No Such Thing as Perfect

by Daltry, Sarah

  “So you’re not a freshman?” I ask.

  “Junior.”

  “Your major?”

  “Game Design. And you’re English.”

  “How’d you know?”

  He’s finished turning the cup into pieces and he swaps the pile between his palms, looking at me the entire time. His eyes have danced through every human emotion in the few short interactions we’ve had. I didn’t know anyone had the kind of depth I see in them.

  “Lucky guess. Plus you’ve read Sense and Sensibility several times, which seems like an English major thing to do,” he says.

  “Yet you know the character names,” I point out.

  “Yeah, but I’m not…” He shakes his head. I don’t know what the sentence was supposed to end with, but he’s not continuing. “Besides, you came out of Joliet Hall, which is Humanities. I suppose you could just be taking a lit class, but it seemed a decent guess.”

  “Well, you’re right. I’m predictable,” I say.

  “I don’t doubt that, Elinor,” he replies, but it’s not judgmental. There’s sadness in the way he says it. Regret. Regret? Stop putting your own issues on him, I tell myself. “So what brings you here?”

  “To Bristol?”

  Jack stands and throws out the Styrofoam. Each piece falls into the trash can like a heartbroken snowflake, slowly at first and then finally accepting its fate and taking the last few inches as inevitable. I watch them fall from his hands, his fingers outstretched and shaking. The ink on his arms is striking against the paleness of his skin.

  “To sitting in a lounge with me in the middle of the night,” he says. “You’re predictable, as you said yourself.” He turns back towards me. “So what’s out of place?”

  “Who said anything was?” I ask.

  “I think I’ve misunderstood,” he says. “I didn’t mean to assume. I just thought there was something familiar in the way you were pacing.”

  “How so?”

  He shrugs. “I’ve spent many nights pacing, too. And a lot more feeling like it was never going to make sense. I shouldn’t have guessed that something was missing, just because it usually is for me.”

  My own Styrofoam cup, now empty, pays the price. How can he see so directly into the weakest parts of me? How does he know that the pieces don’t fit? I picture my mother standing here, whispering in my ear that I’m slipping, that I’m pathetic, that I need to straighten out. I see my life and all my plans ahead of me and I feel them becoming faint outlines and I have to crush the cup to hold onto something solid.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I tell him. “But I need to get back. I’m…”

  I’m about to apologize, but he nods and walks away, leaving me alone. I stand up and throw what’s left of my cup into the trash, where its mangled corpse hides the damage he did to his.

  10.

  “I was thinking of trying out for the school play,” I told my parents at dinner. Jon looked at me and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

  “That sounds great, honey,” my dad said, but my mom’s face grew tight. I knew I had said something wrong, although I didn’t know what was wrong with school plays.

  “Is that okay, Mom?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer right away, her knife growing faster as she cut her chicken. I wanted her to nod, to say she’d be proud, but her lips were pinched and she finally sighed, dropping the silverware loudly against the plate. I felt the crashing in my skin, the sound of being wrong bleeding in my veins.

  “Lily, you have a lot of responsibilities. I just can’t understand why you would want to sacrifice your grades and what you’ve worked for. Have you even thought this through?” she asked.

  “They said rehearsals are from 3-5 a few days a week. I can still go to NHS and Student Council meetings and I already asked Coach Hillary about alternating.”

  “And when are you going to do your homework? Between running, workouts, your clubs, and learning lines, you don’t think your grades will slip?”

  I looked at my brother, who was eating and not paying attention. He played sports, but he barely passed his classes. No one cared. He never needed to study. He was always out with his friends and my mother bragged about him endlessly, especially when he started dating Brianna Graves. She couldn’t get enough of telling him how great Brianna was. Brianna, the valedictorian cheerleader who had no flaws. Brianna, who came over after school when my parents weren’t around and locked herself in my brother’s room with him, doing things I always found out about later when it filtered back to me through gossip. Things that led to her and Jon skipping school to go to a clinic out of town where they could pay someone to make sure no one else knew that they weren’t perfect.

  “I’m a junior. You won’t let me work. It’s only a few hours a week. I can ask for a small part,” I argued.

  “And what’s the point then?” my mother snapped. “You’re going to sacrifice for what? To get five minutes on stage? Do what you like, Lily, but I’m not going to sit there and pretend to be proud that you’re an elf. If I thought you could handle a leading role, I might consider it, but you know what you’ll do. It will all end up being too much and then you’ll be here one night crying that you can’t keep up with everything. I just don’t want to hear it when you screw this up.”

  That was the end of the conversation, as far as she was concerned, although I did go to auditions. I practiced for two weeks after everyone was in bed, memorizing the monologue I’d found online. But on the day of auditions, I sat in the back of the auditorium. The girls were all so much more talented than I was, full of confidence and sure that they belonged on stage. They all knew they had something to say and that someone wanted to listen.

  I was the last person to go. I waited until the end and all I could think about was how I wouldn’t be able to get it right, how I’d forget the lines, how I would make a mistake and everyone would laugh. But when they called my name, I walked up on stage and pretended it didn’t terrify me. The lights drilled their ghostly white through my skull and the kids directing were only fuzzy shapes, orbs of flickering color surrounded by faded darkness. My throat was dry, my tongue too big and stuck to the roof of my mouth. We weren’t given anything but a stool, which I leaned on to stop the vertigo. But then I paused and breathed and I looked at the words in my shaking hand.

  Inside the words, I could hide. I could become and the stage lights reminded me of what had sparked the desire in the first place. Becoming – not acting, not pretending, but becoming. That was what this was for me. And as I shed myself, a girl spoke… and everyone listened.

  11.

  Derek isn’t listening. We’ve spent the entire weekend in my room, not even leaving to eat except to meet the delivery guy, but after two days, I still don’t feel like he’s hearing me at all.

  “I’m saying I just wonder if it was a bad idea,” I repeat. “I mean, yeah, this is a better school, but I don’t know. Maybe I’d be happier with you and Jon. You could introduce me to people.”

  He leans back against the wall, knocking loose one of the pictures I put up. It was taken over the summer and we’re both smiling in it. It was at a baseball game and although I’m not much of a fan, Derek had a great time and that night, he told me he saw his future and it was all me. I pick up the picture and try to smooth down the crease from where he bent it and pulled the tape from the wall.

  “Lily, you wouldn’t be happy. I wouldn’t be happy,” he says.

  “Why? Don’t you want to spend more time with me? All you’ve said since you got here is how much you missed being with me.”

  “Yeah, but that’s physical. You know that. You know how much I love to hold you. But if we were together all the time, wouldn’t you get bored?”

  The photo’s crease goes through my neck. I look like a monster.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t get bored with you,” I tell him.

  “Because it’s always been like this. Me away at school and you at home. Now you
’re away at school, too, so it just means when I come to visit we have privacy. But nothing else is different. This works, Lily.”

  “We were happy this summer, though. I saw you almost every day and we were happy.”

  “I guess, but you weren’t being clingy. Don’t start being clingy. Besides, at school, things are a certain way. I have my friends and you’d feel out of place. We never really ran in the same circles, you know,” he says.

  “Are you ashamed of me?” I ask.

  For the last ten months, I never visited him on campus once. It always made sense, though, because Jon felt like it would be uncomfortable for me to share the room with him and Derek and although he hasn’t said much, I know he’s still not sure how he feels about his best friend sleeping with his little sister. Now, though, I wonder if Derek is part of that, too.

  He leans forward, pushing me backwards onto the bed, kissing me and holding me close to him. “Do I look ashamed, Lily?”

  I don’t have a chance to reply. He moves fast and I don’t want to fight and he loves me. Obviously he loves me. So even though he doesn’t answer my question directly, I let him keep kissing me and I believe what he says with his body because the words never come.

  ****

  When Derek leaves, I don’t know what to do with myself, so I go to the Club Fair. It’s been happening all weekend, but my boyfriend took precedence over the Knitting Club. However, now that he’s gone, Kristen and I are trying to be active or something. I look over at the frats and sororities for a moment; my mother would be delighted to be able to tell everyone about her darling sorority girl, but they’re all just so… excited. I’m not excited. I’m cold and Derek was weird when he left, dodging questions about when he would call and he still never said whether he was ashamed of me and everyone here is happy and I’m not because there is something wrong with me. It hovers and swirls like an endless cyclone of doubt and chaos and I’m being swept away, which makes me angry. So angry that I turn around and join the Environmental Club before I can change my mind. That will show them. I don’t know who them is and I don’t think saving the planet is really a message that anyone should be upset about sending, but even my anger is pathetic.

  I’m on an activity kick, though, so I just go down the line, signing up for things. Somewhere here is where I belong; somewhere is a place where I can feel less empty. I stop when I come to the drama troupe. I can still picture the auditions. I can even see the flickers of dust that darted across the burning lights. I feel the stage under my shoes, hard and hollow and echoing the fear with each step, but also unyielding and unforgiving enough to make me want to walk forward. I remember the silence while I spoke. People listened. For the only moment in my life, they truly listened, but then, it was over. When the cast list went up, I had gotten a part. I was to play Miss Prism, but it wasn’t a lead. I’d said no on the form where it asked if I was interested in a leading role, but my mind seemed to tell me that if I was good enough, if I was perfect, they would cast me anyway. And Miss Prism was a good role. Four women were cast – and forty had auditioned. But my mother had been right and so I had declined. I consider all this in the moment as I pass the drama table. Why bother if you can’t be the best? That’s what my mother always told me.

  “You should write for the paper,” Kristen says.

  “You think so?” I look over at the table. I enjoy writing. I like words, but I can’t see myself being an aggressive reporter. Then again, how aggressive can you possibly have to be for the college paper?

  “I think you’d be good at it. I mean, unless you’re going to sign up for the Ping Pong Club?” She points to the table at the end, which is where we’re headed. Since I’ve been mindlessly signing my name on things, it probably wouldn’t be that much of a reach.

  “Not that I have a thing against Ping Pong,” I tell her, “but I’m kind of-”

  “Dainty?” she asks.

  “What the hell? I’m not dainty. What does that even mean?”

  She laughs and grabs my pen, heading towards the newspaper table. “You just get a little OCD about random shit. You need to lighten up. Here. They need a music reporter. That’s your calling, Lily. You are going to be Bristol’s new punk princess.”

  12.

  “You look like a princess,” my dad said.

  My Prom dress was white and it was too long. There were bows and ribbons in places that didn’t need bows and ribbons, but it was pretty and my mother had found it at some store in the city. And if it was good enough for people in the city, it had to be good enough for me.

  “Do you think Derek will like it?” I asked Abby again. I’d been asking for weeks. He didn’t want to go to Prom. He told me it was stupid to come home from school for something dumb like a high school dance, but I hadn’t gone to Prom before and he had. Everyone had heard about his Prom.

  “Yes. Calm down,” she told me. “You look beautiful.”

  We were waiting for Derek and Jon. They’d both decided to come home, since Derek had to anyway for me. I knew he had exams coming up and he hadn’t been studying. We’d argued about it a few times, but I’d let it die because I didn’t want to go to Prom alone. He didn’t want to go at all.

  I grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her out into the hallway. “Do I look okay? I mean, do I compare to Gina?” Gina had won Prom Queen last year. The pictures were still in the albums by the couch in the living room – Derek and Gina, Jon and Brianna. I didn’t know why my mom kept them. Jon and Brianna hadn’t lasted past summer.

  “Stop it, Lily. You look amazing. He’d be an idiot not to see that,” Abby said.

  She didn’t know about the fight. She didn’t know that I’d stayed up all night crying only two weeks earlier when Derek had said he thought I should go alone, that he had work to do, that it was a pointless tradition anyway and I wouldn’t even like it.

  He and I had been together almost six months. I wanted it to work. I was willing to sacrifice Prom for it to work, but he’d felt bad after making me cry. The next day, he had called back and he’d been genuinely contrite since. In my head, I envisioned him seeing me in the dress and feeling like an ass, begging for my forgiveness, but he was late and we had to take pictures and the limo was waiting and I was starting to wonder if I should have faked sick or something so everyone didn’t have to wait.

  “He’s here,” my mom called from the living room. Abby held my arm; she wanted to say something. There were moments when I thought she knew, when I felt like maybe I didn’t need to try to find the words for the anxiety and fear I lived with, but she just shook her head.

  When Derek walked in, he hugged my mom and then he looked at me, his eyes running over the length of my body. I was being inspected, but I hadn’t been told in advance what the penalty was for failure.

  “You look beautiful,” he told me.

  “So it was worth it?” I asked.

  “I’m sure you’ll make it worth it,” he said, his hands moving quickly over every part of me before my parents noticed.

  “Everyone in the living room for pictures,” my mother yelled and we followed, obedient.

  I stood with my boyfriend’s arm around me while my dad called me his princess and my mother said she was proud. Finally I had done something that she could stick in a frame and preserve.

  We took plenty of pictures, those cellulose storytellers we cling to when we want to believe the past was one way even though we know it wasn’t. The shiny lies only reveal what’s on the outside, what we can see, and the limitations of the senses tell a different truth. Derek smelled awful but the stench of weed that clung to his tux didn’t get captured by the camera. In the end, the pictures were perfect and they could be placed next to the ones from Jon’s Prom, all part of the façade. It didn’t matter that the night was anything but, because it’s only about what we allow ourselves to remember.

  13.

  Joining the paper has been good, because it keeps me busy. When I’m not working on schoolwork or attend
ing my sporadic Environmental Club meetings with Lyle, I’m in the newspaper office. I don’t know anything about music, but Kristen wasn’t kidding. They wanted a music reporter and that’s what I do. I open bins of CDs and take them back to my room and listen to them and try to write reviews, but it all sounds the same to me.

  “Hey, you, new girl.” My editor comes into the office as if we were already in the middle of a conversation. I save the inane review I’m writing, empty praise about some band who plays “Shoegaze,” whatever that means, and turn around.

  “Lily,” I remind her, but she knows.

  “Yeah, whatever. Listen, I need you to cover some crappy concert.”

  “Um, I don’t know,” I say. I’ve been to one concert ever, and it was a Christian folksinger who played at my church. “I really don’t belong in music,” I tell her, but I’ve told her and everyone else and despite the fact that the twelve people who read our paper know this as well, I’m still reviewing genres of music I didn’t know existed. I wish I could just interview a math professor or something.

  “It’s fine. They’re playing tonight,” she tells me. “The band from campus that I need you to do the story on is the first opener, so you don’t need to stay. Just take some pictures and get a quote from one of the band members and you’re free to go.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  She rolls her eyes. “No. Some generic college band that will break up by next semester. But make them look good. Then they’ll pass out copies of the paper.”

  “Great,” I sigh and I get the address of the club.

  I go back to the dorm and change into something I figure is rock clubby, which means jeans and a black shirt, since I actually have no concept of what people wear to concerts.