Chapter Two
When I was a child, my mother once said to me, “There is no garden without weeds.” She had always been big on proverbs—a trait that annoyed me to no end in my youth. I hated that every bit of advice was tied to a riddle.
As a result, most of her little sayings had a tendency to go in one ear and out the next, but the one about the garden and the weeds, that one always stuck with me.
Nothing could ever be entirely perfect. That was what she meant by it. There would be flaws and imperfections in everything, and no one would ever be able to rid them all.
I took that idea as a personal challenge. I decided that I would cultivate a weedless garden out of my life, and convinced myself that perfection was only unattainable for those who believed it was.
I could be perfect as long as I believed it was possible.
So I worked hard. In school, I excelled.
Honor roll and dual enrollment. I had two years’ worth of college credits under my belt by the time I finished high school.
I took up extracurriculars and worked myself to the bone.
By the time I graduated, I was captain of the volleyball team, student council president, and I had a full-ride scholarship to the school of my dreams.
My free time was scarce. The price to pay for being extraordinary. Still, in little pockets of time, when my body was drained from practicing volleyball, and my mind was exhausted from studying, I would let myself have one hobby: painting.
Painting was both something I cherished and something that I felt so terribly insecure about.
I didn’t have talent. Try as I may, I never got much better, but I loved it.
It was the one thing I kept for myself. It wasn’t a competition or something I did to prove my worth.
Painting was the one thing I did for the sole purpose of bringing myself joy.
My achievements were nearly unparalleled.
Nearly. And perhaps, had it not been for the one soul that was always one step ahead of me, I may have been satisfied.
Maybe then, I would have let myself believe that I had reached that ambiguous goal of perfection.
Maybe Grandma would have looked at me with pride rather than that scrutinizing gaze she always had when she compared me to him.
Liam Ashford. Messy curls of chestnut-brown hair. Amber eyes that I could see even when I shut my own eyes. An infuriating smug grin.
As a child, he was my very best friend. Then we grew up. As we did, he quickly became something much more complicated to me. Not friends. Not necessarily enemies either.
He grew up in the apartment down the hall from mine. His mother and mine were the best of friends. When Mom started working again, three months after having me, Liam’s mom offered to watch me during the day.
Liam Ashford became my first and greatest friend.
I do not have a single memory of my life before him.
He was always there, from the very beginning.
We grew up together. We would play together, eat together, and eventually, we would walk to and from school together.
In every sense of the word, he and I were inseparable.
We would spend every waking moment together. I would cry when 6:15 rolled around, and my father would come to pick me up and drag me back to our apartment. Home became synonymous with Liam. I grew more accustomed to hearing, “Liam and Jessie,” than I did just, “Jessie.”
Then we got a little older. Middle school rolled around, and for the first time in our entire lives, we found ourselves spending more time apart than together. At school, we’d share little more than a conversation or a flickering glance in the other’s direction. But we still had home.
He and I continued to walk to and from school together, just as we always had, and we would spend our afternoons doing homework and playing video games in the living room of his apartment.
The miles of distance that stood between us during the school day vanished once we walked through those doors.
I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t hear what people said about us.
The gossip and the rumors. The jokes his friends would make.
But once we walked through those doors, I could pretend that they didn’t matter.
That it didn’t hurt me to feel like I was losing my best friend.
That the earthquake level shifts in our friendship were normal. That I could handle it all.
Our friendship began to change abruptly and fast.
The topic on everyone’s mind at that age was dating. If a boy and a girl liked each other well enough, then they would ‘date.’ Dating then was more of a code word for being friends and holding hands at lunch. Still, that word held a tremendous amount of power at the age of twelve.
Boys and girls were no longer allowed to be just friends. My friendship with Liam came under great scrutiny by the others in our grade. I was resented by the girls who had a crush on Liam. The boys who were friends with him looked at me as a pest more than anything else.
I didn’t have much of an interest in dating back then. I certainly couldn’t imagine Liam being anything other than my friend.
Liam had been more easily swayed. I could feel him pushing me away.
Brick by brick, building a wall between us.
First, we stopped walking home together.
Then, we stopped walking to school together as well.
The tension felt so thick and heavy between us.
I started going home to my own empty apartment a few days a week, then more, until it was nearly every day of the week.
Then came the project.
With my rapidly disintegrating friendship with Liam, I found myself pouring all that I could into school. School felt tangible. It wasn’t like dating or friendships. I could get better, and I could get smarter, and once I did, no one would take that away from me.
In one of the few classes I shared with Liam, we were assigned a project.
For some reason, that project felt monumentally important to me.
So I worked hard. At that point, it was probably the hardest I had ever worked on a school project.
I poured hours into research, carefully piecing it all together.
I rehearsed my presentation over and over until I had it memorized. Until it was perfect.
The day before we were set to present, I went over to Liam’s place. It was a rare thing at that point. I only came over once every week or two. Still, I wanted him to hear it first.
Lounging on the faded green couch that held over a decade’s worth of memories, he let me rehearse it for him. Then again and again. Until every nerve rattling around in my chest was gone. I had encouraged him to practice his own presentation, but he couldn’t. It was still only half-finished.
The day of the presentations came, and I volunteered to go first. I confidently marched up to the front of the classroom, flawless posterboard in hand. Then, I gave my presentation, just as I had the day before in front of Liam. I felt almost jittery with pride afterward.
My gaze scanned the room, seeking the approval of one person in particular. Only he wasn’t looking at me. Liam was snickering as a friend of his whispered something in his ear.
They weren’t laughing at me. It was more that I was practically invisible to them. That stung more than if they had been laughing at me.
I sank into my seat and willed the tears stinging my eyes to evaporate.
The presentations went on, one after the next, until finally, it was Liam’s turn. I decided that even if he had ignored me, I would still pay attention to him. Plus, a part of me was curious about what he had slapped together at the last minute.
He stood up as confidently as I had and made his way to the front of the class, a stack of notecards in hand.
Liam delivered an excellent presentation.
Better than mine. The classroom erupted with applause as he finished it up, but I couldn’t bring myself to clap.
I had worked so hard. Much harder than he had.
I knew that he was smart. He always had been.
I knew that things came easily to him. That his grades were as good as mine, even though he had never studied in his life.
It had never bothered me before that moment.
I was furious. Furious at him for not noticing me, and for then showing me up in front of everyone. Furious with myself for spending weeks on something that he could do in just one night.
I sat there, in the hard plastic chair behind my desk, burning hot anger bubbling in my chest. I thought to myself, for the first time in my life, that I hated Liam Ashford.
Our grades came in a week later; mine was a perfect one hundred, and his was five points greater. Liam was awarded extra credit for, supposedly, going above and beyond. That day was the second time I ever thought to myself that I hated Liam Ashford.
After that, I began to notice in great detail how much better Liam was in nearly everything compared to me. Our grades, sports, and popularity. Even our own families. His parents and mine were so close that our families were often intertwined.
Every time we were all in the same place at the same time, I found myself picking apart every little interaction.
Everyone seemed to favor him in some way or another. The more I heard them all sing his praises, the more I started to resent him.
Somewhere between that project that sparked it all and the beginning of our freshman year of high school, he and I became something else entirely. Liam and I became rivals.
Everything had begun to revolve around him—if I could even say that there was ever a time when my life didn’t.
My goal of perfection shifted. It was no longer a vague concept, but a definitive goal.
I had to beat him. In something, in anything, maybe everything if I let myself dream. I had to be better than Liam Ashford.