The director of college counseling made an announcement about encouraging girls to add more activism and community service into their schedules. That was my cue.
I successfully held the attention of the parents in the room, and after I was done speaking, I ducked outside into the semicrisp September air. I headed to the Murphy Fountain courtyard and settled down in a light brown wicker chair, ready to leave, and waited for my mom to come outside.
“I can’t believe I had to miss Grey’s Anatomy. You have to tell me about everything that happened,” a woman squealed. I was tucked behind a big bush and couldn’t see who was speaking. For a moment I thought that the voice belonged to one of my classmates, and that she was talking to me. I shot my head above the bush for just a moment. There was a woman carefully picking the sprinkles off a cookie, standing at the tableclothed snack table, her back to me. It was impossible to tell who she was—the patent leather heels and designer skinny jeans were entirely generic among Whitbread women—and she could’ve been anyone’s mother, or stepmother or…older sister.
“This meeting is pretty boring,” the mystery woman continued. “Oh! But there is one thing that your dad and I wanted to tell you.” (Ah, a mother or stepmother, then.) “The college counselor spoke tonight about how extracurricular activities are so important. Are you in a club?” There was a pause, and I sat back down in the chair. This conversation probably wasn’t worth snooping on. “Okay, well, your dad and I think that joining a club might be a really good idea, since you failed science last year and all, you know, because of all that time you had to take off after the boob job.” I immediately perked up. Failing? Boob job? Who? “No, I know you did summer school,” the woman continued. “Well, you had to. But anyway, I think you should join a club. Colleges are impressed with that sort of thing. And I know just which one you should join.” I sat perfectly still, hoping that whoever it was didn’t see me. “Oh, I agree, you shouldn’t join a club full of nerds. No, of course not!” The woman paused for a response. “But there’s a girl who spoke tonight.”
I held my breath.
“She’s president of Mock United Nations, I think that’s what it’s called, and she’s very pretty. Doesn’t look like a nerd at all. Plus, you get to go to conferences with boys—how’s that for community service?”
I gasped. Even though this mystery woman’s principles disgusted me, I felt my heart thumping with pride.
I, Becky Miller, was pretty?
Genius
My parents decided to send me to Miles Watson, who worked out of his home, which was deep in the Valley (an outpost of Los Angeles that I never drove to unless absolutely necessary). My brother had seen Dr. Watson. This was how he had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. My dad came to the appointment with me, even though I’d begged him not to. I think he was feeling guilty about not spending enough time with me. As if this were going to be quality time.
The house was large and white and covered with odd trinkets. On top of the coffee table, Christmas ornaments were scattered. Dr. Watson greeted us at the front door. He seemed to be in his late sixties and was very mild-mannered. His white hair was parted to the side.
He said that before he could treat me, he had to run a bunch of tests.
“So, today I will start by doing some general intelligence tests,” Dr. Watson explained, speaking with careful enunciation. “We’ll do the psychological tests, as well as the Wechsler IQ…”
I stopped him. “IQ? Why?”
“This is just the full battery of tests,” he said mildly, smoothing the pant legs of his khakis.
“Fine,” I agreed, resigned. “But can you promise me that you won’t tell my parents my IQ score?” I looked to my dad. He nodded. “For personal reasons,” I added.
“Well, if that’s okay with you,” he said to my dad, “then it’s fine with me.”
“Fine with me,” Dad said.
I was scared to take this test. I was scared that I wouldn’t score high enough.
My mom had never taken an IQ test, but she had been valedictorian of her Ivy League college class. My dad had taken an IQ test, and the result was so high that he refused to tell my brother and me the exact number, fearing that we might be concerned about not living up to his standard. I had always been more or less happy not knowing my IQ because, with me, my dad’s fears were warranted. I worried that I wasn’t as smart as my parents. And now I had been roped into taking an IQ test, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.
When Dr. Watson sat me down at a wooden dining table in his kitchen, I wanted to call bullshit. A psychologist who worked out of his kitchen? How good could he possibly be?
Dr. Watson sat down with me and explained that he was going to list some numbers, and would I please repeat them to him?
“One, seven, five, four, six, nine, eight.”
I looked away, toward the patio door, and listened to him say the numbers. I could almost visualize them in front of me.
“One, seven, five, four, six, nine, eight,” I repeated.
The strings of numbers got longer, and then Dr. Watson said that he was going to give me a mixture of letters and numbers. Could I please repeat them to him in alphabetical and numerical order—letters first, numbers second?
“C, seven, G, nine, three, T.”
I collected the numbers and the letters in my mind, rearranged them, then spoke them.
“C, G, T, three, seven, nine.”
It was only after correctly rearranging and repeating a particularly long sequence that I realized that the strange sensation I was feeling was my mind actually working.
Soon I’d moved on to a four-hundred-question psychological evaluation. Some of the questions applied to me—“Do you often find that you are so anxious that you cannot sleep?”—and others, not so much—“Do you see and hear things that do not actually exist?”
At the end, Dr. Watson told me that my verbal IQ was a little over 150.
“What does that mean?” I realized that all I knew about IQs was that 100 was average.
“Well, that means that you are in the top half of the ninety-ninth percentile.” Was it my imagination, or was Dr. Watson smiling at me? I hadn’t seen him smile before.
“Wow,” I said, trying to register the information. How could…top half-percentile…really? The one personal attribute that I had always held the most stock in was my intelligence. I was never athletic, or skinny, or social, or beautiful. But I was always smart. I just hadn’t had any idea how smart.
“It might be something you want to tell your parents. You should be proud, Becky. You are really an exceptional young woman.”
A few minutes later, as I was coming out of the bathroom, I heard Dr. Watson in the living room talking with my dad.
“Your daughter is very bright,” Dr. Watson said.
“She sure is,” my dad replied.
“No,” Dr. Watson went on. “I don’t think you understand. Her IQ is 155.”
I couldn’t believe it! I burst into the living room. “You broke my confidence! Doctors aren’t supposed to do that,” I reminded him. “You said you weren’t going to tell my parents.” I stood with my hands on my hips, a few feet away from Dr. Watson’s leather armchair.
Dr. Watson put his hand over his mouth. “I am so sorry, Becky. That was—that was really wrong of me. I just got so excited….” I gave him a hard look. “I don’t know what I can say; I really do apologize.” His cheeks were pink; he was flustered.
My eyes burning, I concentrated on taking deep breaths as I followed my dad out the front door.
MUN
At the first MUN meeting of the year, I was standing at the front of Mr. Elwright’s classroom explaining parliamentary procedure to the twenty girls who’d shown up, when the door swung open and the Trinity walked in. Alissa led, casually carrying a Spago to-go bag in one hand and a large Louis Vuitton tote bag in the other. Kimberly followed with Courtney close behind, frantically skimming her Norton
Anthology of English Literature. She wasn’t an intellectual, but she was in my AP English class—and she was most likely behind on homework.
“Hey, sorry we’re late. I had to wait for my driver to come and drop off our lunches.” Alissa waved the Spago bag in the air and flashed a smile. Mr. E. shot me a look, as if to say, “Look who showed up.”
“That’s okay. I’m glad you could make it,” I said, not totally sincerely. I resented these girls a little. Not only were they insipid and way too appearance-oriented, but they also had never been especially nice to me. I couldn’t help wondering what they were doing at an MUN meeting.
Everyone listened attentively while I explained the rules of MUN conferences, but I heard a few excited murmurs when I told them about the first conference, up in Berkeley. It was a couple months away, but I was pretty excited about it, too. It would be my first big act without Amanda. I wanted to win an award. I wanted to prove that I was whole, and just as capable, without her.
When the lunch period ended, the Trinity descended upon me at the front of the classroom.
“This sounds like fun. You’re such a good public speaker,” Courtney said, probably referring to the video clip I had shown from a past conference. “Maybe you can help me out with my speechmaking skills. I’m not that great at it—not in front of big crowds, at least.”
“Yeah, I can help you out,” I said, trying not to let my confusion show. Part of me wanted to beam—Courtney Gross wanted me to do something with her? But the other part of me knew better, knew that there must be some underlying motive. And it probably wasn’t that she was dying to be my friend.
I knew better than that. Besides, I didn’t really want to be friends with the Trinity, did I?
“I can’t wait to go to conferences with cute boys in suits,” Kim added.
I grimaced. So there was an underlying motive after all.
Alissa pulled on Courtney’s arm. “Guys, we have to go. The bell rang. See you in math, Becky!”
Despite my misgivings, driving home from school that day, I surprised myself by thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be my worst year ever after all.
The Dating Game
I hadn’t considered the possibility that my parents might start dating. The thought of my mom and my dad having sex with each other was hideous, but the thought of each of them having sex with other people—well, that was much worse.
One night I was in the kitchen, peeling an orange (I have to do it all in one piece, or else I can’t eat the orange), when I heard my mom yell something from her bedroom. When I had finished peeling, I took the orange and went to see what was going on. I found her hunched over her computer monitor, staring at the screen.
“What’s going on?” I asked, edging up against the desk.
“I just…got this message…from ‘2Fast2Furious.’ I can’t believe it.”
She had signed up for JDate the week before, but she told me that she was just looking, just browsing other people’s profiles, and that if she ever were going to go on a date, she would make sure to let me know beforehand.
“Why not, Mom? You’re hot.”
“It’s…Harold!”
I looked at the screen. JDate’s mail screen was up on the Web browser, and the following message was displayed in the center of the page.
From: 2Fast2Furious
Subject: Hey there!
Hey, smartblonde. I read your profile and user info, and you seem very interesting…even without a picture posted. Although you’re a little bit outside my desired age range, I would really like to get to know you better. Please see a picture of me attached below. If you like what you see, don’t hesitate to message back….;)
–2Fast2Furious
And below was a picture of a man in a baseball cap. A picture of my father. My Yankees-obsessed, BlackBerry-addicted dad.
So I did the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation.
I screamed. “What the fuck?! Outside his age range?! What is his age range? I can’t believe he’s on JDate, too! And sharing his photo?”
Mom gave a disgusted sigh and pointed an impeccably painted nail at the screen. “It says here that he’s more into the twenty-and thirty-year-old set. Natural blondes preferred.”
“So, my dad is dating twelve-year-olds.”
Courtney Gross’s eyes widened in surprise.
“No, no, not literal twelve-year-olds. More like twenty-two-year-olds.”
An MUN meeting had just ended and most of the girls had decided to stay in Mr. Elwright’s room to eat lunch. I had dared myself to sit down with the Trinity.
“Ugh. I know what you mean,” Courtney said as she dug a fork into the herb-roasted chicken breast in her Tupperware container.
Alissa was taking her time chewing a single baby carrot. Her feet were tapping rapidly on the floor. She swallowed the last bite slowly and said, “Omigod, your stepmom is hilarious!”
“Stepmom?” I asked. It was amazing how much I didn’t know about someone I had gone to school with for almost five years.
“Yeah.” Courtney sighed.
“She’s, like, twenty-five, and all she does is shop,” Alissa explained, clearly hating that the discussion wasn’t focused on her. “Sometimes she’ll drop by school in the middle of one of her very busy afternoons to get Court’s opinion on a pair of shoes or something. I think she thinks that’s stepmother-daughter bonding.”
Courtney looked annoyed at Alissa, but then said to me, “So, I guess you have that to look forward to,” and laughed uncomfortably.
“Yeah, it’s pretty horrific,” I agreed.
Kim gave me a wide-eyed look. “Wow. Are you like into studying vocabulary for fun or something?” Kim was notoriously stupid.
“Bitch! That’s mean.” Alissa poked Kim with her elbow. “What she means is that it’s cool you use such big words in normal conversation. I was talking to this actress last night at dinner, and all she said was ‘super cool’.”
“Yeah. I bet you’ll do really well on the SATs and stuff,” Courtney chimed in.
I didn’t mention how I had almost lost it when I missed one word on a first-grade spelling test. It was the only word I’d missed all year, and I thought it might ruin my record. Kim had gone to elementary school with me, but she’d clearly forgotten about this. I just nodded, said thank you, and speared another strawberry with my fork, trying not to think about what parental dating horrors might await me.
Meet the New Becky, Same as the Old Becky
Here’s what my days and nights look like on Mom’s weeks:
Wake up at 6:05 to shower, get dressed, and make the thirty-minute drive to school. Take Jack with me and drop him off at Stratfield, unless he had whined his way into staying at Dad’s so he could sleep later. Go to school and try to fit in, which means not hiding in Mr. Elwright’s class during free periods, but instead hanging out with Taylor or sitting with the Trinity and talking about (a) boys, (b) clothes, or (c) which clothes to wear when we might see boys. Or about the Trinity’s exciting nights, when they go to expensive, extravagant parties, mingle with boring but attractive stars, dressed in sequined minidresses from Beverly Hills sample sales, and hook up with male models who were too strung out to remember their names. Even though my parents were big shots, my mom hated the celebrity social scene, and my dad never took me to whatever events he attended. Nights for me now involved some combination of traffic on the way to Santa Monica, homework, and maybe renting a movie with Taylor….
Here’s what my days and nights look like on Dad’s weeks:
Get up at 6:35 to shower, get dressed, and make the short drive to school. Get home early, and then get depressed about being home alone in a big, empty house with nothing to do but read and watch television—or Google the Trinity and feel jealous about the exciting lives they were leading. Sometimes, one of the Trinity would instant message me and send me a picture of what she was wearing out that night. They didn’t quite get that my life wasn’t as illus
trious as theirs, and I wasn’t eager to correct their assumptions.
Here’s how I feel no matter whose week it is:
Like I am missing something, constantly one step out of the loop.
Like I want to be somewhere else, living someone else’s life.
Like I don’t want to have to deal with Becky Miller and all her issues.
“You’re becoming one of those popular sluts, aren’t you?” Amanda asked me one time after I had rehashed my day with her over the phone. I told her about how I had gone out to Mozza for lunch with the Trinity, and how Courtney and I had started sitting together in the Room during free periods. First, I had told her about Taylor, that she was nice and not quite as weird as we had supposed her to be. To that, Amanda had replied, “No way. She’s a freak, Becky! Have you noticed that she sometimes goes without a bra? Or maybe that was just a tenth-grade thing.” I had muttered “mm-hm” and quickly tried to change the subject. Now, I talked about my dare-I-call-it-friendship with the Trinity instead.
“I am not!” I lay back in my bed, secretly pleased that Amanda might be nervous that I was becoming one of them—that I was capable of becoming one of them. Amanda and I talked once weekly, at best. More often, we just instant messaged. I was afraid that, with the physical distance between us, we might be growing apart. “I wouldn’t leave you for them,” I added.
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