Page 50 - Solstice Art & Literary Magazine 2021

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stroom and would meet them after class. After splashing cold water onto her face, she looked less sunburned, but she was unable to wash away the nagging sense of unease.
Anna was a perfectionist, as were her parents. When they were seated just the three of them around the dinner table, they harassed her about testing and studying and scores less than 100%. When they were around others, however, they bragged about her intelligence and academic prowess. Her last test had been great, but her parents had pushed her to try it one more time, to see if she could get the score up even higher. In came the tutors, with their boatloads of tips and tricks, formulas to remember, set- ups to rely on, and lists of common mistakes to avoid. She didn’t really mind them. She was grateful. She truly was. She told herself that the boy knew nothing of her life. Who was he to judge?
The screech of a pencil sharpener brought her back to re- ality, and she turned to the clock, anticipating the moment the proc- tor would allow them to begin. Her stomach twisted in on itself, and she could feel her breakfast churn- ing around unpleasantly. To calm herself, Anna added up the hours
she’d spent with tutors, and then the hours she’d spent on practice tests. Surely there was nothing to be worried about—she was more than ready. She’d done this before, and today was no different. But her head began to pound, and she felt sick. She tapped her fingers back and forth, back and forth again, but the routine didn’t help.
She looked up once more, and began counting the number of times the boy tapped his left foot on the floor. She really didn’t in- teract with him at all during class; she always stuck with her friends in their little social bubble. The only time they’d really spent together was when a substitute teacher part- nered them up for a short assign- ment. Anna had forgotten her bag at home, so she asked if they could use his calculator. He’d stuttered as he explained that his device wasn’t sophisticated enough to help them with the task at hand. The sub couldn’t find the backups and told them to use a computer program instead. When the boy had opened his laptop, the browser was still up from when he’d last been on, the main page open to an article on scholarship eligibility for first gen- eration students. Anna had averted her eyes, not really knowing why. It was like she’d witnessed something very personal.
Anna’s parents had both at- tended Ivy League schools, and her grandparents before them. There was an expectation that she would follow in their footsteps—never said in so many words, but hovering in the air since middle school, may- be even before then. She’d always thought that these stakes were the highest one could have. But was it possible that the stakes would be higher if none of her family mem- bers had ever gone to college at all?
A rabbit hole began to devel- op in her head, and she couldn’t help but fling herself in headfirst. She imagined dinners with her family, except there wasn’t enough food on the table. They didn’t nag her about not studying enough; they told her to stop studying so much, to get her- self a job so she could do something useful with her life for once. She remembered the overwhelming dis- appointment that was her first prac- tice test—what if that was the one she had to stick with? No do-overs, no second chances? What if every- one around her told her she didn’t have a shot? That college was just a fantasy dream she’d never reach? That even if she got in she couldn’t really go unless she scraped togeth- er some patchwork of scholarships or went into deep deep debt? And what if her family’s insurance didn’t cover her anxiety medication and
she missed her classes because of frequent panic attacks and she was always lost and she couldn’t find a way out of all the rabbit holes with- in rabbit holes?
The clock ticked loudly, but the sound barely registered in Anna’s crowded mind. A long chug from her water bottle didn’t clear the feeling of bile rising in her throat or the sour taste in her mouth. The pounding in her head intensified—definitely a migraine coming on.Was it really nerves that were making her feel this way? Or was it guilt?
Abruptly, she stood up and pushed her chair back forcefully, cringing at the angry screech it made against the tiled floor. All eyes turned to her, watching as she picked up her neatly arranged tools and moved forward. Giving a quick nod to the boy, she grabbed his sub-par calcula- tor—far too old and unreliable to be used during a high stakes test—and replaced it with her own.
He looked at her, totally per- plexed by this strange turn of events. “What are you doing? I don’t think
I’m allowed to use this...”
She didn’t know how to re-
spond. All she could do was run out of the room.
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