How to Be a Perfect Girl

by Mary Williams

  How to be a Perfect Girl

  Mary Williams

  Copyright 2013 by Mary Williams

  Smashwords Edition

  Chapter 1

  Valentina Hunter: girl of my dreams and love of my life. I’ve loved you since I was the awkward kid in the back row of pre-algebra and you were the adorable blonde sitting front and center. I’ve had a crush on you for as long as I can remember. I want to shout it from the rooftops: I love you Valentina!

  But you’ve never loved me back. To you, I’ve always been that dorky kid you’re too cool to talk to. Well that’s alright, my mom says you’re missing out on a lot. But now that we’re going our separate ways, I had to tell you how I feel or regret it forever. Even though you barely noticed me, I spent my whole middle school career trying to impress you; I didn’t actually want to be on student council, I just wanted to be near you. I joined the Spoken Word Society so I could express how I felt for you. Opportunities came and went, and now are no more!

  It’s ironic that I only have the courage to write this now. Now that we are going our separate ways and I probably won’t see you again, I am free to express my emotions. I love you Valentina! Soccer playing goddess of Walker Middle School and Student Body President, I love you! I’d shout it from my own rooftop, but the internet is so much more public.

  Although you were kind of mean sometimes, like when you made fun of my valentine to you, I don’t think it was deliberate. Or at least, I hope it wasn’t. From the outside looking in you always seemed like a nice girl. When my beaker broke in chemistry and you helped me clean it up, I like to think you knew what that would mean to me.

  And although you laughed with everyone else when I puked at the end of the Walker-Run, I can’t blame you; it was funny. Maybe I would have laughed too, if I had been watching instead of living that moment.

  I know you will never reciprocate my affections, and that’s probably why I waited till now to write this; you can go to Palm Lake Prep with all the other rich kids, and I’ll go to Gentry. You can leave Mckayla and me and all the rest behind; I know you’ll be ok. After all, you did better than ok at Walker. To hear the other kids talk about it, you were the queen of the school. Queen, empress, beauty-laureate, that’s what you were to me. Who cares if your mom invented some stupid clasp for necklaces and it went big on QVC? You belong at Gentry, with the rest of us Walker graduates. Maybe then I could have a chance to profess my love for you in person.

  Pass this along to your friends. If enough people like it, maybe Valentina will read what I have to say,

  Jaxton.

  Valentina read the letter again; it made her feel bad for ignoring Jaxton all those years. They had been friends in kindergarten and first grade, but growing up had also meant growing apart. He was right; she had come to see him as the awkward kid who sat in the back, barely worthy of notice. His love-letter, posted on Facebook for everyone to see, had hurt her at first. It reminded her that her popularity had come at the cost of ignoring many friends, and sometimes she had to be mean to maintain her position. When the incident Jaxton had mentioned—his mishap after the Walker-Run—happened, she hadn’t wanted to laugh. But all her friends had been laughing, so Valentina had joined in. Being popular meant fitting in just as often as it meant standing out.

  Val agreed wholeheartedly with the final plea; she wanted to go to Gentry as well. All of her friends were going there; it would be home. Palm Lake would not be home. Valentina saw the girls from that school every time she opened the door of her family’s new house. They were obsessed with all things brand-name, and they tittered in absurdly high voices. Valentina imagined most Palm Lake girls could give Minnie Mouse a run for her money.

  Orientation for Palm Lake Prep was set for tomorrow. Jaxton had sent the letter at the beginning of summer and Valentina had meant to go see him; for what reason, she didn’t know. Maybe she just wanted to relive their carefree kindergarten days. But now that school was starting again, it seemed like the opportunity had passed. Besides, she had enough on her mind without introducing a new factor into the equation. Soccer tryouts would come in the first month, and Valentina knew she had to be on her game; the girls’ soccer team at Palm Lake was the best 5A team in Florida. They’d taken first place in the state tournament each of the last four years. Valentina was a good player—maybe not a great one, but definitely good—and she planned on making varsity her first year.

  There was also the matter of involvement to consider. At Walker, Valentina had been a member of every club she could; from Monday to Friday, her schedule was booked. As much as her parents pressured her to do as much as possible, she pushed herself to do as well as possible. She wasn’t satisfied to be just a student council representative; she had been the president. She hadn’t been satisfied to be a first-string player on her competitive soccer team; she had been the MVP. The Trivia Bowl team had to create a new leadership position for Valentina, since she was so determined to be the best even in that. With so much pressure from without as well as within, Val’s friend Mckayla often joked that she was surprised Valentina didn’t simply explode from the pressure.

  Mckayla. Valentina felt a pang of guilt as she thought about the best friend she’d be leaving behind at Gentry. While she became a high-pitched, Gucci-chasing Palm Lake girl, Mckayla would flounder at Gentry. She’d always needed Valentina to push her to do anything; well, anything non-academic. Mckayla was brilliant, but unmotivated. Valentina knew that if she wasn’t there, Mckayla could easily become a shut-in, only interested in her books. Worse, without daily interactions, their friendship might disappear. This summer, they’d barely seen each other; true, Valentina had been in Cartagena for most of it, but when she came home Mckayla had barely wanted to hang out at all.

  Becoming rich, as Valentina had experienced, was one of the best ways to lose friends. The wealth wasn’t even hers, which made it ten times worse. Her last year at Walker, when her mother’s Magno-Clasp had become famous, she’d been teased mercilessly. Some of her “friends” had tried to hide their mockery under the guise of humor, but many were not so kind. When they heard the Hunters had moved, and saw Valentina pull up in a cab, they had a fit. Val tried pointing out that it wasn’t her fault, but that only encouraged more mockery. She never had figured out a good way to stop the teasing; perhaps it would have required more cruelty than I’m capable of, she mused.

  Chapter 2

  “Here at Palm Lake there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and—“ the tubby teacher smiled at the assembled freshmen, “—those who wonder what just happened.”

  All freshmen were required to spend the first part of their first day taking a tour of the school and participating in other orientation activities. Valentina got the impression that the staff thought their activities were fun, but she simply found them tedious; what self-respecting high-schooler wants to play leapfrog? At her old school, Valentina had organized the welcome party for sixth graders entering Walker; even though they’d been three years younger than this group, she wouldn’t have deigned to make them play kindergarten games.

  After an hour of playing those stupid get-to-know-you games with the rest of her Homeroom classmates, the seniors who were supervising orientation announced they were going to the auditorium for a short presentation on clubs at Palm Lake. Valentina was excited; she planned on being just as involved at her high school as she had been at Walker.

  The presenter, Miss Stevens, was insanely boring. Valentina soon found herself staring at the pile of papers they’d all been given; there were fliers for every club and activity imaginable. There were flyers for the “Palm Lake Forensics Team” (‘and no, we don’t dust for fingerprints!’), a �
�Historical Literature Society”, and even a “Baking Club”. Luckily, there were several normal activities as well. Valentina found the fliers for Student Council, Future Business Leaders of America, and the National Honor Society and set them aside. If soccer practice demanded too much of her time, she’d only be able to join a single club, but she hoped she would be able to make those three work.

  The seniors led the way back to homeroom; Valentina talked with the blond girl who seemed to be the seniors’ leader on the way back. Her name was Avery, and she turned out to be captain of the soccer team. Even though Avery seemed preoccupied by other thoughts, Valentina tried to get as much information about tryouts as she could; she hoped it would give her an edge. Avery told her that the smart girls trying out made sure to share the ball, “It’s not so much about how many goals you can score, since you’ll probably be on second or third string if you even manage to make the team. It’s about how quickly you can get it to the real stars.” The way Avery said real stars made it apparent she counted herself among them.

  Though Valentina tried to like the older girl, she found it was very hard; Avery walked, talked, and acted with a repulsive superiority. Everything she did was done with a sense of entitlement, and when she spoke with Valentina she gave off the impression that every word was a favor. Valentina disliked people who behaved like they were superior to her; after all, no one had that right. As a result, she found herself disliking Avery, despite her best efforts.

  The rest of the day was spent going through maps of the school. There were approximately three hundred kids in Valentina’s incoming class, and Palm Lake was barely large enough to accommodate them. It was a small two-story with a square floorplan; Valentina suspected it would take less than two minutes to walk from one end to the other even if the halls were completely deadlocked.

  Compared to Gentry, Palm Lake was tiny. Valentina had seen Gentry back in seventh grade, and even from the outside it was apparent how many students that building could hold. Palm Lake would have fit snugly within Gentry’s library; all told, the other school was probably capable of housing ten or eleven Palm Lake-sized squares. The options for classes at Gentry had been more numerous as well. There, Valentina could have taken French, Spanish, or several other languages; even German and Latin were offered. The only foreign language taught at Palm Lake was Italian, as if anyone would ever use that. At least Spanish would come in handy if I ever ordered from Taco Bell, Valentina mused. She could see no possible application of Italian, barring a trip to Italy, which some Palm Lake students apparently took each year.

  To Valentina, Gentry seemed better in every way. She agreed with Jaxton; she ought to have gone there. She didn’t care that more Palm Lake graduates went on to the Ivy League than any other private school in the area (as her parents mentioned nightly). She didn’t care that ninety percent of their graduates would start college with at least a year’s worth of Advanced Placement credits. She didn’t care that more perfect ACT scores were earned by Palm Lake students than at any other school in the nation (per capita, of course). All Valentina cared about was being with her friends, her hard-won friends. They weren’t all loyal, and some of them could be mean on occasion, but at least she knew them. Even among those who were not her friends, she had known who to avoid and who could be counted on for a fun time or a laugh. She had not climbed her way to the top of the social pyramid just to leave everyone she knew behind.

  But that was exactly the prospect that faced her. Her peers at Palm Lake were not the carefree, fun-loving middle-schoolers of Walker. They were all overworked and obsessed with doing well; from what Valentina saw, each of her classmates was just as determined as she was to make the most of their high school experience. Almost all of them had signed up for as many clubs as she had, and those who weren’t going to be in any sports were looking at several more. The idea worried Valentina; at Walker, her work ethic had been her edge. What could it be now that she was surrounded by peers willing to work just as hard? Her blond hair?

  The final part of the day was devoted to their first class; Valentina and the other students in her homeroom group had Chemistry. The teacher, Mr. Phillips, was a middle-aged, bearded man. He smiled at every student as they entered; when they had all arrived, he began to speak in a kind, assured voice.

  “Welcome!” he grinned at the still-standing freshmen, who were waiting for seat assignments to be revealed. “No desks here; feel free to take your seats at one of the lab stations.” Valentina took her seat at one of the labs closest to the front, snagging a chair that faced the teacher. Several students started to get out pens and notebooks; “No need for those,” Mr. Phillips waved his hand. “That’ll come later. Today we’re just going to enjoy—the—chemistry.” As he said the last words, Mr. Phillips poured some kind of liquid into a beaker in the middle of one of the lab stations; a foamy, blue-colored substance rose and slid down the sides of the beaker. It fell onto the table and expanded even further. Mr. Phillips went to a similar beaker at each of the other lab stations; a different color foam erupted from each station’s beaker. When it landed on the counter in front of Valentina, she was amazed to find that it was spelling out words. Or, more accurately, words were spelled out by the few inches of table left uncovered by foam.

  “Respect,” Valentina whispered to herself, frowning.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Phillips announced, “Respect! Those are your class guidelines and rules. Respect me, respect your classmates, and especially—“ he returned to the front of the classroom, “Respect the science.”

  Valentina giggled; Mr. Phillips was weird, but at least he knew how to make a class exciting. Beside her, a pig-nosed girl raised her hand. “Yes, Miss—?” Mr. Phillips called on her.

  “Jenny. Jenny Curtis.” Jenny spoke loudly, as if she were afraid Mr. Phillips wouldn’t hear her, “Are you going to explain the science behind this table-writing trick?” It sounded like an accusation.

  The teacher smiled, “If you want me to. But wouldn’t you rather see some other cool things you can do with science? I was planning on having the class make—“

  Jenny cut him off, “I’m here to learn. I can see ‘cool things’ at home.”

  Mr. Phillips frowned, “Show of hands, then. Who here would like to start class as soon as possible?” To Valentina’s surprise, all but two hands shot into the air; she left hers down, and the boy across from her did likewise. “Alright,” Mr. Phillips seemed disappointed, “I guess you will need to get out your notes.”

  The incident amazed Valentina; that a group of students would actively choose work over sitting back and watching experiments was unnatural, and the fact that a teacher would amend his plans because a student demanded it was unprecedented in her experience. If Mr. Phillips had been a teacher at Walker, he would have simply plowed ahead with what he had planned; Valentina supposed that was one of the differences between a state-funded institution and one where parents paid thousands for their children to get the best education possible.

  Mr. Phillips was not nearly as interesting when he was explaining the concepts behind what he had done; the class took notes as he mumbled about “sanitizer and shaving cream”. Valentina took studious notes, but the boy across from her, the only other one who hadn’t voted for the “real lesson” simply watched as their teacher spoke. “What are you doing?” Valentina whispered at him.

  “Staging a protest,” the boy replied, flashing Valentina with a smirk.

  “But what if there’s a test on this?”

  “Then I’ll bs it. Besides, explaining the experiments obviously wasn’t part of his pre-approved lesson plan, so I doubt he’ll add it to any quizzes.”

  “Pre-approved lesson plan?” Valentina asked.

  “Yeah, every teacher here has to submit their lesson plan so the administrators can take a look at it.”

  “How do you know that?” Valentina leaned forward onto the lab counter.

  “You learn a lot of things when your mother’s the pri
nciple,” the boy smiled. “How else do you think a slacker like me could get into ‘Palm Lake Prep’?”

  Valentina laughed; it was obvious this boy wanted to seem cool, and his act was cute. “I’m Valentina, but you can call me Val,” she offered her hand.

  “And I’m not shaking that,” the boy gestured at her hand, “You just had it sitting in god-knows-what.”

  “Oh my god!” Valentina screamed; Mr. Phillips turned to see what was wrong. “What was in that foam?” Valentina asked, panicking.

  “Just hydrochloric acid. Don’t worry, your skin will grow back in a week,” Mr. Phillips smiled.

  “I have to go to the nurse!” Valentina was hyperventilating. “It burns!”

  Jenny shied away from Valentina as she got up and rushed for the exit. “Wait!” Mr. Phillips called as she was about to leave. She turned back to face him. “When was the last time you got burned by water and soap?”

  “Huh?” was all Valentina could say.

  “I was just messing with you,” Mr. Phillips’ expression softened. “The foam decomposes into water after a minute or two, and the solution on the table was just soap. The worst that could’ve happened is some of the dye might have gotten on your arm.”

  Valentina’s face flushed; the other students were laughing. She slunk back to her seat and sat down awkwardly. “Keenan,” the boy offered, a toothy grin set on his face.

  Chapter 3

  Student Council met in the largest room in Palm Lake—the cafeteria. Valentina had been surprised that it started the very first day of school, but in a way it made sense. At Palm Lake, the Student Council was a big deal—one in four students was a member.

  Palm Lake’s Vice President, Raelyn Davis, matched Valentina’s definition of a nerd perfectly; down to the polo with a pocket protector. She spoke so quietly that everyone in the cafeteria had to strain to hear; Raelyn didn’t seem to like crowds, an assumption Valentina made based on the fact that the senior girls’ bespectacled eyes seemed glued to the floor for her whole speech.