Melissa Kantor - Better than Perfect

First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

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Text copyright © Melissa Kantor 2015

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Melissa Kantor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780007580200

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007580217

Version: 2015-01-06

For Jennifer Klonsky

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication For Jennifer Klonsky

Epigraph Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? —Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

“I’m going to miss you.”

Jason’s arms were around me so tightly I could barely breathe, but lack of oxygen wasn’t the reason I didn’t say anything. If I tried to talk I was definitely going to embarrass myself by bawling, so I just nodded.

He kissed the top of my head. “Don’t think of it as being stuck at home. Think of it as a chance to study so you can kick my ass on the SATs.”

“Sure, but will my perfect score come between us?” I asked, my cheek still pressed against his chest. Jason had scored a 2380 on his SATs, just shy of a perfect 2400. Those twenty points were a sore spot with him, and if I ever wanted to get him riled up, all I had to do was get a sad look on my face, sigh, and ask what it was like to have gotten so close to perfection.

“I’m man enough to handle it,” he assured me.

Neither of us said anything about why I’d gotten a crap score on my June SATs, which I’d taken a week after my father broke the news to my mother that he was leaving her, just like neither of us said anything about the reason I wasn’t going on a family vacation this year.

Neither of us said anything about how it’s hard to go on a family vacation when you don’t have a family anymore.

Since there was nothing to say, I stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the lips.

“I’m going to need way more than that to get me through the next two weeks,” he said. His hands on my hips were warmer than the August afternoon, and we kissed again, harder. Jason and I had been kissing since eighth grade, when he came up to me at Max Pinto’s spin-the-bottle party and asked me if I’d done the English homework.

Which is how nerds fall in love.

I heard the click of the front door, and then Jason’s mom called, “Okay, you two. Jason, it’s time.”

Given how often it happened, I probably shouldn’t have gotten embarrassed whenever Jason’s parents caught us kissing, but I did. In some ways I was more daring than Jason—I was the one who’d tried to get him to sneak a bottle of wine from his parents’ wine fridge yesterday so we could drink it on our last night together—but when it came to PDA in front of his parents, he was the one who didn’t care. I slipped out of Jason’s arms and turned to face his mom, my cheeks flushed.

“Sorry, Grace,” I said as Jason wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. We fit together perfectly. There had been about six months freshman year when I was a little taller than he was, but now he was exactly the right height for me to slide under his shoulder.

“Hey, Mom. I was just telling Juliet that you changed your mind about the international phone plan and she can text me as much as she wants.”

Grace laughed and ran her fingers through her hair, which was dyed the same dirty blond that Jason’s hair was naturally. “Try it and spend the rest of the year paying me back,” she said. Apparently it cost a ton to do international texting, and even though the Robinsons had plenty of money, they weren’t the type of parents to give Jason and his sister whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it. While he was in France, Jason and I were going to have to email, which his mom insisted was very romantic and old-fashioned.

“Remember,” Grace added, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” She glanced at the thin gold watch on her wrist. “And … we’ve gotta go. We’ll miss you, Juliet.” After my dad moved out, Grace had asked me if I wanted her to ask my parents if I could join the Robinsons on their vacation, but I’d told her I couldn’t miss the end of my internship at Children United. I’d competed against kids from all over the world to get accepted, and my English teacher who’d written my recommendation for the summer was also writing my recommendation for college. I told Grace that if he found out I’d ditched the program, he might not write my rec in the fall. My reason was a lie, but it was plausible enough that she just smiled and told me how impressed she was by my living up to my responsibilities.