Pushing Perfect(16)

“You’re really making me work on this patience thing,” she said, but she answered every question I had, and everything she told me worked toward convincing me that trying it might be a good idea. The only idea. “You know that the more nervous and freaked out you seem about all this, the more it seems like you should try it, right?”

I saw her point. Sort of.

Still, I was having trouble making a decision. It was one thing to get a prescription from a doctor, an expert who’d decided something was really wrong, but it was a whole other thing to make that decision for myself, and to do something illegal. I’d never done anything like that before; when Isabel had gone through her stealing-lipstick-from-Walgreen’s phase, I’d refused to even go into the store with her, let alone participate. I didn’t get a rush from that kind of rebellion; I really was kind of a goody-goody, even if I didn’t want to admit it.

I admitted it to Alex, though. “Okay, so that’s not your idea of fun,” she said. “What is?”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people get off on doing the bad stuff—I think I’d still love poker even if it weren’t a little off the morality scale, but I do get a kick out of having a secret. Lots of people do.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” I said, but I had to look at my econ textbook while I said it. I hated lying, even though I basically did it every day.

“Everyone has secrets,” she said. “I’m not asking you to tell me yours; I’m just trying to figure out what makes you tick. Let me show you something.” She got up from her desk and walked to the other side of her bedroom. “Come on.”

I followed her over, where, like at Becca’s, there was an enormous closet next to a tiny bathroom. Alex opened the door and turned on the light, and I was shocked to see rows of shirts and pants and skirts and dresses, organized by color. “I’m so confused,” I said as she flipped through the clothes, pulling things out to show me. “Did you rob Forever 21 or something? Where do you even wear this stuff?” Then I looked closer and saw some of the labels. This wasn’t junk from the mall; all the clothes were designer. I ran my hands over one of the rows, stopping on a satin bandage dress in varying shades of silver, a crinkly black jumpsuit that felt soft as I rubbed it between my fingers, a minidress with a bright pattern that seemed to be made out of the same material as scuba gear. I couldn’t picture Alex in any of them.

“The beauty of the internet,” Alex said, holding a sequined sheath up to her body. “And I wear this stuff to parties, when I feel like it.”

The only parties I’d ever heard about were keggers in people’s backyards, and these outfits would be way out of place there. “It seems a little . . . fancy,” I said.

“When I go out, I like to do it up right. It’s kind of fun to dress up every once in a while. It’s kind of like I play a boy online when I play poker, and I play a girl at night when I go out.”

“And what are you during the day?”

“I’m just me,” she said. “And besides, who cares what we look like at school? School isn’t where the fun happens.”

“That much I know.” I was saving up my fun for college, where there would be more people like me, where it wasn’t nerdy to care about school, where boys weren’t the most important thing. Though they’d be important.

“You still haven’t told me what you do for fun, and I’m getting the feeling that that’s because either you’re not having any, or else whatever you think is fun is not even a little bit fun.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I like to do logic puzzles. They’re fun.”

“Logic puzzles? Like extra homework?”

“No, they’re like games.” I explained about the graphs and the clues and how they were basically like figuring out mysteries.

“You’re proving my point,” Alex said, pulling more dresses out of the closet, shaking her head, and throwing them on her bed. “You need to be around other people. And not at school. And not just me.” She picked out a dress and held it up against me and frowned. “You’re just too tall. Or I’m too short.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a party this weekend,” she said. “My friends have kind of an underground thing once a month, and we’re going. It’s what all the fancy clothes are for.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I remembered the last time I’d gone to a party. It hadn’t ended well.

“It’s the best idea! You need to blow off some steam. Maybe that’s why you’re so stressed out—you don’t have an outlet.”

“That’s not the problem,” I said.

“Then what is?”

I didn’t really have an answer to that. “I just . . . Being in situations like that makes me anxious.”

“Then the party is the answer,” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to give you a Novalert to try, just to relax you. If it works, the friend I get it from will be at the party, and I’ll make sure he has more for you.”

I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea.

“Don’t give me that look,” Alex said. “You know I’m right. We’ll have so much fun getting ready—I’ll find something that fits you so we can get all dressed up, and you can help me with my makeup, since you’re obviously way better at it than I am.”