Perfectly Flawed (20 page)

I let out a tiny laugh, a nervous giggle. “I
didn’t write it or anything, it’s Gin Wigmore,” I tell him, as if
that makes any difference.

“I never knew you could sing,” he tells me,
in praise, and I ignore him to grab my backpack leaning against the
wall. The key to the practice room is lying on top of the piano and
I grab it, sliding it around in my hand as I take it back to the
substitute.

“I guess my showerhead isn’t the only thing
impressed,” I mutter sarcastically, shooting a look to my best
friend as he follows behind me. “Look, I can’t sing, Zeph,” I
reply, handing the key over to the sub before she places it back
onto the key ring. “That was just me fooling around with a piano
and an iPod. How long were you even there?”
Don’t be long, don’t
be long, please, don’t be long.

“A while,” he answers vaguely. “My class let
out early so I thought that I would wait for you outside your class
and be your body guard against Harrison if you needed it.” He
smiles at me and says, “I think you’ll need it.”

“Guess we should get going, then.”

We walk into the main hall, our arms
occasionally bumping, sending warmth through me.
What the hell,
body?
We join the large mass of students in attempts of
exodus.

“I never knew you could play the piano,” he
continues as if I still wanted to this embarrassing conversation.
He follows closely on my right as we head to my locker at the other
side of the school while I try to pretend that I have no idea what
he’s talking about, though he should know that one.

“Zeph, there’s one sitting in my living
room,” I point out, knowing that he’s seen the standing piano in my
house. Hell, we used to play around on the thing annoying the crap
out of my aunt when we were kids.

“I thought that was Aunt Hil’s,” he explains,
his brows knit together.

I bark out a laugh. “No, it’s mine.” We make
it to my locker and I spin the lock, using the combination, until
it opens. “Aunt Hil has no idea how to play the piano,” I explain
to him. I can’t even picture my aunt playing music of any kind
unless it’s the radio. “I’ve had it for as long as I can remember,
which you know isn’t too long. I think it belonged to my mother.” I
shrug.

“Hey.” Ryder slides along the neighboring
locker, smiling at me. This kid really doesn’t understand the
concept of
no
. There are only so many times that I can let
him down.

I slam my locker shut after shoving all the
books I need into my backpack, angered, almost infuriated. “Are you
stalking me or something?” I blurt out, completely fed up with the
sight of wanna-Bieber standing in front of me.

I notice Zephyr stiffen beside me.

“I’m not going to stop, I told you this.”
That he did.
Damn.
He winks—actually
winks
—at me,
like the creepy uncle your family tries to avoid during the
holidays.

“This is bordering on sexual harassment,
jackass.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Ryder, you need to just
leave me alone. After the song and the poem you left on the
whiteboard in my class—”

“What poem?” Zephyr cuts me off quickly, his
hand up to separate me from Ryder.

“I’m sorry about the poem,” Ryder begins
quietly, his eyes cast down in shame. I can’t tell if it’s real or
rehearsed. “I honestly had no idea what it meant, I still don’t.”
And he wants to date me without understanding the basics of
Shakespeare? Strike two against him, if you ask me. “I suck at all
the Shakespeare shit.”

Uncultured swine…

“That’s apparent,” I mutter under my
breath.

“Just give me another chance,” he begs,
jutting out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. Zephyr next to
me lets out a snort. “Please.”

“Obviously, Harrison, you never had a chance
with her to begin with,” Zephyr tells him, taking a protective step
closer. He’s taller than Ryder by at least three few inches and it
shows when he stands up straight.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Kalivas.” His eyes
fixed on mine over Zephyr’s shoulder.

Yeah, there was nothing creepy about
that
.

Ryder’s serious, I can tell. He’s bombarded
me with song and dance, poetry, stalking, and bullying of my
closest friend. If I don’t let him try and woo me—dear God—I might
never be free of him until he graduates. Since he doesn’t
understand Shakespeare, or basic words for that matter, who knows
when that day might be.

But what about Zephyr? I can’t help but feel
little tingles shoot through me when he turns his eyes to me, when
he looks at me like I’m the only person in the room. He’s my best
friend, he knows me better than anyone does, and he doesn’t like
Ryder. That’s very obvious as they stare each other down.

“Okay, okay.” I try my best to separate the
two brutes before someone throws a punch that lands them suspended
while the other spends the rest of the night with an ice pack
pressed to their swelling eye. “Let’s all just calm down here.”

“I’m calm,” Ryder says with no
conviction.

“Ditto,” Zephyr mutters.

As much as I’d love to believe that, the epic
staring contest going on leaves little to be desired.

Holy balls!

Now, does anyone understand why I feel the
need to punch people? And these two, well, they deserve it most of
all.

“If we hang out this afternoon,” I start,
offering my only solution to prevent douchery. “And I mean this
only time, this one time to hang out, not a
date
. We try to
be
friends
, Ryder,” I tell him, emphasizing the word
friends
. “Will you leave me alone? Or, will you at least
stop the creepy stalking and serenading me with Justin Bieber?” I
ask, offering the only thing I had. My time.

“This afternoon?” Ryder asks with surprise
and excitement. The way he’s smiling at me reminds me of a little
kid in a candy store.

“Yeah,” I answer, adding a long, drawn out
sigh to exaggerate my boredom.

Zephyr steps between us, severing their stare
down. “We have practice, Harrison,” Zephyr tells him, catching the
look on his teammates face.

“We’re allowed one skip,” Ryder tells him,
his eyes still fixed on me.

“For emergencies,” Zephyr bites out harder,
angrier, and I swear he’s foaming at the mouth.

Maybe I should just take back the invitation.
I’m immediately dreading it.

“I think this qualifies,” Ryder tells him.
“Come on, then.” He holds out his hand for me, but I ignore it,
choosing to follow him out of the building on my own.

“Jo, what are you thinking, here?” Zephyr
whisper-asks as he follows us through the building, passing the
dwindling crowd in the halls.

“What is the worst that can happen?” I ask
before Ryder tugs me along to his car, throwing his arm over my
shoulder, leaving Zephyr behind to watch us leave. I shrug his arm
from my shoulder before we even reach the student parking lot.
Hopefully, this will be a good thing. Hopefully, this afternoon
will bore him and he’ll move on to his next victim.

Five

Ryder pulls his shiny BMW into the Family Fun Center
off Highway 99. It was once Funtasia, but that was the last time I
was there, many, many years ago. Now it’s just a redone arcade, the
same games and mini golf course, same claw machine, same
multi-colored ball pit and random water boat game in the back, it’s
the same Funtasia with a fresh coat of paint. We get ten dollars,
each, in change and try to defeat, crash, bomb, and kill each other
in various video games.

Violence, the only way to a girl’s
heart.

“I didn’t know you were the arcade type,” I
tell him as my pixilated character tries to kill his with a
roundhouse kick. Ah, I miss the old
Mortal Kombat
.

“Every guy is,” he mumbles with his focus on
the game in front of us. “They just don’t admit it past a certain
age,” says the guy still dressed as a wanna-Bieber. I really
thought he would’ve changed after lunch; those pants don’t really
look all that comfortable.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t picture
Ryder as a kid moving from game to game, trying to achieve the
highest score. I wonder if he was ever lucky enough to enter his
initials into the machines back in the day.

Zephyr was.

When we were eleven and his older brother
didn’t know what to do with us, we practically lived in arcades. He
was always happy when he earned the top spot after a lot of effort
perfecting his moves and a lot of quarters, ZAK blinked permanently
within the machines until someone new, maybe months or years in the
future, would beat his score. His score wouldn’t last a week before
I beat it. Some of the games still have JEA as one of the top three
scores.

I shouldn’t admit to knowing that but I get
bored and venture to my old stomping grounds when the nostalgia
strikes me.

“And you’re comfortable enough to tell me
about it?” I ask as his character makes a great hit to mine, it’s
knife slicing through my character’s upper body, large drops of
blood flying before they disappear. The move knocks me down a
life.

He turns his smile to me. “I’m still wearing
harem pants that
sparkle
, Joey,” he starts. “I’m definitely
comfortable admitting that I frequent arcades.” His character dies
after mine spits—or projectile vomits—green acid in its face.

I cheer and do a happy dance, embarrassing
myself, but getting him to laugh. There’s barely anyone in the
large game machine filled room, only a few young kids with their
parents, older siblings, or babysitters, a few kids in their teens,
us, and the workers paid to be bored. That’s about it.

“I feel a little too old to be here,” I tell
Ryder as we move onto another game on the other side of the
room.

There’s just something a little wrong about
standing in a room filled with small children when you’re in your
late teens.

“Ignore the feeling,” he tells me as he
shoves his quarters into the game. “It doesn’t matter; anyway, this
stuff’s still fun for the typical sixteen-year-old.”

He makes a good point. Holy balls, did I just
compliment Ryder Harrison?

“Whatever you say,” I reply with a giggle as
we begin to race each other in one of the car racing games. He wins
by running me off the road early on. I always sucked at the car
games, Zephyr kicked my ass every time because I somehow always got
stuck behind a cow, but Ryder and I play another round.

“If this is any indication,” he starts,
turning the wheel furiously around a virtual turn. “I am
never
getting in a car with you in the driver’s seat.”

“I’m not a bad driver,” I tell him, watching
my car teeter on one side, only two wheels touching the pixilated
road.

From his snort I can tell that he doesn’t
believe me; he’ll never trust me drive him anywhere. Like I’d ever
get the chance. Or want it for that matter. This
relationship—whatever the technical term for what we are may be—is
short term. Nothing will become of us hanging around an arcade. I
need to make sure of it.

But I do like the way he looks at me.

Damn, stop it!

“I wonder if we could get into Chuck E.
Cheese?” he asks as he tries to sideswipe my pink car. Yep, I
picked the pink car. He zooms past me, leaving my car in a
pixilated cloud of swarming dust.

“That’s where I draw the line, buddy.”

“It wouldn’t be weird or anything,” he tries
to tell me as his car crosses the finish line. Black-and-white
checkered flags shoot from the sides of his screen, WINNER flashing
along his screen while I get LOSER.

“Yes it would, that mouse freaks me out,” I
complain, remembering the one birthday party I had there because
Aunt Hil thought that I’d like it. Boy, was she wrong. I cowered
behind Zephyr every time the mouse tried to hug me, and don’t get
me started on his mechanical counterpart in the robot band that
stands on the stage. Their eyes follow you everywhere you go. “It’s
creepy.”

“It’s mechanical,” Ryder defends, hiding his
smirk.

“And I’ve seen
Maximum Overdrive
,” I
counter with my arms crossed.

Confusion quirks his face. “What’s that?”
Ryder asks. I almost tell him he’s lucky that he hasn’t seen
it.

“Stephen King short story turned horrible,
horrible movie?” I ask sarcastically, not everyone’s seen it. It’s
one of those movies that I wasn’t supposed to watch at ten years
old but the curiosity got the better of me. I stole it and watched
it in my room when Aunt Hil went to bed one night. “Emilio Estevez?
Mechanical things taking revenge on the public? Swarm of angry
trucks, one with a creepy devil face on the front? Nothing?”

“Maybe I’ll watch it some time,” he offers,
as if I’d care if he watched a movie I liked let alone a movie I
thought was ridiculous, pathetic, and
so
not worth my
time.

“I wouldn’t bother,” I tell him as I scope
the room for a different game. The thrill of this place is already
fading. Maybe a claw machine should be next. “It’s kind of bad.”
That is the understatement of the hour.

“I’m not sure if I should be intrigued…” he
trails off, looking to me with a mixture of confusion and curiosity
on his face.

I wave my hand through the air as I make my
way toward the nearest claw machine to peek inside, scoping out the
goods. “Don’t be intrigued, just stick to whatever movies you
like.” As I peek through the dirtied plastic window of the machine,
I spot those reject stuffed animals that no one really wants, the
ones that are missing limbs or are low on stuffing to where they
look deflated or some of the sides aren’t sewn correctly. I move
on, wandering through the room, already bored. Ryder follows me and
I start to wonder about what his interests are. “What types of
movies do you watch?” If this
friendship
were to work, we’d
need
some
common interests.