Read No Such Thing as Perfect for Free Online Page A

nod, to say she’d be proud, but her lips were pinched and she finally sighed, dropping the silverware loudly against the plate. I felt the crashing in my skin, the sound of being wrong bleeding in my veins.
    “Lily, you have a lot of responsibilities. I just can’t understand why you would want to sacrifice your grades and what you’ve worked for. Have you even thought this through?” she asked.
    “They said rehearsals are from 3-5 a few days a week. I can still go to NHS and Student Council meetings and I already asked Coach Hillary about alternating.”
    “And when are you going to do your homework? Between running, workouts, your clubs, and learning lines, you don’t think your grades will slip?”
    I looked at my brother, who was eating and not paying attention. He played sports, but he barely passed his classes. No one cared. He never needed to study. He was always out with his friends and my mother bragged about him endlessly, especially when he started dating Brianna Graves. She couldn’t get enough of telling him how great Brianna was. Brianna, the valedictorian cheerleader who had no flaws. Brianna, who came over after school when my parents weren’t around and locked herself in my brother’s room with him, doing things I always found out about later when it filtered back to me through gossip. Things that led to her and Jon skipping school to go to a clinic out of town where they could pay someone to make sure no one else knew that they weren’t perfect.
    “I’m a junior. You won’t let me work. It’s only a few hours a week. I can ask for a small part,” I argued.
    “And what’s the point then?” my mother snapped. “You’re going to sacrifice for what? To get five minutes on stage? Do what you like, Lily, but I’m not going to sit there and pretend to be proud that you’re an elf. If I thought you could handle a leading role, I might consider it, but you know what you’ll do. It will all end up being too much and then you’ll be here one night crying that you can’t keep up with everything. I just don’t want to hear it when you screw this up.”
    That was the end of the conversation, as far as she was concerned, although I did go to auditions. I practiced for two weeks after everyone was in bed, memorizing the monologue I’d found online. But on the day of auditions, I sat in the back of the auditorium. The girls were all so much more talented than I was, full of confidence and sure that they belonged on stage. They all knew they had something to say and that someone wanted to listen.
    I was the last person to go. I waited until the end and all I could think about was how I wouldn’t be able to get it right, how I’d forget the lines, how I would make a mistake and everyone would laugh. But when they called my name, I walked up on stage and pretended it didn’t terrify me. The lights drilled their ghostly white through my skull and the kids directing were only fuzzy shapes, orbs of flickering color surrounded by faded darkness. My throat was dry, my tongue too big and stuck to the roof of my mouth. We weren’t given anything but a stool, which I leaned on to stop the vertigo. But then I paused and breathed and I looked at the words in my shaking hand.
    Inside the words, I could hide. I could become and the stage lights reminded me of what had sparked the desire in the first place. Becoming – not acting, not pretending, but becoming . That was what this was for me. And as I shed myself, a girl spoke... and everyone listened.

11.
    D erek isn’t listening. We’ve spent the entire weekend in my room, not even leaving to eat except to meet the delivery guy, but after two days, I still don’t feel like he’s hearing me at all.
    “I’m saying I just wonder if it was a bad idea,” I repeat. “I mean, yeah, this is a better school, but I don’t know. Maybe I’d be happier with you and Jon. You could introduce me to people.”
    He leans back against the wall, knocking loose one