Perfection

                There was an indescribable quality about her; she was simply different from all the others. The way she dressed, so vaguely, so unadorned, the way she spoke, her voice somehow gentler than the rest. She would sit in study hall doing geometry proofs in her small precise handwriting, glancing up only occasionally to look at the clock, while the others would gather and laugh and talk.
         They noticed her, how she would never join in their conversations. What was wrong with her? In the beginning one would go over to where she sat and try to talk to her. She would look at him with her soft blue eyes and smile, and say “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to finish this homework.”
         She was at the top of the senior class. She was a loner.
         But she was different.
         When sometimes during study hall she would join in, she was at the center. She would lead the conversations, would charm everyone, with her smile, with her eyes. She would laugh and her laughter rang out through the hallways and her eyes sparkled with joy.
         But then the very next day at study hall she would be there, at her table near the corner, writing. She would be there first, since she had physics before that in the classroom across the hall, and when everyone came in she would be frowning and erasing a particular phrase in what she had just written. And they would know that that day, she would not be interested in talking to anyone.
         She was pretty, in an odd way. Her chocolate brown hair would always fall across her shoulders in perfect shape and her blue eyes would always watch, memorizing her surroundings. She would always smell of flowers, wild flowers that grew freely in the fields, the pretty whites and yellows and melancholy blues blowing in the wind.
         But whenever someone talked to her, they would notice not her beauty, but her eyes, those deep, sea-blue eyes. They looked like a dark blue one would find on a stormy night at sea, the waves crashing up upon unfortunate ships, relentless. And that is what her eyes reminded people of, but at the same time they held a level of serenity, like a flowing river in the forest bathing in the sunlight. Like the tranquil blue sky on a cloudless day of silence.
                Yet always, there would exist a tinge of something else. And this was the something that made her special, that opaque something always present in her eyes, in her aura, in her soul.
                To the others, she was perfect, she had everything.
                But to herself, she was nothing.


         Study hall.
         Calculus. No calculus today. Forget that.
                The girl slammed the book closed angrily. I don’t understand.
         No one was there yet. They were all still wandering the hallways, waiting for the teachers to yell at them and crowd them all into the hall. But it was quite big in itself, like a ballroom almost, the ceiling ascending high up into the sky, from which a single crystal chandelier caught the sunlight. The windows all around gave way to another cloudless autumn day, light shining in all around.
         Who cares if you don’t understand? Just do it!
         People were coming in, then.
         Do your calculus or talk. It’s your choice.
         Impulsively, she got out her composition notebook and started to write. If I write and I pretend to concentrate, then people will not talk to me. If people do not talk to me, then I will be happy. Therefore if I write I will be happy. That is the law of syllogism, she wrote.
         What a nerd.
         “Julia!”
         Whoops. Guess my reasoning was wrong. “Yes, Claire?”                                        
              Yes, she knew who Claire was. Claire and Sarah, the two of them. Always together, always happy. Façades. Obvious façades. It was shameful really, because it fooled everyone, everyone except her.
            She did not know what was wrong with Sarah, but Claire was struggling with an abusive boyfriend. Grant, people called him. But she didn’t break up with him because she was too afraid. Like that he would stalk her and take revenge. No one was supposed to know that, but she knew it. She knew things about people, immediately as if she were a part of their intimate secrets.
         “Can you help me with something?”
         Homework. Are you serious?
         And it was calculus. The textbook Claire carried under her arm was too thick to be anything else. No.
         “I’m sorry. I can’t really think today,” she said. Why don’t you go talk to Grant?, she felt like saying.
          “Why not? You’re always so, so perfect and everything and you always get top grades, you’ve never gotten anything below a 97, have you?”
         “Yes, that day I got a 97 was the most horrible day of my life,” she said. “Jealous, are we?”
         She blinked. Did I just say that? She felt dizzy. She had never lost her control before, ever. That was the only thing she prided about herself—she had control. Not over everything, but herself. She had control over her actions, over her decisions, and all she had to do was make all the right ones and everything would be fine on the outside. And that’s what it was about. Façades. It was about convincing people she had a complex personality, a different one, when all she really was was a normal little girl at 17, trying to find her way in the world.
         Claire had not answered, but was simply looking incredulous. Whoops. I’m supposed to be nice.
         “Why don’t you go talk to Grant, huh? Have him kiss you and make it all better, or will he yell at you and hit you ‘cause you’re being stupid? But then... if I had a boyfriend like that I would totally break up with him. Whoever didn’t would be a damned senseless idiot,” she said.
         Claire managed to mumble something and run off.
         Calculus, Julia, concentrate on the math. Calculus. Claire left her book here, study that.
         She felt even dizzier. Why did I do that? Why did you hurt her?
         Math. Something. Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Make sense of something!
         I don’t want to hurt anyone.
         She felt another presence behind her and she thought, why are people talking to me today? Why is today so special, damn it! She looked and behind her stood Sarah.
         “What do you want?” she asked dryly, uninterested in being sweet and wonderful and perfect. “Here’s Claire’s textbook, she left it.” she held it out.
         “You hurt Claire,” Sarah replied softly, pushing the textbook away. “Please go apologize.”
         “No?” She did not have to act like she didn’t know why it hurt her, because Sarah knew these things also.
         “What’s wrong with you?”
         “That is a question I ask myself many times a day. I couldn’t do my calculus today. It bothers me.”
         Sarah pulled a chair from the table where she sat and sat down next to her. “Julia…,” she said, and put a hand on Julia’s shoulder, a look of pure concern coming over her face, “are you okay?”
         Julia resisted the urge to break down crying. “I will go say sorry to Claire.” she said flatly, having no plan to do so.
         “…Good.” Sarah picked up the textbook and walked back.
         She looked up at the clock, a fancy digital one whose light projected onto the wall so that the time was displayed admirably in green numbers across the wall. 3:49. Seven minutes until dismissal. She got up and stuffed her own calculus textbook into her backpack, put it on, and started out to the bathroom, where Claire would inevitably be. Just because she had nothing better to do.
         When she got there and opened the door furtively, sure enough she heard sobbing. Anguished, oh god. Not even soft or quiet or whatever.
         How cliché-ish, she thought idly.
         Is that all you can think about, you little idiot?
         Well, yes. I’ve already caused too much hurt in this world.
         She sighed as the dizzy feeling came back. What have I done?
         The bell rang.
         
         “Julia! How was your day?”
         The girl trudged in the doorway, her backpack way too heavy. She did not answer.
         “Bad, huh?”
         She looked up at her mother, her blue eyes calculating. “No, mommy. It was a good day.” she pushed past her and started up the stairs, not bothering to wait for a reply. “I’m going to sleep,” she called back down, when she remembered that her mother would probably bother her about playing monopoly or something. No, I don’t want to play monopoly, mother, I must do my “homework”.
         When she reached her bedroom she threw off the backpack where it landed with a thump near her closet door. She kicked off her shoes and, not bothering to do anything else, flopped onto her bed and started to cry.
         She cried for a long time, until her eyes were burning from exhaustion. When she did stop, and she had had enough, she lay down sideways and hugged her teddy bear close, and fell deeply asleep.

         In her dreams she did not escape.
         She dreamed that she was talking to someone. Someone she had never seen before. A girl—a benign, banal little child.
         They were at the park, sitting on the swings, talking. The moon glowed in the dark blue night, casting a ring of light on the sand in front of them. The creaking sound of the swings rocking back and forth, back and forth, was oddly calming.
The little girl was asking her if she was okay.
         Yes, I am okay.
         So they kept swinging, and then suddenly the little girl wanted to try jumping off the swing when she got really high, and she tried to stop the little girl, but she wouldn’t listen, saying she would be okay, and she ended up hurting herself.
         So she stopped swinging and ran to see if the little girl was okay, but she was not—her knee was bleeding. But the little girl kept saying “I’m okay, I’m okay,” and she would not let her call anyone or put a bandage on it. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” the little girl said. There’s nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing wrong with me.