The Perfection Paradox (12 page)

Matt sat at
his desk, hunched over, browsing through endless Facebook profiles
of people he barely knew, watching work out videos on YouTube and
reading plot summaries of the books Kennedy would be reading in her
literature class.

His phone was
by his side even though the last message he’d received had been
from his mother a week ago. His friends barely used their phones
and most plans they made together were arranged at school, but Matt
still clung to the hope that someone might actually text him or
something unexpected might actually happen.

It was a
Saturday night in the Brown household and Matt’s family was
gathering in the living room to watch a movie together. Matt slunk
down the stairs half-heartedly. Lisa was texting away, barely
managing to mumble a response to her mother’s enquiries.

“
Who are you
texting?”

…

“
Veronica”

…

“
What are you
guys talking about?”

…

Lisa huffed
impatiently and lowered her phone, her thumbs still resting on its
keypad.

“
Well
, Hunter Campbell asked Kennedy
to homecoming, but she said no, so now Veronica is hoping he’ll ask
her instead” she explained matter of factly. Matt raised his head
swiftly, like a meerkat attempting to sense impending
danger.

Why had
Kennedy turned Hunter down
? Could it be
she was waiting for Matt to make a move?
No
, Matt told himself,
she’s barely looked at me since the day we met,
she’s probably forgotten I even exist
.

“
Kennedy
Blakewood?” her mother asked persistently.

Lisa narrowed
her eyes in disgusted annoyance.

“
Duh mom, is
there any other Kennedy?” she asked brusquely, “Kennedy Blakewood
is
the
Kennedy.”

His father
butted in, “Is Kennedy the tall blonde one?”

Lisa gasped
dramatically, “Dad, how can you not know who Kennedy Blakewood is?
Even grandma knows who she is, and she lives in a different
state!”

“
She’s the
beautiful one,” his wife informed him patiently, patting him on the
hand reassuringly.

“
Ah yes of
course, she’s smart too isn’t she? Matt’s
perfect girl
” he teased, the last
two words were high pitched and girly. Matt’s dad had found an open
diary on his son’s desk a few months ago and Matt had been teased
relentlessly by him ever since.

Matt’s father
was much like every dad. His face a little wearier than in the
photos his mother had shown them from ten years earlier, his hair
speckled with salt and pepper hues. His warm brown eyes were hugged
by crow’s feet and there always seemed to be a ghost of a grin on
his lips, even when he wasn’t smiling.

His stomach
poked out through his t-shirt from a life spent barbecuing,
drinking the odd beer, and enjoying life. He’d never denied himself
any of life’s pleasures, and that was the lesson he’d tried
endlessly to drive into Matt, no matter how adverse Matt’s
character seemed to such ideas.

Matt’s mother
gave up on the topic of Kennedy and picked a movie to watch, and
within half an hour Matt’s father was snoring loudly, his legs
sprawled uncouthly across the sofa, Matt’s mother was struggling to
keep her eyes open, letting her head bob up and down sleepily. Lisa
was on her phone, texting away blissfully.

Matt sat
there, not tired, but with nothing to do.

When had his
life become so boring? What did all the other kids his age do on a
Saturday night? He could already see them, gathered at some
decadent house party at one of the mansions on the other side of
town, champagne flowing, girls in hot tubs, jocks doing keg
stands.

Suddenly it
felt like every other senior must be out having a crazy time and he
was stuck at home. He wasn’t a bad kid, there were a lot worse out
there, what kind of world did they live in if the sadistic Hunter
Campbell was the life and soul of every party while Matt stayed at
home twiddling his thumbs waiting for life to happen.

He didn’t
dare turn up to one of their parties after what had happened last
time, but he felt sad suddenly, and very lonely.

No one wanted
to spend any time with him, no one sought him out after class, no
one wanted to talk to him. The impact he had on the lives of the
other students at Rosewell was non-existent other than occasionally
entertaining them as Hunter’s punching bag. It was as if he didn’t
exist at that school.

He’d
overheard them countless times, planning their weekends, their
summers, their futures, not caring that he heard, that he felt left
out.

Plans to go
shopping at the mall or go to a pool party or the movie
theatre.

Plans to go
on holiday together to Cabo or go to cheerleading camp.

Plans to meet
every year for a reunion after graduation, and to be each other’s
bridesmaids or to come back and watch their sons’ high school
football games together.

Matt wasn’t
allowed to be a part of any of those plans, no one had ever wanted
to share any memories with him, no one wanted to now, and no one
would want to in the dreary future that awaited him.

You’re above
these people
, he told himself,
ten years from now they’ll be working for
you
. But ten years from now didn’t matter
when the present was so miserable and lonesome.

High school
felt like a video game every one knew the cheats to, everyone
except for him, and he was struggling against it, staring round in
shock as those surrounding him survived,
hell
, some of them even
thrived
in the hostile
environment of Rosewell High School.

It’s all to
do with looks
, Matt thought bitterly.
Hunter and Ryan, Brooke, maybe even Kennedy, they’d all be
nothing
if they looked
like us, boring and drab and unexciting. Matt resented that the
most. That it didn’t matter how good of a person he was, how kind
he was, how hard he worked, every girl would rather cling to
vicious train wrecks like Hunter.

You didn’t
base your entire opinion of a book on the front cover, you read it
and got to know its secrets, you began to understand its ebbs and
flows, to realize it all made sense.

You learnt to
love it, the story inside, the beating heart within.

Why didn’t
anyone want to read Matt? Why didn’t anyone want to tell him that
he made sense? That his story was worth reading?

Instead he
got thrown aside in favour of the thinner book, easier to read,
with a flashy front cover that caught your attention straight away,
but that left you feeling a little emptier inside, a little less at
ease every time you read it.

15.

Emily had
been waiting for mid-November for weeks now. The day of SAT
results. Emily's stomach squirmed every time she thought about it.
She felt sure she’d done well. The hours and days and weeks of
preparation
must’ve
paid off. They had to.

The envelope
containing her results was on its way to her house right now. It
might even be in her post box already.

Emily,
however, wouldn’t have to wait until the end of the day to get her
results, every senior who had taken the SATs with Emily would be
told the results today by Mr Hansen, the academic
counsellor.

She took a
seat in one the chairs that had been placed outside Mr Hansen’s
office as a waiting area for students. She pulled the face of her
watch around her wrist. 10:56, only a few more minutes and she’d
know.

She glanced
around her, trying to find something to distract herself to make
the passage of time faster.

The door
across from Mr Hansen’s office was open; a sign reading “Staff
Room” had been drilled into the wooden door. A loud voice was
booming from inside. Emily recognized it as her Literature teacher,
Ms. McCaulton, a middle-aged woman who had been teaching at the
school for more than twenty years.

“
Kennedy
Blakewood is probably the most gifted student I have ever taught.”
She was almost shouting.
Great
, Emily thought, rolling her
eyes,
this is exactly what I want to
listen to
.

“
You know
every now and then you get one of those students that teach you
more than you could ever hope to teach them? That’s what Kennedy
did.”

Emily shook
her head,
what a cliché.

“
The
brightest, most quick-witted and emotionally intelligent girl I
have ever met.
So much
depth and understanding of what we were reading, she
recognized
the
importance of it all, and she translated that to paper
effortlessly
. If she’d
graduated a year early like the school suggested many times, I
still whole-heartedly believe she would’ve been top of her
literature class at an Ivy League of her choice. She was
that
level of
brilliance.”

Emily heard a
timid voice reply, “I’m teaching her Physics this year and she is
indeed a very strong student, I must agree Tabitha. Think of the
future that must lie ahead of her.”

Emily heard
her Literature teacher grunt back in avid agreement. “That girl is
going to do great things,” she reflected, “and
so
beautiful…”

“
Yes,” Emily
heard the physics teacher reply, “very beautiful
indeed.” 

Mr Smithson,
a math teacher, tottered into the room with his empty mug of
coffee, pulling the door shut behind him, cutting off the rest of
the conversation to Emily’s ears.

She tutted,
annoyed, Kennedy couldn’t be a much better student than her. Emily
had written some truly
fantastic
essays, but Ms. McCaulton always seemed to find
something to criticize, it was like she was doing it on
purpose.

She’d show
them when she got in to Harvard and Kennedy
didn’t. 

She glanced
down at her watch. 11am, not much longer now. Emily fidgeted with
her hair, waiting restlessly for Mr Hansen to call her into his
office.

This could be
it for me
, Emily thought. Who knew what
the future held. Duke? Vanderbilt? Stanford? Probably Ivy League,
who was she kidding,
definitely
Ivy League she reassured herself. She could
barely contain her excitement.

Mr Hansen’s
office door creaked open loudly and Emily snapped abruptly out of
her daydream.

“
Ahh! Emily!
Please come in!” Mr Hansen exclaimed, ushering her into his office.
She took a seat on one of the hard wooden stools placed across from
the worn out leather sofa chair tucked behind his desk.

“
Okay Emily,
to begin with, let me say that I am not able to have any sort of in
depth discussions about future plans today. Students will need to
book a meeting with me for a future date”. Emily nodded, barely
listening to what he was saying. She just wanted her
results.

“
All right
then, let’s take a look.” Mr Hansen said, flicking through a large
pile of papers on his desk. “Ah! Here we go!” he exclaimed, his
eyes widening as he read through the results.”350,350,400… that
brings us to a 1100 total. We’ll do our best to get you into
college with that.”

Emily’s world
had faltered and stopped, like a broken record, frozen on an
instant in time forever.

Her mouth
dried up in a matter of seconds and filled with the vile taste of
bile. She felt physically sick. She could feel her eyes welling up
with tears and her hands shaking against her legs.

Mr Hansen’s
words were ringing in her ears over and over again. He was talking
to her but she wasn’t listening.

As soon as he
stopped talking Emily took a natural cue and got up and pushed
through the office door and out into the hallway.

She belted
towards the bathroom and threw her large bag of binders on to the
floor. Her hands grasped for the cold porcelain of the sink,
steadying herself, trying to calm her shaking. She looked into the
mirror. The mascara she’d spent so much time on that morning had
run and her eyes were bloodshot and small with anxiety. Her face
was red and patchy from the nerves and stress. She had never felt
so ugly, so ugly and incompetent.

With
lethargic delirium, she pulled a comb from her handbag and slowly
started easing it through her hair.

She watched
herself in the mirror. Her jaw clenched. She noticed the dark
shadows under her eyes from months of not enough sleep, the ugly
over plucked eyebrows, like the corpses of frail caterpillars
crawling across her forehead.

She tried to
smile, the edges of her mouth lifting hopefully, creasing her lips
hideously.

She grinned
and it was so fake it was almost grotesque. Still she persevered,
she forced a smile on to her face, until she was staring at a
sickening gleeful grin.