We Are the Perfect Girl by Ariel Kaplan

Author:Ariel Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

I wasn’t sure what I was opposing in the middle of Cake Baby. The unfairness of the universe, maybe, which had made Bethany so wholly unable to communicate with the boy she liked. It was okay, though. I was fixing it. We were fixing it.

Greg had finished his cupcake while Bethany and I were in the bathroom and was checking something on his phone when we got back to the table.

I’d already fed Bethany a line, so she said, “Sorry. I had enough spinach in my teeth to make another panini.”

She smiled at me. I smiled back. Greg looked slightly relieved.

She sat back down, looking a little less terrified now, and propped her phone on her knee. I texted her, Which Russian poets are you looking at, specifically?

“Uh. Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, and Alexander Blok are the main ones.”

She glanced down at her lap, and then gave me a look like Are you sure? I widened my eyes a little. She said, “That’s a very masculine list.”

He looked a little surprised. But he said, “I never thought about that.”

Glancing down again, she said, “How’d you come up with it?”

“I guess…they’re just the big names. You’re right, though. It needs work. What about you? What are you doing this summer?”

I thought she should be able to answer this one on her own, but just to be sure, I typed, Aphra and I are going to be counselors at a crew camp for middle school kids. She was getting the hang of sounding less like she was reading. She was even starting to exude a small measure of confidence. Maybe I was rubbing off on her.

“That’s cool. Where is that?”

“West Vagina,” she said emphatically. Then, giving me the world’s nastiest look, she said, “Virginia.”

I typed, Sorry, autocorrect. She said, “Sorry, auto—”

I kicked her. “Auto. Uh. Matic. The camp is supposed to help the rowers learn to operate as a team in a way that’s automatic. Like, instinctual. You know.”

Greg looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh, like he found her occasional inability to form coherent sentences utterly delightful. I typed, Are you planning on rowing for real next year?

“I’m still thinking about it,” he said. To me (to me!) he said, “I’ve sort of given up swimming, so I’m looking for a new sport for next year.”

Bethany’s jaw dropped, because of course she wouldn’t know this. I said, “Oh! No more swimming?”

“No more swimming.” He took Bethany’s hand from across the table and squeezed it. “It was time to try something new.”

“That,” I said. “Uh. That must have taken some hard thinking. To quit after so long.”

“Well,” he said, smiling fondly at Bethany, “you know. I’m bold like that.”

I typed, I always knew you had it in you.

“Yeah,” he said. “You did.” He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

I said, “I just remembered, I promised my brother I’d read Harry Potter tonight. Do you guys mind dropping me off really quick?”

“I should go, too,” Bethany said (on her own!).

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