Perfectly Flawed

by Nessa Morgan

  “You could have been a cheerleader with Kennie,” I reason, almost hiding my giggle, but failing as the image of Harley bouncing around the football field in a short skirt and tight top drifts through my mind. The rule at this school is that students must take a gym class; be it weight lifting, global games—whatever the hell that is—yoga, aerobics, dance, and so on. There is even a walking class for those that don’t want to try or hate exercise all together. The only exception is if you play a sport for the school. They reason that you’re already exercising, there’s no need to tire you out with an hour-long class before practice. Though, if you still want to take gym, like Zephyr and other various athletes because it’s an easy A, you can.

  “So I can spend my days kissing Alexia Cavanaugh’s obviously lipo’d ass, no thank you, ma’am.” Harley scoffs loudly. A few girls nearby turn to glare at her as she badmouths the most popular girl in the junior class. But, my best friend, she’s against organized sports. And Alexia Cavanaugh—who’s not, right? Oh, and cheerleaders in general… minus Kennie. “I’d rather die before I strut my pom poms in front of the entire school.”

  “Kennie does it,” I counter, thinking of our other friend. She decided on a whim at the end of freshman year to try out for the squad. Like a trooper, she endured spirit days dressed in neon leopard print short shorts that defied the school’s clothing policy and animal printed sports bras that she should have been sent home for, parent meetings with the coaches and current and future squad captains, and dancing around the school while the band stalked behind while blaring the school’s fight song. That was an interesting day in math class. Luckily, she was a trained gymnast before she moved here; that was the only reason she made the squad.

  The biggest thing against her was her friendship with me. All the upperclassmen on the squad couldn’t understand it. You’re friends with the crazy chick. Why?

  They just couldn’t reject someone that could out-flip any of them blindfolded, four feet off the ground, on ten centimeters of space to stand on.

  “Kennie has bigger balls than I ever will.”

  I never understood that. Since when did strength for all equate to masculinity?

  As that thought runs through my mind, Harley slams her locker shut, twisting the lock to ensure she won’t lose anything valuable—a lot of people in this school have sticky fingers, just ask my old iPod. I’ve been sitting on the bench tying my laces while she changed her clothes.

  “Dude, I’m definitely telling her that you said that,” I joke.

  “Man, I’ll tell her for you.” Harley tugs on the hem of her cropped black t-shirt. The shirt rises when she raises her arms, or moves, or breathes, revealing the sterling silver barbell pierced in her navel. “I don’t want to run today,” she whines loudly as she ties the purple laces on her black sneakers.

  The thought of running the miles irks me but there is no avoiding it. I have grown to accept it, it’s Monday—Mile Monday, yay alliteration. The coaches like to believe that running the mile weekly will make us faster. In retrospect, it should, but it doesn’t, not in the way they want. I could run a fast mile; I could also enter a chicken wing-eating contest in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, Washington. I just choose not to.

  “Well, suck it up, Harley,” I tell her, patting her on the back, and forcing humor into my voice. There isn’t anything funny about this; I hate it as much as she does. We walk into the large gym, the thick scent of floor polish, chlorine—which is weird because the school doesn’t have a pool—and sweat wafts through the air. It’s enough to make you gag, which I do whenever I am lucky enough to walk through the double doors. I’m graced with this every single day of school. Yay me!

  People are scattered around the gym in groups; some stretching, most talking, all annoyed to be in this class. We check in with one of the four coaches in charge, the one that leads the juniors, and start stretching near the bleachers. Well, I attempt to stretch—cramps are a bitch—Harley just mumbles to herself while leaning against the lower bleacher as her eyes scan our gabbing classmates.

  Well, she’s not mumbling in the crazy way that usually means someone’s hearing voices and replying to a conversation in their head, more like the angry way because it is helping them from standing up and straight punching someone square in the nose.

  “Hey.” I look up and spot Zephyr running toward us. He’s wearing a sleeveless gray shirt and black basketball shorts with a red stripe running up the side, his long hair is tied back away from his face, as he does during gym every day. He smiles at me briefly before turning his attention to the grumbling girl next to me and saying, “Harley, how are you this lovely morning?” I’m not sure if I got my sarcastic quality from him, or he got it from me. He leans into a leg stretch. He’s usually one of the first people in class done running the mile.

  Harley just stares at him, her pale, freckled face expressionless as she waits for him to do… something, before she huffs with annoyance and looks away. Something she learned from me in our many years of friendship. I guess that I rub off on people after a while.

  “Okay,” Zephyr says to himself, his chocolate eyes set to me. His lips try not to crack into a smile but it slowly does, his lips pulling to reveal genuine happiness.

  “Kalivas!” someone yells from the other side of the gym. Jackson Ray, one of Zephyr’s friends, and tallest, towering over Zephyr by a good eight inches, catches his attention across the gym and waves him over.

  “Just wanted to stop by, you know,” he tells me with a small shrug. He straightens up and reaches his arms above his head in one final long stretch that leaves a lazy smile on his face. That good, huh?

  “Whatever, dude.” I stop stretching, dropping my arms down to my side, my hands to the shiny, hardwood floor, and follow Zephyr with my eyes as he walks to his usual group of friends—the stereotypical jocks. Jackson claps him on the back—you know, that really random thing guys do when they see each other, like they’re joining forces or something before they attempt to save the world… or act like complete douches—before his head falls back in laughter at something someone in the group I can’t see from where I sit said.

  “What’s up with him?” Harley nearly whines; her eyebrows raised in speculation and wonder, her eyes set on Zephyr. Her voice shocks me. She’s never been nice to Zephyr and I have never understood why. He’s tried to be friendly—he is friendly—oftentimes trying to include her in any conversation he and I are having but she usually says something snarky and mean or just outright ignores him. There are only so many times that you can pretend someone is furniture before they start to question it and begin to believe that you are furniture. I’ve always wondered, always wanted to ask why she acted that way, but I just normally forgot.

  I’m easily distracted.

  “You weren’t exactly inviting,” is what I say instead. There’s exasperation in my voice and I censor my words as a coach walks by.

  “He took offense to that?” Her black-nailed hand rises to point to Zephyr across the gym as he jokes around with his friends. “Zephyr should know me by now”—how can he when you don’t talk to him unless it’s to sling an insult—“I’m a bitch and damned proud of it.”

  “Trust me, Harley,” I say as I lean back from my stance, resting myself on my arms. “I think the entire school knows that.” The coach long since passed to the other side of the gym.

  “Damn straight,” Harley replies, as if we’ve come upon something new and profound. There’s a sly smile tugging at the corners of her lips, slowly spreading and growing until she’s grinning mischievously.

  It abruptly falls from her face when a shrill screech sounds through the air.

  Stupid whistles!

  Coach Monk, the varsity football coach, called class to attention, making sure that we’ve all checked in for attendance, before sending us out to the track for our damned weekly mile.

  I start at a leisurely pace, not wishing to put in any real effort, and finish in just under ten mi
nutes. Harley has another lap and a half to run before she’s sitting next to me on the bleachers, panting like an overheated dog in July that’s trapped in a car with all the windows rolled up. Sweat pours down her freckled forehead, her hair is wet and matted to her skin, her chest heaves, and her skin is the same shade of pink as a Sharpie highlighter. I only needed a drink from the water fountain on the wall and I was good to go. It looks like Harley might need intravenous fluids or she’ll pass out right here.

  Finally, class ends after we suffer through a few rounds of basketball. Some girl, that doesn’t understand the concept of keep your eyes on the ball, got hit in the face by the basketball. Hard. She screamed about her nose job. I rolled my eyes. It was a typical day in gym for us. Soon, I’m in my normal clothes coating myself in Victoria’s Secret cherry blossom body spray that matches my lotion, then I’m sitting in AP Chemistry boiling things over a Bunsen burner. Finally, it’s time for lunch and I’m entering the cafeteria, avoiding eye contact with, uh, everyone.

  It’s been a few years since anyone attempted to bully me. Back in the day, they’d be able to get away with it easy. I was tiny and scared of everything. I never told anyone how the other kids at school treated me. Not even my aunt. Zephyr and Jamie never witnessed any of it but they weren’t stupid. One day, I discovered that Zephyr was suspended from school for a week. I later discovered that he punched Bobby Logan in the face for bullying me. While his parents grounded him for that, they also praised him for standing up for me during my difficult time. Jamie, later that same week, kicked Angelica Boston in the shins—a sixth grader when Jamie was in fourth grade—for pushing me into the dirt during recess for being a freak. She wasn’t suspended but Angelica Boston never bothered me again. Neither did Bobby Logan, another sixth grader. They didn’t even look at me before they graduated at the end of my freshman year.

  I know that I have nothing to worry about when I walk through the halls anymore. People have long since forgotten about me and my mysterious past. Okay, not really. But it’s old news. They still talk about me and what happened but they aren’t mean to me. Not openly, anyway. Now that I have Harley and Kennie on my side, who knows what might happen. And with Zephyr and Jamie bigger and stronger, I wouldn’t want to press it. Plus, I’m not so little and scared anymore, I sure as hell stand up for myself now and I throw a mean right hook.

  I snag an apple from the lunch line before the lunch lady can notice that I didn’t pay for it. Cleaning the skin with a napkin, I quickly make my way to the back of the cafeteria and take my usual seat at our normal table. It’s a half table that sits directly in front of the large windows that overlook the quad and baseball and soccer fields. The sky today is a hazy gray with the sun trying to force its way through the clouds in a few places. It was supposed to rain today, the normal Washington weather forecast, but we got cloud cover, overcast, instead.

  Meteorology is a lost art if you ask me.

  Especially here.

  Harley takes the seat across from me, the flushed pink tint to her skin has diminished quite a bit since I last saw her but she still glows and glistens in her dark clothing; her Ramones t-shirt and dark jeans. She tugs her brown-bag lunch from her backpack and drops it on the table before her. Something inside knocks against the hard wood top of the table. Kennie soon joins the group in her pink cardigan too bright for my tired eyes to handle and short jean skirt that reveals slightly too much when she leans forward—or any direction for that matter.

  My friends are the only two that don’t judge me. They don’t talk about the scars they claim they see, they don’t turn up their noses when they pass me in the hall, they don’t act like I don’t exist—these are the only two people that I trust outside of Zephyr and Jamie.

  Harley is shorter than I am with light brown hair, almost blonde, and a lip piercing… among others. She wears primarily black—the reason why we got along in the first place—primarily band t-shirts and dark jeans with her hair flat-ironed straight to combat against the unruly frizz that always wins. When I met her in the seventh grade, she was dark and sullen with a facial expression that screamed Forget You World! She was perfect for me and my issues. I quickly claimed her as my friend when we partnered together to dissect a cow heart in science class. Well, she dissected the cow heart; I passed out halfway through.

  I didn’t meet Kennie—full name Kensington—the British-born pretty girl, until high school, middle of our freshman year to be precise. She was assigned the seat next to me in frosh study hall. With her long blonde hair perfectly coiffed, her pink cardigans and short skirts snug tightly to her curvy body, she was the complete opposite of Harley and me. Or so we thought. One day during a boring study hall session when we both ran out of homework, we started discussing music—Slipknot, Otep, Static-X—and we just knew that we could get along. Before, I was judging the book by the bright and colorful cover. Kennie preferred to hang with us after that than the beautiful people that constantly tried to steal her back to their side of the lunchroom. She constantly complained about their self-righteous attitudes.

  Now when she slides onto our bench, a smile brightening her perfect features, people don’t look at her like she’s crazy. They just think that she’s plain insane. It’s the only way they can begin to comprehend why she’s friends with me. That doesn’t stop them from trying to learn my dark secrets and probing Kennie until she tells them, very spiritedly, ‘Screw off!’

  “I heard something today,” Kennie begins in singsong, her French manicured fingers plucking away at a poppy seed muffin she brought from home. Her eyes scream, I have gossip! It’s juicy! You should ask about it and listen to me! Now! Right now!

  It seems appropriate to indulge her; the only thing Kennie loves more than stories about popular people I don’t care about is magazines with stories about celebrities I don’t care about. But Harley cuts me off before the question leaves my lips.

  “Oh, before I forget,” Harley starts proudly and loudly. Her mouth is full of a sandwich I can no longer identify. “I said that you have bigger balls than me, Ken.”

  Kennie raises a pristinely sculpted eyebrow, the left one to be exact, and, after a few moments of her pondering, she giggles her little girly giggle. She covers her mouth politely with her hand. “Well, it’s true,” she states confidently with a flip of her hair. “Right, Joey?” Both of them turn their attention to me, as if I am the deciding vote in this situation. They both agreed, why ask me?

  “Well, yeah…” I drag out before I swallow the piece of apple I was chewing. “But you wouldn’t really want that getting around, would you?” Kennie likes people to think that she’s weak and worried about breaking nails when she can lift more than some of the football players. Okay, most of the freshmen team, but it’s still something. And they still have time to bulk up and build some muscle.

  She waves an arm through the air as if she’s done with the conversation and ready to move on to more important things—like pointless hallway gossip. “That’s irrelevant; I still have this knowledge stuck in my head, waiting to erupt and you, my friends, are going to listen.”

  “Gossip, Kennie?” Harley asks, rolling her sky-colored eyes. She hates gossip. “When did you join the Dark Side?” It sounds like a joke but I know Harley. She isn’t joking. Like me, she doesn’t care about the goings-on of anyone else in the school. She doesn’t care who broke up with who, who cheated on who, who started dating who, who punched who… wait; she’d care about that one.

  “I normally wouldn’t expose you to such petty things, my dearest Harley,” Kennie begins, immediately understanding what Harley means. She forces a thick British accent, mimicking her mother perfectly. Even though she was born in London, she doesn’t have an accent. She was (un)lucky enough to be raised in the United States and lose her accent. We joke that she would be so much cooler, so much hotter, with an accent. Kennie pops a piece of muffin into her mouth and chews. I hated to admit that I wanted her to continue and spill the beans—she had me sl
ightly intrigued now. Provided this piece of gossip had absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with me. “But this,” she continues after she swallows, “has to do with our lovely Joey.”

  Damn it… I spoke too soon.

  “PASS!” I blurt, too loudly I might add. I didn’t exactly mean to yell the words, but it happened. Kennie’s lined ice blue eyes, which used to freeze me when she turned her gaze to me, lock on me. As do a few people at surrounding tables. They’re trying to see what set the loon off this time. I refuse to give them a show, especially if there is a new story going around about me.

  My hand creeps to the chain around my neck, tugging the locket from under my shirt and clutching it in my hand. It’s my own way to calm down when I don’t want to mentally count. I never do. The warm metal bites into my hand and I close my eyes to remember the faces inside, how happy they look, smiling at me, when I open the locket. But I don’t this time; I just remember what’s inside.

  “But—”

  I quickly cut her off before she can say anymore. “Kennie, you’ve heard what they say about me.” I suddenly feel shy and vulnerable, feeling the need to crawl into a shell, tug a blanket over my head, and wait for the clouds and rain to pass. What the hell could people be talking about now? I haven’t done anything since the start of school, I haven’t done anything since I moved here but people still love to tell their tales, despite the truth of the matter at hand.

  “I know, but—”

  “Now, Kennie,” I start, trying to explain to her the best that I can, “I can’t understand why you listen to it.” I glance to Harley as she finishes her sandwich, her eyes glued to the wreck in front of her. If only she had popcorn. My eyes then start to search around the cafeteria. No one’s looking at me, no one is openly pointing and laughing at me with knowledge of some new lie that paints me in a worse light, nor is there anyone doing either of those things covertly. It must be old news then, something that everyone has heard time and time again. “It’s bull, whatever it is.” Nervously, I tuck my hair behind my ears.