Perfectly Flawed (31 page)

Did I mention her Russian accent is just
downright adorable?

Although, people kept giving me weird looks
when I passed, and I don’t mean the usual looks I’ve received
throughout the years, new ones. Disturbing ones, even.

I ignore them for the most part. I’m not
going to let them ruin my night.

At midnight, the dance officially ends, and
Avery walks us out to the car. Though, I suspect it wasn’t to see
all
of us out safely. Only Harley. It was cute, really. They
were inseparable. Soon, we’re heading home and Harley is repeatedly
sighing like a little girl in love with a teen idol she saw on
television.

Aww
, young love. So beautiful when it
blossoms.

“I never thought I’d ever say this,” Harley
starts when she turns onto my street. “But that was fun.”

Hmmm, the dance or Avery?

I bite my tongue.

“We should definitely do it again next year,”
I tell her, genuinely meaning it. I wouldn’t mind going to another
school dance this year, even.

“Yes we should!” Harley exclaims as her car
pulls into my empty driveway. “Same time next year,” she adds.
“I’ll see you two at school on Monday.”

I slide out of the car, Zephyr behind me, and
walk up to my house. At the door, I lean against Zephyr as he
drapes his arm over my shoulder and slink my hand into his jacket
pocket to take out my keys.

“I think someone replaced my friend.” I walk
into the living room, tossing my keys on the table by the door. Now
that I’m inside, I don’t feel the need to wear shoes, so I lean
forward, fighting gravity to unbuckle the strap of my sandal.

“That was fun,” Zephyr tells me as he grabs
my hips to prevent me from falling flat on my face. “I usually
avoid dances.”

“Me too.” As if he didn’t already know
that.

I successfully tug off my sandals, lock the
front door, and start my ascent up the stairs. I launch my sandals
into the closet, letting them join the others that clutter the
floor with a soft
thud
.

Yanking up the top blanket, I take a seat on
my bed. After all the movement, all the dancing, I did tonight, it
feels good just to sit down, lie back, and relax.

“We didn’t get to dance together that much.”
Zephyr’s still standing, leaning, in fact, against the frame of my
door, his hands stuffed in his pockets, as I lie back on my
bed.

I apologize as my hands start to remove the
bobby pins from my hair. “Yeah, they kind of kidnapped me for most
of the songs, huh?” I giggle sheepishly.

I wouldn’t have mind a dance with him. The
thought of our bodies pressed together, swaying to music, is enough
to make me flush in nervous embarrassment.

He takes a few steps into my room, holding
out his hand. “Come here.”

After letting my hair down, I place the pile
of pins on my nightstand. “What?” I ask, standing up from the bed
and taking a step closer to him. Something about me, something that
I’ve never felt before, starts to heat. Something lower than my
cheeks. “You want to dance… now?” I ask, letting a little nervous
giggle escape my mouth.

“No better time than the present.” He takes
my hand and pulls me closer to him slowly. He takes one of my hands
and places it on his shoulder while one of his finds my hip. Our
other hands clasp together.

“There isn’t any music playing,” I tell him
quietly, pointing out the obvious. I mean, I have no rhythm
with
music; I don’t want to see my dancing with
out
music.

Shaking his head, I see the smirk cross his
lips. As if he can’t believe who he’s talking to. Zephyr walks to
my nightstand, clicking on my iPod, selecting a song, and placing
it on the dock of my iHome. The Pretty Reckless’
You
starts
playing quietly through the tiny speakers.

“You’re weird,” I tell him as he walks toward
me, taking my hand again.

Gently, we resume our position, and start to
sway to the music. He’s leading, of course.

At this moment, I take in his scent, woodsy,
soapy, and him, and I feel home. I know I’m home when I’m with him.
And that calms me.

He pulls me closer to him, tucking my head
beneath his chin.

“How is this?” he asks quietly.

“Nice,” I tell him, breathlessly.

I can’t even begin to express how
nice
this is, just to be with him like this.

We continue to dance through the rest of the
album, staying so close through the fast songs, and I realize that
I never want to lose Zephyr. I don’t think I’d be able to survive
without him.

And there’s something more, more feeling than
I can describe. I just need to find the words.

Eight

Sunday morning and I wake up with a wide grin on my
face. Last night was so much fun, I’d be happy to relive it again.
And again. I’m on such a high; I’m not sure what can knock me down.
So I decide to make myself useful around the house and clean.
Throughout most of the morning, I clean the living room—because
that disaster is my fault, the kitchen, and the upstairs bathroom.
I never remember the downstairs bathroom and no one ever uses it,
so I’m happy to leave it untouched. Then I tackle some homework
I’ve been neglecting—there isn’t much. I practice my violin and the
pieces for class, playing through
Brandenburg
three times
before I’m bored. Next thing I do is walk into the living room and
plant my butt in front of the standing piano, playing through a
piece I learned when I was ten.

Hilary walks from the kitchen into the living
room carrying her favorite coffee mug—it’s painted to match the
TARDIS—spotting me at the piano. Her face breaks into a smile.

“I didn’t know you still played,” she says, a
yawn punctuating her sentence. “I’m not here so much I don’t really
know what you do, or like to do, anymore.”

“I play occasionally,” I tell her, pressing
down on a key. The sharp
ping
of the note floats through the
air. “When the violin bores me.” I poke at another key, hearing the
low
bong
.

My aunt takes a sip from her mug before
asking, “What about that old guitar?” she asks, holding the mug in
front of her face.

“Mom’s?” The pale pink acoustic guitar my mom
used when she was a teenager—her first guitar. It’s sitting in my
room near the closet, collecting dust. “I still play that, too. It
makes me feel like she’s here.”

“Is that why you still play the piano?”
Hilary asks as her hands press down on the keys.

My brows knit together in confusion. “What do
you mean?”

“She taught you how to play. You don’t
remember that?” Her eyes widen, the green of her irises
disappearing when she catches what she said. “Of course you don’t,
I’m sorry, sweetie, that was insensitive of me.”

I ignore that. “I thought
you
got me
lessons?”

“No, you were continuing lessons,” my aunt
clarifies, setting her coffee on top of the piano next to a plant
that hasn’t been watered in a week but is still thriving. “When I
would visit you when you were a kid, Keisha was always at the piano
with you on her lap.” She smiles at the memory. I wish I could see
it in her mind, see what she remembers. I wish I could remember it.
“Ivy hated the piano and Noah would rather have played with the
trucks I brought him, you were the only one that wanted to
play.”

“I didn’t know that,” I say, hitting a
chord.

“I know.” She stares at her hands, silently
mulling over something in her head. “I haven’t been telling you
much, have I?”

“I understand why you don’t,” I tell her, my
hand hitting a minor chord. The sound fills the silence growing
between us. “She was your sister, your best friend, you miss her a
lot.”

“Oh, honey,” Aunt Hil starts. “She was my
sister, yeah, but she was your mother. She gave birth to you. You
need to know about her.”

“I know all the important things,” I whisper.
“She loved me and my brother and sister. She was taken, as were
Noah and Ivy, way too soon.” I lean my head to the side. This is
too much emotion for Sunday.

“Honey, even I don’t know all the important
things.”

I nod my head slowly.

“Oh, how was the dance last night,” she asks,
a poor attempt to change the subject, but I’ll take it. I have yet
to fill her in.

“Great. It was great,” I tell her, filling
her in on all the jumping around we did, the shopping beforehand,
even how Zephyr surprised us with wrist corsages. I even told her
how Harley might have an admirer of the sexy kind.

With that little bit of information, she
takes her coffee mug and escapes up the stairs to get ready for her
next shift at the hospital.

I had to call Jamie to tell her I was now
riding to school with her in the mornings, but she already knew.
She saw Zephyr with me at Homecoming so she put two and two
together, correctly guessing we made up. She asked me what happened
with Ryder and I told her that things just didn’t work out.

That didn’t stop her from pressing me on
Monday morning.

“That sucks,” Jamie whines. She fixes her
hair in the rearview mirror as we sit at a traffic light. I’m in
the backseat—first time in a long time.

“It’s… whatever, you know?” I shrug my
shoulders but she can’t see me. I wish we were already at school.
It’s easier to hide.

“Oh, yeah,” she drags out, giggling. Little
does she know what happened with Ryder is in no way funny.

I catch Zephyr’s eye when we exit the car in
the student parking lot.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he
asks, leaning close to whisper so Jamie doesn’t overhear. She knows
he had to come get me, he needed her keys, but she doesn’t know
why. “You know, about you and Harrison?”

I take a deep breath. “There’s nothing to
tell.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I wouldn’t expect you to.

Quietly, I answer, “I know,” and leave it at
that. We walk through the doors and I leave Zephyr to walk to my
locker.

“Shhh, she’s coming,” someone, I think a
sophomore based on her short stature and overuse of eye shadow,
whispers as I pass her and her little friends. They’re all wearing
too much makeup—where do they learn this?—and way too much perfume;
I could smell their sickly sweet scent at the entrance to the
hall.

They avert their gaze when I walk past;
turning their eyes toward the lockers their standing by, like
that’s inconspicuous.

Great, now
they
know who I am.

More people stop talking when I walk near
them. They try to act like they’re not obvious. Others bolt down
the stairs or into nearby classrooms, anything to avoid me.

This is new.

Someone standing near my locker stares at
me—his eyes wide and his mouth open—when I walk up and open my
locker. While I’m stacking my books on the shelf, while this guy
stares at me, and I mean really staring at me. He isn’t
blinking.

Annoyed with all the attention, I snap,
“WHAT?” I forget the books and stare back at him until he does
something.

He squeaks—must be a freshman—and bolts down
the hall, running into someone before he turns the corner.

I roll my eyes. “Weird,” I mutter under my
breath, turning my attention back to my locker.

“Hey,” Harley slides up to my locker, leaning
on its neighbor, a wide smile on her face. Her eyes take a wistful
appearance as she stares at me. That’s new for her, being happy at
school I wonder if Avery has anything to do with her sudden
change.

Ignoring it—even though I really want to
ask—I shake my head. “Are people acting weird to you?” I ask,
confused. “Well, not
to you
to you, I mean, like, in
general, you know.”

“Actually, yeah,” Harley answers, continuing
with, “but it started when you walked in. Like the literal moment
you walked through the door.”

Just what I need right now.

“Great,” I say, deadpan.

Kennie walks up, wearing her tiny
uniform—there’s a soccer game tonight—holding her books in front of
her body. Her blue eyes dart from Harley to me. She’s obviously
nervous about something, the only thing she needs is a hand in her
mouth as she bites her nails. That’s always the giveaway.

“I have a question,” she whispers, leaning in
close.

I look around us, searching for anyone else
in this dead-end part of the hall. We’re very much alone, what’s
with the secrecy?

Still, I lean in closer. “Okay,” I whisper
back, jokingly mocking her. Just like a normal Monday.

“Did you sleep with Ryder at Jennifer Long’s
party?”

“Did I WHAT?” I yell, my voice raising an
octave, ending in a squeak, as Harley yells, “Did she WHAT?” Our
voices echo.

“That’s what Ryder’s saying,” Kennie informs
us. “That you both hooked up at her party in her dad’s den, on his
imported white leather sofa.”

I drop my open backpack on the floor,
completely shocked. Pens and pencils fall from the large pocket and
roll away along the tile.

It makes sense, really. All the weird looks,
all the whispers, even the dance. At the dance, people kept looking
at me weird. It just makes so much sense now.

“I think I might kill him,” I tell them,
dazed. Harley bends to retrieve my scattered belongings. “I might
actually kill someone today. The probability is very,
very
high.”

“I’ll help,” Harley offers, showing how far
her friendship runs with me. “I’ve seen
Criminal Minds
,
Law and Order
, and all three versions of
CSI
. I think
I can get away with murder by now.”

“That’s not all,” Kennie quietly
continues.

“What
else
could he be saying about
me?” I nearly scream.

“Well…” she trails off.

“Kensington Renee Strait,” I seethe,
wondering if steam can really blow from the ears like the cartoons.
“You better start talking or so help me—”