He nods, like he gets what that feels like. “It will be okay. I know it. The test will help, and they’ll make a plan, then everything will go back to the way it was before.”
I really hope he’s right.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Mom is supposed to drive Henley to school and then bring me to Dr. Gold’s office. When we get to the front of the drop-off line, Mom parks, gets out of the car, and walks over to Henley’s teacher, Mrs. McPhee. I can’t tell what Mom is saying, because she’s facing away from me, but she keeps pointing at Henley, who’s standing next to her best friends, the Ellies, and looking at the ground with her shoulders slumped over, like she wants to disappear. I always forget about the shy, scared version of my sister until she’s right in front of me.
A few minutes later, Mom gets back in the car and sighs. It’s the loud kind that sounds like a roar.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“School is just really hard for your sister, and I hate that teacher. I need everyone to be focused on helping Henley right now, before her problem gets bigger and it’s even harder for her to communicate. I don’t know if she doesn’t care or she can’t see it, but it’s so aggravating.” Mom takes a deep breath. She turns the car back on and starts driving. I wonder if she ever gets that mad for me.
* * *
Dr. Gold’s office is one town over in a pink Victorian house with white shutters and a big front porch that feels far away from my real life and all the people who know me and are on their way to school right now.
Mom parks at the end of the long gravel driveway, and I follow her up the porch stairs, through the front door, and into an empty waiting room. There’s no place to check in, like at my regular doctor, just five closed doors. One is the bathroom and the other four have signs with different names. I pick a chair across from the door that says DR. LILLIAN S. GOLD, and Mom sits next to me. She takes one of the crinkly magazines stacked on the side table and flips through the glossy pages. I stare at the ceiling. She hasn’t said anything about our appointment all morning, and even though I’m getting nervous and it would probably help to talk, even about something else, I’m not going to start now. The only thing I want to talk or think about is chess, and she doesn’t care.
After almost ten minutes of waiting, Dr. Gold’s office door finally opens, and she pops her head out. She looks right at me and smiles. She’s wearing a dress with yellow streaks that reminds me of mustard and looks pretty against her dark brown skin. “I’m Dr. Gold. You must be Clea and Clea’s mom.” Her voice is low and scratchy and I sort of want her to keep talking, because everything she says sounds like a song. “Come on in whenever you’re ready.” She leaves the door open and her long braids fall down her back, swaying as she moves.
Inside her office, it smells like gingerbread. There’s a hand-painted sign on the wall that reads: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. —Eleanor Roosevelt. There are three different areas. A small sofa with chairs for talking, a table on the other side of the room, and a desk with a big marble chess set. I wonder if Dr. Gold actually plays, or if the board is there to make her office look important. Red told me that’s a thing adults do sometimes.
“Take a seat,” she says. “Anywhere you’d like.”
I pick the gray leather sofa, and Mom chooses the fuzzy chair closest to the door.
Dr. Gold sits down across from us and looks right at me. “Before we jump in, I want to talk a bit about what we’re going to do over the next two days, and then I’m hoping we can chat for a little while. How does that sound to you?”
“Great,” Mom says.
Dr. Gold is waiting for me to say something, so I say, “Fine,” because I can tell it’s not the kind of question I’m supposed to answer honestly.
“Okay.” She nods. “You’re going to spend time today and tomorrow with one of my colleagues—Dr. Sharma—working on an assessment that will help us understand how you process information. I’d like you to try your best to answer all the questions presented even when you find them to be challenging. Then, on Friday after school, you’ll come back here with your parents and we’ll talk through the results of the test and evaluation and discuss a plan for how we’re going to move forward.”
“That’s great,” Mom says.
“What do you think?” Dr. Gold looks at me.
I shrug.
“I’d really like it if you were honest,” she says, tilting her head, like she’s trying to find the answer. I’m not really sure if I believe her, or if she’s doing that fake-o adult thing, where she’s pretending to care what I think. Then she says, “How you feel about being here can impact your evaluation.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
She nods again.
Even though I’m scared to get tested and find out how dumb I really am, I don’t want to mess things up, so I tell her the truth. “I already know I don’t have ADHD, so I think it’s stupid that I’m missing school and chess for no reason.”
“Clea.” Mom says my name like I’m in trouble.
“What? All I did was follow the directions, Mom. You should be happy. I’m usually bad at that, remember? Isn’t that why I’m here?”
“You’re being rude,” Mom says.
“Sorry,” I apologize to Dr. Gold, because it’s not her fault that I’m mad at Mom. “I was trying to be honest so I didn’t ruin your test.”
“I’m glad to hear that you don’t want to miss school,” Dr. Gold says. “That tells me you don’t hate being there, which will make this process a lot easier.”
“I never thought about that,” Mom says.
Dr. Gold looks at me. “Can you tell me why you don’t think you have ADHD?”
“I just don’t,” I say. “I mean, kids in my grade have it, and I’m not really like them. I can sit still. I don’t blurt out answers all the time or get out of my seat.”
“I understand why the name of the disorder is confusing, but you actually don’t have to be hyperactive to have ADHD.”
“That makes no sense,” I point out, just like I pointed it out when Mom said it.
“Hyperactivity is just one component. It happens to be the most visible, which is why people recognize the symptoms and assume they’re the same. But they’re not. There are different types of ADHD—hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and a combined type. In order to diagnose someone under eighteen, they have to persistently show six symptoms in one of the two categories or in both catagories for at least six months.” Dr. Gold looks over at Mom like she wants to make sure she’s following along. “And those symptoms need to have been present before age twelve and in two or more settings. There also needs to be clear evidence that the symptoms are interfering with academic or social functioning.”
“I still don’t think I have it,” I say. “I mean, I was totally good at school until the end of last year, after I turned twelve.”
“I understand,” Dr. Gold says.
“And I thought no hyperactivity was called ADD,” I say.
“ADD is actually an outdated term. We use a different set of criteria to make a diagnosis now, so the name is different. Basically no one gets diagnosed with ADD anymore.”
“Everyone says it wrong,” I say.
“I know.” She smiles. “I think I have enough information for now. Clea, why don’t we chat a bit more on our own, and then I’ll take you over to Dr. Sharma’s office so you can get started. Mom, we’ll see you a little later.”
“Why can’t you do the test?” I ask.
“That’s a great question, Clea,” Dr. Gold says. “There are different ways to determine if someone has ADHD. Not everyone takes the exact same test. And based on everything I know about you so far from your parents and teachers, I think it makes sense for us to start with an assessment that has to be administered by a psychologist who is trained to give the test. I’m a psychiatrist, which means I have a different background and education.”
“Okay,” I say, because even thoug
h I’d rather stay with Dr. Gold, I get why I can’t.
After Mom leaves, Dr. Gold asks, “Did you say that you play chess?”
I nod. “I’m on the seventh-grade team. I won my first two practice games, which is a really big deal. Only nine people out of twenty did that.”
“That’s impressive.” Dr. Gold sounds like she means it.
“Thanks,” I say. “I love playing so much.”
“Me too. If you had to pick the most powerful piece on the board, which would you choose?”
“The queen,” I say without stopping to think.
“Interesting,” she says. “Why?”
“Because she can move backward and forward and on a diagonal in any direction until she runs into another piece.”
Dr. Gold nods, like maybe she agrees. She has one of those very still faces where it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking most of the time. “Is there anything that makes the queen weak?”
I think about her question for a few seconds. “She’s pretty much always under attack. If you move the queen out in front, she’s vulnerable and needs extra protection, which isn’t that great.”
“So even though she’s the strongest piece on the board, that sometimes puts her in positions where she’s the weakest piece in the game?”
“I think that’s true,” I say.
“Could the weakest piece on the board ever be the strongest?”
“Definitely,” I say. “Like a pawn or the king.”
“I hadn’t thought about the king.”
“Really?” I ask. “I mean, the king can’t do anything. He’s super weak. But he determines the entire game. He holds all the power.”
“I like that a lot,” she says. “It’s all about playing to the piece’s strengths. Find the thing it can do that no one else can. Start to think about those negatives as positives, and be prepared for how the positives can be negatives. You have to look at each piece from all the different angles.”
“I know we’re not talking about chess anymore,” I say.
She grins. “You’re missing important parts of your regular day to be here, and that’s hard, so I want you to understand why you’re being asked to do that. I’m not just looking to see if you have ADHD. I’m trying to identify as many of your strengths and challenges as possible in order to come up with a plan to help you feel more confident and capable and be as successful as I know you can be in everything you do.”
“Okay,” I say, because even though I’m scared of what will happen once she sees all the holes and problems and things that are wrong with me, I really like the idea of having a plan to help me not fail.
I follow Dr. Gold across the quiet waiting area to Dr. Sharma’s office. Everything is white, like in a hospital. It’s not comfortable or cozy at all, but I like Dr. Sharma, too. And not just because I saw a copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in the bag next to her desk, but because she talks to me the way Dr. Gold does, like she thinks what I have to say is important.
When Dr. Gold leaves, Dr. Sharma puts a box and a stack of white cards on the table. She takes out a few wooden blocks and asks me questions about them. Then she arranges the rest of the blocks and puts one of the cards in front of me. There’s a special design on it. She gives me all kinds of instructions. I listen to what she says and move the blocks around on different cards. I try really hard, and I only second-guess myself once. I keep looking up at Dr. Sharma to see how I’m doing, but she has the world’s best poker face, so it’s impossible to tell, until I sneak a look at my score sheet. I don’t understand everything, but there are a lot of low numbers, like 5 and 7, which I know can only mean one thing: I got a lot of questions wrong.
* * *
When I finally get home, I’m so tired. I go up to my room, turn on the thunderstorm, and start my homework. Ms. Curtis made sure I got all my assignments ahead of time. I’ve been staring at my math homework for almost an hour when I get a text from Red: How did the test go?
Kind of okay, I answer. Dr. Gold =
That’s cool. Do you have it?
No idea. I find out on Friday.
Isn’t it like a yes or no question?
I guess not, I write back.
I totally don’t get ADD.
Me neither, I text. BTW ADD doesn’t exist anymore. You have to call it ADHD now.
Weird.
I know, right? So, what did I miss in practice?
Everything. We learned a bunch of super advanced opening strategies.
UGH. JEALOUS, I say.
Don’t worry. I took notes for you. You’re going to be obsessed.
You rock! I text, because it feels good that Red was thinking about me when I wasn’t there.
. That wasn’t even the best part! Mr. Lee finally announced who’s coming to chess camp and it’s really, really, really good.
Tell me now!
Nope, he writes. Guess.
Don’t do this to me, I type as fast as I can.
Hint: Think big.
He’s not going to tell me until I give him at least one name. I try to think of who I want it to be—a national, no, a world champion, like Judit Polgar or Magnus Carlsen.
I type Katerina Nino and press send. She’s the youngest national champion ever, and even though she lives in Palo Alto, California, now, she grew up twenty minutes outside of Boston, too.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“OMG!!!” I scream, even though I’m sitting in my room by myself. Are you messing with me? I write. Because if you are this might actually be the meanest thing you’ve ever done.
Red doesn’t say anything back. When I pick up my phone to call him, it starts buzzing in my hand, because he’s calling me.
“I would never joke about Katerina!” he says as soon as I pick up. “Mr. Lee used to train with her, back in the day.”
“Shut up!” I say. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“I know, right? I’m really glad I got to tell you, even though I obviously wish you’d been in school today.”
“Same.”
“BTW, I can’t hang out on Friday.”
“Really? Why not?” I ask.
“Busy,” he says. I keep waiting for him to explain, but he doesn’t. It’s weird. I can’t remember the last time we didn’t have movie night. And I was sort of counting on hanging out with Red before the tournament, so we could practice.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Dylan invited me to sleep over.”
“Oh. Cool,” I say, even though I think it’s the least cool thing I’ve ever heard.
I think about telling him to delete our texts, because the last thing I need is for Red to leave his phone out and for Dylan to read all about my personal business. But Red can’t know how I feel about Dylan, and I don’t want to make it seem like I’m asking him to pick, even though I want him to pick me.
* * *
Day two with Dr. Sharma is mostly the same as day one. Only Mom doesn’t come inside the office. She drops me off and says good-bye from the car. Instead of moving blocks around on the table, Dr. Sharma reads numbers to me and I have to repeat them back to her, like a monkey. Then she has me look at different lines and shapes. I have to draw exactly what I see or connect a bunch of dots to create circles and squares and other designs.
After we take a break, I read sentences and answer yes-or-no questions that seem to go on forever.
* * *
When I’m finally done and home, Dr. Gold calls our house and asks to speak with me. Mom puts the phone on speaker and sits next to me. “One of the things I’m doing as part of my evaluation is speaking with your teachers. Normally I would have this conversation in person, but I was hoping you could tell me a little more about what happened while you were playing human chess at practice the other day.”
“Why does that matter?” I ask, because I really don’t want to talk about it.
“I want to hear your perspective. That matters more to me than what anyone else says
.” Dr. Gold sounds serious, like she wants me to know she means it.
“I wasn’t trying to ruin the game,” I say. “I was mad. I had the answer, and Red wasn’t listening to me. He was just following whatever Dylan said, even though we’re best friends, not them.”
“It sounds like maybe your emotions took over?”
“Pretty much.”
“Has that ever happened to you before?” she asks.
I think about saying no, because that’s what I want the answer to be, but Dr. Gold is trying to help me and I don’t want to make it even harder for her. “It happens a lot.”
“Okay,” she says softly, like it really is, and I don’t need to be embarrassed by that part of myself in front of her, even though I am.
* * *
I’m in my room, trying to finish my homework, when my phone buzzes.
We got an A on our lab! It’s Sanam.
Fist bump, I text her.
Go team! she writes back. Science was so boring and way harder without you. Please tell me you’re coming back tomorrow.
I think about telling her why I’ve been out, because I want her to know, but I also don’t think it’s a very smart idea to tell her over text, so I just write, Totes.
Phew, she writes. See you tomorrow!
THE NEXT DAY, I’m excited to see Red and talk about Katerina being at chess camp. Only, when I get to school, Red isn’t at our bench. I sit down and wait for him, but after a few minutes, I start to look around, because he’s never this late. That’s when I realize he’s already here, standing on the opposite side of the crowded courtyard with Dylan and the field hockey girls.
Even though seventh grade only started a few weeks ago, I can tell there are all these new, unspoken rules that didn’t exist last year, like how out of nowhere being early to hang out before school starts is cool. And how it’s totally regular for guys and girls, who aren’t best friends like Red and me, to stand next to each other and talk in a group.
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