Perfectly Flawed (29 page)

“It’s good to see Zephyr lounging on our
furniture again,” she says with a full mouth, her words muffled
between the bits of munched food. “I kind of missed him. Ryder
doesn’t have the same
flare
.”

At the sound of his name, I grab a handful of
Cheetos and stuff them into my mouth before I take a long drink
from my Mountain Dew. Zephyr taps me on the head, beaming at me
when I turn to look at him with a mouth full of Code Red. I swallow
before I reach up and pull his long, dark locks lightly in a tease,
watching him wince with faux-pain.

“I know what you mean,” I tell my aunt once
my mouth is empty. I’m truly happy that Zephyr is back in my life.
I wouldn’t trade him for anything. No Ryder can compete with
Zephyr—he’s one of a kind.

“Wait a minute,” Harley starts loudly. It’s
like she’s having an epiphany. “Does that mean that I no longer
have to feign interest in football at lunch?”

Since when did Harley
feign interest
in anything Ryder said at lunch? She glared at him; she pictured
launching Chinese throwing stars at his face. I know these things
because she told me.

“That’s exactly what it means,” I tell her,
light kicking her in the side with my pink-socked foot.

Ryder, as of last night, is out of my life.
Good riddance. I don’t know why he wanted in my life to begin with,
maybe last night had something to do with it—he wanted something
and I just wouldn’t give it to him. I’m looking forward to a normal
lunch at school again.

“YES!” Harley yells with exuberance, Cheetos
flying from the bowl as her arms punch into the air.

“What if I started talking about football
right now?” Zephyr quietly asks me, whispering into my ear. His
breath against my skin sends a shiver up my spine, one that shocks
me.

“You’d be heavily ignored,” Harley warns, her
eyes shooting toward him, throwing the metaphorical daggers into
his direction.

“Duly noted,” Zephyr mumbles, nodding his
head in understanding. He knows if he starts talking about
football, he’s going to be wearing the bowl of
anything
on
his head.

After a few minutes and a few more overly
exaggerated kills on the flat screen, Harley snaps her attention to
me. “The only downside to us just camping out on your couch all
night,” she starts, popping a chip into her mouth. “Is that no
one’s going to know what your dress looks like.”

“Jamie took a picture,” I confess. They seem
to ignore me.

“You should show us,” Zephyr says. His hand
taps me on the head. Again.

“I want to see it,” Aunt Hil chimes from the
recliner. She hasn’t seen it. I didn’t show her when I bought it, I
never brought it up during the past two weeks while it sat on the
back of my closet door.

“No, I shouldn’t,” I say to Zephyr and
Harley, even Hilary. “I’m returning that thing.” I’ll be sad to see
it go, it really is a beautiful dress.

“Please!” Harley and Zephyr beg at the same
time. This feels like a set up. Maybe they rehearsed this when I
hit the bathroom an hour ago. Harley juts out her pierced bottom
lip in a forced pout, putting on the puppy dog eyes.
Damn
.

“Pretty please?” Hilary begs, using her own
form of pouting and begging.

I look to the three of them, all trying to
convince me to change out of my comfortable sweats—my pants feel
like a cloud, no lie—and change into a formal gown. Are they
serious?

“No,” I tell them, attempting to make a
stand. I refuse.

“We should at least see you in it before you
return it,” Harley reasons, making a good and valid point. But,
like a little girl stomping her foot in frustration, I just don’t
want to.

And yet, I know that I have to, damn it.

“Fine,” I stubbornly relent, shoving my way
from the comfortable couch and warm nook I created beneath Zephyr’s
arm. “Pause the stupid movie, I’ll be right back,” I grumble,
stomping up the stairs. I hear my
supposed
friends snicker
behind me.
Some friends you are
.

In my room, I drape the plastic covered dress
across my unmade bed. I untie the bottom of the bag it hangs in,
and strip out of my clothes, quickly slipping the dress over my
head. I feel it fall down my body, falling down my legs softly
until it hits the floor. I don’t bother with the shoes, I don’t
need them to walk through my house, and they’re getting my hair the
way it is—unruly and messy.

“Okay?” I call once I start walking down the
hall, holding the fabric of the gown to keep me from tripping and
tumbling down the stairs. I can’t return this if it’s covered in my
blood.

“Wait!” Harley yells up to me. “You should
make an entrance,” she calls.

An entrance? …
the hell?

I stop in my tracks, rolling my eyes in
frustration. “Who are you and what have you done with my best
friend?” I yell down to the main floor, seriously wondering if I
should be concerned. “I think you’ve switched body’s with Kennie or
something.” I need to look for blonde hair peeping from beneath a
wig when I walk into the living room. This can’t be Harley
Davidson.

And yes, her full name
is
Harley
Davidson—after the motorcycle manufacturing company. Her dad was in
a biker gang when he met her mother. His first born, which he
thought was going to be a boy—the doctor told them they were having
a boy—turned out to be a girl. They still liked the name and it
stuck.
Then
they had a boy, named Arthur, after one of the
founders of the company.

It’s a fun family story, a cute story—it’s
better than mine. My full name, Josephine, comes from Josephine
Baker, the talented dancer and my mother’s idol growing up. She
aspired to be the next Josephine Baker one day but when her dreams
fell short because of one decision she made, she decided to
immortalize her dreams with me.

As the memory comes to me suddenly, as most
of them do, my hand instinctively clutches the locket I never take
off. The locket that somehow matches the dress I wanted to wear
tonight.

Quickly, I push it aside. It’s a little too
heavy for this moment.

“Shut up, would ya?” That’s the Harley I
now.

“You can come down the stairs now.” That’s
Hilary’s voice. No doubt, she’s waiting for this. She’s never seen
me in a formal gown.

“What type of entrance can I…” I start,
walking down the stairs—trying hard not to stumble—while bright
lights flash in my face, blinding me with every step I take. Spots
flutter in my already horrible vision. “Are you taking pictures of
me?” Stupid question. Another bright flash followed by another. I
swear Hilary has a—
what the hell?
—video camera attached to
her hand.

When did I walk into a teen movie?

“We need to remember the night you could’ve
danced away,” Hilary says, angling a lamp my way to better the
lighting.

“Fu—” I stop myself as her kind expression
hardens. “
Forget
you,” I joke, censoring myself as best I
can in front of my aunt. Harley gets it instantly, her smile
widening as she pauses between pictures.

Zephyr lowers his phone, walking over to me.
“You look truly beautiful,” he whispers in my ear. That now
familiar shiver runs through my body and I feel my cheeks flush
with heat. Harley and my aunt talk about how great and wonderful I
look. They then comment on what a shame it will be to return this
dress. “You sure you want to return that?” Zephyr asks louder,
letting the other two hear him.

“What would I wear this to?” I ask, catching
the attention of Harley and my aunt. They’ve both stopped talking
and just stare at me as my hand clutches the smooth black fabric
draped by my legs.

“You should just save it, honey,” Hilary
recommends.
Flash
. “Keep it for some special occasion.”
Flash.

“Like what?”

Flash.
“Something will come up in the
future,” Harley comments, sadly. Her brown eyes cast downward. She
shrugs her shoulders before looking up, “I’m sure of it, you in
that dress—that’s a sight anyone’ll want to see.”

Hilary nods, agreeing with her partner in
crime. “I think I’m going to head on up to bed,” she tells us,
disrupting the brief moment we created. She yawns widely, letting
us know how tired she really is. “I work tonight, see you later.”
She walks through the living room, stopping in front of me.
Flash
. “You really look beautiful, Joey, your mother…” her
voice catches. She takes a deep breath to stop the tears I see
glistening her eyes.

“I know, Aunt Hil,” I tell her quietly.

She nods, her hands covering her mouth,
before she makes her way up the stairs to her room.

Zephyr looks to Harley, wondering if he
should say anything. Harley looks to me, wondering if she should
say anything. I’m the first to break the silence.

“I’m changing out of this now,” I tell them,
turning to ascend the stairs.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Harley blurts, grabbing
my arm to prevent me from fleeing up the stairs to the safety of my
room.

“I’m not just going to hang out on the couch
in this, Harley.”

“I know that, wackadoo.” She laughs. “Forget
the future. You should wear that to the dance tonight.”

Is she serious?

“What are you talking about?” I ask her,
wondering if she was hit in the head when I wasn’t looking. This
can’t be my friend.

“It’s in two hours, we could all go
together,” Harley offers excitedly. Has she lost her ever loving
mind? “Just a little bit, at least?”

She
has
lost it, okay. I’m in search
of a new friend. One sane and less dance obsessed…

But this idea does make her look happy.

Still, I don’t want to go to Homecoming.

“We could,” Zephyr offers.

She’s contagious, damn it!

But wait! There could be a problem with this
plan. “Harley, we didn’t buy tickets,” I remind her.

Her face falls.

“They sell tickets at the door,” Zephyr
chimes.

It’s official, I have no idea what’s going on
with them. Since when do they want to dance?

“You
have
switched body’s with
Kennie,” I state slowly, letting her bright smile infect me. Harley
looks elated for this, like really freaking happy to go to a school
dance. It makes sense that she’d be happy, she’s been sad whenever
someone mentioned the dance. It
could
be fun. I’ll make it
fun even if only for Harley—she’s one of my best friends. “And
you’re for this… this plan?” I turn to Zephyr, half expecting him
to laugh in my face and tell me he was joking the entire time.

I
so
want him to do just that.

But he doesn’t.

He shrugs his shoulders. “I’m up for
anything,” he replies, that mischievous smile tugging at the
corners of his mouth.

Well, some help he is
.

“Do either of you even have anything to
wear?” I wonder, dropping my hand to my thigh, hearing the soft
slap
. Now that we have a plan, we need to figure out what we
need, what we’re doing.

“Not really,” Zephyr answers—as expected.
“But what the hell, right?”

“Just let me change back into normal
clothing.” I run up the stairs, quickly changing into jeans and a
t-shirt, and tell my aunt, before she’s dead to the world, that I’m
heading out. I tell her that I changed my mind, yet again, and I
am
going to Homecoming. She smiles to me before she closes
her eyes and falls asleep, snoring lightly as I close the door and
head back down the stairs.

***

We pile into Harley’s tiny two-door car and
start our way to the mall… yet again. Zephyr struggles in the back
seat to find a comfortable sitting position but Harley and me in
the front drown out his moans and groans with music—mostly Otep. We
arrive at the mall and Harley—I can’t express how much this
surprises me—excitedly bounces around. She searches the racks of
the first store she drags us to—the one Kennie took us to last
weekend to buy her
blue
dress. Zephyr and I watch as she
instantly grabs a red dress from the rack in the back, the one I
saw her looking at last weekend, and tries it on in the fitting
room.

“I have spent
way
too many weekends,
way too many man hours, looking for dresses for this
stupid
dance,” I tell him as he leans against the wall beside me. I’m
sitting on the only stool in the store scrolling through my
Facebook feed on my phone.

“Your dress is perfect,” he tells me. I feel
his hand rest lightly against my shoulder, his thumb making tiny
circles against the blade. It’s such a small touch yet an intimate
gesture I can’t help but smile. Thankfully, he can’t see that.

Harley pops from the dressing room, the
happiness so obvious in her wide, toothy grin, clad in a knee
length red dress with capped sleeves and a high neckline. “What do
you think?” she asks, spinning in a slow circle, desperate for our
honest—but nice—opinion.

“That one’s great.” I’m not lying, she’s
found the perfect dress. I enjoy watching her smile and spin. It’s
a rare sight to see a happy girl take over my friend’s body.

I feel like I’m seeing her for the first
time. I never knew this part of her—school dance happy. Has she
always wanted to venture to school dances? I never noticed. Maybe
it’s a new thing. Maybe she finally decided that she wanted to act
like a normal high school student and spend too much money just to
dance in a hot, sweat-filled gym that smells like socks.

“You look great,” Zephyr says, glancing back
to me.

“I’m excited,” Harley squeals. I can see that
she is. I believe this is her first school dance. She’s as
antisocial as I am.

She purchases the dress and we head back to
my house to get ready together. Zephyr ditches us to get dressed at
his house, and we plan to meet in my living room in an hour.