Perfectly Flawed (37 page)

I shake my head lightly from side to side,
laughing.

“WHAT!” Kennie yelps, her ponytail smacking
me in the face as she turns her head quickly. She reminded me of a
poodle. Harley spits her soda across the table, nearly dousing me
in Cherry Pepsi—not my ideal scent. “Are you serious?” Kennie asks
Avery, ignoring me.

“I may have lied about the time,” Avery
answers, still confirming that his best friend now had a
girlfriend: Me.

“I haven’t been checking my feed,” Kennie
states as she tugs out her iPhone, clicking the blue icon leading
her to Facebook. “I need to like this, like, immediately. When were
you going to tell us?” she snaps at me as she frantically scrolls
through her feed. I think she may explode. I’m not sure if I’ll be
responsible for that.

“Well, if it weren’t for yappy over there.” I
point to the tall, ox-built redhead. “I was going to tell you,
well, uh, now,” I stutter out, shooting an angry look toward Avery.
“But thanks, Avery, for beating me to the punch.”

“Proud to do it,” he replies, smiling as he
throws an arm around Harley’s shoulder. “Hey, man,” he says to
someone behind me. I turn, finding a tall Jackson and similarly
tall Ksenia walking up behind me. The both slide onto the bench
beside Harley, avoiding the Pepsi mess next to me.

I guess, when he’s back at school, this’ll be
Zephyr’s new table. That thought alone makes me smile though I
always knew we’d sit together.

“I heard about you and Zephyr,” Ksenia
starts, her accent thicker than I remember. “Congratulations.” She
smiles.

“Thanks,” I reply, smiling back to her.

This lunch, the time spent with these people,
really makes what’s happening in school seem not important. And it
isn’t, not really.

Nine

After lunch, I head to American Sign Language,
wishing my friends a good rest of the day. I don’t have any classes
with them other than lunch—which isn’t even a class—and gym with
Harley, but I choose to ignore that as well. I take my seat in the
second row and wait patiently for class to start.

During class, a student office attendant
walks into the room and hands Mr. Penn a pale blue slip of paper,
signing
thank you
before she leaves. He looks at it, signs
my name, and I’m off to the guidance counselor’s office for some
reason.

Should I be worried?

I really hope this has nothing to do with the
fight. The last thing I need is to
talk about my feelings
like I used to in elementary school. I already have one shrink; I
really don’t need another.

Mr. Stone, the guidance counselor assigned to
my class, had his door closed when I walked down the hall. I hate
disturbing others but I knock quietly and politely, waiting for him
to wave me in through the tiny window on the door.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Stone?” I ask
after poking my head into the tiny office, noticing the clutter
accumulated throughout his employment. There’s a plant hanging in
the corner that desperately needs water—it’s turning brown and
drooping—but I seriously doubt he notices. There’s a stack of
books, several stacks in fact, in the corner of the room. His desk
is too big for the office but I don’t think he minds or notices.
He’s not one to notice things like that. He’s a bit of a
scatterbrain. How did he even get this job, anyway?

“Yes, Joey.” Mr. Stone sets aside the folder
in his hand he was looking through and points to a desk chair in
front of his desk. “Take a seat, please.”

I sit down, crossing my legs at the knees. I
let my backpack back in class so now I’m trying to find something
with which to fidget. If this is going to be a discussion about
what happened the other day, I’ll need something to distract
me.

“What’s this about?” I ask, worried I may’ve
done something
else
wrong thought I haven’t a clue as to
what. I haven’t injured or threatened anyone since yesterday, I
swear. I’ve turned in my homework, I’ve complied by the rules, and
I haven’t snapped at anyone in a few hours. I’d say I’m doing
pretty well.

“Just touching base with you,” he tells me,
folding his hands in his lap. For a guidance counselor, he looks
young enough to understand teen issues, but I strongly doubt that
he’d understand
my generation
, whatever that really means.
“Seeing how everything’s going.”

“Everything’s going good.” If you ignore the
detention and the fact that I introduced my foot to someone’s
private parts, I’m doing
just
great.

“I can tell.” I’m not sure if I should take
that sarcastically… He grabs the file—it must be mine—opening it
and flipping through the multicolored papers inside. I always
thought, with my past, problems, and issues, my folder would be
this five-inch thick brick of paper. I guess I was wrong or that’s
not my entire folder. “You’re pulling straight As.”

“I know,” I say cockily with a polite smile.
If you’re going to be cocky about something you’re good at,
confident
is the word I prefer to use, it’s better to show
that you’re at least nice about it.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you since the
beginning of the year,” he continues, running his palm along his
forehead.

“What about?” I ask with interest. This must
be more important than a few weeks detention.

“I know that registration for your senior
year’s right around the corner,” he begins, pulling out a sheet of
pale yellow paper from the file folder, his eyes skimming over it.
“Have you thought about what you wanted to take next year at
all?”

I shrug. “Not really,” I answer. “Actually,
I’ve already taken all the senior core classes.”
Because I’m a
nerd like that
. I skipped having a lunch period last year to
take AP Statistics because it looked interesting. I even fit AP
Physics into my schedule last year.

“Exactly,” he nearly shouts. The sound of
excitement makes me jump.

“What does that mean?” I ask when my heart
beat calms.

“Just that you’re on track to graduate this
year,” he answers, matter-of-fact.

Now why didn’t I think of that?

I bite my lip so the comment doesn’t leak
through.

Slowly, the words start to make sense and
what he says hits me in the face like ton of bricks.

Graduate?

As in, like, no longer attend high school?
Ever again?

“This year?” I ask, dumbstruck. “As in, a
year sooner than I should?”
Wait… what?
“Okay, that was
stupid to say,” I grumble, embarrassed at how pathetic I’m acting.
But this news is freaking awesome.

“You’re currently taking senior classes,” he
tells me, handing me a copy of my schedule.

“No, I’m not.” Not completely—but why am I
correcting the man? “My English class—”

“Is advanced English for seniors,” he
finishes, explaining to me. My eyes scour the page in my hands, and
sure enough, AP English 12 stares at me. When did I sign up for
that? How
did
I sign up for that? “Everyone in that class is
a senior accept for you.”

Well, that doesn’t make me sound weird at
all. Though, now that I think about it, I am the youngest one in
the class…

“So…” I draw out, waiting for the words in my
head to make sense. They’re jumbled and scattered, like puzzle
pieces, slowly moving until they make a complete picture. “I walk
at the end of the year?” I ask, still weirded out. I didn’t mean it
as a question but he answers anyway.

“If you want,” Mr. Stone responds, take the
sheet back from me. “I mean, you could stay, but you’d be taking
two, maybe three classes at most next year,” he tells me, tucking
things back into my file. “Two of those classes would be electives
and you’d spend a good amount of time doing, well, nothing.”

“So… I’m graduating?” I clarify, still
surprised.

“You’re graduating,” he confirms with a
smile. I start blinking my eyes quickly, just staring at the folder
on his desk. “You okay?”

Yeah, I’m not looking normal right now.

“I’m just…
shocked
,” I tell him. I
always knew my way of overloading on classes would benefit me in
the future. The
future
? Oh, balls, that means I can apply
for college now. I need to apply to colleges. I don’t even know
where I want to go. “What about the senior project?” I ask,
remember that I can’t graduate unless I do that.

“You could start now,” he offers. “I can set
you up with a teacher who could help you after school or switch out
one of your classes.” He clicks on his computer, bringing up my
schedule for next semester. “You’ll also need to take a senior
experience course but that can wait until next semester.”

“After school would be better,” I tell him,
not willing to lose any of my classes. I could forego lunch but
I’ve done that the last two years. I enjoy having a period where I
can just do… nothing. “What is the senior project?” I ask. I’ve had
to sit through many, many boring presentations. Normally, I tune it
out with my iPod, so I don’t exactly have a good grasp on what to
actually do for it.”

“I’ll assign you with a teacher that will
explain it better than I can.”

I nod.

I go through the rest of my day in a daze,
and then there’s detention. Mrs. Taylor lets me talk to my senior
project advisor—I still can’t believe I’m saying that—and she
explains that the project is just a final major final project I
must pass in order to graduate using the four Ps: Paper, Project,
Portfolio, and Presentation.

That doesn’t sound too hard.

She gives me all the necessary paperwork and
tells me that she’ll be around if I need her. I know I’ll need her.
When I get back to the Mrs. Taylor’s classroom, she has me tutor
one of her students with Shakespeare, mainly
Romeo and
Juliet
. I read that in the seventh grade, it’s a piece of
cake.

I head home on the transit bus and before I
even make it to my front door, Zephyr’s by my side.

“How was your day?” he asks, taking my
backpack from my shoulders.

“Are you going to do this the
entire
week?” I ask, nearly forgetting my good news. I only ask because he
always scares me when he pops up out of nowhere. I swear, he’s part
ninja.

“Yep,” Zephyr answers as I push open the
front door and step through it. “Now, your day; how was it?” he
presses.

“It was great,” I tell him, excitedly diving
into my story about graduating a year early.

He smiles and wraps his arms around me in a
tight hug. “I’m so proud of you, Joey.”

I beam up to him. “Oh, I also have these for
you,” I tell him, tugging papers from my backpack. I hand him the
notes he’s missing in AP Euro—a couple days worth—and a few from
other classes I stopped by before detention. All of his teachers
were happy with the prospect of Zephyr doing homework.
Hmmm…
what kind of student is my boyfriend?

“Damn,” he grumbles when I hand him the thick
stack of papers and past homework.

“Only trying to help you stay caught up.” I
catch his frown as he stares at the work in his hands. “I’d have
given you some of these yesterday, I just kind of spaced, you
know?” It was hard to remember between kisses, you know.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he tells me,
still staring at everything. “
Really.
”

I giggle. “No, I didn’t,” I agree with a
perky smile. “But then how would I”—I drop the AP Euro textbook on
the table, emitting a thick
thud
—“help you study for
history?” I wiggle my eyebrows.

The smile falls from his face. If he thinks
he’s going to spend his week of freedom, oops, I mean
suspension
just lounging around, browsing Tickld, and making
out with me, he has another think coming.

“Run home and grab your stuff,” I tell him,
shoving him to the door. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

Ten

It was one very long, very dull week at school
without Zephyr, but everyone learned quickly that we were
officially dating—thanks to him making it Facebook official.
How
did people learn of relationships before Facebook?
And, boy,
did he have a lot of friends on that thing. It was like dating a
celebrity, everyone wanted to get a better look at me.

I brought him his homework and we’d sit down
and work on it. Kind of boring, but I made a rule: No kissing until
he finished his homework. It sounded weird when I said it, and he
hated it then, but he soared through his work quickly then mauled
me on the living room couch. Okay, that’s an over exaggeration, but
he got his homework done, that was all that mattered. I was also
determined to help him bring up his AP Euro grade. It was somewhat
successful. When the next week started, we were stealing glances at
each other across the room in detention, sending smirks and winks
to each other. At least, that was when I was there. Some days, Mrs.
Taylor let me work with Miss Cherry on my senior project of which I
still had no idea what I was doing, topic-wise.

The start of the month meant that I had my
monthly appointment with Dr. Jett. I had to push that back two
weeks because of my after school
activities
, something that
my shrink understood, she just made it clear that we were
definitely going to talk about it when I saw her in the upcoming
weeks.

“I was thinking,” Zephyr begins on the final
Friday of our detention. We’ve just walked from Mrs. Taylor’s
classroom, bidding her a
good evening
. “We should probably
go on an official date.” He links his fingers with mine, tugging me
closer to him as we walk from the school. He missed his practice,
though he knew that he was playing in the game tonight, as was
Ryder. The coach pulled some strings to get his suspension
suspended for a week. Something about the team they’re playing
tonight being the best in the district, I don’t really know. The
coach doesn’t really care about detention and school rules, he only
cares about winning. With Zephyr and Ryder, he wins. Without, he
learned last week, he loses. By a lot. I’m pretty sure money
exchanged hands.