Pushing Perfect(73)

“Okay, I can manage that,” Alex said.

“That brings us to the second item on your list,” Raj said. “The when.”

“I think we should rip off the Band-Aid,” Alex said. “Do it tomorrow. Don’t give her a lot of time to think about it.”

“Works for me,” Raj said.

I nodded. The sooner the better. The stress was really getting to me, though despite it all I was having a good time, sitting with the two of them, planning how to make things better. I just wished we were talking about something else: where the next party was, or what we were all going to do after school, or whether going to prom was fun or stupid. Anything other than this.

“I was thinking I’d send one of the Mark pictures, and then say ‘I’m going to need a favor. Await further instructions,’” Alex said. “You know, use her lingo.”

“And then we wait until later to send the next one,” I said. “Make her stress out for a while.”

“Getting a bit vindictive there, are we?” Raj asked, but he flashed me a big smile as he said it.

“Believe me, I’d be happy to do worse,” I said.

“Uh-oh, have we turned Perfect Kara into Carrie?” Alex asked. “That’s totally what we should watch tonight.”

“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Raj said. “I have control over Netflix, and we’re going to watch something charming and funny that will make us all forget our troubles.”

“What did you pick?” I asked, forcing myself not to yell at Alex for bringing up Perfect Kara.

“Not until we’re done,” Raj said. “We’re meeting tomorrow at the picnic tables, and Alex has the first text ready, but we haven’t settled on a time.”

“How about seven?” Alex said. “It will be dark, and there will be lots of people coming in and out of restaurants.”

Raj and I both said okay, and we waited as Alex set up her phone and sent the first message.

“So anticlimactic,” I said.

“Well, it’s not like she can write back,” Alex said. “Unless she sends a blast response to everyone involved, which doesn’t seem all that likely.”

Raj picked up the remote and turned on the TV. “Time to move on to the more enjoyable part of the evening,” he said. “I present to you a movie about a girl who people think is perfect until she accidentally starts a rumor about herself that changes everyone’s mind.”

“So basically you’re showing Kara her worst-case scenario,” Alex said.

“Hardly. More like an alternate universe where the bad things happen without such terrible consequences. Come on, you’ll like it.”

He pressed Play and the movie started.

I was hyperaware of Raj next to me on the couch. We’d both stretched out with our feet on the coffee table; in the glow of the television I could see his socks, which did have the promised duckies and bunnies on them. Every so often our legs would brush up against each other, and it sent what felt like an electric shock all through my body. The sensation was even more exciting than that one kiss I’d had with Drew, way back when everything with Isabel and Becca had gone bad. For a minute I forgot about Ms. Davenport, forgot about the scariness of our impending confrontation, and I let myself daydream about how things might be different when this was all over.

The next night, I picked up Raj and Alex and we headed downtown. “Let me do most of the talking,” Alex said. “Kara, you’re too close to her, and we might need to get into the financial stuff to convince her she has to stop. I promise I’ll keep the anger reined in.”

“Works for me,” I said. The less talking I had to do, the better.

“I trust you,” Raj said.

Alex had brought along a folder with color copies of the photos and some documents that explained the whole banking thing, as well as papers from the lawsuit. “It’s not worth getting into,” she said. “But she should be able to tell that these documents are evidence that I could show the police how to find stuff on her computer that leads to the money. And she’ll see that we know about her family, too.”

“Nice one,” Raj said. “Did you save the video as well?”

Alex sniffed at him. “You think I’m some kind of rookie?”

He laughed. “No, I just didn’t have you pegged for a reverse-blackmail expert. Sue me.”

“Get serious, you guys,” I said. “She could be here any minute.”

But she wasn’t. She didn’t come early, anyway, and seven o’clock rolled around with nothing. At ten minutes past she finally walked by the picnic tables. Strolled, really. She didn’t look scared, and I hadn’t realized until then that I’d wanted her to.

“Interesting,” Alex muttered. “Late, but not super late. She’s a little worried, but she’s not terrified.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Raj said as he watched Ms. Davenport scan the row of tables before she saw us.

I wondered how many people she’d sent those horrible text messages to, how many people might have been in the position we were in. But as soon as Ms. Davenport saw us, she headed for our table. She was dressed more casually than she normally was for school: she had on a T-shirt under a leather jacket and skinny jeans with her cowboy boots, her hair in two pigtails. At first I was reminded again of how young she looked, but then I inspected her face more closely and saw the lines again, under the layers of powder. She was good at pretending, but she wasn’t that good. She wasn’t as good as me.