Perfect Couple (Superlatives 2)

Sawyer De Luca, who’d been elected Most Likely to Go to Jail, had taunted Kennedy mercilessly about the eyebrow piercing. But Sawyer taunted everyone about everything. I’d had enough trouble screwing up the courage to get my ears pierced a few years ago. I admired Kennedy’s edgy bravery. I’d thought it put him out of my league.

We hadn’t dated until five weeks ago, when we ran into each other at a film festival in downtown Tampa that we’d both attended alone. That’s when we realized we were perfect for each other. I honestly still believed that.

I crushed on Brody only because of the Perfect Couple title, like a sixth grader who heard a boy was interested and suddenly became interested herself. Except, as a senior, I was supposed to be above this sort of thing. Plus, Brody wasn’t interested. Our class thought he should be, but Brody wasn’t known for doing what he was told.

“Here it is.” Kennedy opened his design for one of the Superlatives pages, with BIGGEST FLIRTS printed at the top.

“Oooh, I like it,” I said, even though I didn’t like it at all.

One of my jobs was to photograph all the Superlatives winners for the yearbook. The Biggest Flirts picture of my friend Tia and her boyfriend, Will, was a great shot. I would include it in my portfolio for admission to college art departments. I’d managed to capture a mixture of playfulness and shock on their faces as they stepped close together for a kiss.

Kennedy had taken away the impact by setting the photo at a thirty-degree angle.

“I have the urge to straighten it,” I admitted, tilting my head. This hurt my neck.

“All the design manuals and websites suggest angling some photos for variety,” he said. “Not every picture in the yearbook can be straight up and down. Think outside the box.”

I nodded thoughtfully, hiding how much his words hurt. I did think outside the box, and all my projects were about visual design. I sewed my own dresses, picking funky materials and making sure the bodices fit just right. The trouble I went to blew a lot of people’s minds, but sewing hadn’t been difficult once I’d mastered the old machine I’d inherited from Grandmom. To go with my outfit of the day, I chose from my three pairs of retro eyeglasses. The frames were worth the investment since I always wore them, ever since I got a prescription in middle school. They made me look less plain. If it hadn’t been for my glasses and the way I dressed, everyone would have forgotten I was there.

As it was, my outside-the-box look and the creative photos I’d been taking for the yearbook made me memorable. That’s why Kennedy had been drawn to me, just as I’d been intrigued by his eyebrow piercing and his philosophy of cinematography. At least, that’s what I’d thought.

I wanted to tell him, If this design is so great, tilt the photos of the chess club thirty degrees, not my photos of the Superlatives. Instead I said carefully, “This layout looks a little dated. It reminds me of a yearbook from the nineties, with fake paint splatters across the pages.”

“I don’t think so.” Turning back to the screen, he moved the cursor to save and communicated how deeply I’d offended him with a hard click on the mouse.

I kept smiling, but my stomach twisted. Kennedy would give me the silent treatment if I didn’t find a way to defuse this fight between now and the end of journalism class. Tonight was the first football game of the season, and I’d be busy snapping shots of our team. I was the only student with a press pass that would get me onto the sidelines. Kennedy would likely be in the stands with my other sort-of ex-boyfriend, Quinn Townsend, and our friends from journalism class. They’d all be telling erudite jokes under their breath that made fun of the football team, the entire game of football, and spectator sports in general. After the game, though, Kennedy and I would both meet our friends at the Crab Lab grill. And he would act like we weren’t even together.

“It’s just the way the picture is tilted,” I ventured. “The rest of it is cool—the background and the font.”

In answer, he opened the next page, labeled MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED. I hadn’t yet taken the photo of my friend Kaye and her boyfriend, Aidan, but Kennedy already had a place for it. He selected the empty space and tilted that, too, telling me, So there.

“When are you going to turn in the rest of these photos?” he asked me. “The deadline to send this section to the printer is two weeks from today.”

“Yeah,” I said doubtfully. “It’s been harder than I thought. I mean, taking the pictures isn’t hard,” I clarified quickly, before he reassigned some of my responsibilities. “It’s tricky to get out of class. We’ve had so many tests. And convincing some of our classmates to show up at a scheduled time is like herding cats.”

“Harper!” he exclaimed. “This is important. You have to get organized.”

I opened my lips, but nothing came out. I was stunned. I prided myself on my organizational skills. Kennedy should have seen the schedule on my laptop. My arrangements for these photo shoots were difficult but, in the end, impeccable. If the people who were supposed to pose for my pictures didn’t meet me, how was that my fault? I couldn’t drag them out of physics class by the ears.

“I need these shots on a rolling basis so I can design the pages,” Kennedy said. “You can’t throw them all at me on the last day. If you make us miss the deadline, the class might not get our yearbooks before graduation. Then the yearbooks would be mailed to us and we wouldn’t get to sign them.”