Escaping Perfect by Emma Harrison Read Free Book Online

of the sidewalk.
    â€œIt is every Thursday through Sunday,” Fiona replied, her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her denim jacket. She’d put on a striped sundress and cowboy boots; her blond hair fanned out over her shoulders. With a little mascara and a swipe of blush she’d become startlingly pretty in a doe-eyed,pixieish kind of way. “They say our population doubles on big bar nights.”
    I believed it. When we got to the Mixer, the line to get in looped down the block and around the corner, but Fiona walked right up to the surly-looking man at the door. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized he was probably checking IDs. Instantly, I began to sweat. This night was going to be over before it began.
    â€œHey, Felix,” she said. “This is Lia.”
    â€œLadies.” He gave me a nod and stood aside to let us through the door.
    The people at the front of the line groaned in protest, but their gripes were instantly drowned out by the noise inside the bar.
    â€œYou know him?” I shouted to be heard.
    â€œI know everyone in this town.” Fiona made this declaration wearily, as if it was not something she was proud of.
    Inside, the Mixer was almost impossibly dark, aside from the huge glowing beacon that was the stage at the top of the room. On it were two girls in ripped jeans, one playing a violin, the other strumming a guitar and crooning into the mic. There were about twenty round two-top tables in front of the stage, each one currently crowded by four or five people, and the bars at either side of the room were stacked three partiers deep.
    My palms began to prickle. This was a crowd. An uncontrolled, unsupervised crowd. And I had no bodyguard. I had never been in a situation like this. Not once in my entire life. What if someone recognized me? What if someone tried to hurt me, or worse, kidnap me again? I felt an almost unbearable need to get back outside. To be alone—my natural state of being.
    This was what you wanted, a little voice inside my head chided. You going to chicken out now?
    Fiona surged ahead. I took a deep, steadying breath and gripped the back of her jacket to keep from getting separated. I kept my head down, waiting for my eyes to adjust, trying to calm the erratic beating of my heart. No one here knew me. No one here was looking for me. I was Lia Washington. Unfamous, uninteresting Lia Washington. I breathed in and out deliberately, just as I’d been taught in meditation, and gradually unclenched.
    Where was Fiona going? She just kept walking, snaking around the chairs and bodies like she had a destination in mind, even though there were clearly no seats left in the entire place. Finally she stopped at a table front and center and proved me wrong, falling into an empty chair.
    â€œHey, Britta.”
    A broad-shouldered Asian girl with a couple dozen tinyponytails sticking out in all directions from her head looked up from her laptop. She wore a black T-shirt that read I CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT over a pair of plaid shorts, torn purple tights, and knee-high black boots.
    â€œWay to be late. Do you know how many times I’ve had to say ‘these seats are taken’?”
    â€œSorry. My fault,” I said, taking the other empty chair. “I hadn’t showered in a while, and I think I stayed in there a little too long.”
    The girl looked at me and pushed her black-framed glasses up on her nose. Only they weren’t glasses, because there was no glass in them. She had Band-Aids in a rainbow of colors around her fingers.
    â€œYou’re pretty,” she said, like an accusation. Then she went right back to typing.
    I looked at Fiona, confused. “Britta both tells it likes it is and saves most of her words for her music review blog,” Fiona explained, nodding at the computer. “I’ll bet you ten dollars she’s ripping these poor girls to shreds right now.”
    â€œGive her ten