Perfect Couple

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Praise for
Biggest Flirts,
the first book in the Superlatives trilogy

“Teen romance fans on the hunt for a flirty fix will find plenty to enjoy in this sexy, fun beach read.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Entertaining and engaging.”

—
School Library Journal

1

FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHS WALLPAPERED MR. OAKLEY’S journalism classroom. Behind his desk, Martin Luther King Jr. waved to thousands who’d crowded the National Mall to hear his “I Have a Dream” speech, with the Washington Monument towering in the distance. Over by the windows, a lone man stood defiant in front of four Chinese tanks in protest of the Tiananmen Square massacre. On the wall directly above my computer screen, a World War II sailor impulsively kissed a nurse in Times Square on the day Japan surrendered.

Mr. Oakley had told us a picture was worth a thousand words, and these posters were his proof. He was right. Descriptions in my history textbook read like old news, but these photos made me want to stand up for people, like Dr. King did, and protest injustice, like Tank Man did.

And be swept away by romance, like that nurse.

My gaze fell from the poster to my computer display, which was full of my pictures of Brody Larson. A few weeks ago, on the first day of school, our senior class had elected the Superlatives—like Most Academic, Most Courteous, and Least Likely to Leave the Tampa/St. Petersburg Metropolitan Area. Brody and I had been voted Perfect Couple That Never Was. Brody had dated Grace Swearingen the whole summer, and I’d been with the yearbook editor, Kennedy Glass, for a little over a month. Being named part of a perfect couple when Brody and I were dating other people was embarrassing. Disorienting. Anything but perfect.

And
me
being named one half of a perfect couple with
Brody
made as much sense as predicting snow for Labor Day next Monday in our beachside town. He was the popular, impulsive quarterback for our football team. Sure, through twelve years of school, I’d liked him. He was friendly and
so
handsome. He also scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t date someone who’d nearly lost his license speeding, was forever in the principal’s office for playing pranks, and had a daily drama with one girl or another on a long list of exes. And he would never fall for law-abiding, curfew-obeying, glasses-wearing me.

So I hadn’t gone after him as my friend Tia had urged me to.
I only found excuses to snap photos of him for the yearbook. For the football section, I’d taken a shot of him at practice in his helmet and pads. Exasperated with his teammates, he’d held up his hands like he needed help from heaven.

For the candid section, I planned to use a picture from my friend Kaye’s party last Saturday. Brody grinned devilishly as he leaned into his truck cab to grab something. I’d cropped out the beer.

For the full-color opening page, I’d taken a close-up of him yesterday in study hall. His brown hair fell long across his forehead. He wore a green T-shirt that made his green eyes seem to glow. Girls all over school would thank me for this when they received their yearbooks next May. In fact, Brody had implied as much when I snapped the picture. He made me promise I wouldn’t sell it to “a porn site for ladies,” which was why he was smiling.

In short, he was the sailor in the poster: the kind of guy to come home from overseas, celebrate the end of the war in Times Square, and sweep a strange girl off her feet.

I only wished I was that girl.

“Harper, you’ve been staring at Brody for a quarter of an hour.” Kennedy rolled his chair down the row of computers to knock against mine. I spun for a few feet before I caught the desktop and stopped myself.

Busted!

“You’re not taking that Perfect Couple vote seriously, are you?” he asked. “I’ll bet a lot of people decided to prank you.”

“Of course I’m not taking it seriously,” I said, and should have left it there. I couldn’t. “Why do you think we’re so mismatched? Because he’s popular and I’m not?”

“No.”

“Because he’s a local celebrity and I’m not?”

“No, because he broke his leg in sixth grade, trying to jump a palmetto grove in his go-cart.”

“I see your point.”

“Besides,
we’re
the perfect couple.”

Right. I smiled. And I waited for him to put his arm around me, backing up his words with a touch. But our relationship had never been very physical. I expected a caress now because that’s what I imagined Brody would do in this situation. I was hopeless.

I said brightly, “If I was staring at Brody, I was zoning out.” I nodded to the Times Square poster. “I get lost in that image sometimes.”

Kennedy squinted at the kiss. “Why? That picture is hackneyed. You can buy it anywhere. It’s on coffee mugs and shower curtains. It’s as common in the dentist’s office as a fake Monet or a print of dogs playing poker.”

Yes, because people loved it—for a reason. I didn’t voice my opinion, though. I was just relieved I’d distracted Kennedy from my lame obsession with Brody.

When Kennedy had bumped my chair, he’d stopped himself squarely in front of my computer. Now he closed my screen
without asking
. I’d saved my changes to Brody’s photos, but what if I hadn’t before he closed them? The idea of losing my digital touch-ups made me cringe. I took a deep breath through my nose, calming myself, as he scrolled through the list of his own files, looking for the one he wanted. I was tense for no good reason.

I’d known Kennedy forever from school. We’d talked a little last spring when Mr. Oakley selected him as the new editor for the yearbook and I won the photographer position. Back then, I’d been sort-of dating my friend Noah Allen, which made me technically off limits. Kennedy was a tall guy who looked older than seventeen because of his long, blond ponytail and darker goatee, his T-shirts for punk bands and indie films I’d never heard of, and his pierced eyebrow.

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.”

My cheeks flamed hot. What had seemed like a fun project at first had quickly turned into a burden. I’d been trying to schedule these appointments during school, around my classes. At home, I selected the best photos and touched them up on my computer. But I also had other responsibilities. I’d signed on to photograph a 5K race at the town’s Labor Day festival next Monday. And of course I had to help Mom. She ran a bed and breakfast. I was required to contribute to the breakfast end of it. I didn’t see how I could produce these finished pictures for Kennedy any faster.

“Is everything okay here?” Mr. Oakley had walked up behind Kennedy.

“Of course,” Kennedy said. From his position, Mr. Oakley couldn’t see Kennedy narrow his eyes, warning me not to complain. Mr. Oakley had said at the beginning of school that he wanted the yearbook to run like a business, meaning we students reported to each other like employees to bosses, rather than crying to him about every minor problem. That meant Kennedy had a lot more power than a yearbook editor at a school where the advisor made the decisions.