The Perfect Day

If Orpheus had been a sixteen-year-old girl, his tale might have had a happier ending. Unfortunately for Eurydice, few can match the stubborn willpower of a teenager with absolutely no time in her schedule for grieving. Today was meant to be her perfect birthday and a perfect birthday she would have, broken alarm clocks and ex-boyfriends be damned.  

“You. Will. Not. Cry.” Eliza told herself in the bathroom mirror, pointing her finger at her already tear-stained face for emphasis. Minor setbacks like a missed bus and a broken heart weren't going to stop her from having the spectacular celebration she deserved. She had planned her day down to the minute, although now, she supposed, everything before second period would have to be disregarded. Using the top of the paper-towel dispenser as a makeshift table, she pulled her color-coded itinerary and a pair of scissors out of her backpack and snipped off everything before “9:15-10:45: Ms. Bradshaw, AP English IV.” 

“Perfect,” she muttered to herself: no need for self-pitying tears now. 

English had always been her favorite class. She was an A+ student in most subjects (AP Physics not included), but literature was one of the only topics she truly understood rather than simply memorized. Today, however, they were doing partner activities over her least favorite book… and they didn’t get to choose their partners. 

“Marcus, you’re with Katie. Noah, you’ll be with Lucas…” Eliza crossed her fingers and prayed for someone at least halfway decent as Ms. Bradshaw paired the students up. 

“Emma O., let’s go ahead and have you and Emma C. work together, why not. And Eliza…” Eliza held her breath “...you’ll be with Tony today.”

Of course she would. The universe must be out to get her. Tony smirked at her across the room and waved one of those stupid two-finger salutes that seems to have become a trademark gesture of teenage assholes. 

“It’s fine,” she told herself. “Just one class, then Calc, then lunch.” She avoided thinking about the fact that she wouldn’t have anywhere to sit at lunch now that she and Brandon weren’t together. 

“So, question one,” she read aloud from their worksheet. “Would you describe Marlowe as a reliable narrator? Why or why not?” In her book, the sooner they finished this questionnaire, the sooner she could go back to having her perfect birthday. But they weren’t going to make any progress so long as Tony kept smirking at her like an idiot. 

“I heard Brandon dumped you” he finally said. 

“Not sure what that has to do with Heart of Darkness,” she replied. 

“Come on, everybody’s talking about it anyway. Don’t you wanna give your side of the story?”

“Not particularly,” she said.

Tony shrugged and pulled out his phone. They weren’t supposed to have them out in class, technically, but if teachers actually attempted to enforce that rule they wouldn’t have time left to do much else. 

A notification went off on his phone, and he snickered. “I guess if you’re really not interested in talking about it, you won’t care what Brandon’s telling everyone about the breakup.” 

Eliza took a deep breath and tried to persuade herself not to take the bait. She focused on finishing the worksheet that Tony clearly had no intention of helping her with. 

“Well, silence fits with your new reputation, I guess,” Tony said.

“What?” she said, curiosity getting the best of her. He beamed at her like he knew he had just won the psychological battle for her dignity. 

“I wouldn’t’ve guessed you were a prude,” he said. 

“A…what? What are you talking about?” 

Unfortunately, Eliza would never learn what, exactly, made her such a prude.. Just as Tony opened his mouth to tell her, Ms. Bradshaw arrived at their table to pick up the still unfinished worksheet. 

“Something more interesting than Conrad to chat about, I see?” She said. “You’re not usually one to procrastinate, Eliza; I had hoped you’d be able to keep the two of you on track.”

Eliza mumbled her apologies as she handed over the half-finished assignment. Tony bolted away from her with the bell, practically knocking her over to jump out of his seat and away from the awkward explanation he had probably never planned to give. 

Whether Calculus passed uneventfully or not she wouldn’t have been able to say; she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to care. Little could have interrupted the argument she was currently having with herself about whether Tony had actually heard that rumor from someone or if he had just made it up to torment her, that is, other than the mid-term that arrived on her desk with a big fat F at the top of the page. She groaned and sunk her head into her arms. A failing grade did not fit into her perfect birthday itinerary. 

Lunch would be her redeeming period; lunch would turn this day back into the perfect day she had anticipated. Today was Friday, objectively the best day of the week, and Friday meant pizza, objectively the best of the cafeteria lunches. And once she got through this ridiculously long line, she would have the chance to reconnect with her old lunch crew, the choir friends who she sat with before she started dating Brandon. Perfect.

“Cheese for me, please,” she said to Donna, the lunch lady. 

“Oh, sorry hon, we’re all out,” Donna said. “It’s just pepperoni left for today.” 

Eliza had to stifle a laugh. Of course it was. “I’m vegetarian.”

“Pick it off then,” Donna said, piling the greasy slice onto her plate. Eliza accepted her lunch tray with a reluctant thanks and made her way to the choir table… which didn’t have a single seat left empty. 

“Hi, guys,” she said, standing next to the table awkwardly. A few girls acknowledged her half-heartedly before turning their attention back to their previous conversation. There was no movement to make room for her at the table. She bounced her weight back and forth between her feet, deciding whether it would be worth it to pull up a chair and make everyone move for her or if she would be better off taking her tray to the choir room. The choir room would be less awkward for everyone, herself included. Plenty of other students spent their lunch periods there; it’s not like she would be eating by herself.

Confident in her decision, she spun on her heels and slammed into a lanky sophomore holding a freshly opened can of diet coke. It exploded on her crisp white shirt and dripped down to her light-wash jeans, leaving particularly unfortunate stains around her crotch and soaking through the dense fabric just enough to make her legs and torso feel immediately sticky. The sophomore turned bright red and frantically offered her napkins from a nearby table. Meanwhile, every single eye in the cafeteria (or what felt like it) had turned its attention to her.

Eliza felt her face turn hot and bit her tongue to keep herself from crying. Backing herself out of the situation as stealthily as she could, which was frankly not very stealthily at all, she fled the cafeteria and made a bee-line for the nearest restroom. “There’s no crying on a perfect day,” she hissed to herself. A freshman in the hallway, having overheard her comment, gave her a nervous side-eye.

After cleaning herself up in the bathroom as much as one possibly could with two semi-broken faucets, toilet paper, a hand dryer, and no change of clothes, she cautiously ventured back into the hallway, hoping she could sneak into her next class early enough to avoid being seen in her now slightly see-through blouse, only to be immediately struck in the temple by something small and wet and slimy. The first had barely fallen to the floor before a second mystery object flew at the side of her head and lodged in her hair. She detangled it from her hair and nearly gagged when she realized what she had been hit with: a spitball. She heard boys’ laughter from behind an open classroom door, and a third spitball hit her squarely in the middle of her diet-coke-stained chest.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she cried, and burst into tears. 

The boys to blame, fearing administrators or teachers or more likely just overwhelmed by the existence of a sobbing teenage girl, scrambled over each other to flee the scene of the crime. 

She floated through the rest of the day in a haze, resorting to the only self-manipulation strategies that still had a chance of working: denial and nihilism. Nothing bad had happened to her today, and if it had, it didn’t really matter because ultimately nothing mattered. Headphones didn’t matter, and neither did diet Coke stains, or spitballs, or ex-boyfriends who started vague rumors or English assignment partners who spread them. Not the strategy for having a perfect day that she originally planned on, but it was good enough. And the one remaining, undeniable benefit of it being her birthday was that she at least didn’t have to take the bus home–her mother was due to pick her up right at the last bell.

“Happy birthday!” her mother half-yelled, half-sang at her as she got in the car. “How was your day? Did everything go as planned?” she asked. Eliza snorted. Parents were so naively innocent. 

“It was perfect,” she said.