151 Days Read online

  A 2184 was not a rabbit. It might have been a bouquet of flowers or maybe a dove or two, but it was not a rabbit. And I needed a big, white, floppy-eared bunny, or I might as well get “Resident of Foster, Texas” tattooed on my arm because it was going to be true as long as I was alive.

  No one else seemed to understand how important this test was to me, but they decided to fault on the side of caution and just let me be crazy in silence.

  I had spent days at the library copying every question in the practice SAT books they had there onto index cards so I could have a portable version of the test on me at all times. Then I broke the questions down into three categories. The first were the ones I knew the answers without thinking. The second were ones that seemed too easy for their own good. These included math word problems that asked dodgy questions, math equations that asked you to solve for more than one variable at the same time, and words that looked too much like other words. The last pile were the ones that were so daunting that if most people ever got that far into the test they would just start picking random answers and hoping that urban myth about picking C was right.

  These questions became my own Legion of Doom.

  Every spare second I had went to going over my cards, drilling the salient facts into my brain one word at a time. Okay, so not every second, maybe every other second I used to study. The other seconds I saved up and spent with Brad. I could see in his eyes that he thought I was worrying about nothing and that my scores were more than sufficient. He was wrong, and one day, after baseball practice, I pulled out a folder and began to explain it to him.

  “Look, I want to go to Stanford, and their average acceptance score is 2150. That is just for them to look at you, not an automatic scholarship or anything. That is like almost forty percent higher than a normal college, and their acceptance rate is seven percent. Seven!” He still didn’t seem to get it. “That means even if you have over a 2150 and your application is perfect, out of every one hundred applications they get, only seven people get in.”

  “Yeah, but you’re different,” he said, giving me the smile that could melt ice at twenty feet. “They’ll take one look at you and say ‘We need to get that guy in here!’ You know that, right?”

  It was sweet he thought getting into college worked like that.

  “You do know they aren’t even going to look at me period if I don’t have a much higher score than the one I have now right?”

  He just laughed and pulled me across the bed toward him. “You worry too much.”

  I let him draw me into a hug because I needed one. “Stanford costs on average fifty-two thousand dollars a year. Four years is over two hundred grand. I have to worry because I don’t have that much money.”

  He twisted one of the drawstrings of my hoodie around his finger as he teased, “Have you thought of doing porn? That’s easy money.”

  I nudged him as he laughed out loud. “You gonna do it with me?” I teased back. “Because I refuse to have you pimp me out on the side.”

  “Aw, but I wanted a huge purple hat and a cane!” I turned around and pounced on him as he burst out in hysterics. “I could be all ‘Bitch, where’s my money!’ and I could get a big ole boat of a car to cruise in.”

  “You’d do that to me?” I asked him, pinning him to the bed.

  “Nope,” he said with a bright smile. “I don’t share you with anyone. No matter how much money they offer.”

  I leaned down to kiss him. “Good answer.”

  Just as our lips were about to touch, he added, “And I didn’t even need a stack of cards to come up with it.”

  I pulled back and looked down at the smirk on his face. “You are so dead,” I warned him.

  Turns out I didn’t get any studying done that night at all.

  THE NEXT day I spent studying to make up for lost time.

  I had less than twenty-four hours before the test, and I needed to cram as much as I could in that time. Thankfully I was caught up in my classes, so I could afford spending a period or two going through my cards over and over. At lunch I spread out my books to go over some of the hardest questions and made notes on my cards to help me out. Brad put a Pepsi down next to me, which I downed in one gulp because I needed the caffeine in a serious way. If there was an intravenous way to ingest caffeine, I would have long ago hooked one up to my arm and forgone sleep altogether.

  They were talking about me and my obsession with getting a better score. I kept one ear listening as I tried to look up if “upbraid” meant what I thought it did.

  I heard Brad sigh as he said, “No, he has scored a 2100 three times and thinks he can do better.”

  “I got a 2184.” I said, not looking up. “I want a 2200 at least.”

  I found “upbraid” and cursed whoever came up with such an incredibly lame word as Jennifer asked me, “What’s a perfect score?”

  “Max is 2400,” I answered as I wrote a definition on my card.

  They kept talking about their scores, which was when I zoned them out. I shouldn’t have let Brad lure me away from studying last night. I was going to have to go over the math all night, and that meant little to no sleep.

  “Kyle,” Jennifer asked, drawing nearer to me, “you do know your score is great, right?”

  I might have answered her in a more hospitable way if I wasn’t so damn tired of explaining this to everyone around me. “Great isn’t enough. I need perfect. I need outstanding. I need to have the best SAT score in the school if I even have a chance of my colleges looking at me. Minus starting up the alliance, I have zero extracurricular activities, and I would need Hillary Clinton to write me a recommendation to make a difference, and I don’t know Hillary Clinton. Do you?” She shook her head. “Then I need a better score.”

  I went back to my notes, hoping it was the last question I got on this for a while.

  I’m not sure how much time had passed, but when Brad called my name to get my attention, most of the quad was empty. I looked over at him, and he had a worried look on his face. “The second bell just went off. You’re going to be late.”

  “Fuck,” I swore as I began to scoop my books up and throw them into my bag. “If they insist on making our entire life depend on this fucking test, the least they could do was give us time off to study for it.” The cards fell out of my hands, and I let out a cry as they fell to the earth, their order forever lost as they hit the steps and went everywhere. It was like looking at my future crumble into ashes as I saw the wind snatch a few of them and swirl them across the quad.

  I dropped my bag and went racing after them. It was a metaphor for my entire life in one idiotic gesture.

  I began to scoop up the cards on the steps when the wind gusted again and took more of them into the air. The cards flew higher and higher, out of my reach, and I mentally gave up. The imagery of my life literally blowing away from me just caused something to short circuit in my brain. I made the same sob a drowning cat would and sank to the steps. Who was I kidding? I was never going to get out of this town. This place was worse than The Matrix, because if I was in a computer-generated reality, at least I’d have cool superpowers or something. Instead, I was a nobody teenager in a nowhere town doing nothing.

  “I got as many as I could.” I looked up and saw Brad with a handful of my cards, out of breath. His face was flushed, and he had the same smile I would imagine on a really happy golden retriever if they had human faces and liked chasing things as much as Brad did. “Don’t be sad anymore. Please?”

  He was the best thing that had ever happened in my life.

  “You don’t give up, do you?” I asked him, taking the cards.

  He sat down on the steps and leaned close to me. “I refuse to surrender on two things. Baseball and you.” He looked over, and I saw the green in his eyes flicker as his bangs fell into his face. “And if you want to know a secret, baseball is a distant second.”

  I was late to fifth period. I didn’t care.

  AFTER SCHOOL, I met him b
y the locker room like I always did before practice.

  “You wanna go somewhere when I’m done?” he asked, nodding to one of the guys as they walked past us.

  “I can’t.” I saw the disappointment in his face, and I hurriedly added, “I only have tonight to study, and all I am going to be doing is freaking out over this stupid test, and I don’t want to put you through that because I will be—”

  He shut me up by kissing me. My whole train of thought got derailed, and he said, “I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow, then.”

  “You’re not mad?” I asked, trying to regain my equilibrium.

  “You can make it up to me.” He had an evil look on his face, and I understood exactly what he meant.

  “You are going to want a back rub,” I said rather than asked.

  “No,” he answered, looking innocently at me. “I am going to want a lot of back rubs.”

  That made me laugh. “Okay, fine, go play ball and stuff. I’ll text you if I get a break in studying.”

  “Text me even if you don’t take a break.”

  I nodded, and he jogged into the locker room. I had a long night ahead of me, and none of it was going to be fun.

  AT SOME point I passed out.

  Since I was not aware or conscious when this happened, I have no idea when it actually occurred. All I could remember was that I was halfway through my trig prep and the next minute my alarm was going off. I had fallen asleep in the middle of my cards and books, which got even more messed up as I tried to get up. I kept seeing something out of the corner of my eye, but whenever I tried to look at it, it’d move with me. It took me a few seconds of waking up to realize I had an index card plastered to my cheek.

  I silently thanked God no one was around to capture that moment of genius and put the card with the rest of them.

  My phone beeped, and I saw I had missed two calls and five texts from Brad, a new record even for me. I texted him back that I was getting in the shower and began to gather all the supplies up off my bed.

  I looked down to see Brad’s reply text: While you’re in the shower send pics!

  That made me laugh as I stuffed my books and folders into my backpack. My cards were shuffled back into a neat pile, and I took a second to raise my arms over my head and stretch the last dregs of slumber out of my system. For a moment, my whole body felt like it was energized as I extended everything from my fingers to my toes.

  And then fell face-first onto the bed as the exhaustion I was trying to con myself out of made even keeping my eyes open a chore. I swore I closed my eyes for only a second, but the next thing I knew my mom was knocking on my door, telling me Brad was outside waiting for me. I looked at my phone, and sure enough over thirty minutes had passed, and I was instantly late.

  “Crap,” I said, jumping to my feet, shucking my shirt. “I’ll be right there.”

  My mom laughed. “I’m sure he’ll wait for you.”

  I didn’t even answer as she closed the door. I broke a new speed record changing my clothes and threw some water on my hair before I raced out the door. I opened the passenger-side door and tossed my backpack in the backseat. “Please tell me you closed your eyes,” he said.

  I was barely aware I was closing the seat belt as I answered him. “I passed out around four, I think. That was the last time I saw.”

  “What time is the test?” he asked me.

  I felt my eyes begin to burn, and all I wanted to do was close them for hours. “Third period.”

  “Then let’s go by Nancy’s, eat some, and get about a gallon of coffee in you. Because if you pass out during the test, I’m pretty sure that won’t improve your grade.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but decided I just didn’t have the energy to bother. “Fine, sounds good.”

  I honestly think I might have dozed off as we headed down East Avenue toward First Street. The car stopping woke me up, and I saw Brad looking at me with worried eyes.

  We found a booth, and Brad ordered us enough food to feed a small country. Sitting still for more than thirty seconds without doing anything felt wrong, and I pulled my cards out of my hoodie. I didn’t even get a chance to arrange them before Brad reached over and took them out of my hands.

  “Hey, I need those,” I protested.

  He gave me a serious look from across the table. “You need to turn your brain off and relax for five minutes. You ever see Bring it On?” The question was so out of the blue, all I could do was shake my head. “Well, neither did I, but I heard there was a scene where they got to finals, and they were hearing some girls out on the lawn practicing. One of the girls opened the window and screamed out at them, ‘If you don’t have it yet, you don’t have it!’”

  Brad likes the movie Bring It On, which is eighty-six minutes long. If Brad has three and a half hours of free time, how many times can Brad watch Bring It On before his boyfriend pukes all over him?

  I’m not sure if he noticed my space out, but he explained, “Kyle, there is nothing you are going to learn in the next hour that you don’t already know. Just relax and enjoy breakfast, okay?”

  I took a sip of water, desperately looking around for some coffee or ice tea. And then something clicked in my mind. “If you didn’t see the movie, how do you know what they said?”

  Now he looked away and told me, “Drink your water.”

  His reaction made me laugh, and I reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “Thank you,” I told him, which got him to look back at me. “I love you.” His face broke into a wide grin. “Even if you are like a thousand times gayer than me now for admitting that.”

  He pulled his hand back and flipped me off.

  As I laughed, I felt some of the exhaustion fade away. My day had just started.

  I MUST have drank half a pitcher of iced tea with a pound of sugar to wake me up.

  By the time we got to the student union, my sugar rush was just starting to kick in. I saw the proctor standing at the door, and my stomach suddenly clenched in anxiety.

  Brad was behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed. “Okay, you got this. You are Kyle Stilleno. You own this test. I have complete faith in your superheroic brain.”

  I turned around a little, surprised. “You do?”

  “Hey, only one of us can look this good,” he said, giving me his Zoolander impression.

  “Ah,” I said, grinning back. “The moneymaker, if I remember. And how much money has it made you now?”

  He leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose. “It scored me a superhero boyfriend, so I’m ahead in the game.”

  I felt my entire body react and forced myself to ask, “You’ll be here when I get out?”

  “I got a game today, remember?” Oh fuck. I had been so worried about this test, I had forgotten his schedule. They were away against… oh come on, Kyle… Archer! He had to see the confusion in my face because he added, “I won’t be back until tonight.”

  I felt like an ass. Here he had been busting his ass to make sure I was all right, and I completely forgot about his thing. “I am a horrible boyfriend. All I’ve been stressing over is my test, and you have a winning streak….”

  “And you have a test,” he said, putting a finger over my lips. “Go kick its ass, and I’ll call you when I get home.”

  The proctor announced last call for the SAT.

  I rushed in the door and turned around to give him a small wave. He was the last thing I saw as they closed the doors.

  “Okay, Stilleno,” I said to myself. “You have him convinced you’re a genius. Time to prove it.”

  I grabbed a seat and pulled my calculator and pencils out of my backpack.

  I was on question fourteen of the first part when I realized something horrible.

  I had just drunk a small lake worth of tea. I was most likely going to piss myself right here in the middle of the test.

  My hand began to scribble faster as I crossed my legs under the desk.

  BY THE time the test let out
, it was lunch, and I was exhausted.

  I know there is no way I could do what Brad does at practice every day, but I never let that get to me because I know he couldn’t do what I just did in that test. Though I had no empirical evidence to prove otherwise, I just knew in my bones I had crushed that test. There was nothing I came across that was foreign or unsolvable, and my response time was way faster than the last times I took it. I knew there was no way to be objective about it, but I just knew this was the last time I was going to see that test.

  Sammy was waiting on the steps when I got out. She had a can of Pepsi waiting for me as she cheered for me as a conquering hero. Normally someone making this big a scene in public would have made me feel self-conscious, but this time it didn’t. I may not have thrown a ball farther or ran faster than someone else, but I damn well was smarter than a whole bunch of people. And that deserved a pat on the back.

  And an entire Pepsi to keep me standing.

  “So how did you do?” Sammy asked me as I sat down.

  I wanted to scream that I fucking killed at the top of my lungs but instead went with a more muted, “I think I did all right.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “You did all right the last three times. You think you got what you were after?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “I knew you could do it,” Sammy said, giving me a hug. “Hey, I need to ask you something—”

  Before she could, Jennifer stomped up the steps and plopped down next to us. The dark cloud of her bad mood surrounded her like stink lines on Pigpen.