Perfectly Dateless
perfectly
dateless
A Universally Misunderstood Novel
kristin billerbeck
Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
Grand Rapids, Michigan
© 2010 by Kristin Billerbeck
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
E-book edition created 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1175-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Published in association with Yates & Yates,
www.yates2.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my wonderful blog readers, who keep me young at heart, giggly, and inspired throughout what would be a lonely workday. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, both publicly and privately.
Contents
Prom Journal
Operation Prom Date
August 21
196 Days until Prom
They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. So I guess I have a problem. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and my life is anything but perfect. In fact, it’s pretty messed up. I mean, sure, if you look at my grades, I appear good on paper. No question about that. But perfectionism is a lonely island, and it sort of feels like land is slipping further away.
I’m a Christian, so I know you can’t actually be perfect, but I sure have tried, as I believe every Christian should. Make the most of the talents God gave you, right? I love the feeling I get when there’s a red “A” scrawled across the top of my paper. Now that is a scarlet letter I can get behind! But if I get 98 out of 100, I sort of obsess about the two I got wrong. It’s just the way my mind works, but I need to be worrying about important things, like why my clothes aren’t cool.
Claire, my best friend, says I’m warped. Could be. I’m not saying it’s right or anything to obsess, I’m only acknowledging that I do. I’ve seen “Intervention” on TV, so I’m well aware that admitting the problem means I’m totally on the way to recovery. Besides, Claire’s parents are normal and rich, so what does she know?
See my problem? Being perfect—impossible. Being a perfect weirdo—something I’m closer to than I’d like to admit. Another excuse? I’m an only child. My parents thought, “Why screw up many children when we could make one perfect child?”
I’m sure that’s where my deranged thinking comes from—always look to the parents, you know what I’m saying? My mom says the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but I’m hopeful that their tree was on a hill and I’m rolling further away as I write. The thing is, kids like Heather Wells don’t care if you’re weird simply because your parents are weird. You’re just weird. And dateless.
My mom says this perfection thing all started when I was a baby and couldn’t handle being in a dirty diaper. Well, yeah! That’s disgusting. I mean, how is that weird to want to remove myself from excrement? What am I missing? I would think that’s instinctual.
In more recent years, I have never missed a day of school, not since the third grade when I had the chicken pox, thanks to Missy Miller’s birthday party with the lopsided cake and lame “Rugrats” theme. I got her a collectible Barbie in this fabulous, silky red ball gown, complete with tiara, and all I got was the chicken pox. So wrong.
Anyway, it’s not like my parents didn’t have a part in my issues either, but I’ll get to that later. Back to my life on paper and the reason I’m in my current predicament.
Straight A’s throughout my entire junior high and high school career (except for driver’s ed, and that was so not my fault). If you were on a college admission board, you would see me as the student you wanted at your school, right? I mean, I am like every thirty-five-year-old’s dream teenager, but if you’re seventeen like me and you’re someone who resembles a hot vampire in a certain movie? You are not going to look my way for a date.
I’m a freak of nature physically too. Five foot ten, and not in a good Heidi Klum way. In a giraffe-like, knobby-kneed, hanging-gorilla-arms kind of way. At that point, you’re thinking “mutant,” not “romance.”
My dad’s lanky genes are totally to blame for this. If I weren’t so tall, I could consider all those little guys who might think about me as a dating option for prom. But I can’t exactly have them stand on a block for the picture, now can I?
Lanky.
Gawky.
Bony.
Giraffe-like.
If I did skinny well, they would call me graceful, lithe, gazelle-like, slender . . . but I don’t do it well, and that’s why the Abercrombie shirt with Claire’s hand-me-down, padded bra underneath was the perfect look for me. (Claire apparently went through puberty, but I’m still waiting, which at seventeen is cause for alarm, or—around here with everyone’s money—for a visit to the plastic surgeon’s office. What is wrong with people? That has to be uncomfortable, right? Sleeping on two hard water balloons? But perhaps it’s just me.)
Now add to this bony package a wardrobe of homemade, “conservative” clothes, and you have a better picture of my so-called perfect life. Being perfect on paper doesn’t actually transfer to real life—as I start my senior year in high school, it’s time to add some practical living skills to my accomplishments.
So why care now? While I was rewriting my “Symbolism in Hamlet” paper four times last year, other girls were giggling, squealing about Zac Efron movies, and generally making themselves matter to people around them. I think I’m irrelevant. And that can’t be good. A perfectly pathetic social life is the antithesis of perfection in high school.
I’ve been so focused on college, it almost feels like I’ve never been to high school. I simply endured a series of tests and deadlines, but I can’t remember much of anything. Sure, I know the Pythagorean theorem, but do I know how to apply false eyelashes or why the Jonas Brothers are popular? No.
I’ve never had a single date, and while my parents wouldn’t let me date anyway (long, irritating story), I wrestle with the fact that I’ve never had the opportunity to say no. I’ve never broken a heart, I’ve never even registered on a guy’s heartbeat. I’ve flatlined. BEEEEEP!
If I don’t change my life now, I’ll spend the rest of it like this: alone and invisible, never in the moment, always striving for the next big thing, forgetting what lies behind. I might become the first teenager with Alzheimer’s. What if the only impact I’ve had on St. James Academy is the gummy bear I left in the school chapel as an experiment?
So no dates, unless you count my dad’s purity talk over dinner at Hometown Buffet, and I so do not count that. Like I want my dad to talk about stuff like that anyway, and in public? Over fried chicken? Then he pulled out a ring, and people around us actually clapped. OMGSH! My purity on display as cause for applause. I could have died! I mean, what if they thought he was just some dirty old man proposing to his young girlfriend? Didn’t my dad get that? That’s a stupid question, of course he didn’t. Unlike me, my dad lives in the moment, never a thought to the future or what might happen. So part of my diligent nature must be his fault. Am I right?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as committed to purity as my dad wants me to be, but I don’t want to announce it publicly. Sheesh, hire out a billboard next time! Unlike Madonna or Sienna Miller, I don’t want my sexuality, or lack thereof, up for public consumption. Call me crazy, but I think my dad makes way too big a deal over it, like it’s his trophy on the mantel, announcing he’s a great dad. Whatever.
I’m so glad my parents care and all that, but I guess I wouldn’t mind if they cared a little less overtly. Parents have no shame. My dad couldn’t even spring for a fancy dinner, and my ring is nothing more than sterling silver.
“I worried you’d lose a diamond,” he said.
“Try me,” I told him, and he just laughed. Like I was joking!
I should sign up for the convent now, except we’re not Catholic, and the clothing . . . gag! I am not doing any job that requires headgear and nursing shoes.
“After all,” Mom told me regarding purity and my future life as a homemaker, “don’t think Cinderella sat around after marriage. She had work to do. A castle to run.”
Somehow I prefer to think of Cinderella as having people for those mundane tasks, but Mom ruined that too. Sort of like she ruins all the good things about being a girl: no makeup, no pedicures, homemade clothes. I’m a wreck, and what’s worse? Up until now, I didn’t even know I was a wreck!
Just so you know, I’m not asking to be head cheerleader or anything. I just want to exist in this petri dish that is St. James Christian Academy. I can adopt a live-in-the-moment attitude without turning into my parents. There’s middle ground. I’m sure of it.
So welcome to my prom journal. It’s totally pink with little flowers and frilly designs, really girly so I can summon my inner female power, which my mom tells me is completely Proverbs 31—the woman in the Bible who managed her household and sold purple things. I’m just hoping it makes me more socially acceptable. I’m looking for an “Aha!” moment, and if journaling helps me get there—a little further from the family tree—that’s success.
My parents are what you’d call countercultural (read: weird). My dad is a classically trained musician and actor who makes his living delivering balloons and singing telegrams, with an occasional speaking gig thrown in. Money has never been a huge priority for him. My mother is content to believe we have plenty, and life is one big crafting fair for her. Our house looks like a Jo-Ann Fabrics, except it’s much more chaotic and I do believe we have more in stock. Having bare feet around here is like asking for a tetanus shot.
My mom has the rosy cheeks of a sixteen-year-old and the fashion sense of a ninety-year-old. If there was a floral pattern in 1970, my mother managed to capture it in oversized dresses that resemble upholstery. She’s currently on a diet, which usually makes her unbearable, but this time? She’s included exercise, and now she’s all perky and buzzing with unnatural energy. I think I like the grumpy version better, but this one is losing weight, so I have a feeling the mom Energizer Bunny is here to stay.
Anyway, this journal is my own little secret. I’m channeling my inner Queen Esther. Sure, my mom can aim for the house manager in Proverbs 31, but I’ve got bigger plans. Queen Esther saved her people (her year of beauty treatments included!). Granted, Esther saved her people from death and I’m only going for social redemption, but a girl’s gotta start somewhere.
“Daisy!” Mom yells.
“In here!” I shout back, shoving the prom journal under my pillow.
She appears in the doorway. “Do you know where your father’s duck costume went?”
“I’m quacking up, Mom. Why would I have Dad’s duck costume?”
She misses the bad pun. “He needs it for tomorrow. He’s doing a marriage proposal as the goose who laid the golden egg. Isn’t that darling?”
I roll my eyes. “Sure, as long as you’re not the bride. Doesn’t he need a goose costume, then?”
She lifts up her sewing kit. “I’m going to fix it.”
“Mom, if some guy ever proposes to me wearing a duck suit, just shoot me, okay? You be the hunter.”
“Goose suit. I have to paint the feet brown. Ducks have orange feet.”