Faking Perfect (2 page)

I knew I was supposed to refuse him, to squash this problem once and for all and become the girl most people saw each day—the smiling, confident girl who’d secured a place at the top of the high school food chain. But I could never truly be her, at least not permanently. So I turned off the lamp, wrapped my arms around Tyler’s neck, and pulled him closer. I shut my mind to everything else, including the intrusive thoughts of Ben. Ben, who I possibly could have loved if only I was brave enough to love someone like him.

I didn’t love Tyler Flynn. I didn’t even like him.

Chapter Two

I
n the morning I took an extra-long shower, ridding my skin and hair of cigarette smoke and Tyler’s scent. Then I got to work on my daily transformation routine.

My hair, otherwise known as the bane of my existence, took the longest to perfect. When I was little it was yellowish-blond and curly, but over the years it had evolved into a pale copper shade and the curl had loosened somewhat. Still, it needed vast amounts of product to tame, especially on damp days.

Next, a layer of foundation to hide the spattering of freckles across the bridge of my nose, and then a few dramatic swipes of black liquid eyeliner that always felt like too much. But heavy eye makeup was the trend and fitting in was imperative.

Lastly, the outfit—jeans and shirt and coat and boots, all the right fit and the right colors and the right labels. Dangly earrings, a few bracelets, a knotted scarf around my neck . . . check, check, and check. Costume complete, I was now fit for school.

Mom and I owned one car, a five-year-old Ford Focus that we shared. Maybe
shared
is the wrong word, since sharing generally means a fairly equal division. Mom took the car to work each day from Monday to Saturday, which meant I couldn’t use it to drive to school. She was a massage therapist at a day spa and she usually worked well into the evening. By the time she got home, I was either too tired to go out or already gone. Maybe, if I was lucky and she happened to be too hungover from the night before to get out of bed, I got to use the car on Sunday, her day off.

No car on school days meant either walking in unpredictable weather or the bus. Or in my case, a friend with his own wheels.

Right on schedule, Ben’s silver Acura TL pulled up in front of my house. The TL was his newest acquisition, a step up from his last car and utterly impractical for an eighteen-year-old boy, but you could get away with driving lavish cars when your father owned the dealership.

“Hey,” Emily said when I slid into the backseat. She handed me a paper to-go cup and I breathed in the familiar scent of nutmeg. A large chai tea latte, my favorite.

“Hi.” I leaned over to say good morning to Ben and Kyla, the girl he’d been seeing for the past month and a half. I’d made little headway bonding with her. She was much friendlier to Emily, but only because Emily was Ben’s cousin and in no way a threat to her. I wasn’t a threat to her, either. Ben treated me the same way he treated Emily—like a blood relative. When he was dating someone, which he almost always was, he didn’t even look at other girls, let alone hook up with them. Kyla had nothing to worry about.

“Lexi,” Emily said in a scolding tone as I settled back into my seat.

“What?” I knew exactly why she was frowning, but I was majorly talented at playing innocent and it never hurt to try. Suddenly, I was glad the thick stripes of eyeliner made my eyes seem wider and more naive. I blinked at her.

“You promised us you’d stop.”

“I did!” For about a week . . .

She leaned over to sniff my hair and then drew back, her narrowed eyes steady on my face. “You didn’t. You smoked.”

I looked away and took a sip of latte. Okay, so I’d smoked a cigarette this morning while reviewing my math. My first one in nine days. I knew how much my friends hated it, and I
had
promised to stop, but I’d woken up feeling so rattled over last night’s first-ever double feature with Tyler that I’d just needed something to calm my nerves. I was sure I’d stood outside long enough to air myself out, but apparently not. I felt doubly guilty. “I’m sorry.”

Ben sighed and ran a hand through his short, golden-blond hair.
Everything
about him was golden, from his hair to his status at school right down to the flecks in his warm hazel eyes. Even after knowing him for two years, his greatness still intimidated me at times. Emily was the same, wholesome and admired and untouchable. Maybe it ran in their family. It was hard work, being worthy of these two.

“Where’s the pack?” Ben asked, turning around and giving me a deliberate look, like he already knew I had it on me—which I did.

I’d thought I might be able to sneak another one by the soccer field later.

I extracted the half-full pack of smokes from my bag and passed it up to him. Wordlessly, he stuffed it into his jacket pocket, keeping it safe until he could get to a garbage can. Ben and Emily liked the idea of saving me . . . from cancer, from other people, from myself. And I let them, because frankly, I could use some saving.

“I’ll quit for good this time,” I told my friends, who were both wearing
I’m-very-disappointed-in-you
looks. Kyla stared straight ahead, sipping her coffee.

Emily opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by a loud tapping noise. We all jumped and looked toward the driver’s side window. My neighbor, Nolan Bruce, stood shivering beside the car, half-frozen water dripping off his jacket sleeves. He must have overslept and missed the bus again. Ben pressed the button to open the window.

“Can I get a ride?” Nolan asked, leaning over to see our faces. “I slept in and missed the bus again.”

“Sure,” Ben said, barely managing to sound civil. He wasn’t done being miffed at me for my relapse. The annoyed set of his mouth grew even more pronounced when Nolan climbed in and tossed his soaking wet backpack against the back of Ben’s seat.

I shot Nolan a look. He knew Ben was particular about his car, but that never stopped him from testing boundaries.

“Oops.” Nolan made a big show of stowing his backpack on the floor and wiping at the wet leather with his equally wet sleeve. “There, good as new.”

Ben grunted and hit the gas. We drove to school in total silence, which wasn’t an unusual phenomenon whenever Nolan hitched a ride with us. Because he was my friend, Ben and Emily and my other friends tolerated him, but just barely. They didn’t get our relationship, couldn’t understand why I spent so much time with “that weirdo across the street.” They assumed we were involved in some sort of clandestine romance, which was ridiculous. For one, Nolan and I had grown up together and interacted like siblings, and for another, Nolan wasn’t hot, at least not by their standards. He was slightly overweight and a little geeky in an intellectual, artistic, oddball sort of way.

Basically, Ben and Nolan’s personalities just didn’t mesh. Nolan called Ben “Pretty Boy” behind his back and often commented that he looked like he belonged on a ski hill in Vermont (true) and Ben was convinced that Nolan deliberately antagonized him just for fun (also true). Being stuck in a car with the two of them at the same time made me want another cigarette.

By the time we got to school, it had stopped snowing and Ben seemed more relaxed. He held Kyla’s hand as we all crossed the parking lot, Nolan trailing a few feet behind us. Ben paused for a moment at the trash can near the main doors and chucked in my pack of cigarettes. I glanced over my shoulder to say a mental farewell to my cancer sticks and saw Nolan cautiously dip a hand into the trash can. A second later, his hand reappeared, clutching my undamaged pack. He grinned at me and slid it into his pocket. I pressed my lips together to avoid laughing, but a snort slipped out.

Ben turned to me and smiled, oblivious to the cigarette rescue. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I said as I walked through the door he held open for us. Always the gentleman. “Nothing at all.”

Inside, the five of us split up into groups and went our separate ways. Emily and me to math, Ben and Kyla to whatever classes they had, and Nolan to the stairs that led to the bottom floor, where he’d undoubtedly sneak out and have a smoke before—or during—first class.

“Are you ready?” Emily asked once we’d settled at our table in math class. The teacher hadn’t arrived yet.

“For what?” I said, still obsessing about last night with Tyler, the feel of his hands on my hips, guiding me toward him, the triumphant look in his eyes when I finally surrendered. What had come over me?

“For the zombie apocalypse. What do you think?” She snapped her fingers in front of my face. “The test. Are you ready for the test?”

“Oh. Sure.” Emily was always extra cranky in math class because it was her least favorite subject. “Are you?”

“I hope so,” she said, biting her lip as she glanced over the notes in front of her. “If I don’t get at least a ninety-five, my final grade will drop.”

“Em, we’ve already applied to colleges. They probably won’t even look at our final grades.”

“Yeah, but my parents will,” she muttered as if a slight dip in her average was grounds for hysteria.

I didn’t get that about Emily and Ben’s family, the focus on excellence. I may have hung around with the school brains, but I wasn’t one myself. The only subject I really excelled in was math which, coincidentally, was the one and only class I shared with Emily. In fact, math was the reason we’d first become friends back in sophomore year.

Emily, like Ben, took mostly honors classes, churned out an impressive grade-point average, and cleaned up at the academic awards ceremony at the end of each year. But unlike Ben, one thing kept her from intellectual perfection: math. She was simply
good
at it, not great at it (which in her world translated to “I suck at it”). After trying honors math for a semester in tenth grade, she grudgingly accepted that she wasn’t a well-rounded genius and transferred to the regular, less daunting math class, where she chose the seat next to me and stayed for the next two years.

I’d seen her around school before that, walking through the halls with the same dark-haired girl and sometimes a blond boy who I’d assumed was her brother because they were so similar in looks. I knew her name; everyone in school did. She was everywhere—on the girls’ basketball and volleyball teams, yearbook committee, school newspaper. Almost every day her name blared over morning announcements as the go-to coordinator for such-and-such club or event. And with her long, sleek blond hair, sprightly walk, and funky black-framed glasses, she was hard to miss.

In sophomore math, the two of us bonded over trigonometry and the distracting sight of our young male teacher’s cute ass. Within weeks I’d been introduced to her best friend, Shelby Meyer, and the blond boy who turned out to be her first cousin, Ben. Right from the start they all took me under their collective wing, like I was a poor, underprivileged child they felt the urge to protect. And at that point in my life, I needed it. I needed them. They were the right kind of friends, respectable people I could reinvent myself with and hide behind.

Yes
, I thought the first time I’d walked down the hall with the acclaimed Emily Manning and her friends.
I have arrived. This is where I belong.

And through a lot of hard work on my part, it was where I still stood today. Somehow, despite several pitfalls and many secrets, I held my position at the top of the Oakfield High food chain. But there was no getting comfortable, not when I knew that at any moment I could either lose my grip or be shoved off completely.

“Okay, folks, everything off the tables,” Mrs. Cranston—our middle-aged, female, non-distracting, senior year math teacher—ordered as she sailed into the room. Right on her heels was Tyler, hair still damp from his morning shower. He sauntered toward the back of the room, avoiding not just my eyes but everyone else’s, too. He looked tired. When I thought about why, I felt my face go warm.

“Still asleep this morning, folks? I said everything off the tables.” Mrs. Cranston plunked her extra-large coffee on her desk and began to pass out the test papers. “All I want to see is a pencil, a calculator, and a great big smile.”

As I passed the stack of tests to the table behind us, I caught another glimpse of Tyler, slouched in his chair and yawning. He ran his hands through his hair and glanced around the room. His eyes skipped over mine and landed squarely on Skyler Thomas, who was watching him, smiling, the end of her pencil resting on her plump bottom lip.

“Begin,” said Mrs. Cranston, collapsing into her chair with her jumbo coffee.

I faced forward and got to work.

Chapter Three

“L
exi?” My mother poked her head into my room and then, when she saw what I was doing, immediately retreated. “Are you almost done?”

“Yes,” I said, rolling my eyes. She acted like Trevor was going to leap out of my hands and close his mouth around her jugular. As if. I’d told her numerous times that corn snakes were not aggressive, but her fear was so bone-deep that it made her irrational. “You can come in, you know. He’s back in his tank.” I’d just finished giving him fresh water, exchanging the piece of Astroturf at the bottom of his tank for a clean one, and now I was dangling a dead, defrosted mouse in front of his face.

Mom peered around the door frame again and let out a strangled yelp. “I can’t watch it
eat
.”

I dropped the mouse and secured the lid on the tank. Trevor lay still, head up, as if checking his dinner for signs of life. I watched him fondly for a moment, enjoying the sinuous beauty in his movements, the vibrant oranges and reds in his skin. For as long as I could remember, I’d loved snakes. Emily, whose mother taught psychology at a high school in the city, often joked that I liked them because they were phallic-looking and I had penis envy. But that was hardly the reason. They just appealed to me. Who needed puppies and kittens when you could own something unusual, something exotic, something that stayed with you for decades.