Hancock Park (8 page)

M
y parents decided to send me to Miles Watson, who worked out of his home, which was deep in the Valley (an outpost of Los Angeles that I never drove to unless absolutely necessary). My brother had seen Dr. Watson. This was how he had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. My dad came to the appointment with me, even though I'd begged him not to. I think he was feeling guilty about not spending enough time with me. As if this were going to be quality time.

The house was large and white and covered with odd trinkets. On top of the coffee table, Christmas ornaments were scattered. Dr. Watson greeted us at the front door. He seemed to be in his late sixties and was very
mild-mannered. His white hair was parted to the side.

He said that before he could treat me, he had to run a bunch of tests.

“So, today I will start by doing some general intelligence tests,” Dr. Watson explained, speaking with careful enunciation. “We'll do the psychological tests, as well as the Wechsler IQ…”

I stopped him. “IQ? Why?”

“This is just the full battery of tests,” he said mildly, smoothing the pant legs of his khakis.

“Fine,” I agreed, resigned. “But can you promise me that you won't tell my parents my IQ score?” I looked to my dad. He nodded. “For personal reasons,” I added.

“Well, if that's okay with you,” he said to my dad, “then it's fine with me.”

“Fine with me,” Dad said.

I was scared to take this test. I was scared that I wouldn't score high enough.

My mom had never taken an IQ test, but she had been valedictorian of her Ivy League college class. My dad had taken an IQ test, and the result was so high that he refused to tell my brother and me the exact number, fearing that we might be concerned about not living up to his standard. I had always been more or less happy not knowing my IQ because, with me, my dad's fears were warranted. I worried that I wasn't as smart as my parents. And now I had been roped into taking an IQ test, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.

When Dr. Watson sat me down at a wooden dining table in his kitchen, I wanted to call bullshit. A psychologist who worked out of his kitchen? How good could he possibly be?

Dr. Watson sat down with me and explained that he was going to list some numbers, and would I please repeat them to him?

“One, seven, five, four, six, nine, eight.”

I looked away, toward the patio door, and listened to him say the numbers. I could almost visualize them in front of me.

“One, seven, five, four, six, nine, eight,” I repeated.

The strings of numbers got longer, and then Dr. Watson said that he was going to give me a mixture of letters and numbers. Could I please repeat them to him in alphabetical and numerical order—letters first, numbers second?

“C, seven, G, nine, three, T.”

I collected the numbers and the letters in my mind, rearranged them, then spoke them.

“C, G, T, three, seven, nine.”

It was only after correctly rearranging and repeating a particularly long sequence that I realized that the strange sensation I was feeling was my mind actually working.

Soon I'd moved on to a four-hundred-question psychological evaluation. Some of the questions applied to me—“Do you often find that you are so anxious that you cannot sleep?”—and others, not so much—“Do you see and hear things that do not actually exist?”

At the end, Dr. Watson told me that my verbal IQ was a little over 150.

“What does that mean?” I realized that all I knew about IQs was that 100 was average.

“Well, that means that you are in the top half of the ninety-ninth percentile.” Was it my imagination, or was Dr. Watson smiling at me? I hadn't seen him smile before.

“Wow,” I said, trying to register the information. How could…top half-percentile…really? The one personal attribute that I had always held the most stock in was my intelligence. I was never athletic, or skinny, or social, or beautiful. But I was always smart. I just hadn't had any idea how smart.

“It might be something you want to tell your parents. You should be proud, Becky. You are really an exceptional young woman.”

A few minutes later, as I was coming out of the bathroom, I heard Dr. Watson in the living room talking with my dad.

“Your daughter is very bright,” Dr. Watson said.

“She sure is,” my dad replied.

“No,” Dr. Watson went on. “I don't think you understand. Her IQ is 155.”

I couldn't believe it! I burst into the living room. “You broke my confidence! Doctors aren't supposed to do that,” I reminded him. “You said you weren't going to tell my parents.” I stood with my hands on my hips, a few feet away from Dr. Watson's leather armchair.

Dr. Watson put his hand over his mouth. “I am so sorry, Becky. That was—that was really wrong of me. I just got so excited….” I gave him a hard look. “I don't know what I can say; I really do apologize.” His cheeks were pink; he was flustered.

My eyes burning, I concentrated on taking deep breaths as I followed my dad out the front door.

A
t the first MUN meeting of the year, I was standing at the front of Mr. Elwright's classroom explaining parliamentary procedure to the twenty girls who'd shown up, when the door swung open and the Trinity walked in. Alissa led, casually carrying a Spago to-go bag in one hand and a large Louis Vuitton tote bag in the other. Kimberly followed with Courtney close behind, frantically skimming her
Norton Anthology of English Literature
. She wasn't an intellectual, but she was in my AP English class—and she was most likely behind on homework.

“Hey, sorry we're late. I had to wait for my driver to come and drop off our lunches.” Alissa waved the Spago bag in the air and flashed a smile. Mr. E. shot me a look,
as if to say, “Look who showed up.”

“That's okay. I'm glad you could make it,” I said, not totally sincerely. I resented these girls a little. Not only were they insipid and way too appearance-oriented, but they also had never been especially nice to me. I couldn't help wondering what they were doing at an MUN meeting.

Everyone listened attentively while I explained the rules of MUN conferences, but I heard a few excited murmurs when I told them about the first conference, up in Berkeley. It was a couple months away, but I was pretty excited about it, too. It would be my first big act without Amanda. I wanted to win an award. I wanted to prove that I was whole, and just as capable, without her.

When the lunch period ended, the Trinity descended upon me at the front of the classroom.

“This sounds like fun. You're such a good public speaker,” Courtney said, probably referring to the video clip I had shown from a past conference. “Maybe you can help me out with my speechmaking skills. I'm not that great at it—not in front of big crowds, at least.”

“Yeah, I can help you out,” I said, trying not to let my confusion show. Part of me wanted to beam—Courtney Gross wanted
me
to do something with her? But the other part of me knew better, knew that there must be some underlying motive. And it probably wasn't that she was dying to be my friend.

I knew better than that. Besides, I didn't
really
want to be friends with the Trinity, did I?

“I can't wait to go to conferences with cute boys in suits,” Kim added.

I grimaced. So there was an underlying motive after all.

Alissa pulled on Courtney's arm. “Guys, we have to go. The bell rang. See you in math, Becky!”

Despite my misgivings, driving home from school that day, I surprised myself by thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be my worst year ever after all.

I
hadn't considered the possibility that my parents might start dating. The thought of my mom and my dad having sex with each other was hideous, but the thought of each of them having sex with other people—well, that was much worse.

One night I was in the kitchen, peeling an orange (I have to do it all in one piece, or else I can't eat the orange), when I heard my mom yell something from her bedroom. When I had finished peeling, I took the orange and went to see what was going on. I found her hunched over her computer monitor, staring at the screen.

“What's going on?” I asked, edging up against the desk.

“I just…got this message…from ‘2Fast2Furious.' I can't believe it.”

She had signed up for JDate the week before, but she told me that she was just looking, just browsing other people's profiles, and that if she ever were going to go on a date, she would make sure to let me know beforehand.

“Why not, Mom? You're hot.”

“It's…Harold!”

I looked at the screen. JDate's mail screen was up on the Web browser, and the following message was displayed in the center of the page.

 

From: 2Fast2Furious

Subject: Hey there!

Hey, smartblonde. I read your profile and user info, and you seem very interesting…even without a picture posted. Although you're a
little
bit outside my desired age range, I would really like to get to know you better. Please see a picture of me attached below. If you like what you see, don't hesitate to message back….;)

–2Fast2Furious

 

And below was a picture of a man in a baseball cap. A picture of my father. My Yankees-obsessed, BlackBerry-addicted
dad
.

So I did the only reasonable thing to do in such a situation.

I screamed. “What the
fuck
?! Outside his age range?!
What is his age range? I can't believe he's on JDate, too! And sharing his photo?”

Mom gave a disgusted sigh and pointed an impeccably painted nail at the screen. “It says here that he's more into the twenty-and thirty-year-old set. Natural blondes preferred.”

 

“So, my dad is dating twelve-year-olds.”

Courtney Gross's eyes widened in surprise.

“No, no, not literal twelve-year-olds. More like twenty-two-year-olds.”

An MUN meeting had just ended and most of the girls had decided to stay in Mr. Elwright's room to eat lunch. I had dared myself to sit down with the Trinity.

“Ugh. I know what you mean,” Courtney said as she dug a fork into the herb-roasted chicken breast in her Tupperware container.

Alissa was taking her time chewing a single baby carrot. Her feet were tapping rapidly on the floor. She swallowed the last bite slowly and said, “Omigod, your stepmom is hilarious!”

“Stepmom?” I asked. It was amazing how much I didn't know about someone I had gone to school with for almost five years.

“Yeah.” Courtney sighed.

“She's, like, twenty-five, and all she does is shop,” Alissa explained, clearly hating that the discussion wasn't focused on her. “Sometimes she'll drop by school in the
middle of one of her very busy afternoons to get Court's opinion on a pair of shoes or something. I think she thinks that's stepmother-daughter bonding.”

Courtney looked annoyed at Alissa, but then said to me, “So, I guess you have that to look forward to,” and laughed uncomfortably.

“Yeah, it's pretty horrific,” I agreed.

Kim gave me a wide-eyed look. “Wow. Are you like into studying vocabulary for fun or something?” Kim was notoriously stupid.

“Bitch! That's mean.” Alissa poked Kim with her elbow. “What she means is that it's cool you use such big words in normal conversation. I was talking to this actress last night at dinner, and all she said was ‘super cool'.”

“Yeah. I bet you'll do really well on the SATs and stuff,” Courtney chimed in.

I didn't mention how I had almost lost it when I missed one word on a first-grade spelling test. It was the only word I'd missed all year, and I thought it might ruin my record. Kim had gone to elementary school with me, but she'd clearly forgotten about this. I just nodded, said thank you, and speared another strawberry with my fork, trying not to think about what parental dating horrors might await me.

H
ere's what my days and nights look like on Mom's weeks:

Wake up at 6:05 to shower, get dressed, and make the thirty-minute drive to school. Take Jack with me and drop him off at Stratfield, unless he had whined his way into staying at Dad's so he could sleep later. Go to school and try to fit in, which means not hiding in Mr. Elwright's class during free periods, but instead hanging out with Taylor or sitting with the Trinity and talking about (a) boys, (b) clothes, or (c) which clothes to wear when we might see boys. Or about the Trinity's exciting nights, when they
go to expensive, extravagant parties, mingle with boring but attractive stars, dressed in sequined minidresses from Beverly Hills sample sales, and hook up with male models who were too strung out to remember their names. Even though my parents were big shots, my mom hated the celebrity social scene, and my dad never took me to whatever events he attended. Nights for me now involved some combination of traffic on the way to Santa Monica, homework, and maybe renting a movie with Taylor….

Here's what my days and nights look like on Dad's weeks:

Get up at 6:35 to shower, get dressed, and make the short drive to school. Get home early, and then get depressed about being home alone in a big, empty house with nothing to do but read and watch television—or Google the Trinity and feel jealous about the exciting lives they were leading. Sometimes, one of the Trinity would instant message me and send me a picture of what she was wearing out that night. They didn't quite get that my life wasn't as illustrious as theirs, and I wasn't eager to correct their assumptions.

Here's how I feel no matter whose week it is:

Like I am missing something, constantly one step out of the loop.

Like I want to be somewhere else, living someone else's life.

Like I don't want to have to deal with Becky Miller and all her issues.

 

“You're becoming one of those popular sluts, aren't you?” Amanda asked me one time after I had rehashed my day with her over the phone. I told her about how I had gone out to Mozza for lunch with the Trinity, and how Courtney and I had started sitting together in the Room during free periods. First, I had told her about Taylor, that she was nice and not quite as weird as we had supposed her to be. To that, Amanda had replied, “No way. She's a freak, Becky! Have you noticed that she sometimes goes without a bra? Or maybe that was just a tenth-grade thing.” I had muttered “mm-hm” and quickly tried to change the subject. Now, I talked about my dare-I-call-it-friendship with the Trinity instead.

“I am not!” I lay back in my bed, secretly pleased that Amanda might be nervous that I was becoming one of them—that I was
capable
of becoming one of them. Amanda and I talked once weekly, at best. More often, we just instant messaged. I was afraid that, with the physical distance between us, we might be growing apart. “I wouldn't leave you for them,” I added.

“No, don't worry, it's totally a good thing.”

Did she really think that it was a good thing?

“Yeah, I mean, I've got a bunch of new friends here, and I've been hooking up with this really cute guy for the past few weeks. Oh, and I made the volleyball team!”

“Congrats!” I told her, trying not to resent the fact
that she knew boys—went to school with boys, even—and I didn't.

“Oh, and get this! Some of my new friends on the team invited me to go with them to this crazy Halloween party.” I had completely forgotten that Halloween was coming up. “Speaking of,” Amanda continued, “are you going to Pimps and Hos this year? You should. I bet your new friends could get you an invite.”

Pimps and Hos was Whitbread's most notorious party. Every year, one upper schooler hosted, and because of all the money flying around at my school, each year's party was more elaborate and ridiculous than the past year's. Or so I heard. The idea was that guys dressed like pimps of some sort, and girls dressed like hos. Because Halloween was, after all, basically just an occasion for girls who were usually decently covered up to dress, and act, like sluts.

“Yeah, um, maybe I'll go. Who knows?” What I meant was, “Who knows if I'll even be invited?” I wasn't so sure that I was officially friends with the Trinity. Not yet, at least.

“Okay. You totally should, though. I'm dressing up as a Nava-ho for my Halloween party. It's going to be so cool. No parental supervision, a full bar. It's a real high school party!”

I took a deep gulp in. My idea of an exciting night was renting a movie and watching it at home with Taylor. That was fun in its own way, but it wasn't helping me grow
socially or meet any boys. If I just sat around and waited, I might never get what I wanted. I figured maybe I had to make the effort.

A real high school party. Maybe that was just what I needed to push me in the right direction.