No Such Thing as Perfect (23 page)

“How many times did he cheat on me at school?” I ask.

“I don’t know. There was one time, right after we came home for your birthday, and he didn’t come back to the dorm all night. I asked him, and he told me he had to deal with some things, and I didn’t want to get involved. It wasn’t my business, Lily. You were old enough to decide and we weren’t close. I couldn’t just start dictating how things should be for you.”

“So why are you here?”

“I’m sorry. I let you down. And I just wanted you to know that I believe you.”

I open the door and step outside, sharing the small space on the steps with my older brother. It’s been years since we’ve even looked at one another and the tiny step is still a lot of space to cross. “I don’t know if it’s that easy,” I admit.

He nods. “I know. But I just didn’t want you to leave like this. I promised you, a long time ago, that I’d look out for you. I haven’t, and I’m sorry. It was easier to stay under Mom’s radar when she was always focused on you and I let you deal with it all. And Derek... I should have been there.”

“It’s over now. You weren’t, but this isn’t on you. And maybe, when things settle a bit, maybe we can get coffee or something. Catch up. Get to know each other.”

“I’d like that.”

“Yeah, me, too.” I brush the newly accumulated snow off his shoulder, but we don’t hug. After a few more minutes of awkward silence, he wishes me a Merry Christmas and leaves. I don’t head in right away, watching the car until it disappears at the end of the road.

I
t’s funny that we’re standing by another lake. The night is quiet, though, because the snow has driven everyone inside.

“How do you feel about it?” Jack asks.

“Good. I really do. Sure, there are things I wish were different, but I’m not staying there, and I’m not going to sit back and be silent. I’ve been that girl for too long.”

Maybe I change my mind and I call my mother tomorrow. Maybe I call her in a week, or a year. Maybe I never call. After a few days, I might decide to stay with Kristen instead, or come back here with Abby. I don’t want to start my relationship with Jack this way – needing him – but right now, it works. If that changes, there are other options. The greatest comfort, though, is that any choice I make, any decision, is mine. Entirely. If it’s a mistake, I own it, but I think I’m okay with that.

“I never told you about the trees,” I say. “That night – I told you about my imagination, about the lake and the moon, but I said I’d realized something about the trees, and I didn’t tell you. It sounded stupid in my head and I didn’t want to try to explain it.”

“You can tell me now.”

“Well, it’s... You know how things have been, right? There was nothing more terrifying than change, because change meant learning the rules all over again, and if I already couldn’t stop screwing up...”

He reaches for my hand and brings me close to him, standing behind me and wrapping his arms tight around me. The snow barely touches me when he holds me like this, landing on him instead. “I hate when you say that.”

“Say what?”

“It’s not screwing up to be someone, Lily.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that now, but then... Anyway, I was in the woods and I was thinking about how much things change, about how they were so different, about how I was different. Most nights, I would fall asleep, so scared of waking up the next day and finding out that things had changed, of not knowing what to do next and making a mistake.

“There were only about eight leaves left on the trees. They were basically bare, and I didn’t really even see them. But while I was standing there, thinking about change, one fell. It was just a leaf, brown from the snow and cold. I was looking up and it floated down over me, perfectly lined up for me to catch it. I did, and it probably sounds ridiculous, but it made sense, Jack. The trees change every year, right? Every winter, they die, and then they start over in the spring. And they’re still beautiful.

“I’d known it that day, but it took me another year to understand. That’s it, though, isn’t it? We celebrate their changing.”

I step away from Jack so I can face him. It’s too dark to see his features in the shade of what’s left of the trees. “I’m still scared of making the wrong choices,” I admit.

“The only thing that matters is making them,” he says.

In a life of blank pages, the story doesn’t fill itself in overnight. It’s not about getting the right words and putting them together, just so they can fit where the emptiness lays. Once the pages are turned, they remain empty, and covering the ones that follow won’t change that. But for every new blank page, there exists a new photograph, a new memory, and a new story to tell.

Reaching my hand up to move Jack’s hair from his eyes, I try to remember his face right now. The way he looks tonight, because tonight is just one page, one memory.

Someday, he won’t look the same. Someday, it will be sunny or we might have argued or he’ll have slept poorly the night before. Someday, I won’t care about something my mother said. Someday, Jack and I will be different people and maybe we’ll still love each other with all our imperfections, or maybe we won’t. Someday, I will look back at this night, at this girl, and I won’t remember how I was her, either. All of these somedays are alternate realities right now, but they’re sitting alongside all the possible ways our lives could go, an endless and vast series of opportunities and concepts.

I don’t know which one of those somedays will fill our story, will make up next week or next year. I don’t know who I will be the next time I stand by this lake, when spring comes and the trees change again. I don’t know what tomorrow will look like, but I really, really cannot wait to find out.

S
arah Daltry writes YA fiction, plays too many video games, obsesses over British TV, loves animals, and has a sarcastic remark for anything. She’s also a recluse who’s likely nearly transparent given how little she leaves the house. You can find her online at
http://sarahdaltry.com
.

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No Such Thing as Perfect
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A modern reimagining of the classic poem in novella form. 

A man, bewildered by time and memory, begins to lose touch with what is real and what he has imagined. Told in breaks between memory and now, he narrates his emotions as he recalls the man he was, the man he had hoped to be, and how he became the man he is.