The Perfection Paradox (30 page)

“
That’s not
true Em” Sarah maintained, “Girls like Kennedy aren’t
real
, she’s an illusion,
an idea, she’s whatever people want her to be, but at her core
she’s vapid and empty. We’re
lucky
not to be like her. We can make mistakes, we can
be ourselves, without hundreds of people watching, telling us what
we’re doing is wrong. One day you’ll find someone, and to him
you’ll be as perfect as Kennedy is to Hunter, and you’ll never look
back, I promise.”

She held
Emily’s tear-stained face in her hands and wiped away the trails of
mascara. “He’s not worth your tears.”

Emily
realized then.

The heart
sees what it wants to see, it feels the love it wants to feel, it
picks it out from the ashes of indifference and rejection and
breathes new life into it.

She responded
to the clutch of Sarah’s hands, tightening her grip and smiling
appreciatively. She nodded her reluctant agreement and Sarah threw
her arms around her, pulling her close and hugging her.

“
You’re above
all of this Em. Trust us, you don’t need to change a single thing.
We’ve seen you at your worst and we’re still here. We’ll always be
here.”

A large
pepperoni pizza and three sodas later, Emily was sat on her bed
with Sarah and Amanda. They were half watching a cheesy romcom,
half going through the pictures from graduation that had recently
been added to Facebook.

Emily laughed
absent-mindedly at a punch line in the movie they were watching,
refreshing her Facebook newsfeed in the hope that some new pictures
might be up.

Her stomach
flipped and she felt sick.

“
RIP Kennedy
Blakewood
” a fellow senior had just posted
as her status.

She looked up
at her friends who were still laughing and reiterating the punch
line from the movie.

“
Em, what’s
wrong?” Amanda asked, looking up from her laptop.

“
Have you
seen Allison’s status?” she demanded dryly, she was so dumbfounded
she couldn’t explain or elaborate.

“
No” Amanda
said, raising an eyebrow, confused, “What does it say?”

Sarah gasped
and clasped her hands to her mouth.

“
Oh my
god,
oh my god
”
her eyes welled up with tears instantly and she was
crying.

“
What’s
happened? What’s going on?” Amanda demanded, looking from one
friend to the other, bewildered.

Sarah
uncovered her mouth.

“
Rest in
peace Kennedy Blakewood” she uttered in a shocked rasp.

“
What?”
Amanda asked, “
What
? That’s got to be a lie. Kennedy’s not dead. That’s
definitely a lie.”

“
It’s not a
lie. Look, people have already written on her Facebook wall, giving
their condolences.”

Apart from
that, her profile was exactly the same as always, nothing
different, nothing that would explain it.

“
I don’t
understand” Sarah replied.

“
What the
fuck.” Amanda said.

She got to
her feet and paced around the room. “This can’t be happening. I
mean
Kennedy Blakewood
? Of all the people? I can’t believe it”

She leaned
against Emily’s wall, staring straight ahead, deep in thought,
“this is unreal. She was at graduation with us
yesterday
. She was valedictorian.
She spoke to all of us. She spoke to all of us about the
future
, about everything
we still had ahead of us, and now she’s dead?”

Emily was
still shaking her head in disbelief, thinking back on graduation
the day before, the winter of Kennedy’s existence, the last hours
of her life.

She was too
shocked to cry, to speak, to do anything.

It could have
been anyone, any one of them, but it had been her.

It just
seemed so un-Kennedy-ish.

The girl that
everything had always gone right for, the luckiest girl in the
world it seemed, and now she was dead, and that was it? That was
her life?

No, it
couldn’t be, she had been hyped up too much for it all to end
now.

38.

“
Strike
!” Hannah shouted excitedly,
laughing as Marie enjoyed a victory dance, flailing her too big
bowling shoes.

“
Your turn
Jess!” Hannah said, nodding at the lane with ten pins standing at
the end of it waiting to be knocked over.

Jessica got
up from her seat and proceeded to pick out the lightest bowling
ball and hurl it, almost violently, down the bowling
lane.

She hit one
pin, which stood at the furthest left of the lane, but the rest
remained standing.

Jessica
huffed dramatically.

She picked up
a second ball and flung it down the lane in a similar manner, this
time completely missing any of the pins. She took a seat again,
feigning unhappiness, “this is the first and last time we go
bowling, I suck!” she exclaimed.

“
I’m getting
another drink, anyone else want anything?” she asked, fumbling
through her handbag in search of her wallet.

She picked up
her phone and flipped it open.

“
What the
hell!
Twelve
missed calls from home, something’s got to be up, I’m just
going to call them back quickly”

Hannah and
Marie turned to her questioningly, wondering what could be so
important, Jessica’s parents weren’t the kind to hound her about
anything.

“
Mom?”
Jessica asked, staring around the bowling alley distractedly, “Mom
what’s up? Why did you call me like a hundred times?”

Suddenly
Jessica sat bolt up right in her seat.

The blood
drained from her face.

“
Oh my god.
When?” she asked, her voice trembled. “I can’t believe it. I’m
just… speechless… We’re coming home now, we’ll be there as soon as
we can.”

She flipped
the phone shut and looked up at her two friends. “Guys, we need to
go home”

Hannah
frowned, “Jess, what’s wrong?”

Jessica got
up and started picking up her belongings, “We have to
go…”

“
Jessica
what’s happened? Talk to us, tell us what’s going on!”

Jessica
stopped fumbling around for her personal items and looked at her
friends, gulping loudly.

“
Kennedy
Blakewood is
dead
.” She whispered, as though the words were cursed.

Both Marie
and Hannah’s jaws dropped.

 “
What?
How?”

“
I don’t
know, my mom doesn’t know, she’s just been told she died last
night. We need to go home. We need to find out more.”

The girls
grabbed their belongings hurriedly and rushed out the
door.

Hannah felt
the panic in her rising, felt her eyes well up and her nose sting,
like she’d been punched in the face.

Kennedy
Blakewood was dead
.

She’d never
say another word, never eat another meal, never smile again. She’d
never hug another person or have another picture taken. She’d never
turn nineteen. Never graduate from Harvard.

This was
where her story ended.

All those
dreams, all those aspirations, crumbled to dust to be carried away
by the winds of death.

Horrific
images flashed across Hannah’s mind.

Kennedy lying
in the middle of the road, her face pale, her lips
quaking.

She saw her
floating face down in the extravagantly tiled pool she’d seen from
Kennedy’s bedroom window.

Finally, she
saw Kennedy’s lithe body swinging gently from a thick rope, like a
broken marionette. Her stomach squirmed unpleasantly.

39.

Hunter
remembered it suddenly, a memory that had seemed so unimportant at
the time. Thinking of it now he felt queasy uneasiness in the pit
of his stomach.

It had
happened at a house party many months ago. Hunter had been drunk,
but he still remembered it clearly enough to recount it
now.

Kennedy had
been pouring herself a coke, laughing as someone shouted a joke
across the kitchen.

It was Billy
McKemey’s birthday and he was seriously wasted. He could barely
walk straight, and when he approached Kennedy his words were
slurred.

“
Hi Kennedy!”
he rambled. She smiled back at him, completely at ease.

“
Happy
Birthday Billy” she exclaimed holding her red cup up to chink
against his. He just about managed it without dropping to the floor
in a state of near-unconscious intoxication.

He poured
some more beer into his half-empty cup from a nearby keg with an
unsteady hand. Once his cup was filled to the brink and he’d picked
it up and sloshed most of its contents over his hands and jeans he
turned to Kennedy and mumbled something incomprehensible. She
leaned closer, tilting one of her ears towards his face.

“
Cood I haf a
picshoor wi yoo? My birday…” was what it sounded like.

 
Kennedy
looked at him for a second, perplexed, clearly assuming she’d
misunderstood, but then realizing she hadn’t.

She smiled
and shrugged her shoulders in a ‘why not’ manner.

Billy threw
back his shoulders and stuck his chest out proudly. He passed one
of his friends his smartphone and shuffled drunkenly to take his
place next to Kennedy.

Hunter was
watching this all with alcohol-induced amusement.

Billy
wouldn’t have dared speak to Kennedy Blakewood when he was sober,
let alone ask for a goddamn picture. Hunter chuckled to
himself.

Kennedy
smiled. Not the kind of phony smile most people wear when posing
for pictures. Kennedy smiled with her eyes as well as her
mouth.

Billy held on
to Kennedy for a little longer than would’ve been deemed socially
acceptable to any sober individual, but eventually hobbled off to
fill another red cup and inevitably spill it all over himself
again. He was beaming like a giddy child in a candy
store.

 
Kennedy
picked up her own drink, and spotted Hunter leaning against a
bookshelf, watching the scenario with a playful smile. She walked
over to him, the perplexed expression reappearing on her
face.

“
What was
that?” Hunter asked, amusement still plastered across his
face.

“
I have no
idea!” Kennedy replied, laughing “He’s just really wasted I
guess?”

Hunter
watched her, pleading his eyes to focus on her pretty little face.
“It’s not because he’s wasted Kennedy. It’s because it’s
you
”

Kennedy said
nothing, another thing he loved about her, never fishing for
compliments. He sensed an edge of unease radiating from
her.

Pushing it to
the back of his mind, he continued, “Every guy at this party wants
a picture with you”.

Okay, not
his
best
line but
it made sense at the time. Still she was silent, glancing around at
the party in full swing.

A freshman
from the JV football team was sprawled over a sofa, his sophomore
teammates covering his face in phallic scribbles.

A gaggle of
junior girls were bopping to the music blasting from the three-foot
speakers.

Jocks were
playing beer pong on Billy’s oak dinner table, yelping like cavemen
with every throw of the Ping-Pong ball. 

Hunter leaned
towards her, inhaling the aroma of her that gave him goose bumps
every time.

“
Kennedy…” he
whispered, “you’re
perfect
”.

She stopped
looking around and stared at him, a hint of anguish on her
face.

“
Please…
stop…” she muttered, fidgeting uncomfortably.

“
Why?” Hunter
asked.

“
Because it’s
not true…”

“
It is true.
Everyone knows it Kennedy, everyone knows you’re
perfect.”

“
Hunter. Quit
it.” She nearly shouted.

“
Don’t
pretend you don’t know…”

“
I’m not
perfect. No one’s perfect. I’m tired of people telling me what I am
and who I am. I’m not the homecoming queen, I’m not head
cheerleader, I’m not the captain of the volleyball team, I’m not
Senior Class President. I’m Kennedy. That’s all. A person with
feelings and flaws like everyone else.”

“
Okay, okay,
calm down” Hunter retorted, his voice muffled by booze “I’m sorry
Kennedy…”

Kennedy shook
her head slowly, her eyes closed and her face sad, “No, I’m sorry…
I shouldn’t have snapped at you… I’m just tired…”

Hunter was
too drunk to hold a grudge, especially against Kennedy.