500 Words or Less
Page 11
recently waxed and shiny.
Kitty held the sheet,
scanning through,
brow beginning to furrow.
She read through the essay
about Miranda or Audrey,
Marco or Austin.
It didn’t really matter who.
“You know what doesn’t make sense,
Nic?
It’s not that this is clearly wrong,
or that you charged a shit ton
of money
when you don’t even need it.
“It’s that you would invest so much,
be so thoughtful,
take the time
to get to know somebody
you don’t even
care about.”
Kitty paused.
She looked down at the essay.
“It’s like you cared
more about these essays,
than you did about
our own friendship.
It hurts, Nic.”
She handed me the single sheet of paper
before walking away,
leaving me in a familiar hallway
with familiar doors
and familiar lockers
and familiar faces
that sauntered by.
But Kitty walked away,
leaving me in a place
unfamiliar.
Dislodged
I held the sheet of paper,
slightly crumpled.
Austin’s essay.
Austin who I
barely spoke to.
Austin who I didn’t
really know.
Austin whose place
next to Jordan
dislodged
when Ben reappeared.
That night I slept with Jordan,
the first time,
something also dislodged.
Kitty was right.
From the safety
of an emotional distance
I could write
about people
I barely knew.
But with her,
with Jordan,
with Ben,
with myself,
I couldn’t even ask
the right questions
to dig deeper
into knowing
who we were.
A Draft of Austin Schroeder’s Essay
Discuss an accomplishment, event, or experience that generated a new understanding of yourself.
When I went onstage as Willy Loman, I entered into an implicit agreement with the audience that they would see me, not as a sixteen-year-old sweaty soccer player or the taciturn physics whiz, but as a man of sixty or so years, carrying the weight of an underwhelming life in his briefcase. I asked them to believe who I was in that moment, and in turn I would deliver them that man.
The soccer guys were shocked when I forwent winter training in favor of trying out for the school play, and even more confused when I landed the lead male role in Death of a Salesman. My castmates were intrigued, as I had never set foot in the theater and had no formal training like the rest of them. They called me a “natural” and a “quick study.”
But when I went onstage as Willy Loman, I knew what to do more acutely than the way I knew how to find the open space on a soccer field, or the way I knew that the answer to problem set seven in AP Physics was Δt = 5s. I knew how to perform.
I had been performing my whole life, and I was good at it. I had nailed the role of “Soccer Stud,” down to the calculated days that I didn’t wash my hair. I had perfected the lie of effortless intelligence, pretending I was “out with a girl” instead of at home reading and rereading textbooks. I delivered on those roles, and the audience—everyone around me—loved me for it.
But after the curtain fell on Death of a Salesman and I took my final bow, who was I asking the audience to believe I was now?
Sometimes an actor goes so deep into a role that when he emerges, he no longer knows who he is. He cannot divorce himself from the role he perfected. Sometimes I feel like I have been performing for too long and can no longer divorce myself from the act.
But a funny thing happened after I became Willy Loman. I could start to be someone my friends no longer recognized. I could be someone who washed his hair every day, or never washed it at all. I could be someone who studied seventeen hours for the physics final and wasn’t ashamed to share.
I could slowly be myself, whoever that was—a self no longer onstage.
Loneliness
Isn’t this gaping hole
in your heart
because your boyfriend
broke up with you.
It isn’t being dateless
on prom night.
It isn’t even
the emotional distance
between you
and your parents.
Loneliness is living
in your own skin
with a person
you don’t even know.
Loneliness is
the void of self,
the absence of knowing
who you are.
We waited
We waited for exams to be graded
and classes to end.
We waited for ski season
to turn into prom season.
We waited for our lives to change
with a single e-mail
from a university
that wanted us.
Weeks went by
and nothing changed
until it did.
We no longer waited
Meydenbauer continued to function
like the gears in an old watch,
with classes,
and lunches,
and passing periods
ticking by.
Then the letters
began to roll in.
I stood by my locker
and watched a stream
of oversize T-shirts
parade through the doors
announcing each chosen
school.
Santa Barbara and Santa Clara,
Cornell and Bucknell,
Seattle U and Wash U.
I had a letter.
A weighty envelope.
An e-mail from a .edu,
a crest in orange and black ink.
We are delighted . . . ,
it began.
I was in.
Somehow,
we all were in.
“I heard you got into Princeton!”
Ashok said
as we walked to class.
I nodded.
“And that you got
Miranda into Stanford,
Marco into RISD,
Laurel into Brown,”
he whispered.
I shrugged.
“Congratulations, Nic.
You are a freakin’ dream maker!”
Ashok patted me on the back.
“Whatever,” I said, and shrugged.
Ashok lurched forward
and stopped.
“Oh, hell no, Nic.
You do not get to
whatever me.
“We are friends,
and I’m here
trying
to be that person.
But what kind of person
are you
trying
to be?”
I looked Ashok dead
in the eye.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Ashok turned to face me.
“You are the girl who got into Princeton.
You are the girl who got everyone else
into their dream schools.
You are the girl who
changed people’s lives.”
“But I’m still the girl
who cheated on her boyfriend,
the girl who cheated
on those essays,
the girl who cheated
because maybe
&
nbsp; that’s who I am.”
“Do you really believe that, Nic?”
“I don’t know,”
I said again.
Bryant Barnett walked by
wearing an Elbridge College shirt.
He smiled wide and gave us
two thumbs-up.
I thought about the essay
I didn’t write,
the words of Bryant Barnett.
“The most whole,”
I whispered.
Ashok nodded excitedly.
“Yes! We are people
trying
to be
the most whole.”
I thought
It was Ben’s heart
that was buried
in a cold storage locker,
with the meats and the cheeses
and the emotions he never brought out
to thaw
when we were together.
But I was beginning to think
that it might have been
my own.
Guilt is an internal state
We make mistakes
that sleepwalk
with us,
and guilt is a kind of sadness
that can sleep
for months,
until we awake
and roll over in bed
with guilt
there
to change us.
I gave everything
To those essays
and I felt like shit.
“Do you feel guilty?”
I stopped Miranda
in the hall.
I flung the question at her.
She furrowed her brow.
She still towered over me.
“Sometimes.”
She shrugged.
“For using my essay,”
I said.
Miranda rolled her eyes.
She hitched her bag higher.
“I didn’t use your essay.
“God, Nic.
I’m valedictorian,
clearly not an idiot.”
“Huh?”
I said.
“It wasn’t a complete waste
to pay you.
“What you wrote about me,
it was surprisingly
truthful.
“You wrote
the version of me
that has always
been there,
but I never saw.
“That essay
helped me see myself
as who I am,
who I will be.
“But you think I’d risk
Stanford
by submitting
your essay?
“Hell no.
“I wrote another one.
About my volunteer trip to Haiti.
I guess they liked it.”
She smirked.
Did you use my essay?
I texted.
It was dope. Thnx,
responded Austin.
Um. No. Sorry!
responded Marco.
It was beautiful and thoughtful.
I loved it, Nic.
But no. I couldn’t do it.
I felt too guilty,
Audrey wrote back.
Audrey continued to type.
. . .
And delete.
. . .
And type.
Because the three dots
clung to the screen
for far too long.
Also . . .
My sister would hate me forever,
so like please do not say ANYTHING
But . . .
I’m really really sorry
for what she did.
You know.
On your locker.
She didn’t mean it.
She’s kinda obsessed.
Like OBSESSED
with Jordan.
And well . . .
Good luck with everything
next year, Nic!
Jenny Pugh was a bitch.
She called me a whore
and smeared it
on my locker,
and I should
hate her
for it.
But a small part of me
was beginning to see
that we all weren’t so different
from each other.
To everyone else,
we were all
a bitch, a whore,
a lover, a cheater,
a quarterback, a nerd.
But we weren’t.
We were none of those words.
We were so much more.
After writing Audrey’s and Austin’s,
Miranda’s and Marco’s
and Laurel’s essays,
after so much time
trying to feel
what it’s like to walk
these halls
as someone else,
I could at least now see
that Jenny Pugh
was someone more.
A Draft of Audrey Pugh’s Essay
Describe a person who has had a significant influence on you.
There are very few people in my life who would believe that I can hear my twin’s thoughts, that I can feel what she feels in the blood that pumps through my heart. It sounds kooky and unscientific. Maybe it’s not to those of us who were born into life with womb-mates. I love my sister, Jenny, to pieces. She is more than my best friend; she is my other half. If it were just the two of us, the world would be perfect.
There is more to this world than us. Last summer, when we traveled around Europe with our mother, I saw the way the young Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen would gaze in her direction as she laughed boisterously without a sense of volume or care. Around town, I see the way she charms the ladies at the tennis club and the barista at the coffee shop who always “forgets” to charge her for an extra shot. I can feel her wanting to consume the world and the way the world wants to consume her.
Jenny is not going to college. She’s told me this a million times. She’s told our parents she’s taking a gap year, in London or New York, where she’ll go to make it in whatever “it” is. I can feel what the world wants from Jenny, but without her, what do I want from the world?
I once read an interview with the unknown twin sister of a supermodel. The unknown twin chose to go to college, then law school, instead of New York Fashion Week and Milan like her sister. She described her sister as the sun, burning bright and radiant, and she as the moon, full and clear. I always thought I was destined to be the moon, the lesser-known twin, full and clear instead of burning bright. But with Jenny, I know what it feels like to shine bright.
Yet is it possible to have a world with two suns?
One night while in the south of France, Jenny and I sat on the terrace of a maison we were inhabiting for the week. The air was cool. Frogs croaked somewhere in the distance. The moon was there with us.
Jenny mused about a future gallivanting around Europe and jet-setting alone. I wanted her to want to take me with her, to want me by her side. But I let her continue to dream about a life where we were separable. Then she sighed, looked up at the sky, and said, “I love how the stars are a sun in someone else’s world.”
I know that we can both be suns in our own worlds, and that there’s a world for me to find, and consume and be consumed by, with Jenny pumping through my heart.
Outside
Spring leaves held strong
on agitated branches
and fluttered,
like my heart that lay agitated
and fluttered
and tried to find a rhythm of solace,
but wasn’t quite sure
if it should.
Like shattered glass
Late Saturday afternoon,
while I was studying for AP exams,
my phone lay dormant
on top of a textbook.
Then
like shattered glass.
A text from Ben
stared back at me.
I need you,
it said.
I froze.
Ben’s number
pinged again.
Everything slowly began
collapsing in
on itself.
It’s Jordan,
it said.
And my heart
stopped.
To pretend to know what happened
According to the phone log
I had texted Jordan back.
I had texted him back as if he were Ben.
I had texted him with everything I ever wanted to say
to Ben.
I miss you.
I love you.
I hurt you.
I’m sorry.
None of that mattered.
None of my texts were returned
by Ben
ever,
like the silence
that lingered on an empty street,
long after he drove away,
tires screeching around a corner.
The rain had returned
Like it always did
after I left Jordan’s house
that evening.
It soaked through my jacket, my clothes,
into my skin.
I walked down barren sidewalks
listening
for the rumble of a skateboard,
the sound of a boy,
a sign of something
that might be
Ben.
Early this morning
they were in the mountains
spring skiing.
Ben and Jordan.
The powder was epic.
They took two different lines.
Ben handed Jordan his phone
for a photo.
What they couldn’t see
was the water that trickled
into the fissures in the snow,
loosening the base.
If I closed my eyes,
just for a moment,
I could see Ben,
up there, on that mountain,
the one that peeked through the tops
of the evergreens.
I could see his long swooping tracks
writing cursive in the snow.
I could see
Ben looping down
the side of the mountain
one last time
before the roar of white powder
engulfed him.
My father sat
On a decorative bench