Little Miss Perfect Read online

“I don't mean that. Your car is fine. I mean – man. I haven't see that kind of treatment for anyone but football players during district playoffs. What the hell did you do to deserve that?” Genuine mirth fills him, his hands on his hips. A breeze blows his hair across his forehead and I can see the man he'll become, strong and confident, always finding his footing.

  Like the quarterback he is.

  We walk closer and I come to a dead halt as the words on the windshield come into view, mortified.

  Will bursts into laughter.

  2

  Most Likely to Become a Porn Star is written in hot pink glitter paint across my windshield.

  “Did I miss a class vote for that one?” Will snarks as he points and continues laughing, hard. “Don't remember a page like that in the yearbook, and I was editor.”

  A blush blooms from my chest to my ear tips. My skin matches the magenta sparkly paint.

  “Pretty sure my friend Persephone is responsible for that,” I squeak. She must have just done it right after the rain. It's fresh.

  “Persephone?”

  “Yes?” A head with long, honey-colored hair pops up from behind Will's car, two rows over, her overgrown bangs brushing against the tips of her eyelashes. She's wearing overalls and a massive smile that says, Gotcha.

  “You're dead! SO DEAD!!” I shout. “That is not funny!”

  “Actually, it is,” Will says.

  “I didn't ask for your opinion!”

  “We're told we can do anything if we put our minds to it,” Will says, deadpan. “I'm sure if you try hard enough, you can become a porn star.” His eyes drift lower, as if he's assessing the truth of his joke.

  One finger tip grazes against the paint. Studying it, he smirks, then wipes it off on my windshield. As he moves, his thumb pad slides against more paint, until he frowns and tries to get rid of it, leaving a sparkly line on the underside of his wrist.

  Persephone throws her arm around my shoulders, an ever-present to-go cup of coffee in her hand. Her eyes jump from me to Will, filled with more questions than our pending government final. “What's up?”

  “My blood pressure!” I hiss.

  “I mean why are you both out here?” Her eyes add, Why are you with him?

  “We forgot our government textbooks,” I explain.

  “Why are you out here?” she asks Will.

  “Like I said. To get them from our cars,” I quickly re-explain before he can answer. Is Persephone high? I look at her eyes.

  No. Not high.

  Just an impish jerk.

  “Didn't you turn those in already?” She acts like we're harboring a fugitive.

  “The exam isn't until one o'clock.”

  She looks at her phone. “That's in two hours.”

  “Right.”

  “How much more can you learn in two hours?” she asks, her face pulled back in a kind of existential horror. She takes a long drag off her coffee cup, sucking on the lip like it's a cigarette. A few months ago, she smoked her first one. Our other friend, Fiona, and I keep trying to get her to stop, but once Persephone puts her mind to something, that's it.

  She's not just stubborn. She's stupid-stubborn.

  The worst kind.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think two more hours of studying will make a difference?” she scoffs.

  Will and I exchange a look that makes me feel understood.

  Persephone flips hair off her left shoulder, the long, straight, strands leaving my insides in a puddle of envy. I could spend ten years with a straightening iron and never have hair like that. Reflexively, I reach up.

  Yep.

  Poodlehead.

  Flaming auburn poodlehead. I look like a copper scrubby.

  She points to him, one corner of her mouth scrunched up, evaluating Will like my mother getting an Easter ham at the butcher shop, trying to decide whether it's what she needs.

  “Or is this about trying to edge Mallory out of being valedictorian?” she challenges Will.

  Looking at me, he answers her. “Of course it is.”

  “You left your textbook in your car just so you could walk out here with Mal and intimidate her, all alone in the parking lot? Good thing we came out here to decorate her car, buster!”

  “I think you meant desecrate.” I poke one of the balloons on the antenna. It pokes back. “Persephone, what's on this balloon?”

  “Lube.”

  I peer closer at the balloon. “Is that a condom?”

  “Yeah. We forgot to grab regular balloons at Target, so I improvised.”

  “With condoms?”

  “I'm impressed you had leftovers,” Will says, fighting to keep his face blank.

  Persephone glares at him. “Is that a cut?”

  “No. I'm serious. Who has leftovers?” Tingling takes over every nerve in my body at the thought of Will using a condom.

  “I buy them in bulk because I'm a total slut,” she snaps back.

  His palms go up. “I never said that.”

  Jumping to Will's defense comes naturally. “Technically, Persephone, what he said was the opposite. He was bashing you for not having enough sex.”

  “I never said that, either!” Will protests, cracking the knuckles on his left hand, one at a time. He makes it through three before stopping. As an astute student of All Things Will, I know this means he's nervous.

  Why would he be nervous? It's not like Persephone and I are up there in the High School Popularity Food Chain. Will is lobster and filet.

  We're hamburger in a tube. On sale. At Wal-Mart.

  “I'm trying to help you,” I start to explain to him, feeling like every word out of my mouth is on a dimensional time delay, the multiverse hard at work to transport my words to the exact wrong contexts for maximum chaos.

  “You're really bad at it.” His voice goes low. Is he joking, or angry? I can't tell, Everything about Will is fuzzy.

  So fuzzy.

  My racing brain catches on something, like a parent grabbing a merry go round that's spinning out of control. I look at Persephone and put my hands on my hips, imitating a preschool teacher with infinite patience addressing a three year old. “Don't you have your math final right now?”

  She frowns, grabbing her phone. A few seconds of looking at it and she screams, running off. “Shit! I forgot! Thanks, Mallllll.”

  Her voice fades as she sprints for the double doors.

  “I can't believe it,” Will says.

  “I know! Who forgets they have a final?”

  “I meant the extra condoms part. Who has extras?”

  I laugh nervously, because I have no other way of laughing when Will Lotham jokes about sex. Sex I haven't had yet. Sex I've imagined having with him a thousand times, in a thousand ways, but never, ever in front of my car with the words Most Likely to Become a Porn Star painted on it in glitter-glow hot pink paint.

  Tires squeal on pavement as Sameer Ramini, one of Will's football buddies and the biggest asshole at Harmony Hills High, comes ripping into the parking lot, crookedly managing to take part of three different spots a few rows away. His convertible top is down and he grabs a book and sprints into the building. If he's late for an exam, he's late. Like, an hour late. Perky-level late. His exam score is going to suck.

  I smile. Good. After what he did to me a few years ago, good.

  Will's brow goes down as I realize he's watching me watch Sameer. Before I can even try to explain what I'm thinking, Will's neck moves slightly, the way you become attuned to a sound. “Do you hear that?”

  I go quiet. There's a hum, like a swarm of bees in the distance.

  “I do.” Turning my head, I twist to catch it, the sound low. Lower than you'd expect a swarm of bees to fly.

  “Shhh.” His finger covers his lips. I want to be that finger. Never before in the history of my entire life have I wanted to be a digit.

  My phone beeps with a reminder. Will stays on task, searching for the source of the weird sound. I look a
t my phone.

  “The exam's in less than two hours now, and we have to study. Or, well, I have to study. I need to reinforce my understanding of how to write answers to the document-based questions.” I reach for the handle to the driver's side door.

  He looks in my car window. When his eyes widen, they're even more handsome. Reaching for me, his palm covers mine, stopping my hand on the door.

  I ignite.

  “What? Is there a bee in my car?” I gasp, wondering how I can speak through the flames flying into the air from my lips as he touches me.

  “Something like that.” Moving closer to me, his shoulder grazes mine as he peers in. I can smell him, mint and coffee, and suddenly, I have no senses other than scent and touch. Whatever parts of Will connect with me are all that I am.

  And all that I want to be.

  “What's in there?” I beg, needing more than his answer.

  “I don't – ” His face changes as he tilts his head, astonishment making those blue-green eyes go wide. He bites his lower lip. A wicked grin starts to emerge. “I, uh, Mallory, you might want to brace yourself.”

  “Something dangerous got in there, didn't it?”

  His mouth tightens, a shock of dark hair bisecting his forehead as a sudden breeze blows it askew. “Dangerous? Maybe.”

  “I don't want it to hurt me! Is it big?”

  “Uh,” he chokes, losing his composure, shoulders shaking with amusement. Will is the most self-assured guy at Harmony Hills High, so whatever creepy thing is in my car, it must be bad.

  “Then I'm not opening it! How will I get my textbook out of there?”

  And how do I stop having a runaway heartbeat from your touch?

  No. Wait.

  How do I get more of this? Dear God. Oh, Lord.

  Help.

  “That's not... a bee, Mallory. Unless bees are dark purple, twelve inches long, and have fake veins in them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He points.

  I cup my hands around my eyes as I peer in through the window.

  And find a giant vibrator flailing on my front seat.

  “Oh my GOD!”

  “Not a bee.”

  “I figured that out, Will!” I snap.

  He gives me an appreciative grin. “You can yell.”

  “OF COURSE I CAN YELL!”

  “I've never seen you yell before.” He crosses his arms over his wide chest and leans against the car next to mine as if settling in to watch a show, then quickly lifts his ass off the metal, the leftover rain darkening his jeans in all the right places. “Little Miss Perfect can get angry. Who knew?”

  What the hell does that mean?

  “EVERYONE CAN YELL! ESPECIALLY WHEN THEIR FRIENDS DO THIS TO THEM TWO HOURS BEFORE AN IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT FINAL!” I shout, my mind exploding.

  Little Miss Perfect?

  He calls me that? Do his friends call me that behind my back? Why did he call me Little Miss Perfect? What does this mean?

  And why does he keep looking at me like he's seeing me for the first time in his life?

  “Why are you yelling?” Fiona says, suddenly appearing from behind another car. Her head is shaved, her hair about half an inch long. She has thick black eyeliner on, drawn at the edges like Cleopatra, and she's wearing a sleeveless black tank. Her breasts are bound and her jeans are so baggy she uses rope as a belt. Shit kickers cover her feet, the tips worn down by a file from her father's garage. She henna'd the tips in a pattern that matches a tattoo on her thigh, which you can see through a big tear in her jeans.

  She's a walking dress code violation and likes it that way.

  I point to my car. “Do you really need me to spell out a reason for why I'm yelling?”

  A big grin splits her face. “Gotcha!”

  “This isn't funny!”

  “Porn stars are always funny.”

  “There is sex lube all over my windshield!”

  “Don't worry. All your lectures about safe sex got through to us. We got the condoms with spermicide. Your car can't get pregnant.”

  Will snickers. Fiona looks at him and, comically, does an Ah-oooo-gah face. You know, like in cartoons, where the character's eyes pop out of their head, their tongue drops to the ground and rolls out for fifty yards, and their head smokes?

  That's Fiona right now.

  Looking at Will.

  “You,” she says.

  He points to himself, tapping his chest. “Me?”

  “Yeah. You. What are you doing out here?” Ignoring him, she reaches for her phone, flips it open, and starts texting someone, pressing buttons furiously. Probably Persephone.

  “I'm – what?”

  “Why are you here with Mallory?”

  The words with Mallory burn in my brain, like leather working in shop class.

  Szzzzzzzz.

  “We forgot our government textbooks, if it's any of your business.” Will's voice takes on that quality guys in his circle have, where who he shares information with depends on how they fit in, status wise. If you're not important enough, you're not worth his attention.

  “She's my bestie. It's my business.” Fiona holds firm. “And if you're here to scare her into bombing the final so you can be valedictorian, fuck off.”

  “Hey!” Will and I shout the word at the same time, in two completely different tones.

  Actually, huh.

  Same tone.

  Outrage.

  “Fuck you right back, Feisty,” he says, resurrecting her nickname from middle school. Fiona dropkicked Chris Fletcher, one of Will's football buddies, and the name stuck. “I don't need to cheat to win.”

  “Not cheat. Just intimidate. I know how your kind operate.”

  “My kind? My kind? What the hell does that mean?” Will challenges, his body loose and casual, his face sharp and angry. Having one of my best friends trading profanities with my biggest crush makes me feel like a referee in a fight I never agreed to jump into.

  I'm up against the ropes, ready to be pummeled.

  Fiona looks at me. I know exactly what she means. A tiny, imperceptible head shake from me makes her stand down.

  “Whatever. You're not worth the fight. Bye. Good luck with your finals.” She looks him up and down. “You'll need it.”

  And with that, Feisty walks away.

  “What a piece of work,” Will says to me. “That's your best friend?”

  My turn to snort. “Like your friends are any better?”

  “They don't run around accusing people of using underhanded tactics to win.”

  “That's exactly what Fletch and Ramini did last fall during football season, when they accused the Lawrence team of using covert signals to eavesdrop on the coaches.”

  “That's different.” But I can tell he's surprised I am aware of anything football related.

  “No, it isn't. Objectively speaking, if you apply the same standards, it's the same.”

  “Do you apply objectivity to everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even to rejecting Harvard?”

  My heart leaps into my throat like it's jumping from a burning building.

  3

  “Excuse me?” I back up, the tip of a blown-up condom scraping against my hair, the sudden chemical scent of lube reminding me of hospitals, shots, stitches.

  Pain.

  “You just said that applying the same, objective standards to everything is important to you.”

  “Well, not – I didn't – ”

  “And I heard you rejected Harvard.”

  “Heard?”

  “Through the grapevine.”

  “The grapevine talks about me?” The words are out before I can stop myself.

  “The grapevine talks about everyone. You're not special.”

  You're not special.

  I close my eyes and try not to curl my abs in from the verbal KO those words just delivered. His words have the same power as Fiona's foot to Chris Fletcher's jaw.

&nb
sp; As I lean against my car, I feel a strange vibration. A humming. I'm turning inside out, drawing on the deep energy of the earth, an ancient and timeless –

  “Your vibrator.”

  “My what?”

  He points. “It's next to your gear shaft. It's making the whole car hum. You might want to turn it off.”

  “Quit calling it my vibrator. It's not mine! I don't want to touch that thing!” A quick glance inside my car shows that the stick shift has been covered in some sort of giant silicone... apparatus... that turns the stick shift into a peach penis.

  Persephone and Fiona are dead meat.

  “If you don't put it away, when finals are over, someone will see it,” he says dryly, going back to the casual, closed-off guy I've known for four years, as if the mask is adjusted and back in place.

  “I don't care if someone sees it, but it clearly bothers you,” I say, stung by his words earlier. “Remember? I'm not special. Why would anyone care what's in my car?”

  He frowns, then closes his eyes, taking in a long breath, letting it out while his hand rakes through his hair. “That was mean. I'm sorry.” Real Will engaged.

  I'm getting dizzy watching him flip-flop.

  “Yeah, it was mean. It was also true. I'll take the truth over fakery any day.”

  In the air between us, something pauses. Absorbs. Attunes.

  “You want truth?” he says quietly, voice low and full of attention.

  I stop myself from reaching into my car and look at him. “Always.”

  “Fine. Then here's some truth: you made a huge mistake.” The words come out of him like he's been holding them in a pressure cooker. I swear I feel steam as they blast out across the gulf between us.

  “What?”

  “Rejecting Harvard. Big mistake.”

  “No, it's not!”

  Fury – abject fury – takes over his face.

  I step back. I step away. There's so much emotion in Will Lotham suddenly, all of it aimed right at -

  Me?

  “You know how it all works,” he says, as if he's angry with me. As if I've done something wrong and I don't know what that is. “Do all the extracurriculars. Be the best jock in town. Get the highest SAT scores. Take all the AP classes. Volunteer and intern and network until you are the cream of the crop. Get into a good Ivy. Then grad school. Come out on top, always fighting, and keep rising. We're supposed to push and push and push, right?”