This is my answer:
Sometimes, I hear someone calling my name. I turn my head, startled and listen. But no one’s there. It’s been so quiet here. No planes in the sky. No cars. I don’t think I’ve heard any birds now that I think about it. There’s wind and trees, bees, flowers blooming. Rustle of the grasses. The sound of green growing.
My palms sweat and I can’t think. I read the question again. I don’t know what they want from me. Where do I begin? They told me the answer last Monday, but then I thought around it, flipped it over, found something else and now I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
My mother took me across the ocean to the other side of the world. One of those luxurious pleasure cruises with 13 decks but a cramped room with one dumb little round window. I stayed in our tiny space, flat on my back on the bed, closed my eyes and pretended I didn’t exist. Don’t think about the ocean. If I thought about how we were gliding across all that deep darkness, that vast deep nothing, all that water thick with salt, all the creatures below moving their odd slick bodies in their unknown world, with their unblinking dead eyes, all of it sure death for me, I would have gone mad.
I decided to paint my toenails. A pretty green. Something bright and fresh. I liked the scent. It felt dangerous. Poisonous. Like I was doing something only someone wicked would do. I had no fear. But the polish spread too much, the brush thin but wide. The polish kept getting on my skin. So ragged and ugly looking. Like I was a little kid who snuck into her mother’s bathroom to secretly use her lipstick and put it on all over my mouth not just my lips, round and round like a clown. As if I couldn’t understand where things on my face began and ended.
When it’s very late at night and the sky is thick with clouds and the rain is coming down hard, I sneak outside and walk in the darkness. I close my eyes and feel my way. I know that I am in constant danger. But I have to listen to what my body is telling me, and fear it, but do it all the same. I have to walk in this darkness, alone. If my body says run, I must run. I have to get on the plane. I have a limited amount of time and I’m in great demand. I have certain expertise. I have to get there and get back. When I am up in the sky at 33,000 feet, I can’t think about it. 200 or so people up that high in the pale blue air and fluff of cloud. Traveling at 500 miles per hour. In this little tiny nothing of a thing. A big wind could break us open. We are so vulnerable. The fine line of life. Death is just waiting for us, hands open. If this plane is struck by lightning or an engine explodes, or there’s a fire, anything really, we can only go down. I have put on the free headphones. I turn the volume up and watch a movie and count the syllables of the dialogue out on my fingers. Otherwise, I might go mad.
I’d stay here in New York City if I could. I love shopping. I have a trust fund. I can buy whatever I want. But I must return home. Back to my miserable life. My mother and her concern. Her soft sad eyes. She’s always on the verge of tears. I can’t be responsible for her happiness. I have my own to worry about. I have to take care of myself. Get ready for school. Pack my lunch. A fresh apple. Celery. Green tea. During lunch, I lean against the wall in the hallway just outside the cafeteria. The way the other kids watch me unwrap my apple. They like to make fun of how I drink my hot tea. They look over my clothes. My hair. They look out the side of their eyes at me. Smirk. The boys run down the hallway and try their best at the last minute to curve their bodies around mine as if I’m a sudden object in the way of their smooth trajectory.
I realize I seem like the type to always be trying new things but that’s not me. I like to do what I do every day. The comfort of routine. I like to be alone. But I can’t. I have to fly to New York late tonight. The red-eye. I’ll be back in the morning so that I can make it to school on time. I’m working on a movie in Manhattan. All the actors call me. Ask for my advice. My parents always want to know who I’m talking to. They tell me how lucky I am. To be so talented at such a young age. Everybody wants to be me. Everyone is jealous. All the other kids, they couldn’t be anything like me. They’re incapable. You have to burn hard and bright. It’s a bit scary to put yourself out there like this. Over the ocean. Or up high in the sky. All you have to do is one thing wrong and then you are falling forever. Always falling. Down into the vast air or the vast ocean, unable to breathe. You could go mad.