We Are the Perfect Girl

by Ariel Kaplan

  “Hang on, it’s not like I’m robbing banks,” I said. “I just…very occasionally…run out for a sandwich. Or something.”

  “Did you know about this?” my mom asked my father, who shrugged and tried to hide his smile.

  “It’s not prison,” I told my parents. “It’s school. The point is, I can duck out long enough to take Kit to the allergist for a shot once in a while. It’s not like it’d be every day.”

  Mom sighed. Dad said, “Hmmm.”

  I said, “He’ll never forgive you if you make him give up that cat without at least trying the shots first.”

  “This is Kit we’re talking about. Not you.”

  I rolled my eyes, but I knew I already had her. It was the only logical course of action. When plan A sucks, you try plan B first. She said, “I’ll call the doctor and see what he says.”

  Back in the kitchen, I pressed a cookie into Kit’s hand. “Okay, mon frère,” I said as Kit lifted his head and looked at me through swollen eyes. “Here is what I got you.”

  “We can keep Walnut?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We’re going to try, but Walnut can’t sleep in your room anymore, and you’re going to have to do allergy shots.”

  “I have to get shots?”

  “Kit,” I said, “I told them you’d do it.”

  “Shots? Like a lot of shots?”

  “Twice a week,” I said. “For the first few months. Then you don’t have to go as often.”

  He snuffled. “I hate shots.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And I can’t sleep with Walnut anymore?”

  “Sorry, buddy.”

  “He’ll be sad. He doesn’t like to sleep by himself.”

  I suspected what he really meant was that he didn’t like to sleep by himself. I said, “He can sleep with me if he wants.”

  “Really? Because he likes to be on the pillow. That’s his favorite.”

  “All right,” I said. “He can have the pillow.”

  I had just turned off my light when I heard the Star Trek theme coming from the bottom of my backpack, where I’d left my phone.

  Walnut was glaring at me; he’d been howling outside Kit’s door while, from inside, I could hear Kit screaming, “I LOVE YOU, WALNUT!” so I’d scooped up the miserable furball and deposited him on my bed, shutting the door so he couldn’t get back out. “You’d better not pee in here,” I’d said, but he’d already jumped down and was scratching at the door.

  I grabbed a paper shopping bag out of the bottom of my closet and put it sideways on the floor, hoping Walnut would climb into it and forget his troubles for a while, which he did, and then I picked up my phone.

  I felt a tiny thrill. It was Greg. He’d messaged me at the same time three nights in a row. I’d become part of his nightly routine, I guessed. Well, not me, exactly. But Deanna had. By the time I got my phone, Deanna’s autopilot had engaged and she’d already said, Adolescents require approximately nine hours of sleep and it is presently 10:37.

  Damn it. I took over and typed, However, unburdening yourself of your troubles before bed can reduce cortisol levels and increase sleep value.

  Sleep value? What the hell is sleep value?

  I winced, but he must have attributed that statement to Deanna’s programming, since he said, I don’t have to be up until 8 tomorrow anyway.

  Without thinking, I typed, Don’t you have school?

  I don’t go to first block. I take two classes at the community college.

  He’d mentioned something like that to me in Latin, but I hadn’t really thought about what it meant. What classes do you take at the community college?

  Russian and Mandarin.

  I knew there were other people at Middleridge who were dual-enrolled—taking high school and college classes at the same time—but I didn’t know any of them personally. It did sound pretty cool not to be limited by our tiny course catalog. I wanted to ask what it took to sign up, but I was aware this conversation already sounded extremely un-chatbot-y, so I’d just have to look it up later.

  I said, Russian is the native language of approximately 153 million people.

  Yeah, that sounds about right.

  I wanted to bring up swimming, but since he’d only mentioned it using Cyrillic characters, I wasn’t sure I could get away with it. I said, Learning multiple languages is beneficial for brain development and good for your employment prospects.

  Unfortunately it does not also pay for college, he said.

  Ah, now we were getting to it. I typed, NCAA sports occasionally provide scholarship opportunities, particularly at the Division I level.

  Yes. Except when they don’t.

  I was starting to get the picture here….Greg said he hated swimming, was skipping practice, and worried about his parents paying for college. I said, However, there are other ways to pay for college tuition.

  Yeah, and they’re called loans. Expensive loans.

  The size of a loan is dependent on a parent’s estimated financial contribution.

  It sure is. But what if your parents feel like they already spent that money putting you in a sport because they thought you’d get a scholarship, and you aren’t good enough?

  Oh.

  Parents should be aware that children are humans and not commodities that can be manipulated at will, I said.

  I don’t think they see it as manipulation.

  I didn’t mean manipulated that way, but I tried again: Put another way: a child is not something one creates with a specific vision in mind. He is an independent being, not a sculpture you make and then love because it turned out just as you planned.

  A sculpture, huh? Like in Pygmalion?

  I realized I might be tipping my hand, since we’d just been reading it in class. I said, Pygmalion is a very famous story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

  I always thought it was kind of gross, he said. Like, if you fall in love with something you made, aren’t you just falling in love with yourself?

  I’d never thought about it that way. I didn’t exactly know how to respond, so I said, with the help of some quick googling, Pygmalion has been reinterpreted several times in modern times, as in the film My Fair Lady. The Japanese novel Naomi, written by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, is often considered a related work, although in that version the protagonist is ultimately rejected by the woman he creates.

  I then added, In a modern rendition, Pygmalion might be interpreted as the villain.

  I imagined him smiling. That was the downside of this: I could imagine Greg sitting in front of his phone, typing to me, but I couldn’t see how he was reacting. Did he think I was clever? I’d never be sure. He hadn’t hung up yet, though. He said, Too bad you aren’t real. You could talk to my parents for me.

  You seem to be articulate enough to speak to them yourself. In several languages, even.

  It’s very hard to deliver a message no one wants to hear, he said.

  People don’t always want to know what they need to know, I replied. Be bold.

  Be bold, he repeated. All right. Say good night, Deanna.

  Good night, Deanna.

  * * *

  —

  We ended up going back to Bethany’s after crew the next day, because I’d left my Latin books there and needed them for class tomorrow. I went up to her room to get them and came down to find Bethany standing in the kitchen with a pamphlet in either hand. “What are those?” I asked.

  Bethany’s eyes were a little glassy. “I found these in the dining room, mixed in with the mail.”

  I took one of the brochures from her and read the front page. “ ‘Shady Pines Adult Living.’ ” I flipped it open to see pictures of smiling old people playing golf and doing water aerobics. “I don’t understand. Is it like assisted living?” I couldn’t figure o
ut who it might be for….Bethany’s maternal grandmother already lives in assisted living, and as far as I know, they never hear from her dad’s parents at all.

  “It’s an over-55 community,” she said. She handed me the second brochure, which was for the Windy Oaks Adult Living Community.

  “So…she’s on a mailing list? I don’t get it.”

  “No! She requested these. They aren’t junk mail.” She flipped over the first one and pointed out the first-class stamp.

  “But why would your mom want to live in an…Oh.” My eyes went to the pile of Colin’s dirty laundry, which he’d left next to the stove for some inexplicable reason, and back to Bethany, who was looking at me like I was a little slow on the uptake.

  “It gets him out of the house,” she said. “They won’t let him live there since he’s under 55.”

  “I guess that’s one way of solving the problem,” I said. “The passive-aggressive way.”

  “There’s just one thing, though,” she said.

  I turned to the back of the Shady Pines brochure, where two old people were walking into the sunset. It was creepy. Like looking at a brochure for heaven’s waiting room, and here were two people making their final exit. “What’s that?” I asked.

  She gave a little huff of exasperation. “I’m under 55, too!”

  I dropped the brochure on the table. “Oh,” I said. “Crap.”

  “Yeah, crap.”

  “Well, wait. Maybe this isn’t going to happen until after you go to college.”

  “Yeah, or maybe she’s just going to put all my stuff out on the lawn once I turn eighteen!”

  “She wouldn’t…she wouldn’t do that. Would she do that?”

  She gestured at the giant pile of laundry. “Are you kidding? I’d go there tomorrow if I were her.”

  “Maybe you should talk to her,” I said. “I mean, this is probably just a misunderstanding.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think she really wants him out.”

  “Yeah, but wanting him out is not wanting you out.”

  “Maybe it is,” she said. “I mean, maybe she thinks I’m going to end up like that, too.”

  On cue, Colin appeared from the basement. He said, “Do you guys have to be so loud? I was trying to sleep.”

  Bethany sort of made a strangled cry of either rage or despair. I said, “I’ve got to get home anyway, B. I’m watching Kit tonight.”

  “Babysitting?” Colin said. “For your mommy?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said.

  “Three kids in ten years? Is she even done yet?” I felt my ire begin to rise. “I mean, that’s too many kids, I’m just saying.”

  “When are you going to stop making your mommy wash your socks?” I said acidly. “I’m just saying.”

  “You know,” he said, “our planet has a carrying capacity.”

  “If you’re worried about overpopulation,” I said, “I’d be happy to step outside with you and even things out.”

  He stared at me for a long minute and then disappeared back into the basement.

  “There but for the grace of God,” Bethany said.

  “No,” I said. “Come on, you’re not anything like that. Colin’s not shy, he’s a lazy little twit who thinks his mom should still be buying his underpants. You’re not going to end up like that.”

  “Are you kidding? Do you know how many days I would like to just lock myself in my room and never talk to anybody? All the time. All the time. It’s like, every day when I go out of the house I feel like I’m holding my breath. I hate it.” She collapsed into the nearest chair, pulling a canvas grocery bag out from under her butt and kneading it between her hands.

  I frowned. “You feel like that when you’re talking to me?”

  “No. But you’re different.”

  “I’m not different.”

  “You are, though.”

  “You’re just used to me.”

  “I guess,” she said. She tossed the grocery bag across the room. “Are you really babysitting tonight?”

  “Yeah, Mom has some birthday party and Dad’s teaching.”

  “Can I come over? I might as well have fun before Mom throws me out on my butt.”

  “Sure, if you want. It’s just going to be cartoons and homework.”

  “That sounds really good, actually. Well, not the homework, I guess. Are you done fixing the Deanna app?”

  I hesitated before saying, “Almost.”

  “You want me to log in some?” she asked. “I can ask her some questions for you.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s fine.”

  * * *

  —

  We sat on my living room floor with our stuff spread out on the coffee table while Kit and Walnut took over the couch: me with my Latin, Bethany with her Spanish, and Kit with some T-rated anime that was probably not strictly age-appropriate, but when you’re the third child no one cares about that stuff anymore. On the screen, some guy produced a sword from inside his own throat and started hacking at people with it while it was still sticking out of his mouth.

  “That’s disturbing,” Bethany said.

  “But handy,” I replied. “I mean, I often wish I had a sword I could pull out of my own throat and use to attack people.”

  “Do you think he sets off metal detectors?” There was a lot of blood, and Bethany flinched. “Could we watch My Little Pony instead?”

  Kit cried, “NO, DON’T SUMMON GAMAKATSU!”

  “What does that mean?” Bethany asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said, hoping we weren’t scarring him too badly. I went back to my Metamorphoses translation, which was due tomorrow. I’d gotten to the part toward the end where Pygmalion goes to cop a feel on this poor statue and he’s like, “A REAL BOOB!” so he pokes it a couple more times to be sure, and somehow, miraculously, the come-to-life statue does not murder him right there. “I hate this story.” I put my pencil down. “This guy sucks.”

  Bethany glanced over my shoulder at my translation. “Does he really poke her in the boob?”

  “Well, I’m taking some artistic license translating temptat as ‘poke,’ but the rest of it’s spot-on.”

  “I think I’d rather end up with the guy with the throat sword. What a douche.”

  “Douchecanoe,” I suggested.

  “Douchenozzle?”

  “Douchecannon.” That made Bethany laugh until she doubled over.

  “What’s a douche?” Kit asked from the couch. Bethany looked aghast, but I said, “Something the patriarchy told women they needed but it turned out they didn’t.”

  “What’s the patriarchy?”

  “That thing that says you can’t cry or wear purple.”

  At that, Mom came out of her room. “I’m heading out,” she said, blatantly ignoring the gore on the television. “Don’t let him stay up too late.”

  “Aphra said I can stay up till ten,” he chirped.

  “I did not say that,” I said. “But you can stay up till 9:15 if you let Bethany watch her ponies.”

  “Ugh,” he said. “The ponies.”

  “You love the ponies!” Bethany protested.

  “Not anymore. That’s a baby show.”

  “I’m not a baby, and I like it.”

  “You’re a girl.”

  I pointed my finger at him and exclaimed, “Patriarchy!” even though, truth be told, I was also sick of the ponies. He glumly handed Bethany the remote, we gave him the Kit Kiss, which he promptly wiped off, and then Bethany scrolled through Crunchyroll until she found her favorite episode with Rainbow Dash and Daring Do. Honestly, I kind of preferred the show with throat-sword guy, but I’m a good friend, and anyway, it’s easier to do homework when the show in the background is something you’ve seen 500 times.

&nbs
p; Mom leaned in for a hug and I batted her away. “Stop,” I said. “You smell like the white death.”

  Bethany said, “What?”

  “It’s the coconut in my shampoo,” Mom said. “She’s being dramatic.”

  “Oh, right,” Bethany said. “The Girl Scout cookie incident.”

  “We don’t talk about that,” I said.

  “How many had you eaten?”

  “We don’t talk about that.”

  “I think it was eight,” Mom said, tying her hair in a ponytail. “I counted when I had to clean them out of the carpet.”

  “Unless you want to clean tonight’s dinner out of the carpet, you really need to stop,” I said, because while Superman has kryptonite and the Green Lantern has literally anything yellow (and, like, how does he even pee?), I have…coconut. When I was eight, I’d come down with the stomach flu an hour after eating half a box of Samoas, and let me tell you, they don’t taste as good coming up as they do going down, and no matter how many times Mom told me it was the norovirus that made me puke, not the cookies, the reptilian part of my brain can never quite believe it. Ever since then, the taste, the smell, even the sight of coconut makes the back of my throat close up….Even the piña colada song is enough to send me running to the bathroom. So of course, when Mom’s department secretary started hawking essential oils, Mom caved and bought two bottles of this coconut-scented shampoo, which in theory is supposed to “dispel stress” but in practice makes me gag.

  Mom kissed Kit on the cheek and blew a raspberry on his neck. “I’m going,” she said. “Be good.” She pointed at me. “9:15.”

  “Yes’m,” I said.

  But at 9:30, Bethany had fallen asleep on top of her Spanish and Kit and I were back to gory anime.

  “You should go to bed,” I said.

  “What about Bethany?”

  I nudged her shoulder. “B,” I said. “B, throat-sword guy got the ponies.”

  She blinked at me a few times. “Really?”

  “Yeah, it was horrible. C’mon, I’ll walk you back.”

  She sat up and rubbed her face. “Crap, I didn’t even finish this.”