s just…” She hesitated, hardly believing what she was about to say.
“Thanks, Dad, but I think I have to go to school today!”
• • •
By the time Sam reached the school’s broad, white-washed sidewalk, she was already regretting her decision. The strange feeling that something momentous was about to happen had vanished as soon as she had arrived, and now the hulking red-brick building loomed over her, promising nothing but heartache and boredom in approximately equal measure.
There were thirty-seven wide, shallow steps in the walkway, and she climbed every one with an increasing sense of disappointment.
One, two, three, four…
Where had that strange sense of urgency gone? It had been such a beautiful feeling, to think that for once in her life, something she was about to do might actually matter.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
Now she would be stuck in school all day, and for what? Why hadn’t she taken her father’s offer while she had the chance?
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty…
How could she have been so stupid? She had been in a good mood for what? Maybe five minutes? So, of course, she just had to start believing her life was actually important, that anything she did might actually mean something. It couldn’t possibly be that she was just happy to have her father’s attention for half a second, or that she was still loopy on sleep deprivation at 5:28 a.m.
Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…
Now, it felt as though nothing mattered again, like today was just another inconsequential day along the road to old age. Where was that sense of impending change? Where was that miraculous feeling she had had for just one fleeting moment, that her life was about to be full of adventure—that she was finally about to step into her destiny?
Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six…
Great, and, of course, as if she weren’t already miserable enough, Vinnie Esposito just had to be at the front door.
Thirty-seven.
“Mongol,” he said as she walked by.
“Peanut,” she replied, her foot crossing the threshold exactly as the first bell rang.
“Why the hell you call me ‘Peanut?’” Vinnie demanded, following her down the hallway. He hovered just inches behind her, as he always did, the very weight of his presence making her skin crawl.
Not that she was about to show it.
“I told you to Google it,” she snapped back.
Vinnie had called her ‘Mongol’ ever since the second grade, when a young and hopelessly misguided teacher had commented cheerfully—in front of the whole class, no less—that Sam had such an interesting look and was she, perhaps, Mongolian?
Sam had explained in tight-lipped embarrassment that her mother was Chinese and her father was, well, not—with Vinnie snickering maniacally in the back row throughout the entire affair. Sam had inherited her mother’s lush black hair, her father’s green eyes, and an exotic blend of facial features that was hard for the people of her New Jersey suburb to pin down. Vinnie had started calling her ‘Mongol’ after that, and unfortunately, the name had stuck.
In return, she called Vinnie ‘Peanut’ after the dog that had won the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in 2014, a fact she had not let on to anyone, least of all Vinnie.
“How about I just beat it out of you?” he suggested.
He grabbed her shoulder, holding her back long enough to get in front of her and planting one heavy arm against the wall, leaning his body in threateningly, trapping her in the hallway just a few feet from their homeroom.
“Just hit me,” she said, staring straight into his eyes. “I’ll fall down and scream bloody murder, and when Miss Anderson comes out, I’ll get you expelled. I’ll miss your ugly face, of course, but I’ll do my best to get by. Come to think of it, I might report you for bullying anyway, whether you hit me or not.”
“You got no proof, Mongol,” he sneered back.
“Hall camera behind you says otherwise, Peanut. Are you going to move, or should I go ahead and call Miss Anderson out here?”
Vinnie glanced over his shoulder at the security camera and then glared at her a moment longer anyway, but Sam stared him down without flinching until he grudgingly removed his arm and let her by.
The second bell rang just as she stepped through the homeroom door.
• • •
“Now remember, even though this doesn’t count toward your grades, you still need to do your best. Your scores will be matched against those of comparable districts. If the scores here are significantly lower, the entire district will have to take the test again.”
There were several groans throughout the room as Miss Anderson walked up and down the aisles, placing scratch paper on each student’s desk.
“That’s right,” she said, nodding. “So do your best—unless you want to spend another two hours of your lives on this little exercise next week.”
What difference does it make? Sam thought glumly, but she had no intention of tanking it. If she didn’t do well on any test, even one that didn’t count, someone was bound to call her parents for a conference on ‘why our perfect Samantha is behaving erratically.’ Those conversations never ended well for her.
Miss Anderson finished handing out paper and started around the room again, this time with a box of Number 2 pencils.
“The test has three sections, each thirty-six minutes long. The first two sections have seventy-two multiple-choice questions. The final section has thirty-six short answers.”
Seventy-two questions, thirty-six minutes. No problem. No reading comprehension, that’s for sure. Not at thirty seconds per question. Probably math or logic or science.
Sam let herself grin just a little. Those were her best subjects.
Miss Anderson gave out the last pencil and started around with test booklets and answer sheets.
“Fill out your name on your answer sheet as soon as you receive it. Do not turn the test over until it is time to begin.”
S, oval nineteen. S is for Samantha. S is for student. Sam composed an acronym for ‘Samantha’ as she filled in each letter: S-A-M-A-N-T-H-A. Student… aggravated, answering, arbitrary… Student Aces Maniacally Arbitrary Numbskull Test, Having Answers.
“You will have exactly thirty-six minutes to complete this section.” Miss Anderson returned to the front of the classroom, where she waited until the second hand of the clock was on the number twelve.
“You may begin.”
Sam turned her test over.
1. Which color is the best color?
A) red
B) yellow
C) blue
D) purple
E) orange
Sam glanced around as a low murmur pervaded the classroom. Everyone was either staring at the test in confusion or leaning surreptitiously across the aisle to see if a neighbor knew the answer. As if there were an answer. What color is the best color? What kind of question was that?
Miss Anderson ignored them all. She just sat at her desk, reading.
OK, fine. Let’s see. Red means danger, so that’s out. Yellow is for cowards… don’t eat yellow snow… yeah, not yellow. Blue is for sky… water… blue eyes… blue jeans… maybe blue? Purple is for royalty. Nothing wrong with that, but this is America—not exactly popular here. Maybe that’s a trick? And orange… sunrises, sunsets… I guess caution signs are kind of orange? Seriously, what a stupid question. Who wrote this test, anyway?
Sam didn’t see why blue would be better than orange, but it was probably more popular, so she chose it on the theory that most standardized tests were not especially inventive.
2. Which of the following best describes humanity?
A) exciting
B) well-intentioned
C) innovative
D) predictable
E) resourceful
Really? Sam stared at the question until she knew she was taking too long to answer. As ridiculous as it was, she had to pick one.
She couldn’t honestly say she found most people to be exciting, innovative, or resourceful. Some, sure, but certainly not most. That left ‘well-intentioned’ and ‘predictable.’ Sam figured she was supposed to choose ‘well-intentioned,’ thereby proving that she was a healthy, well-balanced teenager with a positive outlook on humanity.
But she just couldn’t bring herself to ignore ‘predictable.’
People got up at the same time every day, went to the same places, had the same arguments over and over… repeated the same opinions on the same topics of conversation. There was an insufferable rhythm buried within the mind of almost every human being Samantha Prescott had ever met—a numbing monotony that had been threatening to drag her into the depths of despair for years—and if someone was actually going to ask her about it, even if it was only on a stupid test, she was damn well going to be honest.
D. Predictable.
She filled in the answer meticulously, definitively, watching her pencil go around and around, blackening the oval with more than just a small sense of satisfaction before finally moving on.