Pushing Perfect. Michelle Falkoff

I wrote. Tell you about it tonight. When do you want me?

      Sounds like you need cheering up, she wrote. Let’s go for ice cream instead. Meet me downtown at seven.

      I was about to suggest frozen yogurt, but then I figured, why bother? No need to keep up with the crazy health food diet if it wasn’t going to help anyway. Ice cream sounded awesome.

      Now I just had to keep myself busy for the rest of the afternoon. If I kept thinking about the morning’s nightmare, I’d never stop crying. It was times like these when I really missed swimming. Being in the water, feeling the cool of it on my skin, concentrating on my arms and my legs and making them work together and nothing else—it was the perfect way to get out of my own head. My favorite stroke was freestyle, which had always come naturally to me; Becca was all about the butterfly, which made sense, given that she was more muscular than I was. She had so much power in her arms and shoulders, whereas I’d hit my growth spurt early and could use my long arms and legs to move through the water smoothly.

      Swimming had been my only form of exercise. When I stopped, I missed the endorphins. I started getting depressed, though initially I’d assumed it was because high school was so hard and because Becca and Isabel and I were already growing apart.

      Mom had seen what was going on. “Sweetie, you’re going to need to get some exercise,” she said one day, as I picked at my cereal, wishing I could just get back into bed instead of going to school.

      “What, you think I’m gaining weight or something? Don’t I worry about my appearance enough as it is?” I was really not in the best mood.

      “Not at all,” she said, unruffled. It took a lot to ruffle her. “You just seem unhappy, and I think you’d be surprised how much better you’d feel if you got in a workout.”

      “Well, that’s impossible,” I snapped. “I can’t swim anymore, and I’m not about to go somewhere without the stupid makeup, and the stupid makeup is not sweat-friendly.”

      Mom paused, trying to decide which aspect of what I’d said to take on. We hadn’t talked about my unwillingness to let anyone know about my skin problem, and back then she and Dad were just starting to work out their issues post-Tahoe, which I knew she hadn’t told anyone about either. It’s not like I’d have listened if she’d told me it was time to start sharing. “I understand,” she said finally, and I thought that was the end of it.

      I came home from school that day to find a brand-new treadmill in the guest bedroom. I had no idea how she’d made it happen that fast, but I recognized the gesture immediately. She wasn’t even home from work yet; she must have come home to let the delivery people in and then gone back. My eyes teared up with embarrassment—I’d been such a jerk that morning, and this was how she’d responded. I changed into shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes right away.

      Ever since then, I’d come to enjoy running on the treadmill, at least as much as anyone liked running on a treadmill, and I used it to get away from being in my own head all the time. I cranked the stereo when no one was home (or blasted music through my headphones when they were), and for an hour I was free.

      A long run would be the perfect way to get the morning out of my system. I put on the happiest music I could find and ran until I could barely feel my legs and my clothes were soaked with sweat. The feeling was exhilarating, and by the time I’d gotten out of a blissfully cold shower, I was ready to put the day behind me.

       6.

      Alex was waiting for me outside the ice-cream place when I got there, and I could tell she desperately wanted to ask me what happened; she was practically twitching with curiosity. But to her credit she waited until we’d both gotten big waffle cones filled with ice cream and topped with sprinkles—sea-salt caramel for her; mint chip for me—and walked over to the park nearby. Fall in Silicon Valley was almost more like summer—it was in the low eighties, even though it was October—and the store had been filled with people with the same plan as ours. Thankfully, though, the park itself was quiet.

      We sat on adjoining swings and started on our cones. I liked to lick all the sprinkles off, giving the ice cream a little time to melt, but Alex just stuck her face right in there and took a big bite. “Oh my god, that hurts my teeth SO BAD!” she yelled, once she’d swallowed.

      “At least you didn’t get brain freeze,” I said, but she was already squeezing her eyes shut. “Did I speak too soon?”

      “If we’re going to be friends, I mean real friends, you are going to have to teach me patience.”

      “You think I have patience?”

      She pointed to my cone. “You’re even patient with your ice cream. Not to mention that you haven’t started talking yet and I am dying over here.”

      “I thought that was just the brain freeze,” I said. “Maybe I can teach you patience by waiting a little longer.”

      She gave me a side-eye glare and I laughed.

      “Come on,” she said. “It couldn’t have been that hard. Not for a member of”—she deepened her voice—“the Brain Trust.”

      “Hard wasn’t the problem,” I said. “The face-plant. That was the problem.”

      “The what now?”

      “I totally blacked out. Fainted. In front of everyone.”

      “You’re kidding,” she said, and took another giant bite of ice cream, wincing as it hit her teeth. “Tell me everything.”

      And the funny thing was, I wanted to. Had it really been over a year since someone had been really, truly interested in what was happening to me? At lunch we talked about school, about our futures, but we almost never talked about ourselves. How we felt about things. That was what I’d had with Becca and Isabel, until I’d stopped wanting to tell them what was really going on with me. Or they’d stopped wanting to listen. Either way.

      “Well, this wasn’t my first panic attack,” I told Alex. I didn’t want to get into the specifics of the first one, but I told her there were some things that stressed me out and I’d started having these attacks, and then I told her about the PSAT.

      “That sounds scary,” she said.

      “Totally,” I agreed. “The thing is, there’s only one more SAT before college apps are due, and I just have to nail it. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” I licked my ice cream, which was about two seconds away from dripping all over me. The perils of patience.

      Alex had powered through hers and was now chewing on the last bits of cone. “So is it more about fear or focus?”

      “Does it matter? I’m kind of screwed either way.”

      “Humor me,” she said. “I might have some ideas.”

      I had to think about it. “I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s more about fear, but this time I got through that first bit, and then it turned into focus. It was like I forgot how to read—I finished the first section, math, but then when I got to reading comp it was like I couldn’t see, and then I couldn’t breathe, and then I was back to fear.”

      Alex kicked at some of the gravel under the swing. “So, I don’t know if this is something you’d be into, but I kind of had some similar problems last year. It started out more as a focus thing—I was staying up all night playing poker, and I kept falling asleep in class. But then I was having trouble playing because my head just wasn’t in it, and it started affecting school. And when it was clear the focus was gone, the fear kicked in—I didn’t know if I’d ever get the focus back, and I was scared it was going to ruin everything. It was like this horrible cycle.”

      “But you got over it? And don’t tell me it was like meditation or yoga—I’ve tried all that already. Total