We Are the Perfect Girl

by Ariel Kaplan

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “But thank you. I mean, really. It’s really nice.”

  “Well, you know. My mom always said the way to a girl’s heart is through her best friend.”

  I turned away to get a bowl out of the cabinet. I said, “Oh, right. Okay.”

  “Not that…Ugh. That sounded better in my head.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll make sure to tell Bethany you came over.” I dumped half the soup into the bowl and put it in the microwave. I felt grungy and gross and sick, but on the other hand, at least there was soup. Also, Greg was in my kitchen. Talking to me. Talking to me, knowing who I was. I felt a little naked, and not in a good way.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll just…”

  “Can I get the Latin homework from you?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. It’s written down in my notes, but I’ll text you with it later.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  I wanted him to leave. I didn’t want him to leave. I said, “Um, so Bethany said you took your Mandarin final last weekend.”

  “Oh. Yeah, at NOVA. I did.”

  The microwave beeped, and I got my soup out and sat down with it, taking a second to breathe in the steam. “What about Latin? Are you going to take that at NOVA next year? Since you already did the AP?”

  He sat down opposite me, like we were old friends. We kind of were old friends. He said, “No, I was thinking about letting that one go. I only took it in the first place because it’s supposed to be a good gateway language.”

  “Right. And you already spoke Spanish.”

  “Yeah. What about you? You never wanted to speak to the living?”

  I laughed a little and tested the temperature of the soup against my lower lip. “I mean, I guess so. I just grew up with a lot of Latin in the house, ’cause of my dad, so I wanted to learn it. I really like it, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, there’s something kind of…finite about it. I don’t know. I guess I like the way I can draw boundaries around it.”

  He nodded. “I can see that. What are you going to do next year?”

  “What, for Latin? I’m not sure. I’ve already got five years of it. I thought maybe I’d just do some other elective.”

  “What about NOVA?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about it. Isn’t the scheduling kind of hard?”

  “Most of the classes are evenings or weekends, so it isn’t too bad.”

  I slurped at my soup. “It’d be nice to sleep through first block.”

  “That part is very good.” He got up. “Well, I hope you feel better.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This is the magic soup, so.”

  “Is it really?”

  “It definitely is. Good for what ails you, my mom always said. When she was pregnant with my brother, it was the only thing she could keep down for weeks.”

  “Huh. Well, I guess I’ll have to try it next time I’m sick. Or pregnant.”

  I got up to let him out. “I’ll bring you some. Or, um, Bethany will. I’m sure she will.”

  “I’ll leave it to you to make sure that happens.”

  “Oh, absolutely. I will be your soup enforcer.”

  “See you,” he said.

  “Bye,” I said, and then he was gone.

  In the bottom of the soup bag was a fortune cookie. Now, I’m not really into astrology or fortune-telling on the whole, but I have found that occasionally you can get some really excellent advice from a cookie. Like the time I had one that told me a clean environment is best for learning, and then I found ten dollars when I was throwing crap out of my desk.

  So I tore the cookie open. Maybe it would tell me what to do about the mess I was in. It said: A BIRD IN THE HAND MAKES EXCELLENT DIM SUM.

  Perhaps not so useful this time.

  * * *

  —

  I was finishing the last of my reheated soup that night when Greg messaged me.

  Are you feeling better?

  I am, thanks. I tried to remember my Russian fairy tales. Was there one about magic soup? Baba Yaga would approve.

  You’re getting into the Russian stuff. I told you you would.

  I laughed. With all the languages you know, you always lead with that one. Couldn’t you occasionally say something in Italian or Spanish?

  I could, he said. But for our purposes Russian is better.

  Oh really. And why is that?

  It’s more romantically evocative, of course.

  I laughed out loud.

  Right. Russian is known globally as the language of love. That whole business about it being French is just really good marketing by the Parisians.

  I’ll have you know that Russian is an extremely romantic language. Dr. Zhivago? Anna Karenina? War and Peace? They’re all, like, giant romantic epics.

  Fine, I said. Tell me something romantic in Russian.

  He typed:

  Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,

  То робостью, то ревностью томим.

  I said, Be still, my quivering heart.

  Oh please, you don’t even know what it says!

  Of course I don’t!

  …

  So are you going to tell me what it says?

  So now you want to know.

  Fine, don’t tell me.

  I’ll tell you.

  …

  It says: I loved you wordlessly, without a hope,

  By shyness tortured, or by jealousy.

  Some little noise came from my throat. I hated that noise. He didn’t know. He doesn’t know. Those are just words to him. That they happened to be exactly the right words was another matter. I stared at the screen and then typed, Oh.

  That’s Pushkin, he said.

  It’s very romantic, I said. You were right.

  …

  …

  Hey, he said. Did I scare you off? Here. Here’s another one: I was not born to amuse the tsars. That’s Pushkin, too. Just ignore the other one.

  No, I said. No, the other one was perfect. It’s perfect.

  Oh. Good. That’s good. I don’t want to freak you out or anything.

  You didn’t, I said. It’s just, I’ve felt that. Those words, I’ve felt that.

  About me?

  Yes, about you. All the time.

  You know you don’t have to be wordless with me, right?

  I know. It’s just hard to say what I’m feeling.

  Why? he asked.

  I don’t know.

  Your words mean a lot to me. I want you to know that.

  My words.

  I mean, you must know how beautiful you are. And you are. You’re probably the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. But you’re so much more than that. It’s like, when we’re talking like this, I just feel this—

  I typed, Connection.

  Yes! Tell me you also feel that. Like, like there’s this direct line between my brain and yours, like we just telegraph on the same frequency. I’ve never had that before. It’s like you see past everything that isn’t important right to the stuff that is.

  I typed, I feel that, too.

  Maybe it’s because we can’t see each other. There’s nothing but thoughts.

  We’re both unseen and unseeing. There’s nothing but the part of ourselves that’s inside us.

  YES

  I put my hand over my mouth. Did he know? He had to know. He must know. He couldn’t know.

  He said, Damn it, my phone’s down to 3% and I left my charger in my car. I’ll see you tomorrow, right? If you’re better?

  Tomorrow. Of course you will.

  I can’t wait to se
e you for real.

  For real. What was I doing? What had I done?

  Everything suddenly snapped back to reality. I would see Greg tomorrow, but he wouldn’t see me. For all he was talking about seeing down to the essentials, he had no idea who I was. I wanted to type How can you not know? How can you not know who I am? I’m right in front of your face every day!

  And I couldn’t understand it, that was the thing. I legitimately didn’t understand how Greg could not know that Bethany couldn’t possibly be on the other end of this conversation. She just didn’t use words the same way I did.

  I suppose I could have forgiven him for not knowing that part, since he probably barely knew what Bethany did sound like. But the thing was, I was there, too. I was there talking to him, with my own words, in my own voice. And all I could think was if he didn’t recognize that I was the same person IRL and online, it was only because he didn’t want to. Someone who could speak six freaking languages should have been able to recognize my speech patterns, my language, my words.

  I typed, I can’t wait to see you, either.

  Because it was true. I’d probably be with Bethany, and he’d come ambling up with his happy-go-lucky gait, and he’d kiss Bethany and not me. But I’d be there. And I’d be happy to see him. More than happy. It would be the best part of my day, watching him put his arm around my best friend and smile at me like we were buddies.

  I actually did feel a little better the next day, and I like to think it was due to the magic soup, though it could have been the fact that I slept in until 11:30. My sinuses felt less like impacted golf balls, and after I took a couple of decongestants I felt almost normal. I texted Bethany, Your boy brought me the magic soup, and now I am magically healed.

  She replied, You must’ve gotten the only magic bowl. I’m still sick.

  Damn. Really?

  Yeah, my throat is on fire. I’m going to get it swabbed in a little while to make sure it’s not strep.

  Oh. Sorry. Hope it’s not strep.

  While I was eating my cereal (and wishing I had more soup), I pulled up the course catalog for NOVA. They didn’t have a huge Latin department, and it looked like I’d probably place out of most of their classes if I did well on the AP, but they did have one on Virgil that looked interesting. It was on the Annandale campus, which isn’t too far away, on Mondays and Wednesdays from five to seven. I don’t row in the fall, so logistically, it was possible. I went in search of my dad. He was sitting at his desk with a pad of paper on his lap and some computer program open on the monitor in front of him.

  “It lives!” he exclaimed, without turning around. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Ish.”

  “What do you know about SAS?” he asked.

  “Only that I’m full of it.”

  “Not sass,” he said, smiling. “S-A-S. It’s a statistical programming language. Supposed to be very easy to learn.”

  “I’m guessing it’s not?”

  He pushed away from the desk. “Maybe it’s me.”

  “Isn’t this the kind of thing you have grad students for?”

  “I just need a simple program that’ll make me a database.”

  “You could ask Sebastian.”

  He gave me a dark look. I said, “He does computer stuff!”

  He made a face. Dad was analyzing medieval tax documents over the period of several hundred years to see how the money moved around. The pipe roll of 1130 was the first surviving English tax document, and then there were a bunch missing because of the civil war that happened right after that, when the English barons promised to support Henry’s daughter Maude as the queen and then her cousin tried to take over anyway and the whole country spent twenty years eating itself alive in a civil war because the patriarchy sucks.

  Anyway, that’s what Dad was doing, and had been doing for the past couple of years, but it was not going well because he is not very good at math or computers.

  “It took Einstein ten years to learn calculus,” I reminded him.

  “When you’re Einstein, you can take ten years to learn calculus. Unfortunately, I’m not him.”

  “He was a crappy family man,” I said. “So we’re probably better off.”

  “Did you really come down here to talk about the pipe roll?”

  “No, actually, I came to talk about my classes for next year.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s just, you know they do dual enrollment with the community college, right?”

  “I remember Delia mentioned it a couple of years ago.”

  “Yeah, so I’m kind of topped out on Latin as of this year, and I was thinking maybe I could take a class over there so I don’t have to give it up.”

  “At NOVA, huh? How would you get over there?”

  “I’m not really sure about that part. I have this, uh, friend. And he’s taking some classes over there, and he seems to like them. Otherwise I’ll have to sit out Latin next year.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “We’d have to figure out the logistics with your mom. You ever been there, even?”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

  “Well, when you’re feeling better, why don’t you head over? Check it out. See if you think it’s workable to get there on your own.” He smiled at his program. “I don’t suppose dual enrollment means the classes are free?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But the credits transfer, so it’s probably cheaper in the long run.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. I suspected what he really wanted was to get back to work. “Maybe I’ll just go over there today,” I suggested.

  “Aren’t you still sick?”

  “Barely,” I said. “Can I use the car this afternoon?”

  “I’ll be doing this until I retire,” he said. “So sure.”

  * * *

  —

  NOVA has six different locations, not one contained campus like GMU. Annandale is the biggest one and also the closest to my house, so I decided to head over there that afternoon. I stopped at a bench on the quad and watched the students go by. It was kind of a mixed bunch in terms of age. There were people who looked like they were my age or younger, and then a couple of ladies in hijabs walked by who looked like they were probably in their fifties.

  I wasn’t sure why I was there, except that I was curious. Middleridge was starting to feel kind of tight, like a shirt I’d outgrown, and this was the logical next size up. Plus, there was something undeniably appealing about the idea of telling people at school, “Sorry, I won’t be here tomorrow. I’ll be at college.” I smiled thinking about it. I wandered around the main building, where most of the classes were held, and then went down to the basement to check out the bookstore.

  There wasn’t a lot in the language section, so I meandered down the aisle to see what they had for English. There was a huge tome of the giants of Russian literature on the shelf for a literature-in-translation class. I pulled it out and sat down on the floor with it on my lap.

  The type was really small. I’m not normally one to be bothered by that, but it was like the publisher had tried to save money by using the least amount of paper possible. And on top of that, there didn’t seem to be normal punctuation marks, like quotes or paragraph breaks.

  “Good grief,” I muttered, two pages in. I wasn’t even sure what I was reading—a short story by Chekhov, I knew that much, and there was a little boy and he seemed to be eating soup? With his nanny?

  Someone walked up to me and, in a low voice like a movie announcer’s, said, “Aphra Brown.”

  I looked up into the face of Greg D’Agostino, who was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Hey,” I said. “I mean, hi. I mean.” Of all the times to be channeling Bethany.

  Jeez, that was a mean thought.

  He said, “Aren’t you sick
?”

  “Not so much now. There was, you know, the soup, which you brought. That you brought. Which you brought. Ugh, they both sound right, I don’t know.”

  “I think it’s which,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, it’s a nonrestrictive clause, right?”

  Brilliantly, I said, “Um.”

  “Nonessential information,” he explained.

  “Well, then no, because the origin of the soup was important. So I’ve changed my mind. It’s the soup that you brought.”

  I wished this felt less like flirting. I was pretty sure bantering about the rules of English grammar didn’t count as flirting for Greg. I wondered if he and Bethany flirted, but I imagined they just skipped that part and went straight to the making out. “So,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

  “I was meeting with the professor about my independent study,” he said. “I had to rework the syllabus since your girl Bethany reminded me I’d included no women.”

  That’s right. She had said that.

  “Are you signing up for next semester?” he asked.

  “I—I’m not sure. I just wanted to look around, I guess.”

  “And you decided to do a little light reading?”

  I looked down at my book. “Something like that.”

  “That translation isn’t getting you anywhere,” he said, putting the book back on the shelf. “Too archaic. I have the Robert Payne at home, if you want it.”

  “Don’t you usually read this stuff in the original?”

  “I go back and forth,” he said. “Depends how ambitious I’m feeling.”

  I got up off the floor. The decongestant I’d taken seemed to have struck the edge off my wits, or maybe that was just Greg. “I guess I’m done, then,” I said. “I was just looking around.”

  “I’m just picking this up,” he said, flashing me a slim paperback with a title in Russian that I couldn’t read and didn’t feel like asking about. “I was going to get something to eat now, though.” He inclined his head toward the door. “Did you want something? The food’s not great, but it’s better than the stuff at Middleridge.” He grimaced. “Barely.”