Yellow light freckles the screen of my computer and I turn away from my large front window. Outside, the October sun billows through my street, spinning dead leaves into flakes of gold and the old asphalt into a river of silver. Cooper tumbles down the stairs, his cleats knocking on the scarred wood. “Tell Mom I’m going down to the field!” he screams, banging shut the door. I slam back against the couch, suddenly furious that I’ve barricaded myself inside all weekend with a Great Wall of Homework. I touch my nose to the cold glass pane. Next Saturday, I tell myself.

When my teacher hands the essay back a few weeks later, a big red 100% lies in the corner. Pride sweeps through me and I leave it face up on my desk. Simon leans over. “Of course,” he says, sighing sarcastically. “Leave it to Emma.”
…
No one has ever had to focus me on academics. Not in fifth grade, when I sat on our cold, porcelain toilet late at night and crafted a perfect analysis of that week’s reading. Not in eighth grade, when I worked for months on my science fair project. Definitely not in high school, with perilous real life approaching at breakneck speeds.

As I grow older, my place in society is sealed by my focus to do well. I have smoothly condensed into a group of girls like me, whose company has only increased my intensity over the years, boiled it down like a beam of sunlight through a magnifying glass.

Say I make a mistake on an exam. Even if I do well overall, I lament those incorrect answers, dig into myself over what I should’ve, could’ve, would’ve done if only I’d been thinking more clearly. An anxious resolve to improve falls over me, nervous, agitated and raucous in my stomach. Internal pressure threatens to burst outwards even as it coils inwards. Mom and Dad don’t push me this way. No one ever has.
…
Our tests are passed back. I look at mine. 85%. Lola crows in delight.
“Oh my God!” she exclaims. “I did better than Emma!”
“I guess so…” I say. Come on, Emma, I think. You can do better.
“Yes! Finally!” Lola is beaming and does a little dance. You can do so much better.
…
I’ve been helped through life by a multitude of variables tilted in my favor: a stable home, married parents who read to me as a little girl, helpful grandparents who support my pursuits in the arts, good healthcare and an orthodontist, numerous visits to the symphony, theater, museums, and some experience with international travel. Not to say we haven’t had our problems, of course we have. Two grandmothers on their deathbeds, a worried phone call with my aunt, why won’t he agree to a facility. A lack of money at tax season, a frantic saving spree, my father splurging on some new toy. But I have never been for want of food, clean water, electricity or warmth. Statistics show that with my upbringing, I’m on a direct path to well-being.

I fit seamlessly into those statistics. I have fulfilled everything that was expected of me. But in doing so, I have boxed myself away. People don’t worry or wonder about me. I’m snagged just where I should be—a place where society tells me I belong. A place where excellent is average and all accomplishments are normal.

A few weeks ago, we were assigned a project in language arts. Create a mask based off of symbols of your identity. I had trouble filling out the sheet because the only identity markers I could come up with were smart and hardworking. I asked around about what to symbolize. All my friends called me smart and nothing else. I was a boring person, I thought hopelessly. I would never have any interesting stories to tell. A sheet of self-loathing slid over my eyes for days, to the point where everything I did was typical, boring, and expected. 

For the next few Sunday nights before school, as I was lying in bed, I would tell myself I had to be more interesting, yet I didn’t know how to be anything but myself. And that, as I had previously realized, was no good. All the other students brushing past me in the hallways had something that set them apart, except for me. I was a robot programmed to do well, no more, no less.

Spending years sunk into grades, I’ve missed out on all this fun. I still have plenty of time before graduation, I know that. But I haven’t developed any other skills. I’m not an athlete and I’m not an artist. I don’t know how to flirt with boys and I don’t know how to sweep make-up over my cheeks and turn into something beautiful. I want to have something else define be besides school, and if school defines me, I want it to be impressive, not the standard for someone like me.

Sometimes I think I should just let it all go. Dad smoked pot, drank, flunked most of his classes… and he turned out all right. Maybe I should just take my chances. Though I’m not sure I would enjoy myself if I had no aim, no focus. I wouldn’t be stressed or have a constant thorn of homework in my side, yet I also wouldn’t be remembered. I want to return to my high school reunion and be extraordinary. If I give up now, that will never work.

That life, it’s so alluring. I want so badly to have a cute boy like me or stay out late with friends, know all the gossip, or do something insanely illegal. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard: I don’t look all that freakish. I have blonde hair that falls to by collarbone in smooth layers, I don’t break out, I have 20/20 vision, I got my braces off in seventh grade. I could slip in with a crowd of wild, popular teens and never look back. What’s holding me back is the personality everyone else brands me with, the personality created by my passion for school. There’s something kind of ostracizing about turning in a model you worked on for six hours when everybody else slapped some glue on a poster board.

Mom came home one night and announced we were all going out to dinner. Dad was out giving a lecture to a group of high school students about the Constitution. We went to a fancy Mexican restaurant, not the usual one six blocks away. I ordered prawns and they came in halves, the shells still on the backs like stiff rice paper, the six little crustaceous legs curled in a spiced ocean of orange oil. As I was tearing out the flesh, delicious, fried, and tangy, the conversation somehow came to our personalities. Mom briefly told me that I was hard-working and always on top of things. She told my brother that he was really happy, sweet and enjoyed life, ever since he was a baby. I ripped out another prawn and surreptitiously licked my fingers when the waitress had her back turned, disappointed. Even Mom saw me that way.

Whatever small amount of success I have cultivated has been undermined by the fact that I was expected to be successful. Since the prediction came true, I don’t get a lot of credit, the variables do. I’ve put in the late nights, quivering fingers, studying, paying attention, do my homework, practice my piano, do my work, do my work, do my work. But do I really want to continue exhausting myself with all this effort when it won’t amount to anything special, when my peers consider an annoyance rather than a virtue, that serious, competitive girl intent on doing well. What do I want to get out of my high school experience? Someone who excelled and will continue to for the rest of her life, giving up the opportunity of being popular, giving up those impossible adventures highlighted in every YA novel. Or do I want to abandon projects to the last minute, impressing my classmates with my carelessness, my disregard, become someone worthy of respect, a blonde socialite. What gives me more pleasure, a boy going out of his way to talk to me, or a teacher congratulating me on an excellent job? Besides the obvious opinion of everyone else, who do I think I am, and what will make me happy?