Running Up
I’m sixteen for three more months. An awkward rising junior homeschooled student who nevertheless grew up attending the Ankeny Summer Fest parades, watching a sea of pretty teens from the local high school ride in the back of sports cars. One would be named Miss Photogenic, another Miss Scholastic. I dreamed of participating in Miss Sixteen the way other kids dreamed of prom, of their wedding day.
At the community center, I enter a room full of beautiful girls on the edge of seventeen who all know each other, where rows of tables display each of our portraits to be judged, all taken by a man named Lon with a studio in town. Mine looks terrible—my eyeliner accentuating beady eyes, a frozen pose minimizing my nearly-A chest, my blonde home dye job growing out with several inches of brown roots, two years before ombre would become a trend. I wander the room and look at the other fifty-odd photos, try to pick out at least five I think are worse than mine.
We sit down for the scholastic portion of the competition. I’ve never written an in-class one-page essay before, but I have written whole novels, so I dive right into the topic: if you could be a spokesperson for one charity, what would it be and why? A good Christian girl instilled with the fear of God for His lost children in all corners of the world, I write about Operation Christmas Child, filling shoebox gifts with toothbrushes, toys, and gospel tracts to be sent into the third world, tie it to my love language, which is—of course—giving. I’m among the last to finish and one of the few to reread my essay for errors before turning it in.
The big day arrives, and it begins with the parade. Among the crowd of milling teens, another outsider greets me—her friends didn’t want to participate, and my only public-schooled friend-slash-next-door neighbor was sixteen last year—so the outsider and I sit on the back of a convertible together, me sporting newly-bobbed hair that’s all one shade of mousy brown, and wave at crowds of blond children who are disappointed we don’t throw candy.
At the ceremony that evening, I wear a red dress, red lip, red flower in my hair. Each young woman holds the arm of a male escort, be he boyfriend, brother, father, or friend. My five-year-old neighbor takes my hand reluctantly and marches me across the stage. I smile, glad at least to stand out from the rest of the boy-crazy girls, having no idea that I won’t be kissed for another eight years.
I’m named runner-up for Miss Scholastic—pleasantly surprised, vindicated in my desire to participate at all. Ha ha, I think, runner-up and I don’t even go here. The second smartest sixteen-year-old girl in Ankeny is a homeschooler, take that! I say to my nonexistent haters.
A year later they call me—Miss Scholastic is off at smart camp, or saving endangered turtles, or getting into Yale, and unavailable for the parade. Could I fill in?
I put on a borrowed crown and try not to feel like a phony, prepare to ride it out sitting next to the most photogenic seventeen-year-old in Ankeny, Iowa, but they give me a 2007 Pontiac Solstice all to myself. En route, a man points me out to his daughter, says, “That’s Miss Scholastic, which means she’s pretty and smart.”
***
College graduation week, and I think I’m a shoo-in for at least three accolades.
I. The Senior Literary Studies Award
With only a handful of graduating English majors, the competition is small, yet fierce, but I’ve been known as the class favorite since the first assignment of advanced freshman English, when the department chair said my essay “floated” above the rest and sent all those who needed help to me for tutoring. From there, I rose to the challenge of being the best. When the syllabus asked for 6–20-page research papers, I wrote flush to the edge of the twentieth. When told a senior independent study was an option, I alone from my year completed one. And when an opportunity to teach a writing workshop in a state prison fell upon the department chair’s desk, I was the first person he called.
He gives the award to all five of us.
If everyone’s special, no one is, I think. But I’ll still put it on my resume.
II. The Elizabeth Spencer Creative Writing Award
I’m committed to the creative writing department, my first major and source of my scholarship. Senior editor of the literary magazine, former teaching assistant for the intro class, published in an outside journal, and author of a 40,000-word capstone project, which exceeded the length requirements twice over. At the senior reading, my essay elicits genuine laughs at all the right moments, and I practice my humble smile.
Come award time, the chair calls a different name.
Right, I think, sitting in the small auditorium shoveling down humble pie. I did a lot of stuff. But what made me think I was the best writer?
III. Valedictorian
Math is the one thing that isn’t subjective, and this honor is awarded on numbers alone. I’m a 4.0, but I know I’m not the only one in my small college, so it comes down to number of credits earned. But I’m a double degree, 155 deep, and I rule out the other possible contenders from the honors college based on the math of various majors and overheard gossip about grades. Quantity is on my side, it seems, and finally I will be validated for choosing to be an academic vampire instead of a campus socialite. Sitting between two strangers at graduation who apparently also go here, I brace myself for the win, wonder if I’ll trip in these heels on my way to the stage. If my bright yellow sundress will show too much to my classmates in the orchestra pit.
They call my friend Grace—double major in English and music, and the nicest person you’ll ever meet. I had no idea she took so many extra classes. In the end, she beat me by a handful of eligible credits because the high marks I earned from my semester abroad didn’t count toward my total.
I twist my honors cords around my neck, briefly tightening them, wondering what it might be like to shuffle off, at last, this mortal coil.
I. The Senior Literary Studies Award
With only a handful of graduating English majors, the competition is small, yet fierce, but I’ve been known as the class favorite since the first assignment of advanced freshman English, when the department chair said my essay “floated” above the rest and sent all those who needed help to me for tutoring. From there, I rose to the challenge of being the best. When the syllabus asked for 6–20-page research papers, I wrote flush to the edge of the twentieth. When told a senior independent study was an option, I alone from my year completed one. And when an opportunity to teach a writing workshop in a state prison fell upon the department chair’s desk, I was the first person he called.
He gives the award to all five of us.
If everyone’s special, no one is, I think. But I’ll still put it on my resume.
II. The Elizabeth Spencer Creative Writing Award
I’m committed to the creative writing department, my first major and source of my scholarship. Senior editor of the literary magazine, former teaching assistant for the intro class, published in an outside journal, and author of a 40,000-word capstone project, which exceeded the length requirements twice over. At the senior reading, my essay elicits genuine laughs at all the right moments, and I practice my humble smile.
Come award time, the chair calls a different name.
Right, I think, sitting in the small auditorium shoveling down humble pie. I did a lot of stuff. But what made me think I was the best writer?
III. Valedictorian
Math is the one thing that isn’t subjective, and this honor is awarded on numbers alone. I’m a 4.0, but I know I’m not the only one in my small college, so it comes down to number of credits earned. But I’m a double degree, 155 deep, and I rule out the other possible contenders from the honors college based on the math of various majors and overheard gossip about grades. Quantity is on my side, it seems, and finally I will be validated for choosing to be an academic vampire instead of a campus socialite. Sitting between two strangers at graduation who apparently also go here, I brace myself for the win, wonder if I’ll trip in these heels on my way to the stage. If my bright yellow sundress will show too much to my classmates in the orchestra pit.
They call my friend Grace—double major in English and music, and the nicest person you’ll ever meet. I had no idea she took so many extra classes. In the end, she beat me by a handful of eligible credits because the high marks I earned from my semester abroad didn’t count toward my total.
I twist my honors cords around my neck, briefly tightening them, wondering what it might be like to shuffle off, at last, this mortal coil.
***
Two years into a job I don’t love working on audiobooks, six months into the pandemic-induced hiring freeze, and I’m up for the opportunity of a lifetime within the company to assist an editor—an ideal intersection of my passions, my interests, my taste, my institutional knowledge, my editorial ambitions. The dream mentor. There has never been a role I was more qualified for, more perfectly suited for, more uniquely positioned for. It’s the chance that makes all other possibilities seem dim and distant. The waking at the end of the nightmare of deferred dreams.
I don’t have to feign enthusiasm or subject knowledge for one second when I write my cover letter, land the interview, and spend over an hour talking with my potential future boss while wearing the forest green power blazer that has never failed me yet. I use the whole weekend to complete the written assignment—two reader’s reports and sample flap copy—pour everything I have into the task, leave no energy on the table.
“Sorry, I can’t come over,” I tell my boyfriend. “I’m analyzing the gender stereotyping of anthropomorphized boats in a children’s picture book.”
I wait for the next step. Follow all my possible future coworkers on Twitter. Make it to the final round, where I meet with the head of the department.
“Do you have any hesitations about my qualifications?” I ask him, in a ballsy move at the end of my interview over a Heaven-sent stable Zoom connection that feels like a sign.
“Oh,” he says, and smiles. “No.” I wait an hour, then send him a thank-you note, and with that I’ve eked out my last chance to make a good impression.
The whole process takes two months, my hope stretched till it could snap. Then, on a Monday morning, it does: the hardest hiring decision I’ve ever made. . . . over three-thousand applicants. . . . You were very high on the list.
I look at the floor of my home office, my hope a broken rubber band on the gray rug. The good thing about work-from-home, I think, is no one can see you cry during the work day. I brush the pieces into the trash, wipe my leaky face, make a cup of coffee, tell myself maybe better things are coming. Life will be full of second place finishes great and terrible that I cannot yet even imagine. Just wait and see.
I don’t have to feign enthusiasm or subject knowledge for one second when I write my cover letter, land the interview, and spend over an hour talking with my potential future boss while wearing the forest green power blazer that has never failed me yet. I use the whole weekend to complete the written assignment—two reader’s reports and sample flap copy—pour everything I have into the task, leave no energy on the table.
“Sorry, I can’t come over,” I tell my boyfriend. “I’m analyzing the gender stereotyping of anthropomorphized boats in a children’s picture book.”
I wait for the next step. Follow all my possible future coworkers on Twitter. Make it to the final round, where I meet with the head of the department.
“Do you have any hesitations about my qualifications?” I ask him, in a ballsy move at the end of my interview over a Heaven-sent stable Zoom connection that feels like a sign.
“Oh,” he says, and smiles. “No.” I wait an hour, then send him a thank-you note, and with that I’ve eked out my last chance to make a good impression.
The whole process takes two months, my hope stretched till it could snap. Then, on a Monday morning, it does: the hardest hiring decision I’ve ever made. . . . over three-thousand applicants. . . . You were very high on the list.
I look at the floor of my home office, my hope a broken rubber band on the gray rug. The good thing about work-from-home, I think, is no one can see you cry during the work day. I brush the pieces into the trash, wipe my leaky face, make a cup of coffee, tell myself maybe better things are coming. Life will be full of second place finishes great and terrible that I cannot yet even imagine. Just wait and see.
Emily Polson is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared in HAD, Salt Hill Journal, Capsule Stories, Wizards in Space, and elsewhere. She earned a BFA in creative writing from Belhaven University. Originally from Iowa, she now lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor at Scribner. You can find her on Twitter @emilycpolson.