Perfectly Flawed Read online

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Ryder asks. Through the phone, he sounds amused. I can hear his cocky, crooked grin. I think he’s enjoying this a little too much.

  Hell, no. “Not even in the slightest.” Idiot, I mentally add at the end of the sentence. I want to tell him that I’m not a mind reader. And even if I were, his would not be a mind I’d want to read.

  “A date.”

  I snort in derision. Very ladylike, I might add.

  He can’t be serious.

  “What is it?” Zephyr practically growls through clenched teeth. Why’s he so angry all of a sudden?

  “Shut it, would ya,” I snap at Zephyr, shooting him a glare. “You’re not serious? You can’t be?” The more that I argue with him, the more that it’ll become true.

  “Like a heart attack,” answers Ryder in a voice that sounds serious, but I can’t see him. I don’t know what he looks like; I don’t know what he’s thinking. Again, I’m not a mind reader.

  “Well, I’m sorry to waste your time, Ryder,” I begin, looking over to a seething Zephyr who can’t feign indifference to save his life. “But there’s no way that I’m agreeing to that.”

  “Doing what?” Zephyr asks, annoyingly loud, definitely trying to be heard on Ryder’s end.

  I reach my arm out to smack him in the back of the head but he backs away. My arm just swings through the air fruitlessly, slicing through strands of his hair.

  “Why not?” asks Ryder on the other line. He sounds hurt, genuinely. I still don’t feel bad about it. There are many things that I’d rather do than date him. Most of them are quite painful but more enjoyable than an evening spent with Ryder.

  Let’s just be honest here. That’s always good. “Because I don’t really like you,” I answer. “Not as a person, not as a romantic interest. Not if you were made out of money and sneezed gold coins.”

  “Ouch,” Ryder exclaims loudly. I can still hear the chuckling when he calms down, he isn’t hurt that bad. “You don’t even know me, honey.”

  Honey?

  “You don’t even know me,” I retort acerbically. “And don’t call me honey.”

  “Sorry, I promise I will only call you by your name—”

  “That’s all I ask,” I snap angrily, cutting him off before he can finish.

  “And I’m trying to get to know you, Joey,” he tells me, mockingly. I roll my eyes, stifling the urge to just hang up. It’s a very strong urge. “Can’t you tell by now? The fact that I don’t know anything about you, well, that’s something I’m trying to change.” He sounds like he’s begging—his voice dripping with desperation—which is funny. I snicker.

  Sweet baby Jesus, seriously, someone just gag me with a spoon.

  Be still my heart.

  “There really is nothing you can do to remedy that—”

  “What’s going on, Joey?” Zephyr annoyingly whines like a five year old whose been denied a cookie for dinner. I roll my eyes for the umpteenth friggin’ time this evening.

  “—so I suggest you stop.” I shoot Zephyr an angry glance. “I’m hanging up now.” Before he can object, I click the red dot on my screen, turn my phone to silent, and drop it among the clutter, letting it get lost beneath the papers. I should just block his number but that means that I would have to add his number to my contact list and it doesn’t stop him from texting or leaving voicemail messages.

  Ugh!

  With a sigh, I turn my attention back to my notes, trying to forget the previous exchange I just had with Ryder. Though, I know Zephyr isn’t going to let this go. No matter how much I hope he will.

  “Are you going to answer me?” Zephyr asks. His arms are folded defiantly across his broad chest as he stares me down from his side of the table.

  “About Franz Ferdinand or Austria-Hungary in general?” I reply, avoiding the obvious. In my hand, I hold up a sheet from my notes. He doesn’t look amused.

  I didn’t think he would.

  “You know what I mean. Harrison.” Zephyr leans forward, resting his forearms on the table, staring me intently in the eyes. His eyes burn into mine, his usually dark brown eyes growing darker as he examines me. “What did he want?”

  I roll my eyes openly in front of him when he doesn’t back away. “I don’t know,” I mumble angrily. That isn’t really true. So I say, “A date.” I shrug and look back to my notes as if I’m not affected by it. I don’t want to be affected by it, I want to move on. But I know this isn’t over. Far from it.

  “Why?”

  And there’s the dreaded follow up question.

  Can he not just let it go?

  I turn my gaze to him, deadpan. “Because some people in this world, believe it or not, think I’m attractive, Zephyr.” That seemed to shock him, throw him back a bit.

  He nervously runs his hands through his hair. “I didn’t say that you’re not attractive, Joey, it’s just…” Zephyr leans further away, shielding his eyes. Did he just blush? He pauses, trying to chose his words carefully—knowing that I’ll throw something at him if they’re the wrong choice—then he continues with, “he dates the Alexia type. That shallow, vapid, self-absorbed cheerleader with access to an AmEx and a Beamer.”

  Need I remind Zephyr, my good buddy, that he also dates the Alexia type? Or just the Alexia. For two years.

  “Where are you going with this, Zeph?” I pop the tab on my Mountain Dew, surprised that he didn’t shake it when I wasn’t looking, causing the yellow liquid geysers me in the face, and take a long drink from the cool can. It fizzles and tickles down my throat, bubbling as it glides toward its destination.

  “Girls with no depth, with no sense of what they want or who they are,” he starts, trying to paint a picture of the girls that I’ve been forced to see daily for the past eight or so years. I could smack him, I know those girls very well. “Harrison chooses them, not because they’re painted to simulate beauty, but because they’re easy.” Tell me something I don’t know, Sherlock. “He doesn’t need tricks to get them into his bed.” Zephyr glances toward my phone; the little green light flashes in the upper right corner, alerting me to a text message. “He’s up to something; Harrison never chooses girls who can think for themselves.”

  “Thanks?” I draw out, muttering in question, not entirely sure if he is complimenting me because I’m my own person with a working brain or warning me from Ryder in general. I think the former. I reach for my HTC blinking at me, turning on the screen.

  Unknown Number: Please!!! Just one date?

  Must be Ryder. Damn it.

  Me: No!

  Unknown Number: I won’t stop trying.

  And, damn, the boy meant it. The next day at lunch, with Harley at home with food poisoning—swearing never to touch another piece of sushi again. She’s been sending me very descriptive texts on the hour, every hour, and now I think I’ll never go near sushi again myself—it’s just me and Kennie at our usual table. She’s wearing her uniform, midriff bearing and showcasing her long, tanned legs. I nearly scream at her—nearly because I try my hardest to keep my voice low—about giving my number to Ryder and she tells me that she did no such thing.

  “Kennie, just be honest with me,” I tell her in the hall as we walk toward the cafeteria.

  She looks me directly in the eyes, stopping me where I stand, and tells me, “I would never, ever give out your number without your permission, Joey.”

  Well, I can’t argue with that.

  Then how did he get my number?

  And why would he tell me that Kennie gave it to him?

  Both very good questions.

  For the rest of lunch, I use my tutor skills to help Kennie with her Algebra II homework. She’s struggling with the quadratic equation; it’s easy for me. I remember the stupid song we learned in eighth grade math. X equals negative b, plus or minus the square root…

  Somewhere in the large room, music starts to play over the loudspeaker, and the voices quiet down as people seek out the source. I recognize the song immediately
, Snow Patrol’s Just Say Yes. It’s a good song but why in the world is it playing during lunch?

  “Isn’t it a bit early for people to start asking others to Homecoming?” Kennie asks me, her eyes searching the crowd for the lucky, unsuspecting girl.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you that, Miss Spirit Squad?” I reply, tapping my pen on the tabletop, hearing the click, click, clicking of plastic on plastic. “Just ignore it, let’s finish this problem.”

  We turn our attention back to her homework right when the singing starts.

  Okay, so singing is too nice of a word for what we are hearing. The voice is loud and off key, scratchy and high pitched. It reminds me of a cross between someone strangling a cat and sending a chipmunk through a wood chipper.

  What is worse, I still recognize the horrible, horrible voice. I spoke to it on the phone last night.

  Is this what he meant when he said that he wouldn’t stop trying?

  Oh, sweet Jesus!

  Ryder Harrison steps from the ASB office holding a single red rose. Surrounding him are other senior football players—all wearing their jerseys since it’s game day—all of them holding two roses of various colors alternating from yellow to pink to white, but he’s the only one holding red. They line up to hand the flowers to me, my hands growing heavier from the weight of the flowers. There are at least twenty dudes handing me roses.

  As nice and awkward as this gesture is, I really don’t like roses, I think they’re cliché and overrated.

  Ryder walks up to me, the de facto leader of the group, finishing the last line of the first verse, handing me the rose. He then holds out his now-free hand to me, the lyrics of the song asking me to take it.

  I can see Zephyr at his table on the other side of the cafeteria, wearing his own varsity jersey, standing up as he watches what is happening to me. With his arms folded across his chest, his muscles peek out from beneath the sleeves. His face doesn’t hold a happy expression; he looks pissed—enraged even.

  As am I.

  I look to other people in the cafeteria. Jamie is seated one table away from Zephyr; Marcus’ arm around her shoulders, as she smiles widely at me, giving me a thumbs up. Her friends all smile sweetly, they probably think that I’m the luckiest girl in the room because someone—Ryder, of all people—is serenading me in front of the entire school. Or the entirety of fifth period lunch. Blech. Other girls, apparently thinking this is beautiful and romantic, swoon as Ryder butchers—I mean sings to me. The girls that don’t like me scowl and wish that Ryder would give this type of attention to them.

  They can have it.

  A few people can see this for what it is: embarrassing. These people are laughing as hard as I would if this were happening to someone else.

  But it’s not. It’s happening to me. Right here, right now, in front of witnesses with camera phones and YouTube apps on those phones.

  Crap, I’ll be a viral hit by dinner.

  Thank you, Ryder. I really appreciate this.

  I want to tackle Ryder to the ground. I want to tackle him so hard this his grandchildren’s grandchildren will feel it and know never to do this sort of thing to anyone. Ever. Instead, I snatch the microphone from his hands, instantly clicking it off—he should never sing again. Not even to his showerhead—and after slamming the microphone onto the lunch table directly in front of Kennie with enough force that I hear the tiny appliance crack, I drag Ryder through the back doors and into the quad by the sleeve of his jersey.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, dude?” I yell, alerting the attention of everyone in the quad to us. Most of the surrounding people are stoners so they immediately, and thankfully, dismiss the outburst. “Are there a few wires in that thick head of yours touching that shouldn’t be?”

  “I told you last night that I wouldn’t stop trying.” He smirks at me, winking. That’s just disgusting. “I can keep this serenade thing going, you know, Joey. I have it all planned out.” He lifts up his hand to start listing things off. “On Monday, I was thinking Carly Rae Jepsen, then on Tuesday, some Justin Bieber—because everyone loves the Biebs—and on Wednesday I’d sing some Taylor Swift. On Thursday, I was thinking that new Selena Gomez song, it’s perfect for our situation, but Friday—”

  “STOP!” I yell. My hands lift up, ready to strangle him if he doesn’t stop talking. This is something that I really, really need to think about. Now, he’s basically admitting to wanting to torture me with music—which is not a good thing—if I refuse him. If I do agree to the date, it’s only one night, a few hours of my life. Maybe I should just agree even if I really don’t want to. What’s the harm, really? “I’ll go out with you,” I relent quietly; admitting defeat, damn it.

  “Seriously?” Ryder’s eyes widen. He looks shocked. He looks like he didn’t expect me to cave so quickly.

  “Yes, if it means that I never, ever, have to hear you sing again.” I heave out a loud, rough, exaggerated sigh. “I will. One date.” The sound of his shrill squealing is on constant repeat in my brain. “No one should hear you sing. Ever again.”

  “That bad, huh?” Seething, knowing that I’ve just been tricked into a date, well, practically tricked. More like manhandled into a date with Ryder, I shoot him a look filled with metaphorical daggers that should answer his question. “I guess we won’t hit up a karaoke joint, then.”

  ***

  Ryder wanted our first date—and only date, I quickly added before he thought that this was anything more than a onetime occurrence —to start directly after the football game. I had to nip that thought in the bud. If he actually thought I was the type of girl to attend football games and root for my school with one of these overgrown pom poms, he doesn’t know me at all—which, in all honesty, he’s already admitted that he doesn’t know me at all, go figure. So our date is on Saturday—that’s tonight. I’m not exactly excited about it but I don’t want to live through a poorly executed episode of Glee, so it’s better that I agree to a date now to save myself further embarrassment in the future.

  Now, I am standing in my room, after a long, hot, relaxing shower, trying to find something date appropriate to wear. I don’t really know what to wear on a date; I’ve never been on one before. I’d call Kennie, but she’s cheering at a boy’s soccer away game before she heads to some stupid cheer party. I’d call Harley but she’s still an infected human geyser. She also doesn’t really approve of this. I later learned that through angry texts in all caps yesterday when I told her that I agreed to a date with Ryder after he threatened to sing to me again and again and again and…

  Well, you get it.

  That leaves only one real option.

  Why didn’t I think of her sooner.

  “ZEPHYR!” I scream out my window, leaning on my arms until my head pokes over the empty alley that separates our houses. I look down and see his family’s canoes leaning against the side of his house, on our side are our trashcans and recycling bins full to the brim—we forget about trash day. A lot. I can hear metal music playing from the ancient stereo he has had set up in the corner in his room since we were nine, you know, back when they were still a big thing. It was his Christmas gift from his grandparents, their old one. He loves the thing and uses it religiously rather than conform and buy an iHome like the rest of the civilization. Mine’s pink and sits on my nightstand.

  He wanders to the window lazily, his long hair tied back away from his face. A few locks fall free, framing his face when he hasn’t tried to tuck them behind his ears. There’s a splotch of yellow paint beneath his left eye, a smudge of green paint on his forehead, and a splatter of blue paint on his white t-shirt.

  “Yeah?” he asks, cleaning his hands on an old towel covered in various colors. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him paint; it’s a refreshing sight. When he was younger and decided that he liked art, I would sit in his room as he discovered his technique. Sometimes I would sit as his model. Fully clothed. Although he did try to convince me to take off my shirt once. That wa
s the summer that I started wearing a bra and he noticed.

  It’s been even longer since I’ve seen any of his pieces except for the one hanging on my wall. It was his attempt at a self portrait—it was a great attempt. It looks just like him. He hated it so I stole it when he wasn’t looking and I refused to give it back. I still do when he begs me for it.

  “Is Jamie home?” I call over the alley. She’s the only person I can think of to help me with this problem in such a short notice. I’m not sure what I’ll do if she isn’t home. There’s my aunt but I’d feel a little weird asking her about this. Hey, do you have any idea what I can wear that’s both sexy and modest?

  Not that I want to look sexy for Ryder.

  “Yeah, want me to send her over?” He slings the towel over his left shoulder before he crosses his arms along his chest. Zephyr leans forward, revealing more of himself in the window across from mine.

  “Please?” I beg sweetly, speaking over the alley.

  “Not a problem,” he says to me, briefly chuckling, as he turns to yell, “JAMIE, GET YOUR ASS OVER TO JOEY’S.”

  I snort loudly, using my hand to cover my mouth

  “Thanks,” I call to him, watching him walk away from the window briefly, maybe to check out his painting from a different angle.

  “Anything for you, my dear,” he replies, distracted.

  A few moments later, Jamie stands in front of my open closet, staring at my clothes, trying to put something together in her mind, anything that could possibly look good together and look great on me. From the look on her face—mostly boredom, I swear that she yawned!—I can tell that she is neither satisfied nor impressed.

  I wouldn’t be, either. I know what’s in there. Nothing but band t-shirts and worn jeans.

  “This is all you have?” she asks, her hand fiddling with the end of her side braid. I can see that she’s trying not to bite her nails, a nervous habit she’s had since she was a kid. Something I gained from hanging around with her a lot. Her mother used to scold her for doing it. Jamie tried to stop until she started getting French manicures—she couldn’t bite those off.