Twenty-six
Tovah
I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE the type of person to get senioritis, but I’ve been wrong about a lot this year. Second semester in student council means decorating prom posters and ordering crowns for prom royalty. I’m grateful for the mindless break from the rest of my classes.
I squeeze down on a tube of gold puffy paint as Lindsay and Emma Martinez, the student council president, chatter about prom.
“We’re definitely getting a limo,” Emma says.
“We’ll probably get a hotel room.” Lindsay blows on the paint, waiting for it to dry. “Not sure about a limo yet.”
I concentrate on the W at the end of PROM TIX ON SALE NOW, but I screw it up and dribble gold all over the poster. With Adi and Aba on the East Coast, I’ve felt off this whole week. The house is half-empty, and I’ve cooked dinner for Ima and me most nights, usually something easy like stir-fry or spaghetti. The hard part is sitting across from her at the table with two empty chairs next to us.
It makes me wonder how it’ll feel when she’s gone.
“That looks great,” says Ms. Greenwald as she circles the room. “Keep up the good work, you three.”
I’m sure Zack would find some way to make this poster cool. I slip my phone out of my pocket to text him a photo of my artistic masterpiece—Ms. Greenwald doesn’t care if we’re on our phones as long as the work gets done—but before I can, I see something: the e-mail I’ve been waiting months for.
I push myself to my feet so quickly my knees pop.
“Be right back,” I tell Lindsay and Emma, hoping they don’t notice the tremor in my voice. “Bathroom.”
Ms. Greenwald nods at me as I head out the door, teacher-speak for I trust you not to abuse your bathroom privileges.
My wobbly legs carry me down the hall to an empty bathroom. My fingers are so clumsy I miss my phone password a few times before I can read the e-mail.
Dear Tovah, it begins again. Like we’re on a first-name basis. Like we’re friends. The admissions committee has completed its review of your application, and we are so sorry to tell you that we are unable to offer you admission to Johns Hopkins.
The so is what gets me. Johns Hopkins is so sorry.
My phone lands on the linoleum with a soft thwick.
I press my hands against the porcelain sink. “So sorry,” I tell my reflection.
Then I feel it. Deep inside my chest cavity, next to my stomach, this twist that makes me bend over, my head between my arms as I stare down at the sink drain. At the swirls of hair trapped inside it. The makeup smeared on the sides.
My heart slams against my rib cage over and over and over like it’s trying to escape, and my vision blurs. I push the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, willing the tears not to start. I push so hard that when I take my hands away, there are spots in my vision. I’m shaking so badly, my breathing ragged.
They didn’t even wait-list me. They absolutely, positively, definitively do not want me.
My first-semester grades were flawless and my additional letters of recommendation emphasized how good a fit I’d be for Johns Hopkins. But that wasn’t enough. None of it was.
One, two, three, four deep breaths, the way Coach makes us do during track warm-ups sometimes.
Then I’m out the door, blinking back tears and sprinting down the hall and into the parking lot. I’ve never skipped before. Even though I pass a few teachers, no one stops me. It’s like I’ve accumulated all this good-kid cred by being Tovah Siegel these past four years, and no one cares that a second-semester senior is about to skip the last twenty minutes of seventh period.
Fleetingly, I wonder what else I’d be able to get away with.
Where are you?
I have your backpack.
ARE YOU OK???
On my way up to my room, I type back something about my period, and Lindsay replies with a frowny-face emoji.
“Tov?” It’s Ima, calling from downstairs. Faintly, her knitting needles clack-clack-clack. She knits slower than she used to. She has to give her fingers so many breaks. “Can you help me with something?”
I sigh and tromp down the stairs. “What is it?”
She places the needles next to her on the couch. “Are you all right, Tovah’le? You look a little . . . frizzled? Is that the right word?”
Ima’s frown is deep, the wrinkles like parentheses on each side of her mouth. Depression is hitting her harder now that she’s home all day, though Aba’s been trying to work from home one or two days a week so he can keep her company and be there if she needs anything. This week, though, she’s been all alone.
“You mean frazzled.” My correction’s much harsher than I intend it to be. “No, I’m fine. Just a long day. What do you need?” I hope she can’t hear the impatience in my voice.
“The yarn.” She picks up a skein of purple wool and crushes it in her hand. “There’s a knot, and I can’t”—tug—“seem”—tug—“to untie it.” She curses in Hebrew. Hurls the ball of yarn across the room. Rage clenches her teeth and fists, reddens her cheeks.
As calmly as I can, I retrieve the yarn. It takes me a couple minutes, but I finally undo the knot.
“Todah,” she says, the anger fading. Sometimes the mood swings last an instant, making her capable of going from zero to fury at any time. “Do you want to sit for a while? You can knit something for yourself, if you want. Remember, you tried it once when you were little? You made a few scarves.”
No. That was Adina. She taught Adina how to knit, but not me.
One day, will she be unable to tell us apart?
“I have to do something upstairs,” I tell her.
When I reach my room, I rummage through all my desk drawers, tossing trinkets and dull pencils and loose papers on the carpet. Finally I find it: Gray’s Anatomy, the classic anatomy textbook. Cliché, but anyone interested in medicine has to have a copy. Aba gave it to me when I returned home from the Johns Hopkins summer program. I stare at the glossy cover, the well-worn pages with intricate drawings of the human body.
Then I yank the cover by the corner and rip it off. Fuck you, Gray’s Anatomy.
I flip to a diagram of the four chambers of the heart, two atria, two ventricles. I tear it into halves. Into quarters. Into eighths. Broken heart, so sad.
The next page I land on is a grayscale rendering of the brain. I break apart the hemispheres. I shred the cerebellum, killing this person’s balance and coordination, occipital lobe, rendering this person blind, and temporal lobe, making them forget it ever happened.
Losing Johns Hopkins must be my punishment for testing negative. It’s how I can repay this cosmic debt I owe. It’s the universe telling me luck doesn’t exist, after all. I’m lucky and unlucky all at once.
It’s the only way I can rationalize it.
I sever heads. I amputate limbs. I castrate men. I turn it all into confetti, and then into dust. When I finish, there are more books. Old lab reports I saved because I got As. Endless certificates of achievement and participation. All of them, dust.
The Nirvana ticket is the only thing I can’t bear to destroy. Kurt Cobain didn’t betray me. Nirvana made me no promises they couldn’t keep. I put on “Lithium” and blast it, growling along off-key.
I am acting like Adina: ruled by my emotions. We haven’t ever been that different, after all.
Adina. I’ve tried so hard with her, even when it felt impossible to do so. Maybe it’s because of Adina, though, that I didn’t get in.
My life has been eighteen years of alphabet soup, AP and SAT and GPA meant to lead me to JHU. The best biology education, then the best medical school, best residency . . .
Since I decided this was my path, people have always told me I’d make such a good doctor, a skilled surgeon. Everyone said they knew, they knew I’d get in. How can I tell my parents? My teachers? Zack, who once said he liked how ambitious I am? Am I still ambitious if I’ve failed?
Paper fuzz covers my clothes and floor like a thin dusting of snow. My room’s a disaster zone, nothing left to take apart. Still, adrenaline surges through me, so back downstairs I go, taking the steps three at a time.
“I’m going for a run!” I shout to Ima before bolting outside.
I zip my hoodie all the way up and tie it under my chin. I forgot my special bra, but there’s no going back now. The air bites at my ears, turning them numb. The reason is because—
Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.
My legs carry me eleven miles north. Nearly a half marathon. Track started a few weeks ago, and I push myself harder than I ever do at practice. I run on sidewalks and through parks and parking lots. The sky darkens and the temperature drops, my clothes damp with perspiration. I have to keep going. Running used to be my time to think about the future without distraction, but today I understand why everyone uses it to clear their heads. The only thing in mine is the thump of my feet on cement, the pulse of my heart in my ears.
I don’t know what will happen if stop.
But I do stop at a gas station in Shoreline, when my feet are screaming and my throat is dry. My family doesn’t use disposable bottles because they’re bad for the environment, but right now nothing sounds better than crunching plastic in my fist as cold water streams down my throat.
After I pay, I head outside and chug it all in nearly one gulp. I suck the last drops of it, the sides of the bottle caving in.
And then it all comes back up.
I fall to the pavement, my knees smacking the cement. I heave again, my stomach twisted and my throat raw.
“Are you all right?” asks a woman filling up her hatchback. “Should I call an ambulance?”
I wipe my mouth with the sleeve of my hoodie. Slowly get to my feet. “I’m fine. Thanks.” Then I’m on my aching feet again, limping to the nearest bus stop a couple blocks away. It takes me three buses and almost two hours to get home.
Ima’s standing outside my inside-out room, gaping at the paper snowstorm I left behind.
“Tovah’le,” she says, voice full of confusion. Like she doesn’t know who I am anymore, and maybe I don’t either. “What did you do?”