My stomach twisted.
The hand over my mouth was the same one he’d kissed.
I yanked it back like I’d touched a hot stove.
“P-E-R-F-E-C-T,” I whispered into the dark, the letters shaky and rushed. A lifeline. A command. “P-E-R-F-E-C-T.”
Perfect girls didn’t gasp against boys in coat closets.
Perfect girls didn’t have crushes on bad boys.
And perfect girls definitely didn’t imagine kissing?—
“P-E-R-F-E-C-T,” I said again, more firmly this time, like if I spelled it enough, I could force myself back into shape. Sand down the wild edges. Tuck every ugly, reckless feeling back where it belonged. “P-E-R-F-E-C-T.”
I thought you were better than your sister, Mrs. Johnson’s voice filled my head.Better than kissing bad boys.
I latched onto the reminder. I was.I am. I was Eleanor Brighton. Better than my sister, who disappointed our parents at every turn. Better than my sister, who snuck out to meet boys and kissed them in secret.
I was not my sister. I was Eleanor Brighton.
And Eleanor Brighton was perfect.
P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
CHAPTER 14
The ride home from Alderton-Du Ponte was silent.
Daisy had driven to Ms. Jennings’s birthday party, so as soon as I’d fled the coat closet, I’d found her in the hallway and had gripped her arm hard. “Can you take me home?”
I’d meant for it to come out normal. It hadn’t.
Daisy hadn’t even hesitated. Thankfully, somewhere between walking away from the coat closet with Carter and when I’d found her, they’d parted ways. I couldn’t face him, not with my pulse still misfiring. And I couldn’t meet his father for the first time, either, with my mind so thoroughly scrambled.
Jamie met us outside a minute later, slipping into the backseat with his book like this was any other night. Like I wasn’t trying to piece myself back together from nearly falling apart.
We had an unspoken rule about things like this. Whensomething was wrong, we didn’t push. So Daisy drove, while Jamie turned a page in the backseat, using one of the overhead lights to read by.
I sat in the passenger’s seat, thinking and rethinking my words, and refusing to think or rethink anything else. I refused to close my eyes, too, because every time I did, I was suddenly back in the closet with Beck. With his hands on my skin. With my palm to his mouth.
I straightened slightly in my seat, smoothing a palm down my jeans, rubbing away a nonexistent wrinkle.P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
Daisy punched in the key code to our neighborhood and then continued on to the house. Her headlights bobbed on the garage door as she pulled into the driveway, putting the gearstick into park. Daisy tapped the steering wheel, waiting. I had a feeling she was looking at me from the corner of her eye. I couldn’t look away from the garage door.
Squeezing my phone in my lap, I finally confessed, “I kissed Beck.”
“What?” they both exclaimed at the same time.
“You kissed Beckham Jennings?” Daisy screeched at the same time Jamie demanded, “Again?”
Daisy’s head cracked toward Jamie. “What do you mean,again?” Then she looked at me. “What does he mean,again?”
I couldn’t quite explain why it suddenly felt so important to tell her. A few days ago, the thought of admitting it all to Daisy would’ve made my stomach turn. Now, keeping it to myself felt worse.
I drew in a slow breath.P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
Except when I whirled to face Daisy, theperfectfaçade shattered. “I used to have a crush on Beck when I was little, and the night of the garden fire, I kissed him.” My words rushed out fast, nearly running together. “And I was the one who destroyed the garden and started the fire. Not Beck. But everyone blamed him anyway, and I didn’t stop them.”
