The Best Possible Answer

by E. Katherine Kottaras

  My mom sighs and then finally relents. “Okay, I guess. Fine. I’ll have to talk to your father about this, but—”

  “Thank you, Mama.” I kiss her on the cheek and grab Sammie’s hand so we can leave before she changes her mind. I hear Mila crying behind us, and I feel bad, but I don’t turn back.

  AP U.S. History Exam: Sample Question

  Between October and December of last year, Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe engaged in romantic activities that directly opposed her parents’ rules and expectations for how she was supposed to live her life. Analyze the reasons that these activities emerged in this period, and assess the degree to which Viviana succeeded in ruining both her social and her personal life.

  Before Viviana started dating Dean early last October, her father warned her not to get involved with anyone. He said that “boys would be a distraction,” that they’d take her off course from everything she’d worked for her entire life.

  She didn’t listen, of course.

  She fell for Dean during a particularly bad day. Their physics teacher, Mr. Foster, had them in the computer lab, where they were working on an online roller-coaster simulator. Viviana had a C- in the class, so Mr. Foster thought that it would be a good idea to quiz her in front of everyone as a way to encourage her to raise her grade. He started riding her for not being able to explain the measurements of potential energy and kinetic energy as they related to her design. She thought she knew the answer, but everything that came out of her mouth was wrong. Rather than call on someone else, Mr. Foster kept picking on her. “Come on, Viviana. Think, Viviana. You know this, Viviana.”

  He wouldn’t let up, and she wanted to cry so badly. Finally, rather than break down sobbing in front of the whole class, she put her head down and closed her eyes. Mr. Foster finally sighed and said, “Viviana, if you’d only apply yourself a bit more, you’d do well in this class.”

  She did everything she could not to let the other kids hear her cry. She choked it back, let the tears fall onto the desk.

  Then she felt a tap on her shoulder and a note slide under her elbow.

  It was from Dean, who had just transferred to their school from the suburbs a few weeks before. It was a quickly sketched cartoon with the two of them riding a roller coaster, and above his little figure, it said, “Let’s convert our potential energy into kinetic together.”

  She lifted her head, wiped her tears, and smiled at him.

  With that one little note and one kind smile, she was all in. She fell for him, and fast.

  But her parents hated Dean from the very start. Her dad called him “a useless distraction,” while her mother reminded her constantly that she needed to focus on school.

  Of course, she ignored them. She was able to hang out with Dean and even get her physics grade up to a B+. She was experiencing all kinds of firsts: first date, first kiss, first show-me-a-little-of-this, first hold-me-a-little-like-that. They tripped over the words “I love you” at first and then said them again and again. And then they explored and played and learned about each other’s bodies. Dean wanted more, of course. He’d already had sex with his ex-girlfriend, and he said he was “hungry” for her. She wasn’t ready yet, but she was completely okay with doing other stuff—playing and flirting and trying nearly everything but.

  So last year, right after Thanksgiving, she took a picture of herself, a very private and personal picture that was supposed to be for his eyes only. She sent it to him via this new app called HushDuo, which was supposed to be this messaging system that was truly secure, unlike Snapchat. It was her idea. And he sent her one, too. She knew what she was doing. She liked what she was doing. He said he liked it, too. He said it was enough.

  And she was in complete control.

  Until she wasn’t.

  When Sammie texted her a photo of Dean making out with some girl at Alex Luna’s New Year’s Eve party, she broke up with Dean that night. She forwarded Dean the photo of his lying face sucking on that girl, along with one simple message: “We’re done.”

  Even though she cried for four days, her parents seemed more relieved than anything that “this phase” was over.

  But she was broken. She’d loved him. Or at least she thought she had. Certainly, she had trusted him with everything she was, everything she had.

  Unfortunately, the lesson wasn’t over quite yet.

  Just her luck that Dean rigged his phone so he could save what was supposed to have been erased. Of course, HushDuo wasn’t so secure after all. He didn’t write back to her, but he did forward that very private and very personal photo to a few of his friends. Someone posted it on Instagram, someone else on Facebook, and after that, it spread like wildfire. By the time she returned to school in January, she couldn’t walk down the hall without a whisper or a comment thrown her way. Because of Dean, she developed a reputation, and it was the antithesis of the hardworking, studious nerd that she’d been before. Suddenly, she was known as a “whore” and a “slut” and all kinds of other horrifying names the kids at school threw at her. Even her teachers gave her terrible looks. Instead of picking on her, Mr. Foster couldn’t even look her in the eye.

  But the worst part wasn’t even that.

  The worst part was when her parents got called into the principal’s office. The worst part was when they saw the photo and read the comments. The worst part was sitting in that stiff leather chair waiting for her father’s reaction. The worst part was his cold, empty stare, the fact that she’d failed him completely, that “this phase” had ruined her completely.

  When he left five days later, she broke down. They came home from returning Christmas presents at Water Tower to find his desk empty, his closets mostly cleared out, no explanations, no good-byes. This wasn’t just a weeklong business trip. This was different.

  That was the absolute worst.

  She learned that her parents were right. She learned that she’d ruined her life, completely. She learned that love is a distraction. She learned not to love, not to trust, and not to—ever again—let anyone else in.

  PART TWO

  Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe’s College Application Checklist

  □ May: AP Exams bombed

  □ June–July: Design and Engineering Summer Academy thwarted

  □ July: Work on College Apps

  □ August: Work on College Apps; Study for SAT

  □ September: Finalize Stanford Application

  College Admissions Tip #1

  Extracurricular and summer activities demonstrate your enthusiasm for the experience of learning. What’s even more important is that you grow from the experience in new and important ways, and that you communicate that growth in your college essays.

  The very first day of Bennett Tower Pool’s Memorial Day Weekend Grand Opening is the exact opposite of inertia.

  It’s chaos.

  Pure and utter chaos.

  It’s early Saturday morning, and the gate isn’t even open yet, but the line outside is already packed with screaming kids, frantic mothers, oblivious fathers, and retired old couples desperate to get in. I’ve lived here for five years, but I don’t recognize anyone. Perhaps that’s equally due to my life as a hermit.

  Mr. Bautista leads us to our permanent post at the front desk, where we’ll be scanning membership cards, checking IDs, recording visitors’ passes, and selling snacks, and then he promptly checks his phone. “I’ve got a leaky faucet on the twenty-fifth floor. You’ll introduce your friend to everyone, Sammie?”

  “Will do,” Sammie says, and he disappears.

  I put my textbooks down on the counter. “I thought he was in charge?”

  “He’s in charge of the Bennett Village maintenance, but Virgo is the pool manager.”

  Virgo, who’s placing towels on a shelf, hears his name and comes over. “Got yourself an accomplice this year, Sammie?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Virgo, this is Viviana Rabinovich-Lowe.”

  “Viviana, you say?” He rolls the r’s and a
ccents the a’s perfectly. “Ciao, bella! Are you, by chance, Italian?”

  “No,” I say. “My mom is Jewish, born in Russia, but she spent time in central Italy.” I briefly explain the history of my mom’s journey around the world. “They were only there for a few months when she was young, but she still gave my sister and me Italian names, she loved it there so much.”

  “Do you speak?”

  I shake my head. My mom knows Russian, Hebrew, some Yiddish, and even a little Italian, and yet she never speaks any of the languages to us. My dad tried to convince her to speak to me (“Stanford loves multilingual students!”), but she refused. She never really does anything cultural or religious with us. Except for telling us her story, she says she wanted to leave those worlds behind.

  “Poverino! Viviana!” Virgo, who has to be at least six feet tall, starts to sing my name in a gorgeous operatic voice. My name reverberates over the empty pool and into the sky. “The most beautiful operas in the world are Italian.”

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s Colombian but thinks he’s from Rome.”

  “Actually, I’m from Irving Park, born and raised. But yes, my full name—Virgilio—is Italian, and so I am Italian in my soul,” Virgo says, pressing his hand on his heart.

  “He also thinks he’s in charge,” Sammie says. “But he’s not the one signing your paycheck.”

  “I am very much in charge.” Virgo puts his hands over my ears. “Ignore her. Listen to me. Listen to everything I say, Signorina Viviana. I know everything about everything.”

  “He doesn’t know anything.” A tall girl in a red sweatshirt and matching red shorts, with a sleek black ponytail that hangs all the way down her back, is sweeping the entrance.

  “You can listen to her.” Sammie gives her a hug. “Vanessa’s pretty trustworthy.”

  I give a wave. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Virgo calls a few of the other guards over to meet me: Vanessa’s a junior, like Sammie and me, and Marquis is a senior who’s just about to graduate. There are a few other guards who aren’t here today, but I’ll meet them tomorrow. I also find out that Virgo’s home after his first year in college, and that he’s studying music, of course.

  Thankfully, everyone here is from a private school, and it’s a relief to be surrounded by people who don’t know me, who don’t know about what happened after the physics exam, and, best of all, who don’t know about Dean and me.

  It’s a relief to be anonymous.

  I wave hello, and they all smile. They all seem nice. And sun-kissed. And shiny.

  While it’s nice to be anonymous, I’m also suddenly self-conscious, aware of how pasty I am after spending the last three years holed up in a library or a lab.

  “And who is this?” a new voice asks behind me.

  I turn to the guy who’s just made his way through the front gate, and oh no—

  I know him.

  Or at least I knew him once—as a younger, seventh-grade version of myself kissing a younger, ninth-grade version of him. Evan something or another—I can’t remember his last name. But I do remember Seven Minutes in Heaven at Anne Boyd’s birthday party. It was dark, and I was a little tipsy from the one and only beer I’ve ever dared to taste, and there were all these strange new boys from the private school up the road. I was overjoyed when Evan and I got paired together. I’d never kissed a boy before. And I thought there was no way he would want to kiss me. We sat in the dark on the edge of the tub, and finally, at six minutes forty-five seconds, I leaned in, and he leaned back. I tasted Bud Light and peppermint gum and his cold, chapped lips.

  It was fifteen seconds of heaven. And then I never saw him again.

  Until now.

  I remember his short dark hair. Those ridiculous dimples and sharp brown eyes. And now he’s tall, with broad shoulders. Naturally lean but also muscular. And yeah, his shirt is off, so there’s that. Four years have been good to him.

  “I’m Evan.” He puts out his hand to take mine.

  He doesn’t remember me.

  There are four forces in nature that act upon us. Gravity, of course, binds us to the earth. Electromagnetism binds our atoms together. The strong force binds the nucleus, and the weak force governs subatomic decay. Unless you’ve spent the past eight months obsessing over the AP physics exam and the past two years thinking about the design of physical structures and the risk of collapse, you don’t normally think about these forces. You can’t see them, and you certainly can’t control them. They just happen. All you can do is observe.

  When Evan puts his hand in mine, I’m inclined to believe there’s a fifth force. It can’t be defined or calculated or memorized, but it pulls me toward him. It’s pulled me toward him before.

  And there’s something about him—the sincerity of his smile, the way he looks at me, direct and piercing, the strength of his hand around mine. I search his face to see if he remembers, too.

  But when Sammie introduces me, he continues to give me a blank, open smile. “That’s right—the BFF we never got to meet. You live here in Bennett, right? Why have we never been graced with your presence before?”

  “I wanted to come down,” I say. “I mean, Sammie invited me. I was just too busy—”

  “Vivi’s been too busy geeking it up at a physics academy,” Sammie says with a laugh.

  “It’s a Design and Engineering Academy,” I say. “Science is only part of it. And physics is actually my weakest subject.”

  “Excuse me.” Sammie hates when I correct her, but it’s like a tic that I can’t control. “A Design and Engineering Academy.” She mocks me with a snotty pseudo-British accent.

  “That sounds cool.” Evan picks up my physics book and fans through it. “Did you, like, toss eggs from windows to understand their velocity?”

  “Not at the Academy.” I laugh. “But in my physics class, yes. With parachutes. But it was to understand resistance. I’m more into design theories.” There I go correcting again, like a know-it-all, even though I’m more of a know-a-little-bit. I never really understood resistance all that well, and it’s not like I could completely explain it if he asked.

  But he doesn’t even blink. “I’m more of a music man, myself, but I’m thinking about minoring in math. I love how it all connects. Geometry. Sequences. Chord patterns.”

  “You’re in college?”

  “Graduated last year, along with this blockhead.” Evan throws a playful punch at Virgo. I find out that they’re both enrolled at St. Mary’s, a private university that’s a few miles north.

  Virgo punches him back. “Now we’re roommates, and I’ve got to listen to Evan’s god-awful singing.”

  Evan looks genuinely hurt. “Please don’t tell my dad that you think my singing is god-awful,” he says. “He already thinks I’m wasting my time as a music major. He doesn’t need your professional opinion on my skills.”

  “Well, I really like your voice,” Sammie says.

  “Why, thank you!” He smiles at her. “See there, I’ve got at least one fan.”

  “Dude,” Virgo says. “I was kidding.”

  “Evan also plays guitar,” Sammie says to me. Right. I vaguely remember her gushing about these jam sessions they had last summer during the pool’s closing on Saturday nights when it wasn’t too crowded. She wanted me to come, but I never did. “Did you bring it?”

  “Not today. Too many people.” He puts down my book. “Were you planning on studying?”

  “I didn’t expect it to be this busy.”

  Some kids at the front of the line outside the gates whine for us to open. I look up at the clock. 8:58 A.M. “When do we let them in?”

  “In exactly eighty-six seconds,” Virgo says.

  “Do we have to?” Evan complains.

  “It’s what we get paid to do.”

  “Well, I guess we should, then,” Evan says, and then he turns to me and smiles. “It was nice to meet you, BFF.”

  I remember his peppermint lips on mine.

 
; He’s so very, very cute.

  But I tell every cell in my body to resist. I’ve been burned before by friendly guys with nice smiles. I’ve made a promise to myself: no more relationships, no distractions, nothing until college. Or maybe even after.

  No entanglements. No more trouble. Inertia. That’s what you want, Viviana. Complete and utter inertia.

  I slide my books under the counter, and Virgo takes out keys to open the gate. “I guess it’s time. Here we go,” he says. “Let summer begin.”

  “Well, Vivi”—Evan leans in and sings an unfamiliar melody in a voice deep and low and ever so enticing—“welcome to the madhouse.”

  College Admissions Tip #2

  College admissions officers are definitely interested in what students do during summer breaks. They will not be swayed by empty holes in your time line. If you’ve done nothing more than hang around and goof off with friends instead of getting involved and showing leadership and growth, they will not be impressed.

  There are just so many people, so many IDs. So much whining from the kids, so much eye rolling from the parents. It’s rote and boring and constant.

  Scan and check.

  Scan and check.

  I don’t mention anything to Sammie about having met Evan before. Her parents, protective as they were, didn’t let her go to the party, and though I told her about kissing a random guy, there’s no possible way she could know it was Evan.

  “I’m waiting for my inertia,” I say to Sammie.

  “It’s the first day. And it’s hot, so everyone’s here. It’ll slow down in a week, when all the kids are in camp,” she says. “Give it time.”

  The word hot doesn’t even cut it. By 10:00 A.M., it’s near ninety degrees, even though it’s the end of May and technically still spring.

  “It’s not hot,” I grumble. “It’s a veritable hell.”

  “We’ll get to go in the water soon, right?” Sammie says to Virgo as he works on the schedule behind us. “We’ll get to swim?”