Pushing Perfect. Michelle Falkoff

people get off on doing the bad stuff—I think I’d still love poker even if it weren’t a little off the morality scale, but I do get a kick out of having a secret. Lots of people do.”

      “I don’t have any secrets,” I said, but I had to look at my econ textbook while I said it. I hated lying, even though I basically did it every day.

      “Everyone has secrets,” she said. “I’m not asking you to tell me yours; I’m just trying to figure out what makes you tick. Let me show you something.” She got up from her desk and walked to the other side of her bedroom. “Come on.”

      I followed her over, where, like at Becca’s, there was an enormous closet next to a tiny bathroom. Alex opened the door and turned on the light, and I was shocked to see rows of shirts and pants and skirts and dresses, organized by color. “I’m so confused,” I said as she flipped through the clothes, pulling things out to show me. “Did you rob Forever 21 or something? Where do you even wear this stuff?” Then I looked closer and saw some of the labels. This wasn’t junk from the mall; all the clothes were designer. I ran my hands over one of the rows, stopping on a satin bandage dress in varying shades of silver, a crinkly black jumpsuit that felt soft as I rubbed it between my fingers, a minidress with a bright pattern that seemed to be made out of the same material as scuba gear. I couldn’t picture Alex in any of them.

      “The beauty of the internet,” Alex said, holding a sequined sheath up to her body. “And I wear this stuff to parties, when I feel like it.”

      The only parties I’d ever heard about were keggers in people’s backyards, and these outfits would be way out of place there. “It seems a little … fancy,” I said.

      “When I go out, I like to do it up right. It’s kind of fun to dress up every once in a while. It’s kind of like I play a boy online when I play poker, and I play a girl at night when I go out.”

      “And what are you during the day?”

      “I’m just me,” she said. “And besides, who cares what we look like at school? School isn’t where the fun happens.”

      “That much I know.” I was saving up my fun for college, where there would be more people like me, where it wasn’t nerdy to care about school, where boys weren’t the most important thing. Though they’d be important.

      “You still haven’t told me what you do for fun, and I’m getting the feeling that that’s because either you’re not having any, or else whatever you think is fun is not even a little bit fun.”

      “That’s not fair,” I said. “I like to do logic puzzles. They’re fun.”

      “Logic puzzles? Like extra homework?”

      “No, they’re like games.” I explained about the graphs and the clues and how they were basically like figuring out mysteries.

      “You’re proving my point,” Alex said, pulling more dresses out of the closet, shaking her head, and throwing them on her bed. “You need to be around other people. And not at school. And not just me.” She picked out a dress and held it up against me and frowned. “You’re just too tall. Or I’m too short.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “There’s a party this weekend,” she said. “My friends have kind of an underground thing once a month, and we’re going. It’s what all the fancy clothes are for.”

      “Oh, I don’t know.” I remembered the last time I’d gone to a party. It hadn’t ended well.

      “It’s the best idea! You need to blow off some steam. Maybe that’s why you’re so stressed out—you don’t have an outlet.”

      “That’s not the problem,” I said.

      “Then what is?”

      I didn’t really have an answer to that. “I just … Being in situations like that makes me anxious.”

      “Then the party is the answer,” she said. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to give you a Novalert to try, just to relax you. If it works, the friend I get it from will be at the party, and I’ll make sure he has more for you.”

      I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea.

      “Don’t give me that look,” Alex said. “You know I’m right. We’ll have so much fun getting ready—I’ll find something that fits you so we can get all dressed up, and you can help me with my makeup, since you’re obviously way better at it than I am.”

      I’d never seen Alex wear makeup. Her skin was perfect; giving her a makeover would be kind of fun. Like painting on a totally clean canvas. “You really think I should try this?”

      “It worked for me. Loosened me up, too. Much easier to flirt when you’re not worried about whether it’ll work.”

      “That might be going a little too far.”

      “We’ll see,” she said. “So, are you in?”

      Maybe Alex was right. Maybe I did need to relax. Besides, I’d already fainted in front of a bunch of people, so whatever happened at this party couldn’t be any worse than that. And it was all in service of the most important thing, which was the SAT. If I didn’t fix that problem, then I might as well trash any hope I ever had of getting into a good school and having a real future. When I thought about it like that, I knew I had no choice. I’d try anything.

      “I’m in,” I said.

      The night of the party I told Mom I was staying over at Alex’s, and I packed up a train case of makeup to take with me. I’d done the basic SCAM so she wouldn’t see what my blank canvas looked like, but I saved the rest of it to do at her house, once we’d decided what I would wear. It would have been easier just to pick something out of my own closet, but I didn’t have anything like Alex’s Closet of Wonders, and she’d made it clear that this party was going to be capital-F Fancy.

      Alex had already started decimating her closet by the time I got to her house. Her bed was covered with dresses in nearly every color. “I have to find the perfect thing,” she said.

      “For you or for me?”

      “Both!” She picked up two dresses and held them out at her sides. “Me first. What do you think?”

      One was a black cocktail dress, simple and beautifully cut. The other looked like a flapper dress from the twenties, short and spangly and adorable. “What are you going for?”

      “Well, the plan was to be wingwoman for you. But I’ve got my eye on someone there too.”

      “Who?”

      “Let’s just call him the Prospect,” she said. “I like to have nicknames when I’m on a mission.”

      “Gotcha,” I said. “Okay, the black one isn’t sexy enough. The other one’s cute, but it’s so short I think you’ll be pulling on it constantly, which is probably not what you want.”

      “You’re so practical,” she said, but she sounded impressed. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

      “Do you mind if I—” I nodded at the dress pile on the bed. She gave me the okay and I started sorting through the mess, luxuriating in the fabrics: the soft-but-bristly feel of suede, the near-liquid sensation of running my hands through a dress made almost entirely out of fringe. I kind of wanted to just jump in the pile and roll around in it, everything felt so good. Finally I saw a silky red slip dress. It was short, but not as short as the flapper dress, and it had thin straps and a little swirl in the skirt. “What about this one?”

      Alex squealed her approval. “Oh, I forgot about that one!”

      Given how many dresses were on the bed, I could understand how. She shimmied out of her jeans and T-shirt before I had a chance to say I’d happily go into another room. Now that I’d seen her out-of-school wardrobe, I wasn’t surprised she was wearing