Even so, I find myself putting on makeup. When you add my new SPF foundation and a poorly lit bedroom, you get Halloween, four weeks early. Don’t do it! Don’t do it! Still, I (compulsively) dab on another layer of concealer when I hear Roz clomping down the hall.
“Where is she?” Roz’s voice vibrates with impatience.
“Viola, time to go!” Mom calls, then not-so-conspiratorially, adds, “Roz, princess, can you make sure Viola wears her hat at school today?”
I crush the pink makeup sponge in my hand.
Now, indignation rings: “Viola. I’m. Late!”
With one last glance at the mirror, I drop my makeup sponge on my desk. I’d need special effects makeup skills to camouflage my face anyway. And then there’s the matter of the Lee & Li letter, a missive to Dr. Luthra and the school board that’s so well written, so well researched, and so well reasoned, there’s zero chance the school won’t blot out the sun with all the measures my parents “strongly suggest.” Honestly, I’d be in awe if it also didn’t guarantee that everyone will know about my condition before long. Maybe I should just fake being sick, stay home from school, enforce my ban on players. Did I really need to add Josh’s expression to my Library of Regrets: Tanzania (regretted), Darren (regrettable). He has other ideas, apparently. My phone pings with a text.
Josh: Meet at 4:32 p.m. today?
Tonight is my prep night for the bake sale when I’m supposed to make and bake all the cookies so they’re ready to be frosted and packaged tomorrow. But that 4:32 p.m. is catnip with its mysterious specificity. I bite.
Me: Not 4:30?
Josh: Official sunset.
Josh: Somewhere
I admit it: I laugh out loud and on-screen.
My bedroom door thuds under a disgruntled palm. “I knew it! Mom! She’s not even getting ready in there!” Another thump. “I can’t be late!”
Apparently, the Viola Express runs, rain or shine. News flash: This conductor is taking her own sweet time.
Me: 4:32:05
The college counseling office on the second floor of Liberty Prep is bathed in soothing shades of maroon and beige, and filled with soft autumnal light, all come-in-and-get-cozy as if it were a log cabin high in the mountains. Looks are deceiving, and not just because invisible UV rays are seeping through the glass. Lurking above are storm clouds of expectation: college pennants, pinned shoulder to shoulder along the tops of the walls. Wesleyan. Boston College. Stanford. MIT. UCLA. Occidental. Georgetown. New York University.
One moment inside Ms. Kavoussi’s office, and my stress almost builds into hives. My counselor swivels around in her black chair to greet me by way of opening my file folder. She doesn’t even glance at her notes, not one little peek like she’s already summed me up. Like it’s not hard to sum me up. I lower myself delicately to the wood chair in the corner farthest from the windows. Even so, I hunch my shoulders to tuck as much of myself under my hat, but that does nothing to ease the pain in my rear.
“Viola. I’ve been looking forward to chatting with you.” Ms. Kavoussi smiles and picks up a ballpoint pen as slender as herself, not to jot notes, but to use as a baton to punctuate her speech. Tap! “Did you make your preliminary list of colleges?”
Why, yes, college counselor who is dressed for our future success, all East Coast liberal arts college with her tailored gray pants and pearls, I didn’t just bring the list of potential colleges, I even brought my full essay. I rummage inside my messenger bag to find it, printed out and filed for safekeeping in my planner, and hand the pages to her.
Ms. Kavoussi now takes her pen to my list. “I love Grinnell. Northwestern and Grinnell could be targets.” TARGET! “University of Washington. I’d say that’s a likely for you.” LIKELY. “But NYU Abu Dhabi?” Tappitytappitytappity. TAP. “That’s an unlikely.” UNLIKELY! Ms. Kavoussi raps her pen on her chin. “What happened to Georgetown being your first choice? I thought when the four of us met last spring, your parents said that you were going into crisis management with them.”
“Actually, I was thinking about being a foreign correspondent,” I say a little shakily, not just because I’ve rarely declared this aloud, but now I’m wondering whether I’m the one checking into the Kingdom of Crazy for still believing I can report breaking news. Just picturing myself in the middle of a riot, standing in the blazing sun, makes my skin almost prickle now. “An international journalist.”
“Ah. Hence, Abu Dhabi. That’s bold. Part of the school’s winnowing process is to fly out their best prospects for a free campus visit. Do your parents know?”
Even as I’m processing that luscious piece of information—free trip!—I shrug noncommittally: maybe yes, possibly not yet, definitely no.
Her cedar-brown eyes pierce through my hedging. Nervous, I touch my lariat, remind myself that my job in this world is to give voice to the voiceless, to cover the forgotten issues, the ones more convenient to ignore.
Tappity, tappity, tappity, TAP. Ms. Kavoussi, sounding thoughtful, says, “Dr. Luthra told me that you have a condition.”
“Dr. Luthra?”
“Are you sure with your condition that you’ll be able to go to a school in the desert? Or that being a journalist is really possible?” Ms. Kavoussi asks, her tone now carefully kind like she’s speaking to the Sick Girl. If my teeth clenched even tighter, my jaw would break.
…
QUESTION: WHY IS VIOLA WYNNE LI SWEATING LIKE A HUMAN WATERFALL?
Anger at her parents for informing Dr. Luthra.
Irritation at Dr. Luthra for tattling to Ms. Kavoussi.
Climate change is real: Her future plans are melting from sun exposure.
Or maybe, just maybe, her father has it right, and the overhead lights are frying her skin.Correct answer: All of the above.
…
How is it possible that I felt a heck of a lot safer in the savanna, even when a lion’s primal roar scared us awake in our (flimsy) canvas tent? I can’t shrink from the high beam of Ms. Kavoussi’s scrutiny or the reality that being a foreign correspondent might be impossible or that both my skin and my plans feel like they’re being rubbed raw.
Ms. Kavoussi continues, “I ask, not because I don’t think you’d be excellent as a journalist, Viola, because you would be. A great one. But we have to be realistic and strategic in your college apps, especially since it’s so extremely competitive today. If you want to put crisis management back on the table, then Georgetown—which would still be a stretch—should be your Early Action pick.”
“I’m absolutely sure I want to be a journalist,” I tell Ms. Kavoussi firmly, “and I have no doubt that I’ll figure out a way to do my job.”
Liar, liar. My skin stings ever so slightly, even though not a speck of sunlight is touching me. Yeah, so how could I stand out in the open to cover a million-person march? Or broadcast in a studio under the hot lights? I scoot my chair farther back even if it makes me feel cornered.
“Okay, fine, so journalism,” Ms. Kavoussi says doubtfully. The bell sounding the end of my dreams tolls even louder. “The natural question—the number one question—admissions officers will ask is why you didn’t work on the school paper. You’ll need to address that in your essay.”
“Actually, I’ve got a first draft,” I tell Ms. Kavoussi as I pull her copy out of my planner.
“Fantastic,” she says, nodding once, smoothing out the pages. “Tanzania,” she reads. “Safari.”
“Field experience.”
“Entitled.”
“But my aunt brought me to—”
“Watch a documentary being filmed in Ghana.”
“Yeah, in the courtroom—”
“Observer.”
Sweat starts to collect under my arms, and I lift my elbows off my sides to ventilate a little. But the thought of being an Entitled Observer makes me sweat even more. I quick check my body for the telltale prickles of a gathering rash, but all I feel is the rawness of my phototested rear.
“Bake sales
,” Ms. Kavoussi ponders before her frown deepens. She plays with her pearls like they are a rosary, and I get the distinct sense that I’m the one who should be praying. “You’ve raised fifty thousand dollars over forty-nine bake sales. That’s solid.”
Why am I getting the impression that “solid” in college-application speak means inadequate?
“And I wrote about fifty different causes,” I tell her, and pull out my copy of the essay, so flustered I barely remember what I wrote. “I interviewed leaders, researched trends, and Aminta drew political cartoons. We distributed our pamphlets through bake sales with even more info online on Medium.” Now that I hear myself, it sounds like amateur hour. Maybe I should have stayed on Liberty News, writing my way up the editorial chain, censorship and all.
“Yes, my hips are well acquainted with your bake sales. Good causes. All of them”—tap!—“but college admissions officers have read about every single issue and every single brownie in the world. They like focus. Focus is good. Being the editor of the school paper would have been excellent.”
“I was censored! Don’t my articles for my bake sales show initiative?”
Tappity-tap-tap! “Some kids have raised a million dollars for cancer research with their lemonade stands. I’m sorry, but that’s the kind of initiative that NYU Abu Dhabi is looking for.”
No wonder there’s a box of Kleenex on the conference table, ready for the spontaneous combustion of egos and the ensuing tears when you discover that despite what your parents have told you, special you, there are sixty thousand students Better Than You with better grades, better test scores, better brownies.
“But it’s all I have,” I tell her. From her pursed lips, it’s obviously not enough.
“What could be compelling is how you manage your own health crisis.” Ms. Kavoussi leans back in her seat to stare at me. “That’s unique. What do you think?”
“No,” I grit out despite Ms. Kavoussi’s lifted eyebrow, “because this is not going to change my life at all.”
SEATTLE—The following is a full transcript of a meeting with Geeks for Good, a community service group sited at Liberty Prep. It has been edited for content and clarity.
Participants: Aminta Sarabhai, Caresse Jackson, Viola Wynne Li
Aminta: Caresse and I have been thinking …
Viola: [unintelligible sound, possibly a groan.]
[Nervous laughter.]
Caresse: Honestly, we can take a break on the bake sales for now until you get better. Or stabilize. There’s no urgent need—
Viola: Not a chance. I need fifty bake sales.
Aminta: That’s not going to make or break your college apps. And a bake sale isn’t going to make or break one of the groups we support.
Viola: But it’ll make or break me.
Caresse: That’s the point! We don’t want to break you.
Aminta: So let us help bake this one time. We can totally handle it.
Caresse: And we’ll handle all of the setup.
Aminta: Not to mention, all of the sales. We’ll handle all the table duty, drop-off, lunch, and pick-up.
Viola: And what’s my role then?
Aminta:
Caresse:
Viola: [unintelligible sound, possibly a chair scooting back, sneakers running away, door shutting with a soft bang.]
Take an indie bookstore dedicated to geekery, add a café that serves all things buttery goodness, throw in shadow-box tables filled with antique compasses and cameras, and you have one of my favorite places on the planet. One that I need today after my dream-killing meetings, first with Ms. Kavoussi, then with my friends (formerly known as my bake-sale buddies). It’s a few minutes after four, and I have hustled from school to Ada’s Technical Books for the sole purpose of getting comfortably settled before Josh arrives. My timing may be wrong: be fashionably late and all. But there is nothing fashionable about UPF clothes. Which is why I plan to be parked at a table with as much of me concealed as humanly possible and with maximum time to purge the thought that my life is changing, with or without my consent.
Case in point: Fate laughs at me in the face once again.
Unfortunately, after I wave at the best barista at Ada’s—a mermaid on land with sea-glass everything: earrings, necklace, and wispy blue-green hair—I catch the unmistakable unfurling of a hulk wearing a matching safari hat as he straightens out of a gunmetal gray chair. Josh and his (many) (many) muscles wait for me to take my seat before he sits back down at the one table that hugs the wall, away from the bank of windows.
“Hey!” Josh says as he tips his brim in my direction. “The hat looks great on you.”
“Thanks, I love it,” I say with a shy smile, then bend down to rest my messenger bag at my feet.
“Is this table okay?”
A single exposed light bulb hangs over our table, but thanks to him, my helmet du jour should keep me safe. What could an hour do to me, covered as I am?
“This is perfect,” I tell him and mean it, especially when I notice what lies under the glass tabletop: a telescoping spyglass and a chart of the stars.
“It’s like—” I start to say.
At the same time, Josh asks, “Do you want—”
We do the whole awkward first dance of conversations: “you first,” “no, you first,” “no, really, you go.”
Somehow, I’d forgotten just how blue his eyes are. I clear my throat and tap the star map. “It’s like Persephone is with us.”
“Whoa, a little weird, isn’t it?” he says, but he still looks distracted and nods toward the back room, nestled dark and cozy on all four sides with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “We can go over there if it’s better.” (For you.)
I hear that silent addendum and add my own silent sigh. Frankly, it’s embarrassing that any concessions have to be made for me. More importantly, I don’t want any pity accommodations, not when I’m perfectly fine. Liar, liar: I adjust uncomfortably on the hard chair. Recovering from the phototest or from a meeting with Ms. Kavoussi or an intervention from my friends is not the fastest thing I’ve ever experienced. I assure him, “I’m great here.”
“Sorry. You can add me to the list of nags.”
“Parents, aunt, doctors, college counselor, and you,” I say lightly, even though I feel off balance like I haven’t eaten or drank anything in three days, maybe four. “Done.” Yes, my future is done. My eyes water, and I bite my lip because I don’t want to cry now.
“What?”
“I just got some bad news, that’s all.”
“Your doctor?”
“No, well, yes, that, too.” I take a shaky breath, still hearing Ms. Kavoussi’s penetrating questions. “With my condition, I’m not sure I can be a journalist anymore. It’s what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid.”
“That sucks,” he says. “Are all your bake sales for causes?”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“All your articles hanging on your wall at home. It kind of seems like you do a lot more than just report about an issue. You take a stand and try to make a change, more like an activist.”
Was that true? I had never thought about myself that way: an activist. And I hadn’t seen my writing from that angle: to create change, not just to document. I frown.
“Something to think about, anyway,” Josh says with a slight smile like he knows he’s inverted my world.
“Definitely,” I tell him, wishing I had something hot to drink now. I feel so cold. “It’s just hard to look at my life in a new way. Being a foreign correspondent is what I’ve always planned to do.”
“I know that feeling. My twin died. We fought like you wouldn’t believe, but I never thought I’d go through life alone.”
Just then, the barista calls Josh’s name, and he jumps up. A moment later, he sets a steaming mug in front of me. “I figured all the baristas knew you. Almond milk chai, geothermally hot. Did we get it right?”
It’s not just the table location or meeting Ms. Kavoussi or blath
ering about myself that’s thrown me off. It’s this guy himself.
“Totally right,” I tell him. “Thanks! What do I owe you?” He waves my offer away as I take an experimental sip and sigh. “This drink is a public service.”
“What do you mean?”
I wrap my hands around the mug. “Caffeine to get me through homework, more nutritious than a cookie, good for my bones. See? It’s prepping me to be a healthy, productive member of society. Public service.”
“So you should be paid to drink this?”
“Heck, yeah! Hey, where’s yours?”
“I don’t drink.”
“What do you mean? You don’t drink the most amazing homemade chai tea in the world out of, what? Misplaced loyalty to coffee?”
“No caffeine.”
“Coffee? Coke? Red Bull?”
He shakes his safari-hatted head (adorably).
“Beer,” I crow with a triumphant lift of my mug. “Straight shots of vodka. No, tequila, right?”
“None of the above. Just water.”
“Seriously?” I lower my chai, deflated.
Josh’s eyes crinkle at the edges. He doesn’t even attempt to conceal his not-so-subtle smugness. “Surprised you, didn’t I?”
I blush because it’s true that I’ve judged and convicted him of being one of those guys who views flirting and partying as professional sports. I mean, those (broad) shoulders, those light blue eyes. How could they not be weapons of female destruction? Plus, Aminta had warned me about him. “You just kind of seem like the partier type.”
Instead of being offended, he simply says, “I was. Until a car accident after a party.”
He looks lost in a bad memory, and I ask quietly, “What happened?”
“A truck T-boned us.”
“That’s awful. Were you hurt?”
His hands knot together on the table. “No.” (I wish.)
I hear that silent “I wish” loud and clear. How many times last night did I yell the same thing in the privacy of my own head? “I wish this hadn’t happened to me. I wish things were different. I wish I were Roz instead.” And his? How much did it cross over to “I wish I were the one who died?” because I swear, I hear that, and I hate it.