No Such Thing as Perfect

by Daltry, Sarah

  “And spiders. That’s my job as your big brother.”

  When Jon and I got older and it wasn’t normal anymore for us to play in the woods and fight trees we envisioned as trolls, I think I still imagined that the rest of it was true. That big brothers really did protect their sisters – from ogres and spiders and anything else that scared them. But sometimes imagination isn’t just about turning a tree into something scary. Sometimes, I guess, it’s about seeing something real as better than it is.

  31.

  What’s funny about believing a lie you tell yourself is that it’s easy to forget you ever believed it in the first place. When you don’t use all that energy building up a façade, you find you have a lot more time to focus on what’s real. Spending time with Jack and being at school has been buffering the memories and I’ve gotten used to the idea that this is the only life I’ve led. When I went home for Columbus Day, I felt like school was some sort of vacation, but now home feels distant, like it’s a movie I’ve seen too many times.

  I finally finished my paper on Marianne and although I don’t know that it was an improvement, at least I did something different. Lit Study has moved on to Tess of the d’Urbervilles and I’m pondering her complicated beginnings on my walk back to the dorm. I think nothing of the voices coming from my room until I get closer. Kristen is talking to a guy, but I expect it to be Lyle or maybe Don. I definitely don’t expect it to be Derek.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. “You weren’t supposed to come up for a couple weeks.”

  “I thought we should talk,” he says.

  “Oh, okay.” I don’t know what to do or how to react. He shouldn’t feel like a stranger, but suddenly, Derek being here, in my room, feels invasive. Kristen looks at us both and excuses herself. I can’t imagine what she must be thinking.

  As soon as she’s gone, Derek is all over me. His hands are in my shirt, his mouth is near mine, and he’s saying things, but I just want him to stop.

  “Stop,” I tell him.

  “Why?”

  “Just stop.” I move away from him and sit on my bed. The heater is going, but it’s freezing in here. He sits beside me after taking off his shirt and he reaches for my belt loops, kissing my neck and telling me how much he’s missed me.

  “You broke up with me,” I say, trying to move away from him.

  “Lily, I’ve been an ass, come on. Let me make it up to you.”

  “I need you to stop touching me,” I tell him, pushing his hands away. “Please, Derek. I don’t want to.”

  “You’re ridiculous. I’m trying to fix it. Stop fighting me.”

  “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

  I want to run out of the room, to get Kristen or someone to help, but I don’t. He’s still Derek. He’s still friends with my brother. Sure, he’s not listening, but I’m not scared of him. Not until he pushes me hard against the wall.

  “I gave up a lot to date you, you know,” he says. “I broke things off with Jodie. I’ve been faithful to you, even when it wasn’t easy, even when you were a pain in the ass. I miss you when I’m at school. I’m sorry I made you feel bad, but it’s been forever, Lily. I need you. I need this. Stop acting like you don’t want it. You’ve never said no before.”

  “I don’t want it,” I reply. “At all. Get away from me.”

  He doesn’t. I can’t fight him and I’m on my back and he’s on me and I don’t understand. It’s not even the fact that he’s undressing me, that I’m nearly naked and so is he and that he’s planning to do this, despite that fact that I said no. What scares me more than anything is that the boy I fell in love with, the boy in the tent who made me want to have a boyfriend and to be pretty, was always the kind of person who would do this. People don’t become this kind of person; they just are or they aren’t. How did I not see this?

  “Please don’t,” I beg. He’s not gentle and I’m in my underwear and bra and his hands are between my legs and I can’t stop him. I can’t, because I never said no and he thinks this is okay. I can’t even scream, because I don’t know how to make sense of any of it. “Please, Derek.”

  I wish I knew what changed his mind. I wish I could express it and capture it and use it if this ever happened again, but I don’t. He was pushing all his weight down on me, his fingers exploring, and I was sure that my boyfriend or ex-boyfriend or whatever he is was going to rape me, but then he stopped. In a moment, he stopped and now he’s staring at me, the anger still seething, but his hands are by his side again and I can move.

  “You should go,” I say.

  “Lily, I miss you. Don’t be like this. I’m sorry. You do this to me, though. You’re just so sexy and I can’t help myself. Please don’t make me beg. I need it. Please.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you need to go.” The room feels like ice now, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the heat.

  “Are you cheating on me?” he snaps. “Is that why?”

  “We broke up,” I remind him.

  “So that makes it okay for you to be a slut as soon as I need a break. I had schoolwork. I told you it wasn’t about us, that I needed time to get my grades up and to focus on rugby. I didn’t tell you to come back here and just be a whore.”

  “I haven’t touched anyone,” I say. “I’m far from being a slut. You can’t be serious, with all the girls you’ve slept with. You probably did cheat on me.”

  “Nothing serious.”

  “So you did?”

  “No, not really. I mean, there were a few nights I was drunk and Jodie and I had already slept together before you, and you weren’t around, but it didn’t mean anything. I still love you. It wasn’t cheating, because it wasn’t new.”

  “You really need to go,” I tell him again.

  He doesn’t move and I want to hurt him. I want to make him feel everything I’ve felt for a year, everything I convinced myself was normal just because I wanted us to be okay. Just because I believed in a boy who listened and who cared about adventures and who seemed like he could love me. Maybe I don’t warrant real love, but I realize I definitely deserve better than this.

  I wish the knock on the door wasn’t real. I wish I could cry out and stop it. I wish a lot of things, but wishing doesn’t stop Derek from opening the door. Jack looks confused and a little nervous. I can’t meet his eyes, shame breaking me into a million tiny pieces. Derek’s standing there with his shirt off and his pants undone and I’m clinging to my clothes because I was afraid to get dressed, to set him off, to do anything, and now Jack is seeing this and I can’t explain. We aren’t in a relationship and I owe him nothing, but I still want him to know that this isn’t me.

  Derek pushes Jack back so he hits the wall across the hallway. “Who the fuck are you? Are you the guy who ruined her?”

  Jack doesn’t fight back. Not at first. He just stares across the hall at Derek and I rush to get my clothes on. “I’m certainly not the guy who calls her ruined,” Jack says, which pisses Derek off more and he grabs Jack by the throat. I see it in Jack’s eyes – the doubt that he’s a bad person, the internal debate about fighting back, and his recognition of the tears I can’t stop now – and he snaps. He twists out of Derek’s grip and swings at him. The punch connects with Derek’s jaw, which just makes it a million times worse. Derek hits Jack and it knocks him to the ground, but Jack is all rage now.

  “Stop. Both of you. Derek, you need to leave. Now.”

  “Fuck you, bitch,” he says, but he grabs his shirt and takes off, leaving me and Jack in the hall, both of us shaking and he turns me towards my room and leads me inside.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, but I can’t look at him. I don’t want him to see me like this.

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asks from the doorway.

  “I don’t know. Yeah, probably.” It’s not his fault and I don’t want to blame him, but I need to be alone. I don’t want to touch anyone or talk to anyone or even try to ex
plain what just happened. I don’t want to think about it or to have it be true. I just want to curl up and go to sleep and tell myself that it was a bad dream. All of this is a bad dream.

  “I’m going to stay in my room,” Jack says. “I’ll text you every hour. You don’t have to answer. But if you need me, I’ll set my alarm on my phone. Every hour, Lily. And when you’re ready or if you can’t sleep or if you need to walk in circles, you can reply. If I fall asleep, it will only be an hour, okay?”

  I nod, but I can’t talk to him. He leaves and I close the door and grab a sweatshirt from my closet. Even under the blankets and with the sweatshirt, I can’t stop shaking. I want to remember something else, anything else, but my mind can’t remember. All that exists is right now.

  32.

  It’s hard to remember anything when you know you’ve lied to yourself for your entire life.

  PART III:

  Flying

  33.

  “Can I talk to Alana?” I ask Jack. He’s done as he promised and checked on me every hour for three days now. I haven’t even told Kristen what happened. I was asleep when she came back the night Derek was here and then I just told her that we broke up for good.

  “Sure. I mean, yeah. I’ll have her call you. Are you okay?” I’ve only texted him since that night and it feels good to hear his voice, but I’m not ready to talk to him about it yet.

  “I will be. I think.”

  “I’ll call her right now, okay?”

  She texts me quick, but since she didn’t go away to school, she can’t visit for a couple hours and I don’t want to talk over the phone. So I pace and I think about eating. I could get fat. No one would care. Well, my mother would but somehow she feels complicit in all of this.

  Kristen watches me while I wait for Alana, but she says nothing. I feel guilty. She was my friend when I had none. I should tell her. I should text Abby and talk to her somehow, but there’s never privacy talking to her and right now, Europe might as well be Jupiter.

  The first thing I do when Alana and I get to the café is tell her about Prom. I tell her how Derek was, how he made fun of everyone and how he told me a hundred times the night was stupid. I tell her about after, in the hotel he’d argued with me about renting before finally saying he would only go if I did. I tell her how he told me about things other girls did and how he said I would do them, too, if I really loved him. I tell her all about how stupid and naïve and worthless and broken I felt, but how after, I believed him and I tried to forget, because he said he cared and he told me I was perfect. Then I tell her about the last year, about Jodie, about the girls who came before, about camping, and I tell her about how it’s been. I tell her about the breakup and then, finally, I tell her what happened the other night.

  “Did he rape you?” she asks.

  “No. That’s just it. He stopped before it went that far, but he was mean and I thought he was going to. I know I don’t have a right to feel like this. So what? My boyfriend pressures me to have sex and then gets mad when, after a year, I suddenly don’t want to? That’s not a crime and it’s not worth feeling like this over.”

  She pushes the coffee she ordered for me towards me, but I don’t want it. I don’t want anything. It’s too hot and when I sip at it, I can feel the heat sliding down my body in my veins. It makes me feel present, reminds me of how flawed every inch of me is, and I get nauseous remembering how he pushed me.

  “No one ever has the right to make you feel like you do. How you want to define it is up to you and what you want to do next is also your choice, but he’s gone. He can’t decide for you, Lily.”

  “I just feel wrong about feeling this way. What about you? You told me horrible things and here I am, whining about nothing.”

  “It’s not a contest. It’s not about who’s more fucked up. There are no levels of feeling like shit. There’s just being okay – and not being okay. And you’re not okay. So how do we fix that?”

  I look out the window at the parking lot. Stray carriages are rolling across the lot, pushed by invisible people with invisible lives. I wonder if they can see me or if I’m just an invisible girl, too. “Does it bother you that I asked you?” I ask Alana. “I mean, that I could only talk to you about it?”

  “We’re a secret club that no one wants to be a member of,” she replies. “The girls men use. But it sounds so awful to say it. I don’t hate men. I don’t hate sex. I just hate that I feel like I hear this story every day.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She drinks her coffee and gets up to refill it without answering. When she comes back, I notice how tired she looks. She’s only 20, but she’s exhausted by living. “Ask away. I’m ready.”

  “How do you trust anyone? Why do you trust Jack? What happened with him? How can you enjoy sex? And the things in his room… doesn’t that…?” I don’t finish, because that’s more than one something and she’s smiling, but I can see she asks herself the same questions all the time.

  “That’s a lot of things to explain. I don’t trust people, not really, but I try to rationalize some of it. I spend a lot of time in therapy and I take too many pills to numb what I really feel and think. I don’t know why I enjoy sex, because the physical act does one thing but it still bothers me when I’m alone. I talk to my therapist about that, too. As far as the kind of sex I like and have, well, you can’t change your body or your physical responses any more than you can change who you are or how you feel. Just because those guys were the way they were doesn’t mean they get to decide how I’m going to find my own satisfaction. It’s not a question of that, really. It’s a question of reconciling it and justifying it for myself and that’s what I’m working on. You know. In all the therapy.”

  “Should I be angry?” I ask.

  “Are you angry?”

  “I think so. It’s hard to piece it together. All my memories of him, of my mom, of my life – they all made sense and nothing seemed odd about them. But in the last few days, I haven’t slept well. They all keep coming back to me, but I’m seeing them new. I’m seeing them like someone who didn’t live them and I want to tell that girl what kind of person he is, to tell her she isn’t the reason her mom is so angry, that she has every right to want someone to listen. But when I realize that girl is me, I can’t believe those things.”

  “Why?” Alana asks. “What’s so bad about you?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I just don’t think it’s as easy as all that.”

  She finishes her second coffee and looks at mine. The cream has formed a layer over the top and I can’t look at it. I wish I knew why everything made me feel so empty.

  “You should eat something. Drink something. I know it’s hard. I know everyone will have advice and nothing will make sense, but trust me, the worst place you can be right now is alone in your head.”

  I can’t drink the coffee, so I bring it back to the barista, but I force myself to buy – and drink – a small carton of orange juice. It’s something.

  We take our time walking back to campus, because I’m still trying to put all of these pieces of myself together. A girl who was never good enough. A girl who is trying to start new. And now the girl who never speaks up but is tired of silence.

  “Are you still in love with him? Like in the way you were?” I ask Alana.

  “No, I don’t think so. We were kids. I loved him because he made me stronger, but that’s not the same as being in love with someone. At sixteen, I thought it was, and that’s just hard to shake.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With Jack, it’s need. Physical need. Something in each of us is broken. We cling to each other like it will hold us together. It’s hard,” she continues, “when someone is so important to you, to let go, to see it for what it is. But neither of us has a claim to the other.”

  “I’m not ready, not for him,” I admit to her. “I’m not ready for someone to care like he does.”

  “Don’t close him out, Lily. He’s a good
guy. He deserves to believe in something, too.”

  34.

  It’s been a week and I haven’t been leaving my room much. Most days I sleep until midday and then stare at the TV. I try to read, but it’s hard to care much about Tess’ problems. I have enough of my own. Kristen, Jack, and Lyle alternate, coming in to invite me to go to lunch or dinner, listening to my excuses, and then showing up with a meal in Styrofoam because “there was extra.” The college meal policy is really strict about taking food from the cafeteria, because for half a million dollars or whatever it costs a year, we certainly can’t go over our meal plan.

  I need to go to my classes. We just finished midterms and I’m doing well, but I can’t afford to miss class. Despite knowing that, though, I can’t get out of bed. Everything about me feels wrong. I know Alana said it wasn’t wrong and that I had a right to feel this way, but I don’t. And it’s just another thing about me that’s not good enough.

  My parents keep calling. We haven’t talked since Columbus Day, but they left messages on my birthday and I didn’t call back, and now there’s Thanksgiving. My mom will want to know what I’m going to wear. I don’t want to talk to them. I don’t want to go home. I’ll have to hear about Derek and I’ll have to pretend it doesn’t hurt and I’ll have to stop remembering what he’s really like. At the same time, I do want to go home, though, because Abby is flying back until after Christmas and I need her desperately.

  “I brought you a sandwich and some cookies. I couldn’t smuggle anything else out,” Kristen says on her way into the room. She reaches into her purse and pulls out bologna and cheese on a bulky and two sugar cookies, all wrapped in a pile of napkins.

  “Thanks. I’m not hungry, but thank you for making your purse smell like lunchmeat for me.”

  She laughs. “You should eat, though. I won’t tell you to talk to me about whatever happened, but you should eat.”

  “I can’t. The smell of the sandwich is making me sick,” I admit.