The Perfection Paradox (11 page)

Hannah sat in
one of the last line of seats the seniors had managed to fill, at
the end of row eleven of the fifty that stretched out in front of
the principal.

Principal
Andrews filled the students in on the details of Graduation,
explaining everything from the frivolity of the dress code to the
technicality of what exact grades qualified as enough to graduate.
He explained that parents who wished to sign up for Graduation
Committee should email him or the Senior Class President, Kennedy
Blakewood. Hannah noticed a head of white gold hair nod in the
front row, which had subconsciously been reserved for the likes of
Brooke Kent, Hunter Campbell and his sidekicks.

The first row
had been the last to fill up as half the Varsity football team
turned up five minutes late, sauntering into the auditorium, joking
loudly with each other, oblivious to anyone but themselves. The
other students were too wary of the consequences to sit in the
first row.

Principal
Andrews concluded the assembly by informing them that their senior
pages would be due in that Friday.

“
What’s a
senior page?” Hannah asked curiously as they filed out of the
cavernous auditorium.

“
It’s a
tradition here,” Marie explained “You write to all your friends and
family, it’s kind of a like a thanks and goodbye. They publish them
in the yearbook. Think of it as a souvenir!”

Hannah
fiddled with a loose thread hanging from her shirt, what could she
write to these people she’d known less than three
months?

She made her
way to her literature class, slumping into the seat next to Marie
and pulling out her binder and notepad.

The teacher
launched herself into a twenty-minute monologue regarding symbolism
in the Great Gatsby and Hannah felt the woman’s dulcet tones lull
her into a dangerous state of sleepiness. Her eyes fell shut slowly
as Hannah tried to hold her head up, balancing her chin on her
fist, her elbow planted on the table. As her eyes closed her arm
swayed involuntarily until it buckled and she nearly smashed her
face into the imitation wood surface of her desk.

Hannah
glanced over at Marie, who was doodling absent-mindedly on a piece
of paper she’d previously been taking notes on.

Hannah’s brow
furrowed. Marie had written her name down alongside half a dozen
others. Under everyone else’s name Marie had scribbled messy
unreadable scripture. One word had been written under Hannah’s
name.

‘
Senior Page’
was written at the top of the leaf of paper in big bold
letters.

She felt her
stomach sink and her face burn up, although she’d only been here a
couple of months, these girls were probably the closest thing she
had to friends and they could barely think of a single memory they
had together.

Hannah spent
the rest of the afternoon and the whole journey home pondering the
notion moodily. By the time she walked into the dingy living room
of her parents rented house, she’d worked herself into a state of
unease and misery.

“
How was
school?” her mother asked as Hannah poured herself a glass of milk
from the fridge. A large tower of clay stood in the middle of the
room and Hannah’s mother was attempting to mould it into a replica
of Michelangelo’s David. So far it looked more like Jabba the Hutt.
The ridiculous sculpture did little to improve Hannah’s mood.
“Fine” she snapped, taking a long sip from her glass. Its rim was
chipped and the glass had turned a murky greyish colour over
time.

Her father
walked in, dressed in mustard coloured corduroy dungarees and
sandals. Hannah rolled her eyes. All this artistic bullshit was
becoming a bit too much to handle.

“
Why are you
so quiet?” her father asked as he pulled some clay off of Jabba’s
knee and pressed it into the side of his head. Hannah shrugged and
turned her back on them, taking another swig of her
milk.

“
So Hannah,
your mother and I were checking out Craigslist earlier. How would
you feel about graduating high school in
Kansas
?” her father exclaimed
enthusiastically.

Hannah nearly
spat out the remainder of her milk.

She smacked
her glass down on the table forcefully before turning around and
glaring from one parent to another.

“
Please tell
me you’re joking…” she breathed.

Her parents
were exchanging worried glances.

“
Kansas is
supposed to be a beautiful place to settle down, maybe in a few
years we can buy a house” her mother explained, a thin mask of
empathy barely hid the deep greedy visage beneath, her true
face.

Hannah was
seething.

“
Firstly
, you two cannot afford to
buy a house, we barely have money for our basic needs, I’m probably
going to have to whore myself out if I even want to get myself
through college. When you made the decision to pursue art you
pretty much ruined any chance I ever had of having a normal life
and any chance we ever had of owning a house. We can barely afford
this place,” she said indicating to the decrepit house they were
standing in.

“
Secondly
, I’m tired of being lied to
by you. Every place we move to you promise we’ll settle down, and
within six months we’re packing up again! The reason I was upset
today was because we’re supposed to be writing our senior pages,
and one of my only friends in the world could only think of a
single thing to say to me, and that’s
your
fault
!”

She stopped
to catch her breath.

“
You’ve
ruined my life, dragging me all over the country, basically
ensuring I never have any real friends. After a while I just
stopped trying, I just stopped letting people in, because I knew in
a couple of months I’d be moving on anyway. I can forgive how
absolutely embarrassing you are, I can forgive being dressed in
clothes that are older than I am, but why couldn’t you give me the
chance to make friends? Why did you purposely make me so
lonely?”

13.

Emily bustled
out of the changing rooms after gym class, hurrying to her next
lesson. She rubbed her arms, a chill sweeping through the doors
leading to the courtyard as a couple of students passed through.
The weather outside was drab and grey, the clouds tumbling
tumultuously, hints of rain to come scattered across the sky where
the darker patches manifested.

Half way to
her Literature class she swore loudly, suddenly remembering she’d
left her cable knit sweatshirt in the changing rooms. She turned on
her heel, rushing back to the gym to check the lost and found
box.

She rustled
through the large plastic box, searching for her missing piece of
clothing. If she went home without it her mother would have to face
her mother’s wrath.

Finally,
under a baggy Metallica t-shirt that smelled overpoweringly of BO,
Emily uncovered her sweatshirt. She stowed it safely in her gym bag
and was just turning to hurry to class when a pale blue polo
t-shirt caught her eye. She fished it out curiously.

Next to the
designer label sewn into the inside of the shirt’s collar was
another label, with
Kennedy
Blakewood
sewn on to it in navy-blue
cursive writing. She held it out in front of her, and though it was
several sizes too small for her, she stuffed it into her gym bag,
glancing around briefly to make sure no one was there to witness
her.

That
afternoon, as soon as she was back in her bedroom with the door
firmly shut, she pulled Kennedy’s t-shirt from its hiding place in
the side pocket of her sports bag. She analysed it for a few
moments, before taking her own shirt off and pulling Kennedy’s over
her head.

It barely
covered her stomach despite Kennedy being easily five inches taller
than Emily’s 5’4 frame. She shuffled to the left until she could
see her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung on the wall
behind her door.

Even Emily
couldn’t deny that it was
not
a pretty sight. The tight sleeves of the shirt
meant that Emily’s pudgy arms burst unflatteringly out of them. Her
stomach stretched the bottom of the top grossly, and the clingy
fabric meant that Emily’s extra weight pressed up against it
unforgivingly. Her belly button was visible through the material,
as was the mesh and underwire of her beige bra.

Emily had
never looked as grotesque as she did at that moment. She had known
Kennedy was
slightly
slimmer than her, but forcing herself into this tiny polo top
had really opened her eyes. She decided this was the wake up call
she’d needed.

She would
keep Kennedy’s gym top and use it to motivate herself. Eventually
she would be able to fit into it.

And then
everything would be
perfect
.

As she folded
the top up and hid it at the back of her wardrobe, Emily remembered
the first time she’d seen Kennedy Blakewood.

It had been
the first day of high school, back in ninth grade.

The hallways
of Rosewell’s West Wing were alive with the excited chatter of the
new freshman class.

Hunter stood,
surrounded by tall preppy-dressed boys, reliving some dramatic
anecdote animatedly. The boys howled with laughter and Hunter’s
lips twisted into a cocky smile.

“
She’s so
hot” Emily heard him murmur as she walked past,

Could he be
talking about me
? She’d thought
excitedly.

Their eyes
met and Hunter glanced at the other boys who were listening
intently to Taylor’s account of a summer rendezvous with a lingerie
model.

He slid
conspicuously away from the group and approached Emily awkwardly,
his hands tucked into his front pockets and his shoulders
hunched.

Emily smiled
shyly.

“
Hi…” she
stuttered, “how was your summer?”

Her eyes
flickered excitedly as she watched his face.

“
It was good…
How was yours?” his voice was hollow and his mind seemed to be
elsewhere.

Emily racked
her brain desperately for something to say that would grab his
attention, but she could think of nothing.

There was a
long awkward silence before she replied somewhat robotically, “It
was good too”.

Hunter
nodded, glancing over his shoulder nervously. Was he embarrassed to
be seen talking to her?

“
Well I
better get back…” he nodded to the group of boys, Taylor’s story
was done now and they were staring at Hunter and Emily
curiously.

Emily crossed
her arms and swayed on the spot for several seconds, her lips
pressed tightly together, nodding enthusiastically.

“
Of course,
yes, okay… well…”

Hunter nodded
at her curtly, muttered something about seeing her around and
re-joined his friends.

Emily made
her way to her locker downheartedly.

“
Have you
seen the new girl?”

“
She’s
beautiful
!”

 “
Which
classes is she taking?”

“
Does she
have a boyfriend?”

Emily was
picking up snippets of conversation with every step she
took.

What was
going on? Who was everyone talking about?

And then, at
that exact moment, the ‘
she
’ they’d all been discussing
turned the corner at the end of the corridor and strode towards
Emily, her class schedule in her hands.

Emily stopped
dead in her tracks and just watched her, Emily’s
antithesis.

“
Have you
seen the new girl?” Emily asked Amanda hoarsely as she took her
seat in their next class.

Amanda shook
her head, only half paying attention as she rustled through her
handbag in search of her fuchsia tinted lip-gloss.

“
No, I
haven’t, but everyone keeps talking about her, what’s she
like?”

Finally she
tugged the tube of pink from the bottom of her bag and turned to
Emily expectantly, awaiting her answer as she smothered her lips
with glittery gloss.

Describing
Kennedy to someone who had never seen her was like describing the
Sistine Chapel to a blind man or Beethoven’s symphonies to a deaf
man.

There was no
way of knowing the extent of what you were missing without having a
taste of it first.

The meaning
of the word
beauty
changed to whoever set eyes on her, and they would never use
the word lightly again, because beauty
was
Kennedy Blakewood and to call
something beautiful was to compare it with her.

14.

The bedroom
was dimly lit, the only light beaming from a computer screen,
casting eerie shadows across the wall and floor.

Outside a
storm was raging, lightening crackling across the dark angry sky,
thunder shrieking. The outlines of the gnarly branches of nearby
trees were perverted into twisted unnatural limbs as the lightening
accentuated them.