On May 4, a Saturday, Dave’s father woke him at 6:00 a.m. Dave threw off the covers and stumbled to the bathroom, showered and toweled off, combed his shock of hair until it shone. He brushed and flossed his teeth. He examined himself in the mirror, zooming in closer and closer until his face abstracted and his eyes were black tunnels shifting in his skin.
He dressed. Nothing special. Blue polo shirt and chinos, white-soled shoes. Then he loaded his backpack with supplies: one admission ticket, printed from the Internet; one plastic card that identified him as the one and only David Alexander Chu, Student, Valley High School; two number-2 pencils, sharpened, and one soft eraser; one graphing calculator; two extra calculator batteries, just in case; one watch without audible alarm; two peanut butter granola bars; one ripe banana; one canteen of filtered water. And in his front pocket, folded and tucked against his thigh, eight hundred dollars in cash.
His mother made him gluten-free toast and turkey bacon and fried three eggs sunny-side-up. “The SAT book said you’ll need lots of protein to get you through,” she told him.
Dave thanked her and ate it all, cleaned his plate, although he hated how the eggs quivered and glared at him like eyes.
When it was time, his mother drove him to a high school in San Francisco. To get there, they had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge. On the span Dave conducted his silent ritual, holding his breath between one orange spire and the next and trying to imagine those final, suffocating moments in the life of Tristan Bloch.
They passed through the toll booths and merged onto Nineteenth Avenue. In the driver’s seat Dave’s mother said, “It’s too bad we have to drive all the way into the city. I still don’t understand, you couldn’t take the test at your school?”
Dave shrugged. “All the spots were taken.” The lie flowed from his mouth, so easy, surprising him.
“Too bad,” his mother echoed, and was quiet. Then she asked, “Are you nervous?”
The money in his pocket was a steadying force, a strange power. He shook his head. “I think I’m really ready,” he told her. It was the least that he could do.
At the curb she turned and smiled at him; he turned and smiled back. Then he jumped out, his backpack, lighter now, hanging from one shoulder.
The car pulled away from the curb. The school, St. Antony’s, was a massive gray building with an iron gate at its entrance and a dark, enormous cross upon its face.
Nick Brickston waited in their meeting place, around the side. “?’Sup.”
Dave nodded back. He rustled in the backpack for his wallet, then slipped it into the pocket of his chinos. Nick had brought the school ID card he’d made, with his own smiling face next to Dave’s full name. “But my last name—won’t they know you’re not me?” Dave had asked when he first saw the fake; “Naw, man, trust me, no one wants to be the racist prick that starts that conversation,” Nick had explained. Now he handed everything to Nick—the backpack with both pencils and the calculator, the erasers, the granola bars, even the banana. He was thirsty and thought about keeping the canteen for himself, but didn’t. In the end, he gave it all.
—
The scores were posted early on a Friday morning three weeks later. Dave’s parents had punched the release date into their phones, so the phones trilled and beeped at them when it was time. They hurried into Dave’s room and hovered behind him as he logged on to his College Board account. His mother at one shoulder, his father at the other.
As he typed in the password, his mother said, “I cannot look.” But she did. She set her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Assiduous, he thought. That was what his mother felt like when she did this. He knew the word was wrong but suddenly no longer cared. It was almost over. When he clicked the button, it would be done.
MISS NICOLL
It was clear that Molly and Doug Ellison had ruined a perfectly good friendship with the play at intimacy that neither of them had enjoyed. Now Molly was determined to avoid him. She’d arrive at her classroom just after the morning bell had rung so she wouldn’t see him greeting students in the hall; she’d lock her room and walk around the campus during break so she could disappear into the crowds of kids; she’d leave at the start of lunch, hurrying away with a brown bag and a book, to eat unseen in her car. Yet his presence remained: she saw his students grinning as they exited his classroom, she heard the dull reverberation of his voice behind the wall, the banging of his pen upon the whiteboard next door. She prayed that her students did not notice her blushing. She knew she was being ridiculous, but she worried she’d get stuck with Doug in awkward silence, struggling for words as the eddy of kids pressed them closer and closer together. She worried he’d ask her to read more of his book. She worried, perversely, that he might also be avoiding her. But most of all, she dreaded looking into his face and seeing his regret.
And then, one day at lunch, Molly went to the faculty lounge and discovered she could stop her dodging and hiding.
“Just quit,” announced Gwen Thruwey. “No warning.”
“And he’s actually gone?” asked Kristin Steviano.
“Just like that?” asked Jeannie Flugel.