We Are the Perfect Girl

by Ariel Kaplan

  This happened because it was decided by the powers that be at our elementary school that I was destined for greater things (in other words, the advanced academics track), while Bethany would stay in the general ed program.

  We discovered this the week before school started, when we got our class placements. Bethany’s response, when she found out, was to go silent. As in, she stopped speaking, not just to me, but to anyone. My response, not surprisingly, was to be very loud about the injustice of the situation to anyone who would listen.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” I told my mother. “Bethany’s better at math than me by tons. And she reads as well as me, too. She’s just…”

  “I know,” she said. “But there’s nothing we can do about that. Her mom can appeal it if she wants, but it’s not up to us.”

  “But it’s not fair!”

  “I know, honey. It’s not.”

  And for most people, I guess, that would have been the end of it. But on the first day of school, I walked up to the teacher (Ms. Marks, if you’re wondering) and said, “My name is Aphra Brown. I’m in this class. And my friend Bethany’s in Ms. Sullivan’s class, but she should be in here, too, because she’s the best at math in the whole fourth grade.”

  She gave me this frozen smile and said, “Hi, Aphra. I’ve heard all about you.” I didn’t get the sense that that was a particularly good thing, but I was on a roll, so I just barreled ahead.

  “So,” I went on, “if you could just, like, go and get her, we’ll be all set here.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, but you’ll still see your friend at recess. The whole fourth grade goes out at the same time.”

  “No, that’s not it. She actually should be in this class. I don’t know why she’s not.”

  “Why don’t you take your seat, Aphra?”

  “Yeah, I will, as soon as I go get Bethany.”

  “Miss Brown,” she said.

  “Ms. Marks,” I replied.

  “Sit down.”

  “No.”

  “Sit down, or you can go see Ms. Baumgartner.”

  Ms. Baumgartner was the principal. I guess most fourth graders would have been cowed by that particular threat, but I’d been in her office enough times to know the worst I’d get for mouthing off was a call to my parents, whose response to her reports that I gave someone lip was, “Really? Again?” And then, to me, they’d say, “Could you just keep it under the phone-call level? I’m tired of that woman yanking me out of class.”

  So I said, “That’s fine. I’ll go talk to her.”

  I gave the same spiel to Ms. Baumgartner, who looked very tired and said, “I’m proud of you for advocating for your friend.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But it’s not really appropriate. If there’s a problem with Bethany, then Bethany’s parents should come talk to me, or even Bethany herself. Not you.”

  “Yeah, but she won’t come talk to you because she’s scared. I just think you made a mistake, that’s all.”

  She cleared some files off her desk. “You know, there are three things we look at when we’re assembling that class.”

  “Okay.”

  “Standardized test scores, teacher recommendations, and the GBRS.” Only she said the acronym like “gibbers.”

  “The what, now?”

  “The Gifted Behavior Ratings Scale. It’s a questionnaire the teachers fill out about how a student performs in class, like whether they ask incisive questions or demonstrate leadership skills, things like that.”

  I chewed on that a minute. “What about if you have someone who does badly on that because they don’t speak much English? Or they’re shy or something?”

  “Well, we’d still have the test scores.”

  “Okay, but don’t you still need to talk well to do well on the tests? I mean, if you speak mostly Chinese or you were really nervous that day, maybe you’d do bad.”

  “We do look at the whole package, Aphra.”

  “But Bethany—”

  “Is not for you to worry about.” She got up and patted me on the shoulder, which I hated so, so much. “You’re a good friend. But I think you need to worry a little more about Aphra and let Bethany worry about Bethany.”

  I scowled, but I knew I’d lost. They weren’t going to listen to me. So I went back to class. I didn’t forget about it, though. I just needed to find a way to prove them wrong.

  I waited about three days, until the class was being super rowdy and everyone was complaining that our math was all stuff we’d learned the year before.

  Ms. Marks was getting rather frustrated. “This is just a review,” she said. “We’ll be getting to the harder material next week.”

  One of the boys said, “I can do algebra. My dad got me this app that teaches you.”

  “That’s not real algebra,” somebody said.

  “Yes it is!”

  “Fine,” Ms. Marks said. “I’ll give you guys one real algebra problem to mull over, and then we’ll go back to our review.” She turned to the whiteboard and wrote a very long problem. I can’t remember it now, but x was all mixed into some big fraction and there was an exponent, which we hadn’t learned how to do yet. We stared at it in stunned silence, which I guess was the desired effect. After a few seconds, I put my hand up.

  “Aphra?”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” I said. “But I know somebody who does.” I’d copied the problem down on a piece of paper, and before she could stop me I made a beeline out of the room. Ms. Marks was right behind me. I was lucky she had a bad knee.

  Bethany’s class was on the other side of the hall, and I burst in and slapped the paper down on her desk. She looked at me with wide eyes while her teacher sputtered at me. Then both Ms. Sullivan and Ms. Marks took turns screaming at me while discussing how I was out of control and which of them was going to haul me down to the principal’s office. I heard the term “oppositional defiant,” and I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded a good deal worse than “pain in the neck,” which was what my teachers usually called me when they thought I was out of earshot. Ms. Marks had just grabbed ahold of my elbow to escort me down the hall to my certain doom when Bethany got up from her chair and handed me the piece of paper.

  I pulled away from Ms. Marks and looked down at it. Bethany had done a bunch of steps, and at the bottom of the page, she’d written x = 4/7. I handed it to Ms. Marks. I knew it was right as soon as her eyes scanned the page.

  After that, it was decided that Bethany would join my class for math only. We were never allowed to sit together, though. I was banished to the back of the room, while Bethany took a desk at the front.

  I was in my dad’s office when he got the call from Ms. Baumgartner that day after school. “Oppositional,” he said. “Huh.”

  Upon hanging up, he looked at me for a good long minute. Then he opened the top drawer of his desk and took something out. “I was saving this for myself,” he said, handing it to me. “But I think I’ll give it to you instead.” I took it from him; it was a chocolate bar with little bits of toffee in it, the kind he likes to get at the airport, which is my favorite and his, too.

  “Aren’t you mad about the call?”

  “Should I be?”

  “She called me…”

  “Oppositional, yeah. You opposed. What did you oppose?”

  “They wouldn’t let Bethany take the advanced class even though she’s smart enough.”

  “Right. Something unfair. I’ll never be angry to hear about you standing up for someone. That’s always the right thing to do. And if that makes Ms. Baumgartner’s job a little harder, well, that’s just too bad.”

  I tore open the wrapper and snapped the candy bar down the middle, then handed half to my dad. “Yeah?” he asked, and then took it. He held out his p
art and tapped it against mine. “To opposition,” he said.

  “To opposition,” I replied.

  * * *

  —

  I wasn’t sure what I was opposing in the middle of Cake Baby. The unfairness of the universe, maybe, which had made Bethany so wholly unable to communicate with the boy she liked. It was okay, though. I was fixing it. We were fixing it.

  Greg had finished his cupcake while Bethany and I were in the bathroom and was checking something on his phone when we got back to the table.

  I’d already fed Bethany a line, so she said, “Sorry. I had enough spinach in my teeth to make another panini.”

  She smiled at me. I smiled back. Greg looked slightly relieved.

  She sat back down, looking a little less terrified now, and propped her phone on her knee. I texted her, Which Russian poets are you looking at, specifically?

  “Uh. Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Alexander Blok are the main ones.”

  She glanced down at her lap, and then gave me a look like Are you sure? I widened my eyes a little. She said, “That’s a very masculine list.”

  He looked a little surprised. But he said, “I never thought about that.”

  Glancing down again, she said, “How’d you come up with it?”

  “I guess…they’re just the big names. You’re right, though. It needs work. What about you? What are you doing this summer?”

  I thought she should be able to answer this one on her own, but just to be sure, I typed, Aphra and I are going to be counselors at a crew camp for middle school kids. She was getting the hang of sounding less like she was reading. She was even starting to exude a small measure of confidence. Maybe I was rubbing off on her.

  “That’s cool. Where is that?”

  “West Vagina,” she said emphatically. Then, giving me the world’s nastiest look, she said, “Virginia.”

  I typed, Sorry, autocorrect. She said, “Sorry, auto—”

  I kicked her. “Auto. Uh. Matic. The camp is supposed to help the rowers learn to operate as a team in a way that’s automatic. Like, instinctual. You know.”

  Greg looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh, like he found her occasional inability to form coherent sentences utterly delightful. I typed, Are you planning on rowing for real next year?

  “I’m still thinking about it,” he said. To me (to me!) he said, “I’ve sort of given up swimming, so I’m looking for a new sport for next year.”

  Bethany’s jaw dropped, because of course she wouldn’t know this. I said, “Oh! No more swimming?”

  “No more swimming.” He took Bethany’s hand from across the table and squeezed it. “It was time to try something new.”

  “That,” I said. “Uh. That must have taken some hard thinking. To quit after so long.”

  “Well,” he said, smiling fondly at Bethany, “you know. I’m bold like that.”

  I typed, I always knew you had it in you.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You did.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

  I said, “I just remembered, I promised my brother I’d read Harry Potter tonight. Do you guys mind dropping me off really quick?”

  “I should go, too,” Bethany said (on her own!). “I have. Uh. Homework. There’s. Like. Spanish.”

  “That’s right! Aphra said you’re taking Spanish. Puedo ayudarte si quieres; he hablado Español con mi mamá durante toda mi vida,” he said.

  Bethany glanced at me. Why, I have no idea. I typed, I DON’T SPEAK SPANISH, BETHANY.

  She said, “Uh—uh—uh—sí, me gusto mucha si me ayudar.”

  Greg’s eye twitched just a hair, which probably meant that hadn’t been a good answer. I texted, Kiss him. KISS HIM!

  She shot me a desperate look and then pitched face-first over the table. Her mouth met his. He appeared to be surprised and pleased by this. But mostly pleased. As they broke apart, she stole a glance at her phone and said, “Sorry. Must’ve been the accent. I guess I was a little overcome.”

  He grinned at her. I was, if I’m honest, getting a little tired. And grateful when Greg pushed back from the table and said, “I’ll take you guys home. I think we’re scandalizing Aphra.”

  * * *

  —

  He dropped us off at Bethany’s. After we walked inside, she pulled me into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you thank you thank you oh God.”

  “It’s okay—wait, are you crying?”

  She leaned away and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I don’t even know.”

  “It was fine,” I said. “There were a couple of little flubs, but he thought they were cute. That went really well. He’s completely smitten.”

  “I know. It’s not that. I don’t think it’s that.”

  “Don’t you like him?”

  “I do. I really do.”

  “Then what?”

  She snuffled a little more and wiped her eyes. “I’m not sure, Aphra.”

  I put my arm around her. “Hey,” I said. “Do you want to work on Spanish here, or you want to do it at my house?”

  That was when I remembered who else was at my house. Well, Delia could bite me. If she said one nasty word to Bethany, I’d make sure she’d need a second nose job.

  Bethany said, “Your house?”

  “Cool,” I said. I rubbed my hand up and down her arm. “Let’s go get your stuff, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” And then she hugged me again.

  When we got home, my parents were in the kitchen with Delia and Sebastian having a late dinner. Kit was using his chair as a table so he could sit on the floor with the cat.

  “Hey there,” Mom said. “I thought you two were having dinner at Bethany’s.”

  “We did,” I said, pulling up a chair. Bethany sat on the floor next to Kit and ruffled Walnut’s fur between her fingers. “We came over here to do homework.”

  “It’s a sucker’s game,” Sebastian said. Mom set out four glasses of water. She managed not to dump Sebastian’s over his head, but I could tell she was thinking about it. Dad was taking a frozen pizza out of the oven while Delia and Sebastian picked the radishes out of a salad.

  “Delia was just telling us how she and Sebastian met,” Mom said. I crossed my fingers and hoped they hadn’t met at a YouTube convention or something horrible like that.

  “We were in the same biology class,” he said, resting an arm on the back of Delia’s chair. “She spilled coffee on my lap during the midterm.”

  “Was it hot?” I asked, perhaps too hopefully.

  Delia rolled her eyes. “It was cold by then. And mostly empty. There was only like an inch left in the cup.”

  Sebastian said, “So I picked up the coffee cup, wrote my number on it, and put it back on her desk.”

  I had to admit, that was kind of cute. If a little nauseating.

  “So she called me up, and I asked her to come over and wash my pants.”

  Okay. A little less cute now.

  “I didn’t do it,” Delia said. “We had lunch in the dining hall.”

  “Nothing says romance like spaghetti under a heat lamp,” Dad said.

  “And then what?” Kit said.

  “Nothing,” Delia said. “That was it.”

  “Oh,” Kit said, a little disappointed, though really, it hadn’t been a horrible meet-cute, except for the “wash my pants” bit. “Mom and Dad met in college, too,” he said.

  “It was graduate school,” my father corrected him. He loved telling this story.

  “We didn’t have YouTube back then,” my mother added. “It was a dark time.”

  “I’m amazed we got through it.”

  “I’m not sure we did, sometimes.”

  “So,” Dad said, because now that Kit had mentioned the story, there wa
s no way he was not going to tell it. “The Latin American Student Union was having a dance. I went with my roommate, and they had a salsa band, and there was the prettiest girl you ever saw, in her Lisa Loeb glasses—”

  “Not the Lisa Loeb glasses again,” Delia said.

  “In her Lisa Loeb glasses, and my roommate and I were watching her salsa-ing by herself, and he said—this was Alex Castro—he said, ‘That girl is the worst dancer I’ve ever seen.’ ”

  “I wasn’t that bad,” Mom said.

  “She was,” I said. “We’ve all seen it.”

  “Hey,” Mom said. “That’s your gene pool you’re maligning.”

  “Not mine,” I said. “I got my rhythm from Dad. Delia, on the other hand…”

  Delia threw a sprig of parsley at my face. I handed it to Bethany, who turned it into a makeshift cat toy, to Kit’s delight.

  “So we felt really bad for this girl,” Dad went on, laughing now, “because everybody’s looking at her, because she’s dancing alone and what she’s doing has nothing to do with the salsa, and we decided that no one that hopeless should have to dance alone, and the only gentlemanly thing would be to ask her to dance with one of us.”

  “You were too kind,” Mom said flatly.

  “We really were. So we played a round of rock-paper-scissors and I lost.”

  “And if you hadn’t,” I finished, “our father would have been Alex Castro, and we’d all be living in California because you got the girl and he got the job at Stanford.”

  “I got the better deal,” he said, proudly taking a sip of his water.

  “It was Stanford,” Mom reminded him.

  He tugged on a lock of Mom’s hair and said, “Even so.”

  “How was your day, Aphra?” Mom asked.

  My bizarro-world date didn’t seem to match up with “adorable meet-up during a biology test” or “adorable meet-up at a dance.” There was really nothing adorable about “I fed lines to my friend so she could talk to a boy she liked, who is also the boy I like, and she still managed to say the word vagina to him.” So I said, “We played Zombie Air and then we got sandwiches.”