Perfection Doesn't Cry

She put her fingers on the ivories and the notes trickled out of the piano and danced around in the cavernous auditorium, elegant and silvery. It was captivating; it made the concert hall melt away, until it was just the music, a vivid splash of colors and fragrances.

She was a child prodigy, only thirteen, the same age as me, yet the interpretations of the notes she played with spindly fingers were refined as most professional soloists. Her runs were as smooth as butter, her chords mellow, and even grace notes were played with the utmost care.

She finished playing and stood. Her dress was a glittery cream and she had on glossy white shoes and in her honey hair were two silver bows. I stood up and clapped my heart out, maybe even let out a hoot or two, watching her bow as a radiant smile embellished her red lips.

She was the last one to play. The recital concluded and we were invited to the rows of white-draped tables in the back for refreshments. I found her sipping lemonade out of a Dixie cup with a small plate of crackers in her other hand. "You were great," I said.

She smiled. "Thank you," she said sweetly. "You were great, too."

She knew it was a lie, and I knew too. I knew it from the falseness in her voice. Next to her, my playing was clumsy and rhythmless; in fact, next to her, I was a washed out fleck of dirt on the sole of a boot. My tousled dark hair, a mashed-in nose, and raw-knuckled hands were nothing compared to her clean, graceful features. My bland recital dress was a dull navy; the skirt drooped down my knock-knees and stopped above my scuffed Mary-Janes. Even my voice was croaky and noisy compared to hers. I was nothing next to this finely carved sculpture of perfection.

She looked at me and I noticed her eyes. Grotto blue with chartreuse undertones. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Emma."

"Arden."

--

When I woke up, I was eating breakfast.

"WHOA!" I screamed, flailing around. Yet I stayed still, doing the same involuntary movements. Fingers, laced around a silver spoon, dipping into the bowl of oatmeal and tipping it into my mouth.

Anxiously, I tried to move; to will myself out of the chair I was in, to drop the spoon and let it loll around in the bowl and figure out what was going on. But I couldn't move my hands...

My hands? These weren't my hands. They were pale and slender with baby pink gloss on the nails. And the hair splashing down my front was golden.

"Arden," I whispered.

Arden finished her breakfast and crossed over to the sink, giving the bowl and spoon a quick rinse in lukewarm water before placing them in the drying rack. Then, she plunged her arms into a coat, slid into boots, and headed off to school.

It was a mile until she reached a brick-red building teeming with kids. She shouldered open the front doors and walked through winding, linoleum-floored hallways to get to the classroom. Her desk was in the front row, nestled up to the projector on the computer cart. The first thing the teacher did after the bell rang was hand out tests face-down. Arden flipped hers over with deft fingers. 100.

I expected no less of perfection.

The school day sped by. Arden was an exemplary student, yet modest; her hand shot up no more than three times per class. After school the bell rang again and Arden stood up, threw her coat over her shoulders, and walked home, trudging on frozen pavements and crisp autumn leaves.

She laid out all her homework and did it diligently. After her work was done she swept them into binders and then crossed over to the mahogany piano in the living room. She sat down and played through her scales and her pieces, savoring each poignant note. Not until three hours later did she stand up.

Then she cried. Hot tears slipped down her cheeks and her breath came in irregular spurts and I was taken aback. Perfection didn't cry. Perfection was always fine. Perfection didn't have tears tainting their cheeks.

"Why are you crying?" I shouted over the sound of her sniffles.

And everything went black.

--

"What were you doing inside my head, Emma?"

The voice was curt. I snapped awake and found myself lying in an infinite black expanse – and I was me again. Somehow that made me relieved.

"It was an accident," I replied.

Arden came out of the shadows. She scoffed. There was something different about her; something I couldn't pinpoint. She wasn't radiant like she used to be. "I'm not so perfect anymore, am I?"

"Why were you crying?

Her gaze was chilling. "Did you see my parents even once?"

"No," I said. My mouth and throat were going dry.

"It was my aunt who came to see me play," said Arden, who was now pacing. "My parents...they work all the time. They've never been there to see me succeed. Jobs are more important to them."

Tears slipped down her face. "And did I ever hang out with any friends? No. I try, I really do." A tortured expression distorted her delicate face. "But in the end I'm just alone."

The black expanse I was on began to shift and rumble. And just then, I wanted out of her mind. I closed my eyes again and felt unconsciousness wash over me once more.

--

This time I woke up in my own bed. It was so early the sky was still tinted rouge. I walked into the hallway barefoot; snores echoed out of my parents' room. In the hall there was a little mirror fixed above a desk. I looked at myself in it.

If Arden Evans wasn't perfection, who was? Certainly not me. Maybe not anyone. And yet, as I stared at my sloppy black locks, that was okay.

She doesn't know that.

--

Miles away, Arden crossed over to her mailbox and picked out a stack of envelopes. One of them caught her eye. The writing was smudgy but she could make out the name on the return address: Emma Liu. That diminutive, dark-haired girl from the recital, the one with grubby nails and bushy eyebrows, the one that played badly.

Her fingers slit open the envelope, flipped open the folded up piece of paper.

Want to be friends?

She had seen her. She had seen her without her facade and her polite smiles. Emma had seen Arden, not Perfection, and taken her under her wing, a girl who was as far from perfect as could be.

Perfection couldn't see why. But in time, Arden would.