Anatomy of an Honors Student: Buckle

I sit in the passenger’s seat, trembling.

“Just tell me what you got,” my mom repeats, and I hold up the geometry quiz with 77 written in red across the top.

“It’s right there,” I say, and my voice cracks – like I’m a fourteen-year-old boy instead of girl.

“I want you to tell me,” mom says again.

Terror rises into my throat, makes me want to throw up.

“I can’t,” I say feebly. I turn toward the window, look out at the Family Dollar store and the Subway, study their signs to try to hold in my panic. I regulate my breathing, quick and shallow. I blink.

“We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you got on your quiz.”

I turn my face away completely, try not to see myself reflected in the glass of the window.

“A seventy-seven,” I say. I hate her.

“Now what was so hard about that?” she says, her voice flat and stern, and she swings open her door and thrusts out a leg. “There’s nothing wrong with that, Alicia. Let’s go.”

We go.

----

This is the first sign that I am the creature in the closet, pushing myself, punishing myself, perfecting myself. It isn’t my mom.

I come closest in school, to impossible perfection, elementary through high school. I come so close I can taste the bitterness of the final percent, the absent plus. Ninety nine is not enough.

Every year I panic that the last year was my best.

I hit the ninety-ninth percentile on all state standardized tests. I pass all the CAPT the first time. I do well enough to qualify for National Merit Scholar semi-finals on the PSAT and improve my score significantly on the SAT. I take the AP English exam, and college-credit Spanish.

I take all honors classes, but I pay no attention to my GPA. I want an A in every class. I want to prove myself. I am not happy.

I am not happy.

---

We look at each other (hesitantly) and pull our desks together (reluctantly), the feet scratching along the floor as we form a group of convenience.

We are the four closest to each other, but we have nothing in common.

“Now talk about your answers with your group members,” the Life Skills teacher says. David, one of my groupmates, wrinkles his nose at her.

I look at my paper. Number one is “nuclear war.”

“So what are you most concerned about in the world?” one of my groupmates asks.

“Nuclear weapons, and world annihilation,” I say eventually. My group looks at me in disbelief.

“You're really concerned about that?” David asks.

“What did you put?”

“Lunch,” he says.

We all laugh.

“What do you mean, lunch?” we ask. “How could you be worried about lunch?”

“I’m worried that I won’t make it to lunch.” He looks at the clock; it’s only second period. He groans.

Ten seconds pass.

“I’m afraid,” Annette says, her voice level and natural, “of failure. I’m most afraid of really trying at something, and failing anyway.”

I lower my eyes to my paper, look at my answers: nuclear war, famine, disease. I felt a creeping chill along the back of my neck.

Her answer is better than mine.

---

It’s easy to “buckle down” – I pull out my history book junior year, flip to the assigned chapter. I read the questions. I read the chapter. I write my answers, as everything, long-hand on a sheet of blank, unlined paper. By the end of the year I can finish this work in under two hours.

I stay in my room the entire time, not stopping – no bathroom breaks, no snack, no interruptions. I do not enjoy the work, but I am not frustrated or bored. I have prepared myself to be empty of emotion, reaction, expectation. (My koan is “succeed, succeed, succeed.”)

I fill myself with knowledge and feel in-a-way satisfied.

---

My friend and lab partner follows me to my locker.

“But why did he give you an A?” she asks me, and it sounds like an accusation. “You didn’t do anything I didn’t do.”

“I don’t know,” I say, but I think because I’m good at English.

“But what did you do that I didn’t do?” Her voice is harder.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.

She stares at me.

I open my locker and wonder if our friendship can survive this.

“You got a B+,” I offer helpfully, knowing it won’t help.

“But you got an A,” she says.

“A-,” I say, despite myself. I taste the minus like a copper penny or a battery on my tongue.

“I don’t know what you did that I didn’t do,” she snaps, and turns and goes.

I glance at her back, her hair flouncing behind her, and think I’m better than you.

I look again, for the first time since she approached me (asking diffidently “What did you get?”), at the computer printout report card.

“A minus,” I say, and sigh. “What didn’t I do?”

I frown. I slam my locker door.

We all buckle.

---

We buckled down, buckled under, because there was nothing in that space. There was no us – just desire, desire, desire: Depend on me. Need me. Tell me I’m good. Tell me you’re proud, envious, awed. Tell me I haven’t failed. Love me -- but don't just love me.

Love me because I’m perfect.