Perfect Ten

by L. Philips

  My mother is about the only person on earth who could tear my father away from a manuscript and live to tell the tale, so I know she’ll manage it, and I’m extremely grateful.

  “Now come on. I put tons of ketchup on the meatloaf. You’ll love it.”

  She ruffles my hair again as she makes toward the kitchen, but this time I don’t mind it so much.

  It’s the last day of school before Christmas break, snow is falling lightly outside the classroom windows, and I’m staring at my book because my brain is already on holiday mode.

  “Mr. Raines.”

  I look up from my weathered copy of Diary of a Superfluous Man to see that Mrs. Palmer has stopped the discussion—if you can call it that; it was mostly Joel trying to flirt his way to an A—because a runner from the office has just delivered a note. She frowns at the note, then at me, and my heart sinks. Notes from the office can be great news, or they can be horrible news, like telegrams from the military.

  “It looks as though you are wanted in the guidance office.”

  I grab my books and take the note from her waiting hand before exiting the classroom. Guidance is a hallway and a half away, and as soon as I round the corner, I get mugged.

  No. Not really.

  But Meg does fly at me out of nowhere, scaring me enough that I drop my books and let out a girly screech.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  She’s giggling like an idiot as I pick up my books, then she shushes me when I try to ask another question. “Sorry. Kit was working in the office today and did me a favor. I need major advice and we can’t talk about this at lunch. Too much corn.”

  Corn. I snicker. In middle school we’d invented a top-secret code to let each other know that our parents were in the room when we were on the phone together. That way the other would know that we couldn’t talk about the important stuff. Corn equals ears. We were so clever.

  She loops an arm through mine and we make our way to the auditorium. We don’t make a peep as we take a seat in a middle row, like we’re the first ones to arrive to a show.

  Though neither of us act, Meg and I both love the auditorium. She loves it because she swears it has some kind of energy. I love it because unless there’s a rehearsal, it’s usually the quietest place in the school, even more so than the library. I love writing in this space.

  “Here,” Meg says, thrusting her phone in front of my nose.

  I read what’s on the screen. It’s a text from Michael, clearly meant to be suggestive, although all it does is make my stomach queasy. I cringe and give her the phone back. “So his parents are out of town this weekend?”

  She nods, then bites her lip, her eyes pleading with me. “Bringing his sister back from college for the holidays. Cover for me? Please? I can tell my dad we’re having one of our famous movie nights.”

  “All night?”

  She shrugs. “At least until really late. Please, Sam? You know they’d freak if they found out his parents weren’t home.”

  “So he’s not even going to spring for a hotel room?”

  She glares, and I sigh, hesitating with my answer. I’ve lied to her parents before, that’s not unusual. But only for small things, little white lies like, “No, Mrs. Oliver, there won’t be any drinking at the party” or “We want to watch one more movie, can Meg stay out later?” or “Yes, Mr. Oliver, I’ll try harder to pray away the gay.” I’ve never covered for her like this, when she’s sneaking off to be with Michael the Douche. Alone.

  “So, does this mean you’re really going to . . . ?” I can’t force myself to say the words.

  “Maybe?” she says, shrugging. “I still haven’t decided. That’s why I wanted your advice. How did you know you were ready with Landon?”

  I shift in the theater seat. God, I’m going to hate this conversation, I can tell. Everything from the fact that Meg’s considering having sex with that idiot to bringing up the whole thing with Landon. It’s like all my least favorite things combined.

  “I’m not sure we were.” I force a laugh at my own joke, but Meg’s still staring at me with her big trusting eyes, expectant. I sigh. I never could resist her puppy dog looks. “I was in love with him. I couldn’t imagine my first time being with anyone else.”

  Meg turns her gaze to the empty stage, considering my words. The bell rings but we don’t budge; we have an office excuse.

  “I love Michael,” she says finally.

  “Why?”

  Meg shrugs. “Why did you love Landon?”

  “No, don’t avoid the question. Why do you love Michael?”

  “He’s sweet. Romantic. Attractive.” She chews on a hangnail. “It’s like your list. You had all these things you wanted in a person, right? I guess Michael would have a lot of things on my list, if I had one.”

  “And what about loyalty?” I ask.

  “What about it?” she fires back.

  Her peachy cheeks change into an angry red, but I go on. “He asked you out and then, what? A week later he cheated on you with Ellie Graves—”

  “We weren’t really going out yet.”

  “A technicality,” I say, ready to pull from the long mental file of Michael’s other misdeeds. “How about last year when he broke up with you for two days for that slutty sophomore? Or the time he left you crying at Mark Ramey’s party because you refused to go upstairs with him? Or just a couple of weeks ago when you read his texts to another girl?”

  “We talked about all those things and it’s fine. That’s what people who are in love do, they work things out.” It’s kind of a below-the-belt jab at me and Landon, but I let it slide because if she’s truly considering having sex with Michael, she’s clearly not sane. “Why do you hate him so much?” she asks.

  “I already told you!”

  “All of that stuff is about me, though.”

  “Exactly!” I practically yell. “I don’t give a shit that he’s a homophobic jerk, or that he wears football shirts every day, or that he uses enough cologne to choke a cat. I hate him because he hurts you all the time.”

  I know I’ve hit a nerve, a big one, because her red face turns downright purple. “He loves me—”

  “I’m sure that’s what he told you,” I say, my voice pissy and sharp.

  Meg sucks in a breath and then grits her teeth. “At least I’ve been with him for two years and I know who he is. It’s not like I went home with some rock dude that I’d only known for a few hours—which I lied for you about, by the way.”

  “Travis is irrelevant.”

  “Why is he irrelevant? Just because I’m a girl so I’m a slut if I want to have sex?”

  “You know I don’t think that,” I growl at her.

  “Oh, so it’s just because you’re the amazing Sam Raines that you get a free pass?”

  I set my jaw. “You know that’s not true either.”

  “Then explain to me, oh wise one, why Michael is such a bad guy for texting someone else, when you’ve been doing the same thing to Jamie?”

  “That’s not exactly true and I told you why,” I snap. “He’s not good enough for you.”

  “Right,” she says, and sinks down into her chair, kicking at the row of seats in front of us. “Sorry that Michael’s not a beautiful French boy, or a sexy guitar player, or a painter who looks like an elf. But he doesn’t have to match your stupid list, just mine.”

  I pull at my hair in frustration. “Fine. Lose your virginity to a guy who treats you like crap. It’s your life.”

  “Why not? It’s exactly what you did.”

  “Landon and I were not that bad.”

  “You were, Sam. You just didn’t see it.” She collapses back into the auditorium seat beneath her. “God, you’re being such a freaking hypocrite.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re being a bitch.”

  S
hit. Now I’ve done it.

  Her face crumples and tears well up in her eyes, and even though it’s still too fresh for me to grasp it, my heart starts to ache. But Meg’s too proud to let me have the satisfaction of seeing her cry, so she stands and walks out of the auditorium, the door slamming behind her.

  I curse at myself, and the word echoes around the empty theater.

  Then I text Landon.

  I don’t know how he gets out of class but he’s charming like that. Within a minute he’s in the seat next to me, listening with a look of pure concentration on his face while I tell him everything, his hand gripping mine.

  “She brought up you and me, as if we were anything like her and Michael.”

  Landon nods. “Yeah. We were a completely different type of dysfunctional than they are.”

  I laugh a little at that, then we both fall silent. Landon strokes his thumb over my knuckles.

  “I know this is about Meg, but . . .”

  Landon’s voice is unusually soft and kind of strained. I wait as patiently as I can for his next words.

  “Do you really think we were so awful together? I mean, it wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  “Us? Nah,” I say, smiling. “We weren’t all bad.”

  “Good,” Landon says. “I know we made mistakes. I know we have a lot of issues about it, but . . . I thought there was a lot of good too.”

  “There was, Landon. Of course there was. And the good is still here between us. The good survived.”

  “Thanks, Sam. I needed to hear that.” Landon gives my hand a squeeze, then lets go. “For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry I wasn’t a better boyfriend.”

  “We had a lot to learn,” I say, shrugging. “I think I’m learning.”

  I consider telling him what Travis said, about how jealousy doesn’t come from love, but maybe that’s not my place anymore. Maybe he needs his own Travis to say it. Or better yet, his own Jamie to understand it.

  Then, though his pretty eyes seem a touch sad, Landon rests his head back against the theater seat and gives in to one small laugh.

  “Ugh. Michael? The girl has no taste.”

  “Yeah. We haven’t been a good enough influence on her.”

  “Obviously not.” Landon stands, pulling me up. We pause in the aisle, grinning at each other. Then Landon’s whole face softens. “Give her a break, Sam. She says she loves him. Love can make you stupid. And crazy.”

  I take his meaning and sober a little. “I know. She’ll get over it, won’t she?”

  “Most likely. But it might take another dinner at Seven Sauces.”

  Landon winks at me because the jerk knows he’s right: there’s another chocolate torte in my future.

  By the time I head to lunch that day, the sky has unleashed a winter storm and slushy, gray snow is covering everything. It’s ugly, and messy, and not at all the pretty kind you see on Christmas cards. To make matters worse, they decide that keeping us here at school would be safer than sending us home in it, so we don’t even get out early. I should take it as an omen that this day is just going to get worse, but I don’t. I make my way to the art room, hoping to catch Jamie for a bit before I find Meg to apologize.

  I try to cheer myself up as I walk, thinking about my plans with Jamie over break. Christmas is in four days, and my birthday four after that, and for the first time since freshman year I’ll be sharing both with a boyfriend. Jamie has invited me over to his house for Christmas dinner, and we have plans to spend my birthday in Columbus, shopping and eating at a restaurant neither of us can really afford. To top it all off, I called Ninah for help with Jamie’s Christmas present, and she emailed me a list of art supplies that Jamie would need—art supplies I was sure he didn’t have yet. They’ve been arriving piece by piece on my doorstep every day, sent in small and large cardboard boxes from supply stores peppered across the country. I can’t wait to watch him open them all up, to see the smile on his pretty face get bigger and bigger with each one.

  But Jamie isn’t in the art room when I get there. I remember that he said something about a project the art club was doing for the thespians, something about painting their scenery, but I can’t remember when he said he’d be doing that. I was too busy trying to steal another kiss while the teachers weren’t looking.

  I’m about to leave and head to the stage to look for him when my eyes focus on an easel in Jamie’s corner of the room.

  The easel has been the honored place of the phoenix for weeks, since its large canvas is too wide for a space on the wall, and I know Jamie’s been working on it steadily, adding small details and swoops of color here and there until he feels right calling it done.

  This canvas, however, looks nothing like the phoenix. It’s black, or nearly so, covered in thick, ropey strokes of paint. They’re scattered, in no particular pattern—a blob here, a drip there, an angry slash on top of a jabbed splotch. Reds, yellows, and oranges peek out from underneath the tar-like paint, as if scared of the darkness covering them. It’s the phoenix all right, but it’s been mutilated, destroyed.

  My stomach ties itself into a sick knot and I wonder who could have done this to such a beautiful painting. A jealous senior? Some ignorant bigot wanting to teach the homo a lesson?

  Light footsteps draw my attention from the phoenix as Jamie steps into the art room. I glance at him before turning back to the canvas. “What happened? Who did this?”

  “I did.”

  Jamie’s voice is whisper-soft but thick, as if something’s caught in his throat. I turn to look at him in question and see what I didn’t notice before from a single glance. He’s crying, or has been. His porcelain skin is blotched with red, his long eyelashes coated and sticky with wet, and white paths trace their way down his cheeks. The knot within my stomach coils tighter as fear and worry for him fill me.

  “What? What’s wrong? What happened?”

  He doesn’t answer me, and he doesn’t come any closer. He merely stares at me, eyes shiny with tears. “Who’s Travis?”

  Travis.

  The room spins as answers to that question fly in circles around my head. Terror seizes me, runs cold and poisonous through my veins, causing my heart to freeze inside my chest.

  “Travis is a friend,” I hear myself say, and my voice thumps around inside my ears along with my blood.

  “A friend, huh?” Jamie laughs once, a tinny sound without resonance. “Because it sounded like he was much more than that when I heard you and Meg arguing earlier.”

  Oh no. He heard that whole argument? I frantically try to remember what, exactly, Meg and I said, but I can’t. “It’s nothing. I didn’t—”

  “Sure. You didn’t. You just went home with him and Meg had to cover for you because you were out with a friend.”

  “Okay, he was more than that for a while, yeah. But nothing really happened. We decided we were just going to be friends and then I asked you out.”

  “How long?” Jamie asks, and there’s an accusation behind his voice.

  “How long what?”

  “How long between when you decided just to be friends with Travis and when you asked me out?”

  “Oh, um . . .” I grope for words and will myself to think, but nothing’s making sense. It’s all jumbled and I can’t untangle it and I feel like I might break apart because of the way Jamie’s looking at me. It’s like he hates me or something. I’ve never seen him look at anything or anyone with hatred, and how did I get here, that he’s looking at me that way?

  “Let me see if I can help you remember,” Jamie offers in a not at all friendly voice. “Was it after Yellow Springs, then?”

  “Yes, but . . . we weren’t officially together.”

  “Yeah, that’s a really convenient loophole, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not a loophole, it’s fact. I never said—”

  “No,
you never said, you’re right,” Jamie spits. “You just took me to a place I’ve wanted to see for years and bought me a silver cross and let me kiss you like some foolish idiot who has no idea that you’re hooking up with some musician.”

  “Jamie, I wasn’t lying to you. That whole date all I could think about was how perfect you were, how great we were together. I didn’t think about Travis at all, and I’d seen him the night before. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Oh, the night before, huh? From him to me in an hour or less. Actually, that does tell me a lot about you,” he snarls, and I realize then that I just dug a bigger hole for myself. “I should have known. I mean, you were dating Frenchie when you asked for my number.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not fair.”

  Jamie snorts. “Did you do more with Travis than kiss?”

  “What? No . . . I . . . no.”

  “Your hesitation makes me have absolute faith in your answer, Sam.”

  “It wasn’t like that, I swear. I got drunk and he took care of me. That’s why Meg had to lie for me. I swear it.”

  “You were drunk and he took care of you.” Jamie snorts and rolls his eyes. “He sounds like a real gentleman.”

  “Travis is beside the point. What I’m trying to say is that, yeah, I had a thing with him, but I told him I just wanted to be friends.” I look at Jamie, whose gaze is too angry and intense, so I look up at the ceiling instead, and damn it if there aren’t tears in my eyes. “I wanted to be with you.”

  Jamie shakes his head, and his anger seems to dissolve. In its place is defeat. “Seems like it. You tell me you worry that sleeping with me will mess us up, give me that whole Landon sob story, but you’re just fine spending the night with him, apparently.”

  “I was confused, Jamie. I was trying to figure some things out.” I leave it at that because it seems like, at this point, telling him that part of the truth could only make things worse. “That’s all it was. And really, nothing happened. I’m not lying. You have to believe that. You mean so much to me. Travis . . . Travis was nothing compared to that. You’re all I want, Jamie. Yellow Springs meant a lot to me too, okay? Everything has.”