The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk

Author:Mariko Turk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2021-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

IN FIVE MINUTES, the first Vamp rehearsal would start.

Sitting in the auditorium, I watched Mrs. Sorenson noodle around on the piano, and Ms. Langford mark choreography onstage. Jude wasn’t here yet. At first, I assumed I was nervous because I’d be learning my big dance number—the role I’d been chosen for. But the more I kept glancing at the doors, waiting for Jude to walk in, the more I had to admit it: I was nervous about him.

Over the rest of break, I’d looked at that picture from Winter Formal every night before falling asleep. It made me want to do stupid things. Like bust into Jude’s house in the middle of the night so we could talk in the quiet, like we had outside the gym. Since he was in Indiana, my home invasion plans stayed safely imaginary.

But now I worried that when he saw me, he’d be able to tell how much I’d thought about him. I fidgeted with my new yoga tank top. I was wearing it with black dance shorts and tan tights. Ms. Langford had asked me not to wear pants because “your legs are the focal point of this whole number, and I need to see what I can do with them.”

Maybe I was nervous about that, too.

The doors finally opened, and Jude walked in. “Hey!” he called, smiling as he made his way down the aisle.

“Hey,” I repeated.

“How was your break?” He sat down next to me. “Get anything good for Christmas?”

“Oh, yeah. Princeton Review’s Best 385 Colleges.”

He gasped. “I got 1001 Things Every College Student Needs to Know!”

“That’s a lot of things you need to know.”

“I should start reading it now. Otherwise, I’ll only know like seven hundred things when I get to college, and then who knows what will happen.”

“You’ll probably die.”

“I’ll definitely die.”

I smiled, relieved. This wasn’t so awkward. But then Jude reached into his backpack and pulled out a package wrapped in red paper. “I have a present for you.”

“Oh …” Shit. We were at the present-exchanging level?

“It’s no big deal,” he said, laughing a little, which made me wonder how horrified I looked. “I had a lot of downtime in Indiana, so I figured I’d make stuff for people.”

I tore it open and a soft chunky-knit leg warmer slipped onto my lap. The pattern was really pretty, but it was the color that made my eyes go wide. Lavender. The exact shade of my Winter Formal dress. I ran my fingers over the soft yarn, thinking of that night—the dancing, our conversation outside the gym, the way he’d looked at me.

“I—uh—it’s … thank you,” I stammered.

Jude nodded, his smile fading. “I hope it’s not overstepping. It’s just, you said it was hard to loosen your leg up and keep it from being stiff? So I thought … maybe this could help?”

I’d tried to delete that whole scar interaction from my brain, but Jude had remembered. And he’d made me a really thoughtful gift. “No, it’s great. It’s perfect.

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