No Such Thing as Perfect (2 page)

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You’re looking at me funny.”

“Sorry. Nothing. I was thinking,” I stammered.

“Okay, cool. Do you want to play cards or something?” He broke out the deck and started dealing without really getting a confirmation, but I did want to play cards. I suddenly wanted to do anything that would keep Derek looking at me. 

I picked up my hand, which I had to peel from the canvas floor of tent. I didn’t even know what game we were playing, but it didn’t matter.

“You know that painting of the dogs playing poker?” I asked.

“Yeah. My uncle has that in his basement.”

“Well, I feel like we’re the dogs, except we’re fish. You know, ‘cause it’s wet?”

Derek blinked, his eyes going out of focus, but then his smile grew wider. “You are really weird, Lily.” He touched my arm when he said it and I knew he would never be just my brother’s friend again.

As the afternoon turned to evening, the dark sky never changed. We spent hours playing cards, eating the snacks Jon had left behind and talking about school. Derek had just finished his freshman year, but high school was still only a vague concept for me. His braces made it hard for him to talk when he got excited, so sometimes he slurred random words. It was cute; a few months later, when he had his braces removed, I missed it.

Eventually my dad came to get us, because the weather wasn’t going to let up. I wanted to text Abby, to tell her what I was feeling, but I didn’t understand it and I didn’t want to make it real. I didn’t talk about it for month to anyone. Especially since Derek acted as if the day we’d spent meant nothing during the rest of the trip, and maybe it had. Maybe it was only me who felt something different that afternoon.

We spent the last night as a group around the campfire and I kept trying to recreate the smile and the feeling I’d had with Derek just a few days before, but he didn’t look at me at all. I would spend three years of high school trying to relive that rainy afternoon in the tent, but Derek went on to become popular and everything I wasn’t. Meanwhile, I studied and I got good grades and maybe I was pretty, but it didn’t matter, because I only wanted him to pay attention. But no matter how much I wanted it, he never did.

My life from there forward stayed on track, following the plan and schedule, but sometimes, in the late hours when everyone was sleeping, I remembered what it felt like to be a girl who made a boy smile and a girl who stayed outside in the rain when everyone else took the easy way.

T
he college admissions essay question prompts you to talk about how you can bring something new to the school, but after sitting through a few classes, I start to wonder how many essays get read. I like to think that I’m more than a perfect GPA, plus a nicely varied combination of extracurriculars that included Student Council, track, and National Honor Society, as well as dance classes my mom thought I needed to take. However, the brochures sell diversity, while reality seems to be a collection of people as desperately hopeless as I am.

“Am I in the right place?” the guy sitting next to me in Literary Study asks. The classroom is small, nothing like those lecture halls they show in movies. There are about twelve old and hard wooden chairs around a table too big for discussion without shouting. The chalkboards on the walls look like they’ve never been used. It’s warm in here, too, but the overhead fan is trying to stake its superiority to my RA’s plastic one, blowing my notebook open but still not changing the temperature.

“Literary Study – Austen?” I answer. I adjust my backpack, which is on the table and too full. I bought all my books before my first class and I haven’t had time to get back to my dorm yet.

“Shit. I thought it was Trig.” He leaves and I’m sitting next to the only empty chair during the entirety of the class. I tell myself it’s not a sign of things to come.

Fortunately, Elinor Dashwood is familiar. As soon as the professor says we’re starting with
Sense and Sensibility
, I’m back to what I know. I understand Elinor and her responsibilities. I know about being reasonable. When my parents bought me a copy for Christmas during freshman year of high school, the book felt like punishment. Even the inscription –
A good start for your SAT reading and college goals
– was instruction, but I read it anyway, because it was a book and that’s what my Friday nights consisted of usually. While Abby dated and broke up with guy after guy and while Jon and Derek partied, I sat at home and read and studied. But the Dashwoods became my friends. Who needed to come home smelling like beer when you could be out riding with any of Austen’s heroes anyway?

I leave class planning our first assignment – a character study on one of the Dashwoods - and lost in the early 19
^th
century. I yearn for the quiet simplicity of the stories.

“Hey, you dropped this.”

I turn towards the voice. The guy holding my book, which I must have dropped while daydreaming of parties and piano fortes, reaches out to hand it me. His arm is circled by black lines, tattoos snaking under his sleeve. I take the book and look up, meeting his eyes.

“Thanks.”

“Are you reading this?” he asks. Dark hair nearly covers his eyes, which are swirls of indigo, subtle seas of suspicion, broken with a tempest of playfulness.

“Well, technically. I mean, I’ve already read it several times, but yes, we are reading it for class.”

“I personally always liked Marianne,” he says.

“You’ve read it?”

“Is that surprising?”

“No, but slightly cliché. Is this the scene where we discover we knew each other as infants, too?” I ask.

He laughs. “I don’t think so. I think it’s just a pretty common book.”

“Valid point. So why Marianne? Isn’t she a little too... reckless?”

“Not at all. She’s far more intriguing, don’t you think? She knows what she wants, even when it’s wrong for her. I bet Marianne would be a lot of fun.”

I don’t know why it feels like a challenge suddenly, but I tuck my book tighter into my bag and take a step back. “Her
fun
, as you call it,” I argue, “almost ruins her. It’s selfish and immature to think about nothing but one’s own passions.”

“I see. So I suppose I should call you Elinor, then?”

“You don’t need to call me anything. Thanks for picking up my book.”

“I’m Jack,” he says. “Sorry if I upset you. I was just trying to help.” The light in his blue eyes flashes out quickly, leaving a hollow darkness in its place. The sticky heat of a stubborn summer is drained from the world in the empty chill that enters his expression. I didn’t intend to be mean. He was only making conversation. 

“No, I mean, I’m sorry. You’re right. Marianne’s okay.”

I watch him pause. I want to say something, to apologize for some reason, to try to shake the sudden guilt at the way he’s staring at me. His look went from curiosity to anger and then to something else. I understand now what they mean about seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes. He’s reflecting everything I fear about myself in this look – and I hate it.

He takes out a pack of cigarettes and places one between his lips. “All right. See you around, Elinor.”

“Wait,” I plead, but he’s gone.

“Awesome. You are already pissing people off,” I mutter to myself.

I head to dinner, where I load my plate with pasta, focusing on food instead of feeling like I said something stupid. I’m sure he doesn’t care anyway; it was just a dumb conversation.

Kristen is sitting with Lyle and Don and some of the girls I recognize from our floor. The condom hoarder is there, too. I wish I knew how people could walk into the unknown and just start new without caring. They’re already acting like they’ve known each other for ages and I can’t even remember anyone else’s name. I promise myself I’ll try harder. This is not supposed to be hard. I look around the cafeteria and everyone’s talking and eating and settled. Classes just started but I’m the only person who seems out of place.

“Lily, what are you doing tonight?” Lyle asks. “Do you want to go to a party?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not really a party kind of person,” I say.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Kristen says. “It’s just a group of us and some guys from the other wing. Nothing crazy.”

“I have a lot of homework already. Maybe this weekend?”

“Sure. If you change your mind, we’re just down the hall,” Lyle says. “410. Come on by. I’m sure we’ll be up late, so even if you want to pop in after you finish your homework. It isn’t going to get wild or anything. We’ll probably just play Xbox.”

“You really know how to woo girls, don’t you?” Kristen teases.

“You’re coming, aren’t you?”

She blushes and looks away. It’s amazing. It’s so normal, so natural. How do people connect that quickly without trying?

“What’s your major?” Don asks me, taking my attention away from Lyle and Kristen.

“English.” I wait for the comments and questions.
Oh, so you want to be a teacher? What good is English? Really – you must like reading, then?
My mother’s voice won’t get out of my mind. I’ve been through the conversations for almost two years now; there is nothing worthwhile about living in make-believe. However, when I finally got on campus for orientation and was asked to officially declare a major, her voice screaming about practicality didn’t stop me from writing the word on the paper. And once it was written, it had to be true.

“Oh my God, I know,” one of the girls says. “I already have two papers due and two books to read. What’s that about? I thought English was supposed to be easy.”

I shrug. “I don’t mind. I like reading. I just figure I’ll try to get the work done before doing anything else, though.”

Everyone starts talking at once about their classes, which professors are insane, how much work they do or don’t have, where there might be parties this weekend, and it’s noisy and chaotic. I finish my pasta and no one notices when I gather my stuff and head out. The sun has already set and the walk back to my dorm is quiet.

I’m supposed to call Derek when I get in, and I wish I knew what to say. I want to tell him that today was great, that I’m already loving college, that I have the same confidence everyone around me seems to have. Again, I wonder if I should’ve gone to the same school as him, but we had countless conversations about what was best for my future. I know it’s true, that I’ll be better off here, but I feel like I’m just waiting to screw up. It’s hard to think about the future when you can’t get over the past.

A
ll of the other kids were running through the field, chocolate smeared onto their clothes, desperate for more eggs. Jon was fighting with a boy from the next town over, but I couldn’t hear what they were arguing about. It was probably candy anyway. No one seemed to notice or care. I thought about joining the rest of the kids, but my dress was pure white and the black patent leather Mary Janes had just been polished.

“You should go join them,” my dad encouraged. “I hear the golden egg this year is extra special.”

For nine years, my parents had brought Jon and me to the church Easter egg hunt in town. It was one of my earliest memories, even though I only remembered the last few. Jon, at eleven, cared less about the eggs than he did about the competition. I liked the eggs; I had spent the last week helping my mom color and design them for the hunt. For each egg you turned in, you were given a piece of chocolate, but it was only the golden egg that mattered.

“I’ll get dirty,” I told him.

“That’s okay. Live a little.” He laughed and I might have listened. I might have gone on and crawled through the grass, but my mom appeared before I could move.

“Lily, your bow is coming loose,” she snapped, pulling me by the ponytail backwards on the picnic bench. “How do you manage to cause such a mess all the time?”

“You should let her participate,” my dad said to my mom.

“I did. She helped me make the eggs.”

“You know what I mean.”

My mother finished straightening and tightening my bow and turned me to face her. “Is that what you want? Do you want to run around in the dirt like an animal?” I shook my head. She looked at my father. “You shouldn’t encourage her.”

“Jon’s out there thinking he’s in the Old West, ready to have a high noon showdown over a Snickers, but poor Lily-” he started.

“I don’t want to play, Dad. It’s okay. My dress is too pretty. We still have to go out for dinner,” I reminded him. I knew my mom would be devastated if I ruined my outfit before dinner.

“It’s not like it’s mud wrestling,” he mumbled, but he stopped pushing.

Kayla, one of the girls from my reading class, was wearing a pretty dark blue dress and skipping past the tree by the church buildings. Her dress was still clean, because it could hide any dirt or grass stains. I wished I’d worn something darker.

She leaned down and dug in the grass for a minute, before lifting the golden egg. “I got it!” she yelled and everyone stopped. Everyone except Jon and the other boy, because they were still rolling around in the grass. “I win! I win!”

Mrs. Hallomeyer, the CCD teacher, brought Kayla and the golden egg over towards the benches, where the adults – and I – were sitting. The rest of the kids followed, each disappointed about not winning, although the supply of conciliatory candy seemed to appease most of them. Eventually, even Jon and his foe joined us all while Mrs. Hallomeyer talked about Jesus and gratitude and something that was somehow connected to the egg. The whole time, I just stared at Kayla. She gripped the egg close to her and grinned at me. I knew what she was thinking, because I was thinking it, too.

Only a week earlier, our reading teacher, Miss Stephens, had announced the winner of the book contest. Each of us had been asked to read and write reports on as many books as we could during the previous quarter. For each book we finished, we received a star on a chart. It had been me and Kayla down to the end, but I beat her by two books. When Miss Stephens had announced it, Kayla started to cry and said I was a cheater and a liar and that I’d never read those books. She said I only cared about winning and that I read easy books. She said a lot of things, but Miss Stephens knew they were lies. Unfortunately, most of my classmates didn’t care, because Kayla had a pool and she brought cookies every Friday because her mom didn’t work and everyone else started calling me a liar, too.