No Such Thing as Perfect (3 page)

I really wished I had gotten my dress dirty and beaten her to that stupid egg.

“T
hat’s good, right?” Derek asks. He’s been talking about rugby, which is apparently his new hobby. It’s been a day and a half and he’s on the rugby team, while I still don’t know where the health center is.

“It is. I mean, yeah, of course it is.”

“What’s wrong? You sound... different.”

I shake my head, sighing. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid. I don’t know.” I lie back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Kristen talked me into putting up glow-in-the-dark stars since I didn’t even bring a poster. My side is basically a wall, except for the few photos I have of Derek and me. All my other photos are framed or pressed in albums in my parents’ living room.

“Well, it’s not nothing. Talk to me, sweetie.”

“It’s just... I mean, how do you...” I pause, reaching for the words. “You just always seem to know what to do. What to say. Who to talk to. You’ve only been back at school for a day, but you have a whole team. The people I sat with at dinner didn’t even notice when I left.”

“I’ve had a whole year, Lily, remember?”

“I know, but it’s not like it was ever hard for you,” I argue.

“What do you mean?”

“You had friends in high school,” I say.

“So did you.”

I want to tell him. I want to explain everything, but even after a year, there’s still so much ground to cover between us. While he was playing sports and making friends and dating half the girls in our high school, I was planning a canned food drive and taking five AP classes. He didn’t even really notice me at all, although he says he did, until last year when we started dating. And by then, he was already at school and he didn’t see what it was like every day.

“I guess. I should just be social. I’m sorry. I told you it was stupid.”

“It’s fine. Go to a party or something. Join a club,” he suggests.

“Maybe. I was invited to a party tonight, but I have to write an essay.”

Derek sighs. “Don’t do this, Lily. Don’t be that girl.”

“Be what girl?”

“Never mind. Just lighten up, okay? It’s okay to have fun sometimes.”

“I have fun,” I tell him. “I have fun with you.”

“I know, but I’m not going to be there every day. Like I said, this rugby schedule is intense, so I may not even be able to come up as much as I’d hoped. Don’t sit around waiting for me.”

It shouldn’t hurt. I shouldn’t be sad about it, because he’s right. I spent most of high school “sitting around waiting” for Derek, but now, I don’t have a clue how to start living my own life. I miss him, though. I miss something comfortable, something normal. Everyone else seems to slip into newness so easily.

“I won’t. You are coming this weekend, though, right?” I ask.

“I am. Hey, listen, I gotta get going, though, okay? We’re heading to a party. Jon says hi. And seriously, Lily...”

“Yeah?” I prod when he doesn’t continue.

“Just... don’t be weird, okay?”

“I’ll try,” I agree. After he says goodbye, I think about what he said. I’m in my pajama pants and a tank top, but Lyle said they were just having something small and it’s only on the floor. It’s not like I can’t go for an hour or so and still make it back to do my homework. I mean, people balance things all the time.

I decide against going in my pajamas after all, but I do put my work away and get dressed. When I’m presentable, I head out into the hall.
You can do this. It’s just a small group. You’re not going to fail out of school if you stay up an hour later
, I tell myself. Of course, since I’m yet again not paying attention, I turn the corner by the elevator and walk right into someone.

“Oh, hey. It’s Elinor.”

“Lily. And I’m sorry about earlier.” The momentary emptiness I saw in his eyes is gone now. He looks down, tugging at the hem of his shirt. It’s an old shirt, probably worn too often, and he looks young when he tugs at it. However, when he makes eye contact again, the wildness I sensed before has returned.

“No need. You were right. Marianne is a little flaky. I suppose I just like characters who don’t have everything in place already.” It’s not directed at me, just a casual comment about a fictional character, but it reaches into the marrow of my doubt and gnaws at me.

“There’s nothing wrong with a plan. With order.”

“Okay, Lily. Let’s try this again. I’m Jack... and you’re Lily. You have read
Sense and Sensibility
several times, you apparently live on this floor, and you’re a freshman. What else is there? Any deep, dark secrets just waiting to come out?” It’s teasing, but I try to shake the question.

“How’d you know I was a freshman?” I ask.

“You look a little afraid someone’s going to realize you’re in the wrong place,” he says.

“Am I?”

“I think that’s your call.”

“I’m going to a party,” I tell him, although he didn’t ask.

“Sounds grand.”

“Do you... do you want to come?” Lyle didn’t say I could bring anyone, but it feels like the polite thing to do.

“I can’t. I’ve got plans, but I’ll see you around, Miss Dashwood.” He gives a half bow and leaves me standing there, confused. Do I really look lost to other people, too?

There are only five people in Lyle’s room – him, Kristen, the condom hoarder whose name is Kendra, Don, and someone I haven’t seen before. He introduces himself as Paul, but he doesn’t seem to be interacting with anyone else.

“Paul’s my roommate,” Lyle says. “We’ve accepted we have nothing in common.” Paul nods in response and goes back to listening to music.

Kristen is sitting between Lyle’s legs and he has his arms wrapped around her. Her blond hair is falling into his cup of soda, but he’s focused far more on flirting with her anyway. I settle next to Kendra. Don leans across her to hand me a cup of root beer.

“My boyfriend’s at a party tonight,” I tell Kendra. 

“That’s good.” I’m not sure what I expected her to say or why she would care. I imagine Derek, thinking of all his stories, remembering the things he and Jon did in high school. It’s a dramatically different world from sitting on someone’s floor in a circle of five people, drinking soda, and awkwardly trying to make conversation.

“Lily, you up for a game?” Don asks. He tosses a controller in my direction. I’m terrible at video games, but Kristen and Lyle are occupied and helping Don take out zombies feels better than getting up and admitting this was a mistake.

R
ebecca Ellison was pretty, it was true. However, she was unbelievably dumb. I don’t mean she did poorly in some classes or struggled with a learning disability or that she had book smarts but no common sense or vice versa. She was honestly one of the dumbest people I had ever met. Still, dumb didn’t matter, because she was pretty.

I’d heard it from Abby first. Derek had never been subtle about girls – not since the beginning of the year when he and Jon had started playing soccer and they became popular and I was just the nerdy little sister who still liked playing cards in a tent. Derek didn’t change, though. Not really. Everyone else did and he fit right into their changing. He got his braces off and he played sports and suddenly everyone realized he was cute and there was no way the quiet girl who spent her weekends reading and who knew the fifty states in alphabetical order and who was still afraid of getting her dresses dirty could compete with Rebecca Ellison.

“Derek and Rebecca Ellison are a thing,” Abby told me in history. “I guess they hooked up at Stacey Klein’s party last weekend and it got a little crazy.”

“I’m trying to learn about Ivan the Terrible,” I said. “I don’t care what Derek does.” But we both knew better.

“She’s not the first, you know,” Abby continued. “I heard he’s not a virgin already. Jaylinn told me that she heard from Tara that Derek hooked up with Heather Yost earlier in the fall.”

I remembered hearing about it when it had happened. I’d been home, reading and eating cereal, and Jon and Derek came back from a party smelling like weed and beer. My parents had been out of town for the night for my father’s job and Jon was in charge of me while they were gone, although it was me who ended up mopping up his vomit. Before he puked, though, I could hear him and Derek in the hallway, talking about Heather, and I didn’t want to think about the things they were saying. It had only been a few months since we’d gone camping, but the boy I knew didn’t talk like that.

“I know. But it’s not my problem. What is my problem is the medieval nation-state of Russia, so unless Jaylinn or Tara has some interesting gossip about that, I need to focus.”

It was a lie, of course, but what could I do? Aside from impaling myself on one of the great tsar’s stakes and mourning the loss of something that was never going to happen, I mean. I almost made it through the day not letting it bother me – much – until I got to gym class. It was the only class I had with Rebecca and really the only reason I knew she existed. Earlier in the year, she’d “accidentally” bent over during volleyball when she forgot she wasn’t wearing underwear. And then giggled when Wendy Nordstrom told her to “put away her vagina.” It had been the biggest story that week, until someone else did something dumb. I don’t really remember. It was easier to keep track of military coups than what girl did what with whom in my school.

When I saw her, I wanted to be mad. I wanted to be able to say she was ugly, that I wasn’t jealous, that she was boring and that Derek would lose interest quickly, but she was standing on the track, which we were walking because our gym teacher had gotten bored with teaching us sports we couldn’t play, and her hair was literally glowing. She had a damn halo, I swear, and I wanted to hate her. I wanted her beautiful golden locks to fall out of her head, but I couldn’t really be angry at her. It wasn’t her fault she was pretty. It wasn’t her fault Derek liked her and she liked him. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to be happy.

“Oh, my God. Lily!” She ran across the track towards me as if we’d ever spoken before. “You’re Jon Drummond’s sister, right?”

“Yup. Lily Drummond. Jon Drummond. Easy to make that connection,” I said.

She didn’t laugh; instead, she actually said the words, “ha ha ha.” Followed by “you’re so funny and cute.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t trying to be cute. I was trying not to determine the likelihood of a time machine and the value of trade for someone like Rebecca in medieval Siberia.

“Can you believe they’re making us walk this track?” she asked. “It’s like a gazillion miles long, right?”

“A quarter.”

“What?”

I sighed. “It’s a quarter of a mile. That’s why we walk it four times when we’re timing a mile,” I tried to explain. We’d been walking the track for more than a month – every single day. Every day, we had to time a mile. That was the entire assessment. We were even supposed to be keeping logs, so we could eventually do mathematic calculations that had yet to be revealed to us. “You know... the logs? We keep logs?”

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about trees.” I couldn’t even form a reply before she said, “Anyway, I’m having a party this weekend. Can you tell your brother?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Thanks,” she said, before heading back to her friends who were still standing in a circle waiting for her. She sashayed. I’d seen the word in books, but I’d never experienced it. Thanks to Rebecca Ellison, I will always know what it is to sashay.

I
make it through the week otherwise unscathed. All my work is done, I seem to be maybe becoming friends with Kristen, and Derek’s on his way up to campus. I’ve been pacing for the better part of an hour.

“You need to relax,” Kristen says. “What could go wrong?”

For people who don’t need things in their places, it’s easy to relax. If something goes awry, it can always be fixed later. For people like me, though, everything can always go wrong. When I can’t control it, I panic. It’s the only thing I know how to do.

“What if something’s happened?” I ask for the third time. He was supposed to be here an hour ago.

“Nothing happened. He hit traffic, I bet.”

“But why didn’t he call?”

“Because he’s an idiot. Now sit down and stop pacing. You’re making me nervous.”

There’s a scuff on the toe of my shoes, so I do sit down. I scrub at it, but it won’t come out; my attempts end up making it worse, so now the entire toe is dirty. “I look like hell,” I tell Kristen.

“You look fine – just like you have for the last few hours when you’ve asked. How long have you been dating again?”

“Ten months.”

“Ten months, and you think he’s going to show up having not seen you in a week and realize he must have been crazy?” she asks.

“It’s just... he’s the only boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

“So?”

How do I tell her about Rebecca Ellison, about Heather Yost, about Jill Pevarski, about Gina Frey, about all the girls Derek’s dated? How do I explain that nothing ever seemed to happen, that one day he was with them and then one day he wasn’t? How do I make her see that I’ve only wanted him and he fits into the puzzle and that I don’t have a backup plan?

“Never mind. Can I borrow your shoes? The black ones you wore yesterday?”

Kristen shakes her head and jumps down off her bed. “Lily, none of it matters. If Derek doesn’t want you, you’re good enough without him.”

Good enough is not good enough,
I think.
No one wants good enough.
I don’t say anything, though, but I take the shoes and change them. There’s no sign of the scuff. Nothing is out of place, nothing out of order.

****

D
erek’s talking about traffic, but everything is fine now. He’s here. The local diner was the only place I could think of to go for dinner that wasn’t the cafeteria, but Derek seems perfectly okay with it as he douses his fries in ketchup.

“So how was the first week anyway?” he asks.

I stir my milkshake. I ordered it thinking I would have the appetite for it, but after one sip, I don’t feel like eating or drinking. My nerves are frayed, which will pass, but a milkshake is dreadful right now. “It was all right. I missed you.”