On the Road to Find Out (12 page)

It's hard not to be impressed by so much determination in such a small body.

I opened the wrapper, which had distinctive Walter-holes in it, broke off a small piece, and gave it to him. He charged across the room and into the closet. He went behind the door where I wouldn't be able to see him.

“So,” Jenni said. “Miles. You like him!” She smiled and I could see every single one of her small, perfect white teeth. Her tone of voice and that smile made me answer, “No I don't,” and revert back to myself at the age when you could call “Not it” by putting your finger on your nose.

Jenni sighed and said, “Okay, you don't like him. How about if I fill up the tub and you can tell me about how much you don't like him while I soak?”

Mom bought all these perfumed, milled, flowered, gold-flecked, herb-infused bath soaps and bath oils and bath gels and bottles of bubbly things and all-natural sponges and weird plastic scrubbing brushes and left them on the tub for me, she said, but they were really for Jenni, who delighted in using them.

Often when Jenni came over she'd take a soak and I'd sit on the toilet or prop myself against the wall, and we'd talk until she started raisining—which is what we call it when your skin turns into a shriveled piece of dried fruit from being in the bath for too long. Walter liked to investigate the bubbles, and once I let him go for a swim. He pooped—just three little ones—and Jenni banned him from the tub forever.

“Tell me,” she said, submerged in apricot-scented foam.

I had gotten stuck in my head thinking about Miles, when Jenni splashed me with water.

“So are you going to see him again?”

“I don't know,” I said. Because I didn't.

 

7

The reason Jenni made such a big deal about Miles is that I didn't have much history with boys. Or any history with boys.

This was bothersome, since I'd long ago decided I didn't want to go to Yale with all those sophisticated kids without ever having had any history beyond, of course, watching every episode of
Sex and the City—
which I referred to as “educational programming.”

My closest boy encounter happened in eighth grade, with Sam Malouf, now my chief academic rival, when Jenni forced me to go with her to a school dance.

She made me let her put makeup on me. She curled my hair and insisted I wear this flirty dress with boots. When she finished getting me ready, I hardly recognized myself and thought, secretly, I looked good.

Which was nothing compared to what my mom thought. You should have heard her go on and on about how Jenni had brought out my eyes, how she'd really made them pop.

“Oh goody,” I said. “My eyes are popping. Just what I always wanted.”

Twenty seconds after we arrived in the disco-ball-transformed gym, Jenni got asked to dance, and asked again to dance, and I stood around by myself pretending to read the posters that said
Kissing a Smoker Is like Licking an Ashtray
and
Go Wasps!
and
Wasp Football Schedule
tacked up on the bulletin board. I felt silly in the dress and had to stop myself from rubbing my eyes so I didn't turn into a panda.

And then, Sam Malouf asked me to dance.

I didn't know how to dance and didn't know how to say no, so I mumbled, “I guess,” and followed him to the edge of the dance floor. When the song started Sam said, “Oh, man, ‘Stairway to Heaven.' This is one of the best songs of all time. I can't believe they're playing it. They never play it.”

He put his arms around my waist, and I had mine draped over his shoulders, and it was awkward because I was a lot taller than him, and our whole fronts touched, and I could smell his hair product and body wash, and the song, first just a guitar and it felt like one of those coffeehouse soft rock–folk things, then an instrument that sounded like a recorder—the kind of recorder I messed around on when I was little—came in, and Sam pressed close against me and pressed his hands against my back, his breath hot on my neck as he mouthed the words to the song and I tried to figure out what the lyrics were and what they meant and I thought I could feel his heart against my stomach, going like mad, and for a minute I wondered what it would be like if he kissed me because all around us couples were dancing and you could tell some of them were kissing even though they weren't supposed to.

And then,
boing!
He had a woody and it was rubbing against my thigh. Thank god that song only starts out slow. When it got faster and people were rock-and-roll dancing I pulled away from him. Sam was embarrassed and I was embarrassed and we looked off in different directions for the forty-seven minutes it took for that song to be over and when it finally was I said, “Gotta go pee. Thanks.” And dashed off into the bathroom and sat and waited for Jenni for another hour or six.

A few weeks later, after I got Walter, I made the mistake of telling Sam Malouf about him. That was also the time it became clear I was better in math. Sam Malouf stopped being nice to me and started calling me Rat Girl.

And that was it. The first and last time I even got close to a boy.

Until I was running in the woods with Miles.

When my heart was beating through my chest and I couldn't catch my breath, and I was listening to him talk about running and about those races that went on for days and I could smell his soap and my sweat and the woods had that musty melty beginning-of-spring dampness, I thought about kissing him.

I could not stop thinking about kissing him.

 

8

Each day when I went for a run, I looked for Miles and Potato.

I replayed the conversations we'd had and tried to think of witty, sassy things I could have said. Maybe if I'd washed my hair, or at least taken a shower that morning, or put on makeup (or had my mother or Jenni put makeup on me) or worn something other than Dad's stupid sweatshirt and the tights that showed off my thunder thighs, he might have liked me.

As the days after the race passed, the moments of excitement disappeared, and instead I got stuck on my endless loop of rejectedness. I regretted being such a loud-mouth when I applied, telling everyone I would be going to Yale. Even though I knew the odds were against me, I never believed I wouldn't get in.

Walter-the-Man was right. I didn't have a good reason for choosing Yale, but still, being rejected sucked.

I had Googled the Theodore Roosevelt quote about failure that Walter-the-Man threw out at me. I printed it and hung it on my bathroom mirror, after making a minor correction for gender. It read:

It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how the strong person stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Each time I went into the bathroom, I reread that quote. My thoughts were kind of random. Like:

  1.  While blow-drying my hair one morning I realized I didn't know great enthusiasms and great devotions other than wishing that my hair was naturally straight like Jenni's.

  2.  It occurred to me I might turn out to be one of those timid souls who never know victory. This thought came when I popped a pimple on my nose that hurt like you would not believe. And then it kept bleeding.

  3.  I wondered if critics were worth anything. I mean, aren't book reviewers and movie columnists useful? Was President Roosevelt even right about that?

  4.  When I came back from a run covered with sweat, I looked at the quote, and then looked at my face in the mirror and wondered where I could find some dust, and maybe some blood to add to the “marred” effect.

  5.  As I flossed bits of spinach from my teeth on a night when Dad had made spanakopita for dinner I wondered where you could even find the right arena to enter. Did it require an admission ticket?

  6.  Mostly I thought about failure. There were so many ways to fail. And old Teddy Roosevelt was saying that the main one came from not trying. It made me think that maybe, like the smart rats who knew to avoid poison, I was neophobic, afraid to try new things. And that maybe, for me, this was not a good thing.

 

9

Even though it was only the beginning of March, and prom wasn't until May, Jenni had been obsessing about her dress. She came over to show me some sketches.

I said, “You've got two months. The
Project Runway
designers are lucky if they get two days.”

“While I appreciate your confidence in me, Al, you may have noticed I haven't been selected to compete on
Project Runway
.”

“Yet. Because you haven't applied. You are so much better than so many of them.”

“Tell me which of these you like.”

She put the black clothbound sketchbook Mom had gotten for her on the bed and flipped through the pages. Walter took that as an invitation: he likes to turn book pages. He put his nose underneath and pushed with his head.

“No!”
Jenni said, scaring him so he stood completely still.

“Walter,” I said, in the low warning voice Dad sometimes used with me.

“Sorry,” she said to him. “I need you not to do that.”

He looked apologetic.

Then she said to me, “He's a little skinny?” It was part statement and part question.

“No,” I said. “He's perfect, as always.”

I scooped him up and put him on my shoulder. He licked his hands and rubbed them over his face. He gave my neck a few licks and settled down to nest under my hair.

The first dress was a gown, close fitted, a jewel-tone blue, strapless, with a high slit up one leg. It was chic and elegant. It looked like a Carolina Herrera, a designer worn by Blake Lively and Amy Adams and Olivia Munn. I only know this because when Jenni is reading my mom's recycled
People
magazines, she points this stuff out to me.

The next few designs were more frilly than what I like—and than what looks good on Jenni, according to her. But she says it's fun to make something with lots of elements.

“Could use some editing,” I said. Even though I don't really get what that means, it's something Tim Gunn says a lot.

“You're right. Too much going on in these. Too many ideas.”

We came to the last one. It had a deep blue fitted bodice that went straight across, strapless. The bottom part was black, with a bow in the front that didn't look too Glinda-the-Good-Witch, and it had a bit of ruffles, well, not ruffles, more like folds—pleats, they're called pleats—and it flared out at the bottom.

“Jenni Jenni Jenni!” Sometimes, when I get excited, I repeat myself.

She nodded her head. “It's my favorite too. It has a touch of Georgina,” she said, referring to “the beautiful Georgina Chapman,” designer for Marchesa. It's true Georgina Chapman, one of the judges on
Project Runway All Stars
, is gorgeous, but it bugs me that Heidi Klum always uses that adjective to refer to this woman who is smart, and creative, and a shrewd businessperson.

Jenni scrutinized the sketch as if it had been done by someone else. She is able to separate herself from her work in a way that allows her to be self-critical. It's something that we notice many of the
Project Runway
designers can't do. They fall in love with their own ideas, get too attached, and don't see how much trouble they're getting into. It's worst when Tim Gunn points out something. When he says, “This worries me,” and furrows his brow and cocks his left arm, they should know they're headed for a crash. If he then says, “Carry on,” and walks away, and they keep doing what they were doing, we cringe.

I feel like I've learned a lot from
Project Runway
about the importance of being able to take criticism.

I also know I'm not so good at it.

The only person I showed my college-application essay to was Walter-the-Man. After I finished, I was proud of it. Of course, I'm usually proud of whatever I do right after I do it. I've learned I generally need to let something sit for a while to be able to see its flaws and weaknesses, but I was confident I was going to get into Yale. I dashed off the essay, thought it was great, and then, because I wanted praise and not feedback, I brought it down to Walter-the-Man one day when he was watching a football game and said, “Read this.”

He didn't look up from the TV screen.

“Halftime.”

So I sat and flipped through
The New Yorker
, noticing for the zillionth time that I never think the cartoons are funny, and listened to him scream—at the referees and at the players on his team and at the players on the other team and at the TV cameraman and at the ad people who made the commercials—for about seven hours.

After I had to listen to him recap the whole first half for me, I said, “Do I look like I care?”

He said, “No, but you do look like someone who wants a favor and, if that's the case, you might want to indulge the person from whom you want something.”

Then he read the essay.

When he finished, Walter-the-Man was quiet for a long time. He was almost never quiet. He put down the pages and looked at me.

“What I understand from Deborah is that the essay isn't an essential part of the application process. A bad essay won't keep you out if you've got a lot of other things going for you. But a good essay can help illuminate aspects that don't show up anywhere else. Deborah says most essays are bland and typical.”