We Are the Perfect Girl

by Ariel Kaplan

  “Time,” I said, “is a relative thing.”

  “Yeah, no. Not in this case.”

  I was writing as fast as I could, translating a paragraph of Virgil. Hic. Haec. Hoc. “No, no, this is like a universal concept. Did you see the Neil deGrasse Tyson special on NOVA last week? It was amazeballs.” Hic, haec. “Almost makes me want to forgive him for that whole demoting Pluto business.”

  “Aphra.”

  “Ms. Wright,” came Greg’s voice. I hadn’t realized he was still there. “I have a question about the homework.”

  “Hm?”

  “Well, I noticed the Aeneid translation in our textbook didn’t match the one from the Wheelock book, and I was wondering what was going on with that?”

  “What? They match.”

  “No, they don’t, actually, and I’m wondering about the cases—”

  Bless Greg D’Agostino. Ms. Wright wouldn’t be able to resist looking it up, especially since Greg was the one asking. I blazed through the rest of the paragraph. At this point, it hardly mattered if it was perfect; I just needed to finish it and I’d get at least half points.

  “Aphra, your reprieve is over,” she said just as I finished the last sentence.

  “I’m done,” I said.

  “You should thank Greg,” she said, taking my test off my desk. “You didn’t deserve the extra time.”

  “Thank you, Greg.”

  Greg smiled his most perfect smile. I kind of wished he hadn’t. After we exited the classroom, I said, “Seriously, though. Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Did you really fall asleep in the cafeteria?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how you define words like asleep. And cafeteria.”

  He chuckled. We were ten minutes out from the bell, so the halls were mostly emptied. I was supposed to ride with Sophie to practice, but a glance at my phone told me she’d given up on me and left five minutes ago. Greg said, “You need a ride to practice?”

  “That depends.”

  “On how you define practice?”

  “On whether you’re offering.”

  “I am, actually. I got a text from Coach Allen that Samir Rice has strep, so I can try out one of the fours today.”

  “Oh, then yes.”

  The idea of rowing that afternoon kind of made me want to run away, but at least I wouldn’t have to talk anymore, because my brain was exhausted.

  “You okay?” he said on the way to his car.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I just don’t think I’ve ever seen you this quiet.”

  I got into Greg’s ancient silver Ford Focus on the passenger side, pushing his gym bag out of the way with my feet. The truth was, I was tired of talking, of running my mouth, of turning on the charm every second, of making sure everyone else was okay. I just wanted to say Today sucked and I’m cranky and all I had for lunch was half a sandwich that wasn’t even the kind I like. I wanted someone else to do the talking. Somebody else to be in charge. Like, the image of the fairy-tale princess has never particularly appealed to me, but right then, it almost did. Let someone else slay the dragons. I just wanted a shoulder rub and maybe a nap.

  Is it so terrible to occasionally want to be rescued?

  I slumped a little sideways in Greg’s direction. Maybe it was an unconscious move and maybe it wasn’t. I remembered that I still hadn’t eaten the PowerBar I’d brought for lunch, but I was so tired I couldn’t even manage to get it out of my bag.

  “Hey,” Greg said. “Seriously, are you coming down with something?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  He put an arm around my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze. It was friendly, not romantic—not at all—but I still went into semi-shock from the contact. “Don’t worry about that Latin test,” he said. “I’m sure you did fine.”

  “Yeah,” I said. He’d withdrawn his arm, but I hadn’t yet moved away from my squeezed position next to him. He smelled so good. I was so tired. His shoulder was so…there. I thought, We are friends, and it would not be odd at all if I laid my head there for a hot second, so I did. I put my head on Greg’s shoulder. And he didn’t flinch. In fact, for one second, he leaned his cheek against the top of my head. And then I did what I’d never thought I’d do with Greg….I fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  I woke up to the sound of Greg’s voice saying, “Hey. Sleeping Beauty, we’re here.”

  Sleeping Beauty indeed. I opened my eyes and saw, with mounting horror, that there was a filament of drool connecting my mouth to Greg’s shoulder.

  I sat up, saying, “I am so sorry,” though whether I was apologizing for sleeping on him or drooling on him I wasn’t sure, and I certainly wasn’t going to mention the drooling if he hadn’t noticed it. I rubbed a kink out of my neck.

  “No worries,” he said. “Hope you’re rested, though, because this is not going to be fun.”

  He opened the door and got out, and it was only then that I realized it had started to rain.

  “Oh,” I said. “Joy.”

  “Carpe diem!” he said, running from the car while being pelted by fat raindrops.

  I watched him get soaked as he ran off between the trees, and I set a hand to the middle of my chest. Maybe I wasn’t awake yet, I don’t know, but I felt kind of muddy, like whatever was going on inside my chest was more than just one thing; I couldn’t name it, and it made me uncomfortable, but not in a bad way. It wasn’t eros, exactly, and it wasn’t philia, exactly. If it was equal parts both, then what was it? Love should be something specific, not something amorphous, like mashed potatoes. The word you use for your favorite song should not be the same one you use for how you feel about the person who lights up your whole life.

  That was the word for how I felt about Greg, I realized. Not eros and not philia. Lux. Light.

  I followed him through the rain toward the river and the rest of my team and our boats, where everyone was cranky and drenched, but I couldn’t think of anything besides Greg’s shoulder and how for fifteen minutes it had felt so perfectly like home.

  Mom was in the living room with a cup of tea when I got home. She looked not exactly happy, but that was kind of her resting face since Delia had brought her boyfriend home, so I wasn’t sure if it meant anything.

  “So,” she said. “How was Latin today?”

  I started getting the idea that maybe this was more than a case of resting cranky face. “Oh,” I said. “It was great. You know, hic, haec, hoc, the usual. There was a test, I aced it, blah blah blah, but I have an essay for English tomorrow—”

  “Your teacher sent me an email.”

  I swallowed. “Did she? Ms. Wright? Huh. That was, uh. Friendly. Of her.”

  “She said you missed most of your test. Because you fell asleep in the cafeteria.”

  “Ha ha! Yeah. I was up too late, can you believe it?”

  “You’re really going to go with that?”

  I flopped down on the couch. “Yeah, no.”

  “What happened to the ‘I triangulated the route and can be back in thirty minutes’ story?”

  “That didn’t quite happen.”

  “You were forty minutes late!”

  “Thirty-five! And you could have mentioned to me that you have to wait twenty minutes at the allergist!”

  She blinked at me. “What?”

  “They make you wait twenty minutes. Surely you read the sign.”

  She scowled at the carpet. “Your father always took him. Before today, that is.”

  “He never told you about the waiting?”

  “Must’ve slipped his mind. Aphra…”

  “Listen, I am trying!” I said. “I am trying to do the right thing here! And yes, I was very late today, but next time I�
��ll remember to make sure Kit has his lunch, and I’ll go out a different door, and I won’t park in the fire lane. I’m sorry, okay? It’s not like I was late because I was smoking weed in the parking lot.”

  “I know you weren’t. Aphra, the thing is, you missed half a test.”

  “I finished that test! Look, what did you want me to do? I took him today because you asked me.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have asked you. And I didn’t know about the twenty-minute waiting thing.”

  “So if you’d known, you were just going to miss your meeting?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. But your job is to go to school. Not to run your brother all over town in the middle of the day.”

  “So let me get this straight. Am I in trouble or not?”

  “No. Of course not. It was my fault. There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why did you tell me you could do this when you knew you couldn’t? Even without the twenty minutes, you would have been late.”

  “Otherwise you were going to make Kit give up the cat.”

  She recoiled a little in her chair. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

  “That’s it?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She stared out the window for a minute; then she said, “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour, if you want to take a shower first.”

  I picked at a snag in my crew uniform on my way up the stairs. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the number of things that happen to me in the space of a single day, like it’s just more than 24 hours’ worth of stuff. Maybe that’s why I was so tired, and my throat was kind of scratchy, like I was fighting something off. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and stay there.

  After my shower, I decided to lie down for a minute before I got my clothes on and went down for dinner. I ended up falling asleep instead.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up the next morning, I felt a thousand times worse. Like, my throat wasn’t worse, but whatever nasty little virus was inhabiting my epithelial cells had migrated to my head and was setting up shop in my sinuses. My head hurt. My face hurt. Most of all, this area behind my eyes that I was usually unaware of felt like it was full of molten lava.

  I got up and took a decongestant. Mom and Kit were in the kitchen, and she took one look at me and said, “Yikes.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m sure the drugs will kick in in half an hour.”

  She put a hand to my forehead.

  “I’m dying,” I said.

  “You’re hot,” she confirmed. She went looking through the drawers. “I can’t find the thermometer. Are you stay-home sick or go-to-the-doctor sick?”

  “Stay-home sick, I think.”

  “How come you never ask me that?” Kit asked.

  “Because one of you likes to fake it to get out of school.”

  That was not me. Not anymore, anyway. Staying home may be fun when you’re nine, but by the time you’re in high school it just means you have to make up all the work, and it tends to snowball on you until you wish you’d just gone in the first place. It’s hardly ever worth staying home unless the alternative is, like, puking on your desk.

  “I think I should go,” I said.

  But by then, Mom had found the thermometer and was jamming it in my ear. I said, “Ow.”

  “Hundred point two,” she said.

  “Damn it,” I muttered.

  “Lucky,” Kit said.

  * * *

  —

  I spent the day on the couch watching cartoons and wishing someone else was home; Delia and Sebastian were downtown at some museum (which seemed shockingly unironic for Sebastian), and everyone else was at school. Kit’d left some books on the coffee table, so at one point I started thumbing through his library copy of World Fairy Tales, stopping on “The Ugly Duckling.”

  I hate “The Ugly Duckling” with a passion; it is, in fact, my least favorite fairy tale, because the moral of the story is that it’s bad to be mean to ugly people because they might turn out to be hot later on. Like, how is that a good message for kids? Why couldn’t the duck have stayed ugly and the other ducks have realized it’s just wrong to treat people badly? Or to treat ducks badly. Or whatever. Anyway, it’s a rotten fairy tale. The swan doesn’t even do anything except grow up to be cute.

  There are actually a lot of fairy tales I don’t like. For example:

  “Beauty and the Beast”: It’s good to love someone despite their appearance, because your love might make them super hot eventually.

  “Cinderella”: If you are super hot under your rags, a handsome prince might see past your menial existence.

  “Snow White”: More of same.

  “The Little Mermaid”: Well, in the Disney version, it’s that if you’re hot enough, no one cares whether you can communicate. In the original, it’s that if you are hot enough, you can steal some poor mermaid’s man and then laugh like hell when she turns into flotsam.

  It was really disheartening reading these as a homely child, let me tell you. I wanted just one fairy tale where the princess was ugly and stayed that way and got the prince anyway. But there are no stories like that. I slid the book to the other side of the coffee table and picked up the mug of mint tea I’d made myself. I was kind of in that twilight state where I was too sick to sleep and too tired to be awake, so I decided to split the difference and take a bath, which did actually make me feel a little better. Afterward, I texted Bethany so she’d know I was sick before she got to lunch, saying, I am so sick OMG.

  She texted back, OMG, me too.

  I may die from this, I said.

  Sore throat?

  No, head cold.

  My throat hurts so bad I can’t even talk.

  Ugh.

  Ugh.

  I hate this.

  I hate it more. I wish I had soup. Colin ate all the ramen.

  I also wish I had soup. But then I’d have to cook it, and I can’t since I’m dying. Hey, if you told Colin you were dying, do you think he’d go out and buy soup?

  HA HA HA no.

  Seriously, though. You could try.

  Hang on.

  …

  He said no.

  Damn it.

  Yeah, I really drew the short straw for brothers.

  To be fair, Kit wouldn’t get me any, either, if he were here.

  Only because he can’t drive yet.

  That’s probably true.

  I glanced at the clock. Almost time for Latin. Oh, crap, Latin.

  Hey, I said. Gotta go text someone about Latin homework before I forget.

  Okay. I’d say talk to you later, but I’ll be dead then.

  Hey, so will I. If you go first, save me a seat, okay? Wherever you end up.

  What makes you think we’re going to the same place?

  Just what are you implying?

  Nothing, she said. I’ll save you a seat between me and David Bowie.

  You’re the sweetest.

  I texted: John, John. John. John.

  John replied, Where are you?

  Sick. Can you text me the Latin homework?

  Are you going to be back on Friday? I got stuck with Joel and he sucks.

  Probably? It’s just like a sinus thing, I can’t breathe through my nose at all.

  Wow, he said, your nose. You sure that’s not serious? That’s like if Kim K broke her ass, right?

  I stared at my phone. I did not answer.

  Aphra? Come on, it’s a joke.

  I still didn’t answer, because there are very few things I do not joke about, but my nose is one of them. It was worse because John was my friend. We’d been in Latin together since I was a freshman and he was a sophomore, and we’d been on crew together
just as long. We didn’t really hang out socially, but I’d always thought we were cool. Sometimes it seems like whenever I start to feel like maybe I am overreacting about my nose, somebody says something like that and I realize I’m not. It’s like the universe’s way of instituting a course correction. Don’t go that way, Aphra. You know where you belong, and it’s not on the path of “almost pretty in the right light.”

  Never mind, I said. I’ll ask Mitzi.

  It was just a dumb joke. I’m sorry. Don’t ask Mitzi.

  I turned my phone off and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  —

  When I woke up, it was three o’clock and someone was knocking on my front door. My throat was better but my head was worse, and I hoped it was just UPS or something, but after thirty seconds, the knocking came again. A voice said, “Aphra?”

  A boy’s voice. I knew that voice.

  I got up and staggered toward the door.

  It was Greg, carrying a takeout bag. “Uh, hi,” I said. I was still in my pajamas, which consisted of a pair of leggings and an old Mason T-shirt that used to be my dad’s. I hadn’t actually found my way to a hairbrush yet. Or a toothbrush.

  “Hey,” he said. “Sorry for just, like, showing up, but I was at Bethany’s and she said you were sick, too.” He held up the bag. “I brought soup.”

  “You. Brought soup?”

  “Well, the thing is I was going to get some for Bethany, and she kind of mentioned the hot-and-sour at Yen Cheng is her favorite and also your favorite, so I just got two containers.” He paused. “I hope that’s okay.”

  “No, it’s…it’s really nice. I actually forgot to have lunch.”

  “You might need to heat it up,” he said. “I was at Bethany’s first, so it’s probably not that hot now.”

  “But still sour, I hope.”

  He smiled. “I’m sure it is.”

  I took the bag from him and extracted the container of lukewarm soup. He’d even remembered the crunchy noodles, which are the best part. I went into the kitchen to nuke it, and he followed me, which I guess made sense since I hadn’t said goodbye or anything. I realized I might be a little more out of it than I’d thought.