Perfectly Imperfect

By Amy Martin

Book 3 in The Perfects series.

Mean Girls + Freaky Friday + Sabrina, The Teenage Witch = The Perfects

Janey Douchette’s life is less than perfect. She lives in a trailer park, she and her dad have no money, and she lost her mother in a car accident. And to make matters worse, she spends her nights cleaning up after The Perfects, Ridgeview High’s mean girls, on the job at the local coffeehouse.

But when Janey finds a strange book in a box of her mother’s old things, she’s convinced her fortunes are about to change. The words in the strange book have power, and Janey plans to harness that power to undo all the bad things in her life. But can she figure out how to harness that power without screwing up her life and the lives of everyone around her–including The Perfects?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Martin
• Release date: Jul 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463626825

Amy Martin

Amy Martin wrote and illustrated her first book at the age of ten and gave it to her fourth grade teacher, who hopefully lost it in her house somewhere and didn't share it with anyone else.The first book she published as a grown-up, In Your Dreams,was a semi-finalist in the Young Adult category of the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Competition. She has published four books in the In Your Dreams series, and she is also the author of The Perfects series.Amy lives with her husband and a ferocious attack tabby named Cleo. When not writing or reading, she can usually be found watching sports, drinking coffee, or indulging her crippling Twitter habit (and, sometimes, doing all three at once).

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Perfectly

Imperfect

Perfectly Imperfect

Copyright © 2018

Smashwords edition

Amy Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, with express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Photo credit: pixabay.com (user: darksouls1)

Other books by Amy Martin:

In Your Dreams (4 book series)

The Perfects (4 book series)

Want to be the first to know about Amy Martin’s new releases? Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, check out her website at www.theamymartin.com, or sign up for her mailing list.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Other Books by Amy Martin

About the Author

Chapter 1

Tuesday, January 25

I swear the Perfects come in here just to piss me off.

Lexi Grayson, Alissa Lofton, and Dani Maguire have ruled Ridgeview High School basically since the first day of our freshman year.

They’re rich, they’re beautiful, they’re popular. They’re the stereotypical mean girls from every teen movie ever made, and everyone at school loves and hates them at the same time. Even the collective nickname people gave them when we were fourteen, the Perfects, is on one hand a statement of admiration and on the other a big, fat, snarky swipe at how they walk around like they invented popularity or something.

Of course, I’m a walking stereotype, too. I’m the poor girl, the artsy girl, the girl who wears thrift store clothes and doesn’t talk to anyone unless she has to. And since I work the counter at least three or four nights a week at Ridgeview, Missouri’s, only coffeehouse, Smiley Joe’s, I have to talk to people more than I want, even if it’s just to take their order.

I’m the opposite of the Perfects. I’m about as imperfect as it gets.

Knowing every teen movie I’ve ever seen ends with the crowd turning on people like the Perfects and stereotypical little me getting the good things I deserve doesn’t change the fact that the movie isn’t over yet, and I’m becoming less and less convinced as time goes on that my happy ending is coming. Even though I’m past the middle of my senior year, I feel like I’m stuck somewhere in my personal movie’s first act when the mean girls still rule over their high school kingdom and happiness is something I’ll never have.

Chairs scrape the hardwood floor and I glance up from my copy of Moby Dick resting on the counter to see the Perfects preparing to leave. As they slide into their coats and gather up their belongings, part of me watches their actions with curiosity and anticipation.

But the other part of me doesn’t need to wonder how this particular short film, this vignette, is going to end—I’ve seen it too many times.

Dani, a perky blonde with flawless makeup and tanning-bed skin, hitches her bag over her shoulder and picks up her coffee cup. Lexi tosses some of her golden brown curls off her shoulders and shoots Dani a sharp look as Alissa, a petite perky girl who always seems about a half step behind the other two, struggles to zip up her coat.

Quickly, Dani places the cup back on the table top after Lexi’s cutting glare. Satisfied, Lexi pushes her shoulders back and walks ahead of the others toward the exit. Dani follows, but not before giving me the briefest glance. Something in the way her mouth twists up for a second tells me she’s sorry, or maybe I only want to believe she is. Sometimes when Dani pays attention to me, even if it’s when she and her friends are lobbing insults in my direction at school, I imagine she’s about to break away from the group, say Sorry, Janey… and apologize for tanking our friendship in eighth grade.

But she never does. This time, Dani turns and catches up with Lexi while Alissa, who has finally conquered her zipper, shoves a few last papers in her bag.

You’re killing me, Lis, Lexi huffs loudly enough everyone in the coffeehouse would be able to hear if there were anyone else around at the moment.

Alissa slings her bag over her shoulder and trots to catch up with her friends. Lexi pushes the door open and the three of them disappear out onto the sidewalk, releasing a burst of cold January air into the coffeehouse that quickly dissipates because Marilyn Doane, my boss, keeps the heat cranked up to tropical levels during the winter.

I sigh and close my book, grabbing a damp towel from the counter behind me and slinging it over my shoulder as I walk out into the main area of the coffeehouse. Once at the Perfects’ table, I start piling up their dishes and silverware, walking them to a container on a ledge just above the garbage can near the front counter. Marilyn, who’s wiping off the counter where we make drinks, eyes me with some amusement.

I can put up a sign, you know, she says.

Smiley Joe’s is a clear your own table establishment, something most people quickly figure out when they come here for the first time. But every time someone doesn’t clear their table, Marilyn insists we need to put up signs by the garbage cans and near the front counter explaining that people need to take care of their own messes.

Putting up a sign won’t make a difference with those three, I grumble, heading back to their table to get their coffee cups. The Perfects leave a mess on their table every time they come in because they know someone will clean it up—Marilyn, or one of my other co-workers if I’m not here.

Once I’ve cleared the table of what the Perfects have left behind, I wipe the fake-wood surface with a damp cloth and head back to the counter where Moby Dick awaits me.

I had to read that in high school, too, Marilyn says, nodding at me from the other side of the espresso machine.

My sympathies. I feel like I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for the last two hours.

Marilyn laughs as the coffeehouse door opens once again. Your friends are here, she says, wiping the espresso machine’s nozzle with a cloth.

I look up to see Rachel Lord, who’s been one of my best friends since before I can remember, and Ellie Stengel, who’s been our friend since we moved to her neighborhood when we were six. Rachel pushes her coat hood off her head and runs her hands through her wavy brown hair. As if she’s triggered something in me, I run my hand through my own brown hair, which is about two shades lighter than hers to the point it’s almost blonde. But over Christmas break, Ellie and I both dyed our hair—Ellie’s a brunette, too—so now my hair’s mostly blue while Ellie’s, which she has tucked up under a gray sock cap at the moment, is purple. Rachel had been planning to dye her hair bright red, but her mother wouldn’t let her.

Her mother wouldn’t let her isn’t something I’ve had to deal with for six years. My mom died in a car accident when her car slid off a road out by the local strip mall on a cold January night a lot like this one, only on that night sleet covered the roads. My dad’s done the single parent routine well enough over the years, but when dealing with girl stuff, like how I dress or how I wear my hair, he pretty much lets me do whatever I want. Case in point—when I locked myself in the bathroom to dye my hair, I was in there longer than I usually am when I get ready to leave the house. Dad knocked to make sure I was okay, but he didn’t push for details. And after I came out with my new blue hair dripping down my back, he simply said, You look…nice, barely showing any emotion—no happiness, no anger, no confusion. Just nice.

And as cool as my hair is, I would have given anything for my mom to have been there to stop me from dyeing it to begin with. Mom cashing in the mom card and telling me what I can and can’t do would sure beat not having her around at all.

You know, it’s not that cold outside, I say to my friends before either one can get anything out. I have my bike. I don’t need a ride.

Rachel frowns at me. How do you know what we’re here for? Maybe we just got a sudden cappuccino craving and decided to stop by?

You’re here to take me home. It’s almost nine. You know when I get off work, and you guys are pretty predictable.

Well, it’s freezing out, Ellie says, hunching into her coat like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. I’ll never understand how warm-blooded you are. I was cold the second I walked out my front door.

"You were probably cold before you walked out your front door," I tell her, and she smirks at me. Ellie is always freezing no matter the weather. The temperature could be eighty degrees outside and she’d be searching around for a sweater and a hat.

Anyway, before you two get into it—yes, we’re here to give you a ride home, Rachel says. Your dad’s not already on his way, is he?

I’ll text him just in case.

Rachel and Ellie are the only friends I have anymore, but I couldn’t have asked for better ones. Even though the cold weather doesn’t bother me and I’m cool with riding my bike everywhere, Rachel, who has her own car, always seems to wander into Smiley Joe’s on winter nights when I’m about to get off work, and Ellie’s usually along for the ride.

I fire off a quick text to my dad to let him know Ellie and Rachel are bringing me home, and Marilyn sets a to-go cup on the counter in front of me. For the cappuccino craving you aren’t having, she says, brushing some whitish blonde hair out of her eyes as she winks at Rachel and Ellie. Ellie raises her eyebrows at Rachel, who nods at the cup. Finally, Ellie steps forward, reaching inside her bag.

It’s on the house, Marilyn says, holding up her hand as Ellie pulls out her wallet. I can make one for you, too, if you want, she says to Rachel, who shrugs her shoulders and bobs her head sheepishly, probably feeling guilty at taking something for free because it’s who she is. She coordinates most of the volunteer activities our school sponsors, so she’s always worried about people who are less fortunate and wondering what she can do to help. Taking something for free—especially something she doesn’t need but would just be kind of cool to have—totally isn’t in her DNA.

You’re sure? Rachel asks Marilyn, pulling her wallet from her bag just as Ellie had done.

I have to take care of the people who take care of one of my best employees, Marilyn says with another wink, this one directed at me. I’ll make one for you, too.

I shake my head. Sometimes, I don’t know how Marilyn keeps this place open. She’s always giving her employees free food and coffees when we’re working, and now my friends are getting in on the free stuff, too.

As Marilyn makes the cappuccinos, I put my copy of Moby Dick in my bag underneath the counter. Do you need help cleaning up? I ask her. I can stay longer.

I usually get off at nine, but Smiley Joe’s is open until eleven. Usually, Marilyn stays here with Marcus, the cook and assistant manager, and takes care of any customers. Things get kind of slow after nine when most of the other downtown Ridgeview businesses close, and so she spends most of the time cleaning so she can go home right at closing time. Tonight, I feel bad enough about the free drinks for my friends and me that asking her if she wants me to stay seems like the model employee thing to do.

No. You’ve got school tomorrow and a Great American Novel to struggle through, she tells me, placing the last cappuccino on the counter. Go ahead and go home. I’ll be fine.

Okay. I turn to my friends, who are leaning against the counter and sipping their drinks. Just let me get my coat from the back and wheel my bike around. Meet you at your car?

Yeah. We’ll go warm it up, Rachel says before I glare at Ellie and say Shotgun.

You can’t claim ‘shotgun’ before you’re even at the car, Ellie insists.

I didn’t know there were rules other than the first person to call ‘shotgun’ gets to sit in the passenger seat, I say, grabbing my cappuccino and turning toward the door to the kitchen. Not waiting for Ellie’s response, I tell Marilyn goodnight and breeze through the kitchen, waving at Marcus, a ponytailed community college student, on the way to the storage room. My old wool coat with the torn lining hangs from a peg in the storage room wall just inside the store’s back door. I bundle up and head outside, unlocking my rusted ten-speed from the fence at the rear of the alley and wheeling it around to the sidewalk in front of the coffeehouse. Rachel jumps out from behind the wheel of her used Chevy and unlocks the trunk while Ellie gives up her stolen shotgun position to help us store my bike.

Shotgun, I call, sprinting ahead of Ellie to the passenger side of the car as Rachel shuts the trunk lid.

My stuff’s already up there, Ellie whines.

So?

Ellie lowers her shoulders and resigns herself to defeat, sliding into the backseat. Up front, I drop my messenger bag on top of hers in the floorboard, which leaves barely any room for my feet. But I have no problem being a little cramped if cramped equals victorious.

I…got…shot…gun, I sing to Ellie without turning around.

Because you stole it.

I called it while we were still inside Smiley Joe’s, I say, wrapping my hands around the to-go cup and letting the warmth seep into my skin. If anyone stole anything, it’s you.

Children, Rachel begins through a sigh as she backs out of the parking space onto Main Street. I know what an honor it is to sit up front next to me, but if you don’t start behaving, I’ll pull this car over and you’ll both get out and walk home.

Ellie and I snicker at her and she turns up the radio. This is how the three of us work most of the time—Ellie and I bicker at each other and Rachel steps in like she’s our mom or something.

Did you forget your gloves again? Rachel asks, still in mom mode as she notices me gripping the coffee cup for dear life.

Yeah. They’re in my room somewhere.

Remember when we were little and our moms used to safety pin our gloves to our coats so we wouldn’t lose them? she says.

Except I’d always lose the safety pins. And then I’d lose the gloves.

That’s right. She laughs.

Rachel steers us through the mostly deserted streets of Ridgeview, past the high school and on toward the extreme northern part of town where I live. She turns the Chevy into Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park—a place that is neither located in a valley nor is it very pleasant—and drives past several ramshackle single-wides until she reaches the just as ramshackle-as-the-others single-wide where I live with my dad.

Do you guys want to come in? I ask as Rachel pulls up to the curb. I’m sure my dad’s just watching TV and grading papers.

I can’t, Rachel says, shaking her head. My mom will kill me if I don’t get home. She wasn’t happy I was out running around in the cold to begin with, but I wanted to give you a ride.

Yeah, I need to get home, too, Ellie says, opening her door.

Okay. I gather up my bag and get out of the car, heading for the trunk. I don’t blame them for not wanting to stay. It’s my house and I barely want to go inside.

Calling our mobile home a house is generous—the trailer has two small bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and a tiny area with a stacked washer and dryer, all of which could probably fit on the first floor of any of the houses in Grand Prairie, Ridgeview’s richest neighborhood. This trailer has been my home since I was fourteen and had just started high school, and as much as I don’t like it and wish I lived somewhere else, it’s all I’ve known for the last few years.

After my mom died, my dad went through some stuff. I mean, we both did, but my dad basically had a nervous breakdown. Mom was the one who always held everything together, and I didn’t realize how much until she wasn’t around anymore to get us up in the morning, see us off to work and school, keep food in the house, and pay the bills on time. After the funeral, when everything was supposed to get back to normal as far as routines and everyday life were concerned, nothing did. While I was able to stumble through my days on a sort of autopilot setting, Dad couldn’t pull himself together. His depression eventually cost him his job, which meant we had to move from a real house to one we could hook to a truck with a trailer hitch.

Rachel and Ellie join me at the back of the car and help me wrestle my bike from the trunk. Give me a call tomorrow morning if you want a ride to school, Rachel says as I grip the bike’s handlebars. My mom said something about snow. Either way, it’s going to be cold.

Thanks, I say as I wheel my bike up the cracked concrete path leading to our front porch. Once I’m at the bottom of the steps, I turn around and wave goodbye to my friends, who are both back in the car—Ellie in the front seat this time. Rachel pulls away from the curb and turns around in the street, heading back toward the entrance to the mobile home park, and I bump my bike up the porch stairs. As I’m locking the bike to one of the posts at the far end of the porch, the front door opens followed by the rickety screen door and my dad, in a faded David Bowie t-shirt and flannel sleep pants, steps outside.

I thought I heard something out here, he says, hugging himself against the cold. I’d hoped it was you and not a burglar.

"Well, there was a burglar here, but I told him to go away or my dad would beat him up."

Dad raises his bushy red eyebrows. And he bought it?

I shake my head and walk over to him, hitching my messenger bag up on my shoulder. Let’s get inside before you freeze to death.

He opens the door and stands aside to let me in. I hang my coat on one of the kitchen chairs as Dad heads back to the couch in our adjoining living room. He’s taken over the scratched coffee table with piles of papers from his middle school earth science students.

Looks like fun, I say sarcastically, nodding at the papers. What are you working on tonight?

Essays from my sixth graders on the effects of climate change around the world. They each had to pick a country. He sighs, and I don’t blame him. I can’t imagine reading research from twelve-year olds on climate change.

And are you learning anything?

"Very funny. You know I already know everything," he says, his eyes flashing.

Teaching middle school science is Dad’s dream job, which I totally don’t get, probably because I didn’t like middle schoolers when I was one and so I can’t imagine teaching them. My grandparents were kind of unsupportive of teaching as a career path, so they encouraged Dad to major in engineering, which he did. He worked for years at Virgil Tool and Die in nearby Bernardsville, which he didn’t particularly like, but it was a good living.

Then my mom died, and everything imploded.

Once Dad got himself together, he figured he’d tanked his career by getting fired and so he got a part-time job and went back to school to get a teaching degree. And while I’m glad he’s happier now—he deserves it after all we’ve been through—I can’t help but be sad about everything we gave up on the way to him becoming whole again, like a house we can’t hitch to a truck and drive off, for example.

The house we had to sell before we moved into the trailer park was never the place I considered home, even though we lived there for eight years. It’s weird, but home to me has always been our first house in Ridgeview, an average two-story house with a front porch in a now-abandoned area of Ridgeview called Rocky Ridge. So many times, I’ve drawn or painted the white house and the picket fence surrounding the yard along with Mom’s prized rose bushes from memory. We had to move when I was six thanks to a nearby chemical plant contaminating the land and Rocky Ridge Lake. The chemical company bought up our houses and my family, along with Rachel’s and Dani Maguire’s, moved to another subdivision in town. Our old houses, the lake, and the surrounding land now sit fenced off from the rest of the town and mostly ignored, except for guys from my high school who sneak out there to drink in the abandoned houses.

And except for me.

Sometimes I go to Rocky Ridge because I feel closer to Mom there than I do anywhere else, sitting on the busted front porch staring at the naked branches her rose bushes have become. To me, our Rocky Ridge house represents a time in my life when everything was still perfect, those moments as a little kid when I had no idea how cruel the world could be. I sit and stare out at the street and remember things like how Rachel, Dani, and I used to ride our bikes around in front of our houses or how we learned to swim in Rocky Ridge Lake with our moms at our sides. I think about Mom doctoring my skinned knees and scraped elbows, and I remember Dani, Rachel, and I playing with Rachel’s baby sister Jessica and pretending she was a magical fairy we’d found in the woods.

I miss everything about Rocky Ridge. Mom was alive, Dani Maguire was still my friend, and I was just Janey Douchette, average little kid, instead of Janey Douchette, teenage weirdo.

Dad sits on the couch underneath a framed painting of our old house I did in art class freshman year and lowers the volume on the TV. He likes to grade papers with something on in the background, especially when I’m at work, because he says the noise makes him feel like he’s not alone.

I’ll let you get back to grading, I tell him, hitching my thumb toward my bedroom door. I’ve got some stuff to finish up myself.

Have you eaten? There’s leftover meatloaf in the fridge.

No other