The Best Possible Answer Read online

  Sammie moves the binoculars left. “Ooh. Mrs. Woodley is doing Pilates on her balcony.”

  Mrs. Woodley’s real name isn’t Mrs. Woodley. Sammie made up her name, just as she did the O’Briens’ and those of all the other people whose lives we spy on. We don’t know Mrs. Woodley’s real name, but she’s a fifty-something-year-old woman who lives alone in an apartment on the tenth floor. For years, Mrs. Woodley was also a pretty boring character—she mostly just watched TV and ate microwave dinners. But recently she seems to be undergoing a renaissance of sorts—we’ve caught her belly dancing, cooking full gourmet meals and then eating them alone, and now, doing Pilates on the balcony.

  I peek out the window. “She’s wearing her new purple leotard.”

  “And she changed her hair. She looks good as a brunette,” Sammie says. “Hey. She’s seeing someone.”

  “How do you know?”

  Sammie hands me the binoculars. “Look at the dining room table.”

  I adjust the focus. “Oh my God. A dozen roses? Who do you think sent them?”

  Sammie takes the binoculars from me. “A younger man. Most definitely. His name is Tad. Her personal trainer. He’s in his early thirties, is muscular as all hell, and is taken by the fact that he’s made her come alive.”

  “You’re a hopeless romantic.”

  Sammie smiles at me. “Forever and ever,” she says, and then she yells, “Go Mrs. Woodley!” She sort of screams this through the window, as though Mrs. Woodley could hear it. “She’s had a hard, lonely life. I’m glad she’s finally happy.”

  Sammie’s stories are all fairy tales that lead to happy endings. I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but for some reason, this story makes me feel a little worse.

  Around ten, Sammie texts her mom that she’s going to stay down here tonight. I place the binoculars on the sill, and she shuts off the lights. She crawls under the blanket next to me and plays with her phone a little before she falls asleep.

  I lie next to the window and stare out at the city, the flashing lights, the endless cars, the buildings. I think about the O’Briens, the Nut, Mrs. Woodley, each of them busy and empty and desperately wanting more.

  I wonder what they think when they look through our window.

  I wonder if they’ve seen the fights, the tears, the sudden disappearance of my father.

  I wonder what story it is that they tell about us.

  Habits of an Effective Test Taker #2

  Do not spend too much time on any one problem. Your anxiety might start building and then you’ll lose focus. It’s better just to move on.

  My mom makes the announcement over breakfast.

  “I have made up my mind. You are not going.” She says this as she spreads marmalade on her toast, all calm and quiet.

  It doesn’t fully process at first. Sammie’s gone back up to her apartment to get ready for school, and Mila’s still in her pajamas. The sun isn’t up yet. I haven’t poured sugar into my coffee. I haven’t even taken a sip.

  “Mama, what are you talking about?”

  She puts down her knife and looks at me. “It’s too expensive. We cannot afford it. And it is too much work for you. The doctors say you work too hard. You’ve made yourself sick.”

  “Are you talking about the Engineering Academy?” It’s just too early to fully comprehend the context of what my mom is saying.

  “Of course I am talking about the Engineering Academy. I have made my decision and you cannot argue with me. I’m not allowing you to go.” She picks up her mug to take a sip of her coffee. She’s still cool and calm and quiet.

  But I’m instantly awake.

  And my mind is anything but quiet.

  The anxiety rushes over me harder than caffeine. The sweat, the heart palpitations, the tears. “Mama, no,” I start to plead. “I’m going. I have to go.”

  “No.” She slams her coffee mug down on the table, but her voice is still steady.

  “But we need to talk to Dad. He won’t agree with you. He wants me to go—”

  “No. I will not pay for it, and neither will your father. I have already talked to him. We can get a refund, and it is done.”

  “What? You talked to Dad?” My dad’s had to go on business trips since I was little, but this is the longest he’s ever been away, and I don’t know what’s happening with him and my mom. “When?”

  “I’m sorry, Viviana. I spoke to him last night.”

  “Mama, please—”

  “You will stay home and rest this summer.”

  Mila gets excited. “I want to stay at home, too! I want to stay home with Vivi!” I know she would be perfectly happy to stay home from Camp Sportz, where she said the third and fourth graders were mean to her last summer, but that’s not what we had planned.

  “I can’t just sit around all summer doing nothing. It won’t look good on my college applications.”

  “You’re not going back,” my mom says. “End of discussion.”

  “Please, Vivi,” Mila begs. “Let us both stay home. We’ll have so much fun.”

  My mom shakes her head and says something to herself in Russian and then finally instructs Mila to get her bag together for school. After Mila’s left the room, my mom turns back to me. “It’s been too much, Viviana. Didn’t you hear anything the doctors said? They told you to slow down. You need to slow down.”

  She can’t do this to me. She can’t just strip away the only good thing I have.

  But she can.

  I can’t speak. I can’t breathe.

  I try to force out the words: “I don’t need to slow down. I don’t want to slow down. I can fix this—”

  She throws her hands up. “You haven’t been making good decisions. Not at all. So I will make the decision for you.” And then she half-whispers at me: “We need to keep a close eye on you. You are not living away at a camp for that long. We need to know we can trust you. Right now, you’re a bad role model for your little sister.”

  I know what this dig is about.

  I know it’s not about the fall or my academic stuff or even my health.

  I know it’s really about what I did with Dean.

  She’s caught me. And there’s nothing I can say.

  She’s made her decision.

  And so has my father, apparently.

  Without even talking to me.

  Habits of an Effective Test Taker #3

  Effective test takers are honest with themselves about how much effort they’re willing to put in to do well on the exam. It’s true that you can learn anything, but you have to be willing to commit to doing the work.

  My mom makes sure I’ve calmed down before she and Mila leave for school. She makes me promise not to study for the other AP exams I have next week. I lie and say that I won’t.

  After they leave, I text Sammie to tell her the news. She’s already on the bus on her way to school, but she texts back that she’s sorry and wishes she could do something for me.

  And then, I’m alone. I try to study for the AP English exam that’s next week, but I can’t. I try to read, to memorize the definitions of all the tropes and schemes, but it’s all a blur. So I stay true to my promise to my mom and I close the book. I head outside and sit on our balcony. We live on the sixteenth floor in a three-bedroom apartment that my parents rent. But that might be one of the other things we’ll lose if my father doesn’t come back and they decide to divorce. I might as well enjoy it before it’s all gone.

  I never do this. I never just sit. I lean my forehead against the iron railing and identify the patterns of the buses, cars, and people below me. The city below me wakes up. I start thinking about ant trails and power lines and circuitry connections, about the difference between a meandering labyrinth and a strategic maze. In the Design and Engineering Academy, we had to memorize the different patterns of nature, like the spirals and whorls that communicate regeneration and connectivity, and tessellating shapes that stack and pack and communicate stability and organiza
tion. We were instructed to use these patterns in our own designs, and the lessons are ingrained in me. My mind won’t turn off. I can’t just see the cab as a cab or the bus as a bus. Instead, I see how they move, how they’re designed, how they could be improved.

  My father would love this.

  If he were here.

  I wish that he were here.

  I try to just watch the clouds, but even they make me think about energy and movement and space.

  And physics exams.

  And failure.

  The Academy.

  My mom talked to my dad. They talked about me. They talked about what they want for me.

  I haven’t talked to my dad in three months. He won’t communicate with me to tell me why he left, why he’s not coming home. I can’t think of any other reason why he left so suddenly.

  I don’t know how to fix this.

  And then come the palpitations. They flutter inside my chest.

  It’s happening again. The panic. The worry. The dizzying nausea. The caving in.

  I go inside and crawl into my bed, try to breathe like they told me to at the hospital.

  Deep breaths. Belly breaths, they said.

  I try, but in my belly there’s this pit of regret and disgust and exhaustion, and breathing into it only makes it worse.

  I should call someone.

  I shouldn’t have been left alone.

  I close my eyes.

  I fall into the waves.

  I melt into the bed.

  I’m alone.

  * * *

  The Episode lasts for what feels like hours. When it finally calms down, I move to the couch and fall asleep to old episodes of The Big Bang Theory until it’s time to pick up Mila.

  She runs out of the gate toward me with a hand-drawn card made out of construction paper, and it’s taped shut with daisy and unicorn stickers. “Here’s your get-well card.” And then she places her hand on my forehead. “You still look sick. Can we play nurse today?”

  We get home, and I climb into bed so she can bring me a glass of milk and toast. She pulls out a doctor kit from when she was in preschool and listens to my heart with her plastic stethoscope.

  I open the get-well card she drew for me. It’s a picture of all of us—my mom, my dad, Mila, and me. We’re stick figures standing in front of a two-story house, smiling and holding hands.

  My heart drops. Ever since she was in kindergarten, when her teacher gave her an assignment to find out what her parents did for work, she’s asked our dad the same question: “When will you build us a house?” He always laughs and tries to explain that he doesn’t build houses, that he works on large skyscrapers in foreign countries, but it never appeases her. “But you could if you wanted to,” she always says. “You know how.”

  This house is nothing like where we live. It has a slanted roof, a picket fence, and a chimney. There’s a green yard with apple trees and purple flowers, and a rainbow arcs over our round and smiling heads. It’s nothing like Bennett Tower, where we actually live, with its cold white stone and black balconies, an ugly old skyscraper that just straight up out of the earth.

  Mila leans over my shoulder. “Sorry it’s not perfect.”

  “Mila, why do you say it’s not perfect?”

  “I wanted to make it right for you. But I had trouble with the arms.”

  “Mila, come on. I love it. And you know there’s no such thing as perfection.”

  She pauses for a moment. “I think you’re perfect. I think Mommy’s perfect.” She doesn’t mention our dad.

  My Academy teachers said that we’re asymmetrical beings seeking a perfect kind of symmetry that can never be attained. They showed us cracked vases as examples of the beauty of ordinary objects. No design is perfect, they said, but we still can’t help but try.

  I look at Mila’s drawing. My arms have been drawn and erased so many times, I look like the ghost of a Hindu god. “How about this?” I say. “I think that your picture is perfect because you made it.”

  “I guess,” she says.

  I get out of bed so I can pin it to the bulletin board above my desk, but then she grabs it from me and rips it in two.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll make you a new one tomorrow,” she says, crumpling the pieces as she runs.

  “But I like that one!” I chase after her down the hallway and try to pull it from her grasp, but when I finally release it from her hands, it’s completely destroyed.

  * * *

  The next day is Saturday, which means I basically get a four-day weekend, if you include the fabulous ER visit. But it also means that my mom’s home and is on guard to make sure that I do nothing but rest. I have to watch Wild Kratts with Mila while my mom studies at the dining room table. There she is, stressing about her classes, all the while watching over me like the hawk that Mila’s obsessed with on her program.

  At noon, I get a text from Sammie telling me to come upstairs, that she has news—“big, big news!”

  My mom lets me go so long as I promise “no reading, no studying.”

  It takes me thirty-eight seconds to reach Sammie’s apartment via the emergency stairwell. She’s standing at the door, jumping and smiling and clapping her hands.

  “What’s up?”

  “You’re going to work with me this summer!” She yells this, and her mom tells her to close the door, that she’s going to wake up the entire building.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I got you a job.”

  The building we live in is part of this microcosm of a neighborhood called Bennett Village, which isn’t really a village, not like the small town outside of Kiev where my mom grew up. Bennett Village is just a five-block stretch of land in the middle of Chicago where four identical high-rises are separated by overpriced town houses and courtyards that have more concrete than plant life. It was built fifty years ago and was part of this idyllic postwar desire to achieve the American dream, according to my dad, who knows these things. Our building towers over a private Olympic-size outdoor pool on the ground floor, where Sammie worked last summer. Even if you live in the village, you still have to pay a hefty fee to the condo association in order to use the pool.

  As it turns out, Mrs. Salazar is in with Mr. Bautista, the head of Bennett Village maintenance. Sammie’s Filipina, and she has a huge family who live all over Chicago, including Mr. Bautista, who’s her dad’s second cousin through marriage. He trusts Sammie’s mom, so he agreed to hire me without even a pretend interview.

  “My mom’s not going to approve,” I say. “She wants me to sit and do nothing.”

  “You will be doing nothing, though. You’ll be sitting around, with me, getting paid to just hang out!”

  Sammie is absolutely elated. She has extremely high hopes for the summer. “I’m telling you,” she says. “It will be awesome, the summer of our lives. Sun, water, hot guys, free days at the pool. What more could you want?”

  “To go to the Illinois Design and Engineering Summer Academy.”

  “I get that. But that’s not happening, obviously. And anyway, don’t you want to spend the summer with me?”

  I think about it. It is a tempting option. At least a job will look better on college applications than saying I stayed home all summer doing nothing. And it will still give me time to study for my SATs, which I need to retake in the fall. “Yes, of course I do,” I say. “But my mom’s not going to like it. She wants to keep a close eye on me.”

  “How is she going to keep an eye on you? She’s going to be in class.”

  “She’s going to force me to stay home.”

  “Let’s go talk to her.” Sammie convinces me to let her go back downstairs with me to tell my mom.

  My mom’s annoyed—first, that Sammie’s involving herself in my recovery, and, even worse, that it’s thwarting her plan to force me to rest, which is to say her plan to force me to stay at home so she can keep a close eye on me. “I don’t want her wearing h
erself out again.”

  “Mr. Bautista said we could share a lot of our shifts. We’ll mostly just be sitting around together. It’ll be great. And very relaxing for Vivi.”

  “So, total inertia?” I ask.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she says. Sammie’s good at many things—English, history, Drama Club, choir, and secret fashion blogging (1,428 IG followers, and if her mom knew, she’d kill her)—but one of her many things is not science. I’m not a science genius either, but I’ve absorbed enough to recite the basics.

  “Like in physics,” I say. “One definition of inertia is the tendency to remain at rest. To resist movement.”

  “Yes. Like that. I want Viviana to resist all movement. I want her to ‘remain at rest.’” My mom echoes me. “And to stop thinking so much.”

  “We will absolutely resist all movement,” Sammie says. “And we’ll be right downstairs, only fifteen floors away. We will sit at the front desk and do nothing but check IDs and listen to music.”

  “That is all? No lifeguarding? No swimming, running, all of that?”

  “No, Ms. Rabinovich. None of that.”

  “And you’ll be right downstairs?”

  “Yes. Right downstairs.”

  Mila whines from the couch. “No, please no! If Vivi goes to work, then that means I have to go to Camp Sportz.”

  I ignore Mila and offer my counterargument: “Instead of costing money,” I say, “I’ll actually be making money.” I know she likes a good argument, and I hope it works.

  “It will be summer job perfection, Ms. Rabinovich.”

  “I think this is a good compromise, Mama. I really want to do this.”

  My mom looks at me. “You think you’re okay to do this?”

  I think about what I thought was going to be my summer first—dorm life, late-night pizza, field trips, 3-D printers, fabrication labs, group presentations. Yes, it sounded fun, but I was doing it because it was something amazing to put on my college applications. This new possibility of a summer—blue skies, chlorine, whole days with Sammie—I have to admit that I actually feel some of the tension release from my shoulders. “Yes,” I say. “I think this could be really good for me.”