Number 6 Fumbles by Rachel Solar-Tuttle

Author:Rachel Solar-Tuttle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I'm back there again, in my mother's station wagon. I got into an accident, so my car's in the shop. My mother is driving me home from the SATs on her way back from the dry cleaner's. I'm still gripping my five sharpened number two pencils. I flip my sunglasses down from the top of my head and look out the window.

“So, how do you think you did?”

“I don't know. Okay, I guess. I tried.” In truth, I have no idea. There were a lot of things I wasn't 100 percent sure about—questions that could have gone either way. Right now I'm just so relieved that it's over. I turn the knob on the radio, until the Beastie Boys' “Brass Monkey” comes through. Loud.

“Okay you guess?” My mother snaps the radio off.

I exhale so my bangs blow up and flop back down again. My mother takes a turn too sharply, and all the dry-cleaning bags slide across the seat and mound up in the foot space, crinkling.

“I said I tried. But I'm not sure it went too well.” I imagine her turning toward me, telling me that no matter how I did, I'd still be her daughter and she'd still love me the same way, and then asking me if I want to go to Buttrick's for butter-crunch ice cream cones, like we did after doctor's appointments when I was little. But instead I see the veins on her neck bulge. She tightens her grip on the wheel.

“Why do you think you couldn't get it together, Rebecca?” she asks, spitting out the words.

At that moment, I picture myself grabbing the wheel, pulling the car out of control, killing us both. “I don't know, Mother.” I stare straight ahead. “I guess I just decided to fuck up today.”

I glance at her in time to see her raise her hand to hit me. She watches me catch her in motion and says nothing, just lowers her hand so slowly and reluctantly there's no mistaking what I've seen.

When my scores come back, they're in the ninety-fifth percentile. Only Trudie Wexler has done better, and she has anorexia and would have to defer Yale anyway if she got in early. I am redeemed again.

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