We Are the Perfect Girl

by Ariel Kaplan

  I felt a hand on my shoulder; it was Mr. Positano, who said, “Just to clear something up, was Mr. D’Agostino chatting with your AI or with you?”

  I winced and said, “Yeah, it was me.”

  His mouth was very, very flat. He said, “We need to have a conversation.”

  * * *

  —

  Five minutes later, after admitting I’d faked my data, I had a zero on my app for academic dishonesty, and as Mr. Positano reminded me, I was damn lucky not to be suspended or worse.

  The zero was bad enough. That project was 35% of my grade, so I was staring down the barrel of a flat-out F in the class.

  Needless to say, I was not given the tech award. I rather suspected the Junior Class Academic Awards would be quickly consigned to Middleridge’s list of failed experiments best never repeated, like the unfortunate year the student government had two presidents because of an electoral tie, and they ended up having a fistfight over the homecoming theme. I imagined that Ms. Turner was getting drunk in her office right now, crying into a potted plant and slurring, “Let’s never do this again.”

  I texted Bethany after school, Are you okay? Which seemed like the stupidest thing ever to say to someone who was just dumped by the boy of her dreams in front of 2,000 people.

  I don’t want to talk to you, she replied. Ever.

  Friday was the last crew practice of the season. I’d never wanted to attend practice less in my life.

  Bethany wouldn’t look at me, and when I passed Claire doing sit-ups she shook her head and said, “Damn, Aphra.” No one else really wanted to talk to me, either. Even the people who didn’t go to Middleridge.

  I just wanted to get through it. I’d committed to finishing the season, which meant this practice and the regatta over the weekend, and then I’d just have to figure out how to get up in the morning and deal with my life. For once, I was actually grateful I’d be seeing Dr. Pascal on Monday, though I didn’t know what she could possibly say to me apart from “You did what, now?”

  I was out on Dullahan when, from the launch, Coach Kim hollered at us across the water.

  I have no idea why she does that. We can never hear her. Sophie cupped her hand around her ear and shook her head, and Coach switched on her megaphone. “I just got a message for Aphra.”

  We’d stopped to catch our breath before doing a second 1,500. I couldn’t imagine who might have been trying to reach me via Coach Kim.

  “It’s from your dad, Aphra. He says your brother’s in the ER.”

  I recoiled hard enough to rock the boat, and everyone else made sounds of dismay.

  “I have to go!” I said. “I have to get out of this fucking boat right now!”

  “Okay,” Sophie said. She was so calm. How was she so calm? “We’re heading back to the dock. Ladies, we’re coming around to port. Let’s go.”

  Three seats in front of me, Bethany craned her neck to glance back at me. Sophie said, “Ladies, get ready to spin the boat. Ready all, row.”

  We did a turn and rowed back to the dock. Unfortunately, I realized once I got out of the boat that I had no way to leave on my own.

  “I’ll drive you, Aphra,” Sophie said. “Can you guys put the boat away?”

  “Sure,” Claire said.

  Bethany said, “Is he okay?”

  I didn’t answer, or actually register that she’d spoken to me. I just got in the car with Sophie and left.

  * * *

  —

  Sophie dropped me off at the hospital twenty minutes later. I didn’t ask her to come in, and she didn’t offer, which was kind of a relief.

  The admin person at the front desk buzzed me back, and I found Kit and my parents in one of those little curtained-off booths. He was covered in raised red blisters. “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Aphra,” Dad said. “What are you doing here?”

  “You texted that Kit was in the ER!”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Did you not get the message I sent your coach?”

  “She just said he was here….” I fished my buzzing phone out of my pocket. It was a text from Coach Kim, who said, Your dad says he’s fine, had an allergic reaction and has to stay a few hours because they gave him an EpiPen.

  “Maybe next time you should lead with the ‘he’s fine’ part,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Dad said. “I just wanted to make sure you got the message. I tried calling, but your phone was off.”

  “Yeah.” I took a couple of deep breaths. Kit was okay. He was fine. He just looked like he’d gone headfirst into some poison ivy. “What’s up, Kit-Kat?”

  At this, he snuffled. Mom said, “I think I need a soda. Will you come with me to the vending machine?”

  “What? No.”

  “Aphra,” she said. “Come with me to the vending machine.”

  We went back to the waiting room and she pulled me onto a couch next to the Coke machine. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I came home and found him like that,” she said.

  “He was home by himself?”

  “Oh. No, Delia was in the shower. I walked in and he had his whole face buried in that damn cat, and when he looked up he was wheezing and his lips were swollen, and—well, you saw.”

  “The cat? But that never happened before.”

  “The doctor said these things can get worse over time.”

  “But…but before he was just itchy. And sneezing sometimes.”

  “Aphra, you have to listen to me. Walnut has to go, and you have to stop fighting me on this.”

  “But you don’t know it was the cat!”

  “Aphra! He is allergic to the cat! His mouth swelled up—he could have died if I hadn’t come home in time!”

  “But you don’t know it was the cat!” I repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  Her voice dropped. “We discussed this. You are his sister. I am his mother. You are going to have to accept that I’m the one with the authority here.”

  “This isn’t about your authority!”

  “It’s exactly about that. We cannot keep that cat. We will find him a very good home, I promise, but we can’t keep him.”

  “But Kit—”

  “Stop! Aphra. Stop.”

  I got up and walked out of the waiting room. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I went down the hall and then stopped and pressed my forehead against the wall, because this whole thing was my fault. I tried so hard, I tried so hard, and I just managed to make everything worse. Everything I touched turned to crap. I let out one sob, and then another, and I felt a little like I might be having a heart attack. I’d screwed everything up. Everything. I didn’t know what to do. I thought I might be having a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t breathe because I was holding my breath. I let it out on a ten count, because I’d read somewhere to do that. I didn’t really feel any better, though. My chest hurt. My hands felt all tingly. I’d messed up everything and I didn’t even have anybody to talk to, because I’d made literally everyone in my life mad at me. There was no one I could call.

  Well, except one person.

  I took out my phone and called Dr. Pascal’s emergency number.

  I expected to get her answering service or something, but instead, I heard her voice saying, “Hello?”

  “You gave me your actual cell number?” I said incredulously, wiping my eyes and pretending I hadn’t just been crying.

  “Aphra?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Hi. It’s me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. I mean, I’m sorry I called. I didn’t know this was your cell. I’m sorry. It’s just, my mom’s going to make my brother give up his cat.”

/>   Why that seemed like the worst of what I was dealing with right then, I don’t know, but it did. There was the clinking of glasses in the background. “Are you,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m on a date, Aphra.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Wow. Sorry. I, uh. I thought you were married.”

  “I’m on a date with my husband. So you called me about your brother’s cat?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…it’s not fair. It’s not fair.”

  “To the cat?”

  “To my brother! He loves that cat, he loves him so much, and he shouldn’t have to…I mean, if you love someone so much, you should be together.” I was crying again. “Shouldn’t you? You should be able to be with the person you love!”

  “Are we still talking about the cat?”

  “Yes! We are talking about the cat.”

  “I don’t think we are,” she said. She was chewing.

  “Are you eating?”

  “I am eating my dinner, Aphra. I don’t think this is about the cat. I think this is about the boy. The cat is the boy.”

  “The cat is not the boy!”

  “The cat is the boy. This is called projecting. Why does he have to give up the cat?”

  “He’s. He’s allergic. To the cat.”

  “That sounds like a pretty good reason.”

  “But it isn’t fair! He’s…Kit’s…It’s going to break his heart.” I sobbed once and then twice.

  “Aphra,” she said. “Honey.”

  “Why does everything hurt so much? Why does it have to hurt so much?”

  “Because,” she said. “You lost your anger. But you’re going to be okay. You’re going to figure this out.”

  “How? How will I figure it out? Everyone found out I was talking to Greg with the app. And now Bethany hates me, and Greg, and Delia, and my mom, and now probably Kit, too….I just, I just don’t even know what to do!”

  “I don’t think they hate you.”

  “Yes. They do.”

  “They’re angry, and you’re going to have to make that right, but first, Aphra, it’s time for you to learn to let go.”

  “Of the cat?”

  “Of more than the cat. You need to let go of this boy. You need to let go of the idea that things should be fair, and the idea that you know what’s best for people. You are seventeen years old, and you’re still figuring out how the world works. Give yourself permission to learn. And just accept that your brother is allergic to the cat.”

  I sighed. I heard ambulance sirens outside—people with real problems, car accident victims or gunshot wounds, maybe.

  “Here’s what I think,” said Dr. Pascal. “I think you know how much it hurts not to get the love you want, and you’ve made it your mission to make sure no one else in your life hurts like that, because you have a beautiful, kind heart. But that can’t be your job. You have to let it go.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  There was a pause. She said, “Wait, that’s it?”

  “Did you want me to argue with you?”

  “No, I was just expecting it.”

  I laughed a little. “Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry for calling.”

  “That’s why I gave you the number. I’ll see you on Monday. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Bye.” I hung up.

  Let go. Let go. I didn’t know how to do that. But right now, I had no choice. I was letting go of a lot of things that were already out of my reach. I guess what I had to do, really, was just accept that they were already gone.

  I went back to my mother, who was still in the waiting room pressing a cold can of soda against her forehead. “Hey,” I said. “I’m…I’m sorry for yelling.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “So am I. But the cat has to go.”

  Delia had just skidded past, her hair leaving a wet mark on her shirt, and was talking rapidly to the lady at the desk. “Brown,” she was saying. “Christopher. He’s nine.”

  “Delia!” Mom called, and Delia jogged over.

  “Next time could you bang on the bathroom door instead of leaving a text? I got out of the shower and everyone was gone. Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Mom said.

  To Mom, because I was still only ninety-eight percent ready to let go, I said, “Is it…is it possible it was something he ate?”

  “He didn’t eat anything!”

  Delia said, “Wait.”

  “We have all the same stuff in the house that we always do,” Mom said.

  “Maybe he ate something on the bus, though.”

  “Kit didn’t come home on the bus today,” Mom said. “Delia picked him up.”

  “Maybe someone gave him something at school! Like, like a cupcake or something. Maybe it was someone’s birthday.”

  “There was no birthday!” Mom said. “Aphra, it wasn’t something he ate.”

  Delia said, “I think it might have been something he ate.”

  Mom said, “Don’t you start, too.”

  “No, listen—”

  “You guys have to understand that I am the parent! You are the children! And you need to—”

  “We stopped at CVS on the way home,” Delia said.

  “What?” Mom said.

  “I needed tampons. So I got Kit a candy bar, and one for me, too.”

  “What did he have?” I asked.

  “A plain Hershey bar,” she said. “But I had a Mounds bar and he ate half of it.”

  “A Mounds bar?” I asked. “You gave him the white death?”

  “Aphra,” Mom said. “Honestly.”

  “But Kit hates coconut.”

  “No, that’s you,” Delia said. “You’re the one always saying it’s disgusting.”

  “Coconut is disgusting. Anyway, he always throws the coconut candy out at Halloween. I’ve seen him do it.”

  “Right, because you told him it’s gross. But today he wanted to try it, so I let him.”

  Delia and I stared at each other, then at Mom. “Did they check him for coconut? At the allergist?” I asked.

  “I’m not…I don’t think so. It’s not one of the things they usually look for, is it?”

  But Mom had already leapt ahead and was touching her hair. “Oh my God,” she said.

  “That damn shampoo,” I said.

  “So are we saying,” Delia said, “that Kit was never allergic to the cat?”

  “No, he is,” Mom said. “We know he is, they tested that.”

  “But those tests aren’t always accurate,” Delia said. “There are false positives. And even if he is allergic to the cat, it seems like he’s way more allergic to coconut, so it’s possible that’s what was causing most of his symptoms.”

  “Mom,” I said. “Kit’s not allergic to Walnut. He’s allergic to you.”

  “That’s why it’s been coming and going,” Delia said. “It flares up on the days you wash your hair. Is he still doing that thing where he mashes his face into your neck when you read to him at night?”

  Mom put her head in her hands and whispered, “I am a terrible parent.”

  “No,” Delia said. “No, you’re not.” She looked at me, but I was still kind of upset, so I did a so-so gesture with my hand and Delia smacked it down. “But this is good. Right?”

  “Well, so far as we know, he is still allergic to the cat,” Mom said. “Just not in the anaphylactic sense.”

  “We’ll have to go back to the doctor,” Delia said. “See what he says.”

  “This is not a decision to be made by committee,” Mom said.

  We both stared at her. She said, “We’ll have to go back to the doctor.”

  “I will defer to your authority,” I said.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  The thre
e of us sat in a row, watching the TV on the wall, which was turned to the weather channel. Sunny tomorrow, with a high of 72. To my mom, I said, “Can I have your Coke if you don’t want it?”

  She handed it to me and I cracked it open.

  The team bus to the regatta left at 5:30 the next morning. I was the first one there, mostly because that meant I’d be the first one to pick a seat and I wouldn’t be stuck trying to figure out whether to sit next to Bethany or not. She would have to decide what she wanted to do, and I’d have to let it go. Or whatever.

  Bethany, as it turned out, was five minutes late. By the time she got there, there was only one seat left. She sat down next to me without making eye contact.

  After a minute, still facing directly ahead, she asked, “How’s Kit?”

  I wanted to explain about my mother’s stupid shampoo, but it seemed like a lot to get into just then. I said, “He’s fine. He’s allergic to coconut.”

  “Oh.” Then, “Did we know that?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Oh.”

  I wanted to ask her if she’d heard from Greg. I said, “Did you…did you talk to him?”

  “No, I didn’t talk to him!”

  “But maybe if you—”

  “Shut up! God, would you shut up!”

  “I was just trying to—”

  “UGH. Would you QUIT?”

  I stopped talking and turned toward the window.

  But apparently Bethany wasn’t done, and I had to turn back. She said, “You talk and talk and talk and you never actually listen. I told you I wanted to tell Greg. And you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “But that was because—”

  “No! Don’t you get it? You always have some…explanation. Some reason. And you make it all sound so fucking logical, but you won’t just listen to me. But I’m a person. I’m not like you, but I’m still a person, and what I want matters.”

  “Of course you’re a person!”

  “You don’t act like it!”

  “What?”

  “You act like I should be grateful that you’re around to tell me what to do. Because I’m such a fuck-up I could never figure it out on my own. Well, I’m not grateful. I’m not grateful that you lied to Greg and then talked me into going along with it. I’m not grateful that you went behind my back to try to get Greg interested in me, because you think I’m so much less than you that he could never want me for myself.”