Pushing Perfect. Michelle Falkoff

rookie stuff,” she said. “I found something better. It’s this new thing—it just got FDA approval, so not that many people know about it yet, but it’s all over Canada and Europe.”

      I noticed she hadn’t said the word “drug.” “What does it do?”

      “Everything! It’s kind of a miracle. It keeps me focused and steady, but not hyper or jittery, and I know people who’ve taken it for anxiety who said it makes them totally calm. It’s even helping my poker game—it’s like I can keep more information in my head all at once without getting distracted.”

      “What’s it called?”

      “Novalert. And it’s incredible.”

      It sounded like it. “I guess I can ask Mom about it. I don’t think she’ll go for it, though. How’d you get your mom to let you take it? Did you just have the right doctor?”

      Alex laughed. “Oh, my mom has no idea. They’re super antipoker—if she found out I was taking something because I was staying up too late playing, she’d kill me. I got it from some friends. I can hook you up if you want.”

      I didn’t get why Alex’s parents were so antipoker if her uncle was a professional, but I was way more interested in Novalert. “Let me think about it,” I said. It did sound kind of like a miracle, and I really needed a miracle.

      “No problem. But listen, seriously, you won’t tell anyone, right? I just want to help.”

      “Of course not. Who would I tell?”

      She started swinging back and forth, kicking her legs higher and higher in the air. “I’m so glad we’re hanging out!” she yelled. “Swing with me!”

      I hadn’t actually swung on a swing set since I was a little kid, but this one seemed sturdy enough. “Sure, why not?” I kicked my legs until it almost felt like swimming, the breeze on my face almost like water. And I felt a whole lot better. For real this time. Alex was right—she was fun, and I was beginning to see how hanging out with her might make me fun too.

      “You didn’t call,” Mom said, as soon as I opened the front door. “I was worried. Did everything go okay?” She was in the living room, watching TV on the couch, but she muted it once I came in.

      “Not even a little bit okay.” I flopped down in an armchair. I knew I should have called, probably even from school, but I’d wanted to put off the inevitable as long as possible. “It was awful.”

      “Awful as in difficult, or awful as in …”

      “I fainted,” I said. “That kind of awful.”

      “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” she said. “You should have called me at work. I would have come right away.”

      “I know. That’s why I didn’t call.”

      Mom looked confused. “Why wouldn’t you want me there?”

      How did she not understand? “It’s not that I didn’t want you there. I didn’t want me there. It was so humiliating. I can’t do this.”

      “Of course you can,” she said. “You can do anything you—”

      “—set your mind to. I know. You’ve always said that. And that eating organic food would help with the anxiety. Or meditating. Or whatever. I don’t buy it anymore. I can’t do this. I need help.”

      Mom’s mouth tightened. “What kind of help are we talking about?”

      I knew that look. This wasn’t going to go well. “Forget it.”

      “No, tell me. Do you want to talk to someone? I’m sure we can find you a good therapist.”

      “Talking won’t do anything,” I said. “It’s not enough. And I’ve talked to people already. I’ve talked to you, I’ve talked to Ms. Davenport, I’ve even talked to—” I was about to say Alex, but I didn’t want her to ask me the details of that conversation.

      “Honey, I know what you want me to say. But your issues are mental, not medical. And you don’t want to get dependent on something that could affect your brain chemistry. You’re too smart for that.”

      “Dad tried medication,” I reminded her.

      “And he reacted terribly to it,” she reminded me in return. “I don’t want to see you go through that. I’ll try anything else you want. Just not that.”

      “I don’t get it. The whole point of medication is to help people like me.”

      “Not people like you,” she said. “People who really need it. You’re trivializing a very serious issue here.”

      “How do you know I don’t really need it? Why are you so sure?”

      “Because you’re just like your father,” she said. “You get anxious about some things, but you can work through them. Without drugs. I know you can.”

      I couldn’t believe she was being so stubborn. Just because Dad and I were similar didn’t mean we had to handle everything the same way. Mom wasn’t a doctor; who was she to say that therapy was better than medication? And even if she was right, there was no way a therapist could fix me in time for the next test. I was running out of time. I felt the nausea starting as I contemplated trying to get through yet another SAT without doing anything differently. “I don’t know how you can be so sure about everything,” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “I can’t believe you’re willing to risk my whole future on your opinion. You know how important the SAT is. This is the second time I’ve tried to take one of these tests and haven’t even made it through the whole thing. I’ve done everything you suggested, and it’s only getting worse. I have to try something.”

      “I’ll do some research,” she said. “I’ll look at other alternative stress relief techniques. We’ll try a different diet. We’ll get you a therapist. There are lots of things we can still look at. And if the therapist thinks you need medication, then maybe we can get you a referral to a psychiatrist.”

      “There’s no time for that,” I said. The anxiety was subsiding, but I felt deflated. “Forget it.” I didn’t have the energy to fight with her anymore. She wasn’t going to change her mind.

      But maybe I would change mine.

       7.

      I’d been worried about going to school after the whole SAT debacle, nervous about what people might say, whether I’d hear whispers as I walked down the hall about how Perfect Kara wasn’t so perfect after all, but I guess people had better things to do. If they were making fun of me, they were doing a good job of keeping it behind my back.

      Which left me time to think about Novalert. I couldn’t get it out of my head—I was completely out of ideas about how to handle my final shot at the SATs, and though I hadn’t bought in to Mom’s whole fear of drugs, I was still nervous. I peppered Alex with questions during our study sessions at her house: Were there side effects? Did people get addicted? How expensive was it, exactly?

      “You’re really making me work on this patience thing,” she said, but she answered every question I had, and everything she told me worked toward convincing me that trying it might be a good idea. The only idea. “You know that the more nervous and freaked out you seem about all this, the more it seems like you should try it, right?”

      I saw her point. Sort of.

      Still, I was having trouble making a decision. It was one thing to get a prescription from a doctor, an expert who’d decided something was really wrong, but it was a whole other thing to make that decision for myself, and to do something illegal. I’d never done anything like that before; when Isabel had gone through her stealing-lipstick-from-Walgreen’s phase, I’d refused to even go into the store with her,