Perfectly Flawed Read online

  “Do you honestly think that I’d repeat anything I heard that was, like, bad about you?” she asks. The pain of her question, the pain of that thought, crosses her face, her smile disappearing. A Kennie not smiling is a Kennie you want to avoid. I still have to think about it, or at least, I have to debate the pros and cons of gaining this knowledge.

  Pro: I could hear what people are saying now.

  Con: I could hear the new nightmare spreading about me.

  As if it could compete with anything from before. All the crap spread about me—all the stupid whispers and murmurs when I’d walk into a classroom—nothing can compete with that. That feeling that they all know something about you, they all know you but they don’t know you. What they know is the you fabricated by lies and retellings.

  I’m not entirely sure how to answer Kennie’s question. The look on her face tells me that I have nothing to worry about, that I can trust her, that she would never hurt me. However, if I’m honest, my gut says no, but…

  Well, you know what they say about curiosity and the cat.

  Kennie leans forward slightly. “I heard someone has a thing for you,” she whispers to me, quietly so only Harley and me can hear her. “Like, bad.”

  “Who?” Harley asks, a look of disgust quickly crossing her face. She leans back, looking back and forth between us.

  For once, I feel like slapping her.

  “Thanks,” I bark, somewhat sarcastically, mostly hurt about what Harley might be thinking to put that expression on her face.

  Her eyes connect with mine before she says, “I didn’t mean it like that, Joey.” She’s defending herself. “It’s just a bit weird, you know?”

  “Thanks, Harley!” I repeat, louder, with exasperation and over-exaggerated hand gestures slicing through the air aggressively.

  Kennie looks from me to Harley like we are about to fight and she doesn’t want to get caught in the middle of it. It tells me that she’ll jump back and flee as fast as her stilettos will carry her when appropriate. But she continues with, “Wanna know who?” Dangling the little piece of information like bait in front of a lone trout, but I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to be the fish dangling and thrashing from the hook hoping to be tossed back only to be taken home and served for dinner. It could be a trick.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.

  This time I decide to play the game hoping that it doesn’t bite me in the ass.

  “Who?” I ask, not wanting to be curious but I can’t help it. I am human after all.

  Kennie looks around; like this is the biggest secret she could reveal. “Ryder Harrison.”

  Harley and I share a long look with each other that communicates a lot between us in a few seconds. Ryder Harrison is the quarterback of the football team, the star pitcher of the baseball team, and a senior. He is the epitome of ‘All American’ and knows how to charm a girl with his perfect smile, ocean blue eyes, and blonde hair he’s styled perfectly to look like he doesn’t care about his looks. Roll that up in a decorated letterman’s jacket and most girls twirl their hair, bat their eyes, and giggle annoyingly loud because that’s their ritualistic mating call.

  I’m not most girls.

  With this look between us, Harley and I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, a loud, uncomfortable laughter that feels so good. I’d assume that Kennie’s looking at us like we’ve gone off our rockers, that I’ve finally cracked, become contagious, and infected Harley. But I’m laughing so hard that I can’t open my eyes.

  “What?” Kennie asks after at least five minutes, when our laughter starts to die down.

  “Thanks, Kennie,” I tell her, my hand pressing against my aching stomach. “I haven’t laughed that hard in my life, I don’t think.” My hands reach up to my face, pressing against my cheeks—my damp cheeks covered in salty moisture.

  I laughed so hard I cried.

  “What’s so funny?” Kennie continuously asks, looking from me back to Harley, her eyebrows knit together in curiosity. She’s been left out of the joke; she knows that. “Come on, you know,” she pleads.

  Ryder Harrison,” Harley answers between her dwindling bursts of giggles.

  “What about him?” Kennie still doesn’t understand.

  “The star quarterback,” I sputter. I take a deep breath, trying to get air into my lungs. “Has a thing for me?” The shock is obvious, both with the mien of my face and the tone of my voice. I do my best to tuck a curl behind my ear that’s fallen away, abandoning my neglected apple. “Ryder Harrison, the same guy that dated Alexia Cavanaugh? Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

  Kennie’s face drops, disappointment and shame evident on her face; she looks hurt that I am laughing about this. It’s freaking funny, though. “It didn’t sound crazy to me.” Her voice is small and quiet, as if I’ve shamed her, as if she needs to hide before being embarrassed.

  “Because, Kennie,” I start, looking to her. “And, I’m sorry for saying this, but you live in a perfect world.” It’s true; her world is rainbows, lollipops, and unicorns. It’s a bright place where nothing bad happens. People in her world frolic and prance through the trees and blooming flowers, venture to get healthy fruit smoothies, and save the lives of the forgotten, bringing them from the darkness by showing the world someone could only dream. I live in reality; a place filled with death and heartbreak, some place where I can’t get what I want and I doubt I ever will.

  You see, I know my place on the high school food chain—the hierarchy, if you will—and I stay there, I live there happily, thankfully. I don’t want to climb the ladder to the top; I don’t see the need in it. I much prefer the bottom, happily dwelling with the bottom feeders. It’s where I belong.

  I learned long ago that if I don’t mess with them, those at the top, they don’t mess with me. And we all go skipping on our merry ways.

  As she looks at me, Kennie tries to argue that her world isn’t perfect. I have to hide a giggle. With her argument, memories flood my mind of defaced lockers, damaged schoolbooks that I had to pay to replace, hours spent locked in random broom closets around the school. While it was only once, sometimes twice, that these things happened, and a few years back, it’s still fresh in my mind, the agonizing worry that with everything that I do and everyone I meet, things can just go back to how they were. It’s still a concern of mine—the thought, the pain, still lurking that any of that could happen to me again.

  “Let’s just drop this,” I offer, taking another bite of my apple, but I really want to toss it into the trash. I’ve already lost my appetite.

  Kennie agrees, quickly turning to Harley to talk about their upcoming science class, and instantly, our conversation is forgotten. The beauty of distracted minds. I start to stare off into the surrounding crowd. The usual people avoid my gaze; I don’t care. It’s not like I’m actually staring at them. Maybe they think I’m plotting? It’s really random and paranoid to think, but I’m not. I’m just thinking. My thoughts are random and bouncing around my brain like spastic, hyperactive ping-pong balls.

  Some part of me—some microscopic part of me—takes a moment and toys with the bizarre idea of Ryder Harrison and what that could mean to me, or for me if you will, if what Kennie heard and said was true. It can’t be. Why now? Who could possible tolerate the idea of the quarterback taking a liking to me? We’re apples and oranges. I’m black hoodies; he’s a decorated letterman’s jacket. I’m Slipknot, he’s Justin Bieber—these things just don’t mix.

  And I strongly doubt (and pray for the Bieber/Slipknot sake) they ever will.

  Lunch ends and I go through the rest of my classes pretending Kennie never said what she did. It’s easy because I don’t believe any it. It’s bull to me. American Sign Language is easy and we sign about lunch items; specifically what we ate for lunch. For lunch, I ate an apple, I sign to my partner. In AP English, we are assigned Beowulf; I tackle a good chunk of it before the end of class, thanks to a speed-reading technique I was once so bored, I mast
ered. After that, I’m in Chamber Orchestra tuning my violin, Brandenburg Concerto 3 spread along my stand.

  After all of the excitement, I meet Jamie at her car and we wait for Zephyr while talking about classes and the usual things. Luckily, she doesn’t mention anything about her classmate—that means she hasn’t heard anything. I strongly doubt she could keep anything about Ryder Harrison and me to herself, even if nothing has, or ever will, happen.

  Somehow, during our friendship, we’ve grown apart. It was expected, really. Jamie is one of those girls that glide around school on a perfect fluffy cloud with her boyfriend attached to her arm and a trail of minions, oops, I mean friends, following closely behind.

  Instantly, the conversation lulls and we’re in silence, quickly running out of things to talk about. It’s a comfortable silence, and we’re used to it, there’s only so much I can tolerate talking about Marcus and his hair. Or his muscles. Or his blinding smile.

  Zephyr joins us, briefly heading home before he has to drive back for football practice. I walk through the front door and run up the stairs to dump my bag and books on my bed before I head to therapy. I grab the keys from the ugly ceramic bowl by the front door, call up to my aunt in her room just to let her know that I’ve blown through the house, and head out.

  ***

  The windows don’t glint in the late afternoon sun when I pull into the sparsely filled parking lot. It’s rarely crowded when I arrive so parking is never crazy. No pun intended. Usually my car’s the only vehicle in the lot. Today it has the company of an aged Ford truck past its prime and more rusted than its original navy blue, a new yellow Mercedes, and a 1970s era Volkswagen Beetle that has seen way better days. My car, or my aunt’s car, is an SUV from the early 2000s. I have no idea the make, model, or year, and I don’t really care. I never cared. I’m not a car girl. I don’t know the first thing about them. All that matters to me is that I have a license—check!—and access to a working vehicle that can get me from Point A to Point B. Today, Point B happens to be the local psychiatric center.

  Goody, goody gum drops.

  I let Vivian, the middle-aged receptionist that needs to touch up her graying roots if she wants everyone to believe that she is a natural redhead, know I’m here. She smiles at me—her wrinkling face crinkling more with her polite toothy grin—and I return it just to be polite in return. Like always. It’s not long before I am sitting in Dr. Jett’s office, in the plush brown recliner across from her, focusing on various knickknacks and things placed around her room. Scenic landscape on the wall across from me, neat and organized desk in the corner of the room covered with family photographs, paperwork, and business cards, an Apple laptop with a black screen sitting open on the desk, a box of tissues on the table that separates me from Dr. Jett; I stare at these things every session every month. Watching everything evolve with time throughout my years as her patient. Especially the doctor herself.

  When I first walked into her office—cowering behind my aunt, obviously—I was eight. She was fresh out of school and excited to be my doctor. And I mean overly excited. “My name is Caroline Jett,” she told me with perky enthusiasm, shaking my tiny hand vigorously. Back then, she was different; her blonde hair curled wildly, framing her face in a naturally fluffy cloud, and she wore mostly comfortable work clothes. She wasn’t fancy and I usually forgot that she was a doctor, or psychiatrist. At some point, she was pregnant with her first child. That was when I learned that she was married. After that, she started dressing more professionally and styled her hair differently, less wild.

  I still don’t know what spurred the change and I never wanted to ask.

  Dr. Jett, throughout the time that I’ve know her, tried her hardest to seem like my friend in the beginning. She tried to get me to trust her. It was useless; I didn’t trust anyone easily. I still don’t.

  Makes sense, right?

  Still, she tried. I didn’t speak much in the beginning. At all, actually. Sure, I told her the basics; how my day went, if I was making any new friends at school, how me and my aunt got along. Mostly, I answered any questions that she asked that pertained to my present. I never told her anything about before, nothing about what happened.

  “Good afternoon, Joey.” The sound of her voice, low and throaty like she’s been smoking for the past ten years, catches my attention and I stop looking around the room and try and focus on her and her designer suit. On the small wooden table between us, next to the box of Kleenex, is the small tape recorder she’s used since I started seeing her. It’s black and silver with six buttons. Three dots above the buttons light up; one green, one red, and one blue. The steady green means that the small machine is recording; the blinking red means that the tape is nearly full, and I’m not sure what blue means. I’ve never seen it flash before. Right now, the only light blinking is the green.

  “What’s up, Doc?” She smiles at the Bugs Bunny reference, a tired joke that I’ve said since I was nine. I’d be polite and ask her how she was doing, how her life is going, maybe take an interest and ask follow up questions, but she made it quite clear years ago that this was my time, not hers. So I just sit and wait for her to fire the first question.

  “How are you doing today?” Dr. Jett asks. Her hand holds a black Pilot G2 pen, not a Montblanc you would normally expect with someone like her in her perfect suit and coiffed hair. She tucks a loose strand of golden blonde hair behind her ear as she waits for my response.

  “Fine.” I bite my tongue before And yourself? slips from my mouth. It’s a habit of mine.

  “And school?” she continues, trying to probe something juicy from me, anything that she can pounce on. “How is that going?”

  “It’s school,” I answer, matter-of-fact. What would she expect me to say about school? Oh, I dropped out and decided to join the circus as a trapeze artist. So no more school for me anymore. Maybe then I’d have something to say that’d shock her.

  But I don’t.

  However, this is the typical dialogue during our sessions. I don’t understand why she wants to record them. I mean, she has my permission to do it. I don’t really care if she has my voice—all my thoughts, all my problems, every one of my delusional issues—on tape. It’s just that she could hand write the entire thing like a minute keeper and still have too much useless information.

  I don’t really have a problem with the tape recorder. It’s not like she just announced one day that she was recording my worst moments for playback for the hell of it and she didn’t care if I agreed or objected. No. I willingly let her because I didn’t really give a crap when I started these sessions.

  Somewhere in this building, in the deep, dark abyss of all things disturbing and chaotic, I grow on tape. Physically—no one can see that. They can speculate when listening, my voice changes. Mentally—I’d say that was minimal growth, but I’m biased and self-critical. Eh, I’m mostly self-loathing and wallowing in my own self-pity.

  I’m also a little vain, can’t you tell?

  “It started last week,” she continues, not meaning it as a question, but simply stating the fact. Her eyes glance down at the blank page on her lap. I haven’t given her a reason to write yet. “Do you like your classes, Joey?”

  I shrug, saying, “They’re okay.” Instantly, with her simple question, I feel weak, I feel vulnerable. I hate feeling as if my walls are down, like they’ve fallen with her words, and I’m exposed. Completely bare. I try and suppress the feeling. “I’m in four AP classes, so it’s not too hectic for me.”

  “Not too hectic?” she replies, her right eyebrow arced, repeating my statement before she continues with, “Most students can’t handle that kind of workload.”

  That is true.

  “But most students,” I say bitterly, darting my distracted gaze to the open window, “are not me.” It’s a bold point to counter with, but I just cock my head to the side in challenge, stating the obvious. “I like the challenge. I welcome the challenge. Anything to keep me busy.” My han
ds grip each other in my lap, my fingers weaving together and unweaving. Anyone that knows me, even minimally, despite my efforts, could tell that, at this moment, we are about the breach a topic that I would rather not discuss.

  Dr. Jett? Well, she knows me very well.

  “Why do you need to be busy?” she asks. Her hand glides across the page, the pen dancing and bouncing as she finally finds something noteworthy, something that needs to be documented for future reference.

  I bite my bottom lip, lightly nibbling, trying to figure out how I want to answer this question. If I mention the nightmares, she might force me into another sleep study. Oh, who am I kidding, she would definitely force me into another sleep study. Damn me for being a minor. I don’t want to go through that again. Soon, out of nervousness, my hand replaces my bottom lip and I’m biting my nails as the session continues in awkward silence.

  “I like to be busy,” I answer simply with my finger in my mouth, hoping to leave it at that and move forward. It’s an easy answer; it’s a good answer. I should leave it at that. But no, I stupidly open my mouth and add, “I like to be occupied.”

  “Occupied?” Her head cocks to the side slightly, the loose hair falling from her ear gracefully, a blonde curl falling down the front of her right shoulder. She makes no move to tuck it back.

  Crap! Crap! Crap!

  I blame my stupid mouth for that.

  Wrong word to use, why did I say occupied? That was a stupid slipup. My teeth transition from my index finger to my middle finger, clamping down on the nail until my teeth click together. I’m a compulsive nail biter, obviously, though I did stop for two months. That’s a personal best. Now the habit is starting again. I can picture my hands by tomorrow, nails bitten down, red and bloody. It’s not attractive.

  It’s too late to take the word back and substitute something different. I can’t just be like, Did I say occupied? I meant—substitute any other word in the dictionary that makes sense.