Perfectly Flawed (22 page)

“Hey,” I greet, perkily pepping up, trying to
take on Kennie’s happy-go-lucky persona. It doesn’t really work on
me. “What brings you to our neck of the woods?” I ask while already
knowing that he’d love to get a shot at my own neck. Maybe with his
lips.

Oy
.

“The scent of Homecoming’s in the air,” he
states, handing me an apple from his lunch, his fingers lightly
brushing against mine. I can’t help but take the moment to examine
him as he smiles to me in his dark jeans, black t-shirt, and
decorated letterman’s jacket. His blonde curls fall into his eyes
as he looks to me, his normally cocky smirk tugging on his
lips.

I can see why the girls tend to fancy him;
I’m just not one of them.

But I do love the attention. I can’t deny
that.

I smile, my way of thanking him for the
fruit. “Do you smell alcohol, shame, and bad decisions, too?”
Harley snorts. I take a bite from the apple, feeling the juice run
down my chin. I try to stop it with the back of my hand while
Harley tosses me a napkin from her rumpled brown bag.

“Not what I meant,” Ryder begins as he
unwraps a large sub sandwich almost as big as my head, definitely
not one of those Five Dollar Foot-longs from Subway—now I have that
stupid jingle stuck in my head. “I was just thinking that with
Homecoming around the corner, it’d be nice to go with someone I
find…” he trails off, pausing for dramatic effect or some sappy
crap like that. “Adorable,” he finishes, throwing a look to me.

No one in his or her right mind thinks I’m
adorable.

I’ve never been the adorable type.

Time to have fun with this.

“I know just the girl,” I start, taking the
time to swallow another bite. “Kennie’s available for rent, though
she’s pretty pricey, aren’t you, dear?”

Her attention shifts to me, her blonde
ponytail swinging over her right shoulder. Is she surprised? “I
already asked Duke, honey.”
And the girl recovers quickly
. I
roll my eyes.
Can she really not play along here?

I shrug my shoulders, not bothering to look
at Ryder, and say, to my apple, “You were too late, Ryder.” I push
the sadness in my voice, hoping it’s convincing. “Maybe next year,
yeah?”

He lets out a chuckle, low and throaty;
running a hand through his blonde curls. They fall back into place.
“I was thinking someone more brunette and bitter,” he tells his
sandwich just as I spoke to my apple. “Not blonde and bubbly.”

“You think I’m bubbly?” Kennie asks with a
wide smile, as if all of her hard work was beginning to pay off.
She loves compliments, especially when they’re directed to her
perky personality.

“Harley’s the bitter one.” I point at my
friend with a pink painted nail. The color, though I like it, was a
spur of the moment choice last night. I couldn’t sleep so I gave
myself a manicure and couldn’t find the green polish.

Honestly, Harley
is
the bitter one out
of the two of us; I know that’s hard to believe, what with her
winning personality and my quick sarcastic comments and threats
directed toward punching someone in the throat—usually Ryder, but
I’m more the demented one.

Harley looks to Kennie, tucking her hair
behind her ears, her brown eyes narrowed after she rolls them. “Why
does she talk like I’m not even here?”

Kennie shrugs her shoulders.

“What about sexy and cynical?” Not quit
alliteration but I’ll give him an A for effort. “Cute and curly,”
he continues, more stupid than the last. “Or marvelous and
misanthropic?”
Marvelous?
That makes me sound like a cross
between Liberace and Leatherface—ha! I can do alliteration,
too—from
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
.

“Someone’s been studying for their SATs,” I
observe.

“Joey?” The humor has left his voice, Ryder
sounds serious, and he wants to talk to me.
Damn
. I see,
from the corner of my eye, his body shift and turn to face me.
Harley and Kennie exchange curious glances, and I can tell that
they will not leave without witnessing whatever’s about to happen.
Double damn
.

I sigh, loudly and rudely. I don’t want to
have whatever conversation we’re about to have. Can we please just
rewind a few minutes, you know, before the talk of Homecoming
started, and take off on a new path. Maybe one about homework,
perhaps?

“What?” I ask, reluctantly, looking to him as
he smiles shyly.

“I’m trying to ask you to Homecoming.”

I look into his blue eyes, seeing my
reflection; he’s that close to me.

Without embarrassing me and making a big
spectacle out of it with the help of the latest in dorky pop
songs
, I almost blurt out.
That’s very surprising,
dude
.

Yep, I don’t want to have this conversation
now or anytime in the near
or
distant future.

“And I’m trying to deflect,” I tell him
honestly.

“You don’t want to go—”

I try and interrupt him, try and make him
stop talking, with the truthful explanation of, “In my past two
years of high school, I’ve never wanted to go to a dance.”

“—with me?” he finishes, sadness crossing his
face, trying to make me feel guilty. I can’t tell if it’s forced or
he’s actually sad. Probably both.

I release
another
sigh, I feel like I
belong on the CW or something. “It’s not you, Ryder,” I tell him.
Harley and Kennie are still watching us both like hawks. “I just
don’t dance.” Honestly, I have no rhythm—I’m whiter than white
bread—what little African-American in me—and there isn’t a lot if
you look at me—has no
groove thang
. And what makes it worse;
my mother was a dancer. I’m named after Josephine Baker, for crying
out loud. How have I not inherited
anything
? “I hate dances.
I avoid them at all costs. Just ask them.” I point to our
audience.

He briefly looks to my friends, their eyes
wide as they watch the train wreck before them.
Thanks,
guys
, I almost say sarcastically,
Such a
big
help,
you both are
.

“I wouldn’t know anything about it,” Harley
starts, trying to defend, but failing as a sadness fills her eyes,
a sadness I haven’t seen before. “I’ve never been to one either.”
She’s like me, avoiding all school functions with such gusto; it’s
an art.

“She avoids anything school spirit related,
Ryder,” Kennie—the cheerleader and junior class
representative—tries to explain, though she never understood it
herself. She always told me, in that light and musical voice of
hers, that high school was supposed to be fun and eventful, she
understood
why
I would want to hide out and become
invisible, with as much as she’s heard about me, she just didn’t
support it, and my decision for invisibility, most of the time.
“What makes you think that she would attend the biggest dance of
the year?”

From his look—the raised eyebrow over his
left eye—I can tell that he doesn’t get it, that he’s confused by
something someone said.

“I usually spend that night on my couch with
a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey and all versions of
Carrie
.” I did the last two years, and let me tell you, it
was
so
much fun. If you can’t tell the sarcastic nature by
which I mean that last statement, I truly apologize for your
ignorance.

“Forget your aunt.” Harley releases a loud
snort, trying to contain her laughter and prevent her Pepsi from
shooting through her nose like a geyser. “Spend the night with me.”
His sly smile, the one I want to normally punch him for, crosses
his lips—I still want to punch it. “Dancing,” he quickly clarifies.
“Spend the night, with me, dancing.”

I roll my eyes and look to the nearest
garbage can, throwing the now-browning apple core. It soars right
in. “Think about what you just said, dude.” I hope that he makes
the connection; I hope he sees his mistake. “And figure out why my
answer is still
no
, ‘kay?” With that, I slide away from him,
seeking the space he doesn’t allow me to have when he’s near, and
climb over the bench, walking away from the table.

“What did I say wrong,
now
?” Ryder
asks Kennie, loud enough for me to hear him as I’m walking away,
heading anywhere in the school where Ryder isn’t.

***

I went through the rest of my day pretending
there wasn’t a person out there—a popular senior that could have
his pick of any girl in the school, hell, even the state—that
wanted to go to Homecoming with me.
Me
. But it was very hard
to ignore, especially since it was the main thing on my brain, no
matter how many times I tried to push aside for things more
important, like schoolwork.

But it was hard to do when the main focus of
most conversations was the dance.

There were girls in American Sign Language
talking, not signing, about dresses when they should have been
signing, not talking, about books and reading habits. There were
people in AP English talking about creative ways to ask their
girlfriends to the dance, a big extravagant gesture that would get
the girl’s attention, when we should have been reading, analyzing,
or finishing our papers about
Beowulf
; they’re due at the
end of next week. There were large posters in the hall covered with
white and yellow dots meant to represent stars, there were people
dressed as fairies, either from the Tinkerbell world or of their
own creation, handing out floral scented flyers that sparkled when
angled in the light, advertising the dance.

Homecoming, I hated to admit, was everywhere
and I couldn’t escape.

In orchestra, I didn’t even get a break.
Every year, the Chamber Orchestra had to play through the
announcement of Homecoming court, so we practiced, of all things,
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
, the most annoying piece of music
ever composed. After practicing the piece three times, because the
violas had issues, I finally got the break I was looking for,
because the first
Canon in D
is so easy, I learned it in the
fifth grade, we start working on our actual competition pieces.

Last week, Miss Pearl gave us
Fantasia
Espanola
and
Palladio
. We started practicing that, easy
enough, right? Not according to my obnoxious excuse for a stand
partner.

“That was great, class,” Miss Pearl, a huge
fan of positive thinking and positive reinforcement, calls from the
front of the room, her baton still bouncing from what little music
remains in her head, a smile on her face. “I’ll see all of you
tomorrow, same time.”

Like that, class was dismissed to reset the
room; put away the stands and chairs, take the loan instruments
back to their respective places.

“How can she say it was great?” Max
Hawthorne, my stand partner since last year, instantly complains.
His voice is like nails running down a chalkboard, and he still
hates me for being third chair first violin while he’s stuck in
fourth. He removes the shoulder rest from his violin with an angry
yank. This would start The Rant that he’s famous for spewing. “The
seconds were off by a beat, the cellos we just wrong”—because he
can’t think of a valid reason to complain about the cellists—“don’t
get me started on Missy and that thing she claims is a double
bass.”

What
, I wanted to sarcastically ask
just to fuel the fire,
no complaints about the violas?
But
that would only make things worse. From the sound of it, he was
already headed toward a fight with the girl dumb enough to date
him, Missy, our only bassist.

“Max, it was a good practice,” I defend,
zipping up my case and setting it beside my chair as I watch him
take the stand, bending it back aggressively, to the back of the
room where the storage room is.

It was not the greatest practice that we
could have, but it wasn’t bad, we’ve had worse.

There were only two orchestras in the school,
Concert and Chamber. Chamber is the better of the two, award
winning, Concert was for those who wanted the extracurricular
credit but didn’t really care about music or those that need to
practice and perfect their skill more before Miss Pearl will move
them up to Chamber. Basically orchestra doesn’t have its own set
room. Chamber shares with the choirs and concert shares with the
bands.

“Amateurs,” Max whispers with exasperation
while Missy stands near the door, waiting for him. “I’m surrounded
by amateurs.”

It’s times like these that I want to punch
him.

Scratch that, I want to punch him, kick him,
shove him into a damn locker, all the time.

I place my violin in the storage room and
leave before Max can attack Missy’s playing during
Fantasia
.
I head toward my locker, spotting Zephyr at his as he unloads his
books from his backpack.

I stop before I almost pass him, and lean
against the neighboring locker. “Hey,” I start, not sure if he even
wants to talk to me. I haven’t really said more than three words to
him for a few weeks. I miss my best friend. “Long time, no see,” I
say quietly, nervously tucking a curl behind my ear.

His chocolate eyes focus on the books in his
locker. Zephyr won’t look at me. “You saw me this morning,” he says
speaking to something in his locker. While he’s right, I did see
him this morning, I was too busy—I woke up late—trying to get
everything together before I left for school

Even when we got to school, he skipped out on
AP Euro—
again
. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

“Well, that wasn’t in AP Euro, so…” I trail
off, diverting my attention from him to anything else in the
hallway, whether that’s a freshman walking past with his nose in a
book or the closing door of the teacher’s lounge.

Zephyr releases a long, drawn out sigh, as if
he’s a deflating balloon, as if he’d been avoiding this exact
conversation for a while. He still won’t look at me.
When did I
become invisible to him?
“Here we go,” he murmurs, grabbing one
more book and shoving it into his checkered Dakine backpack. He
still won’t look at me.