The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard Read Free Book Online

period on Friday. She was usually fashionably late to class, but she’d had so much on her mind this week that it was worse than usual.
    â€œCutting it close, Miss Jalali,” said Mr. Granger, but she could tell he was mostly teasing. Mr. Granger was one of the youngest teachers in school, just a year or so out of college. He couldn’t even pretend to have an authoritarian air when his students were only five years younger than him.
    Ava turned her thousand-watt smile on her teacher. “Sorry, Mr. Granger. Vending machine emergency. Sour Patch Kids are back in stock, everyone!”
    A ripple of laughter cut through the classroom. Her boyfriend, Alex, craned around from the seat in front of her and winked. A different teacher might have gotten mad, but that was what Ava liked about Mr. Granger—and why she knew she could get away with this stuff. He just gave her a dry smile.
    â€œWell, now that our candy-shortage crisis has ended, we can focus on what we’re here to do.” Mr. Granger picked up a piece of chalk and started to write in sloppy handwriting across the chalkboard: MORALITY AND ETHICS IN CRIME FILM . “We’re starting a new unit today.”
    Ava flipped her notebook to a blank page and poised her pen to take notes, ready to think about something other than Nolan. His picture was plastered every two feet in the hallways, and she’d barely made it through the assembly yesterday. Advanced film studies was her favorite class—she’d originally signed up because it sounded like an easy A, a chance to watch movies all semester, but she’d ended up really getting into the classic films they watched. So far, they’d talked about representations of women in early monster movies, the way World War II–era Bugs Bunny cartoons had been used as American propaganda, and identity and trauma in psychological thrillers. There was so much to learn. Under the glitzy, glamorous surface of the simplest popcorn flick, there were often hidden depths of meaning.
    Just like with her, she thought.
    Ava hadn’t always taken school seriously. Her freshman year, she’d thought studying was for losers. Nerds. Geeks. Uglies. Ava was gorgeous, and she knew it. Half Iranian and half Irish, she had striking almond-shaped eyes, smooth caramel-colored skin, and a long-limbed figure with impressive curves. She’d even worked a few modeling gigs, posing for an upscale makeup company based in Seattle and shimmying into skintight designer jeans for a department store’s ad campaign. Who cared about getting into Yale or Stanford—maybe she didn’t even need to go to college.
    Then her mom had died, hit by a drunk driver one night on her way home from campus. Her mom had always insisted that Ava was smarter than her report cards. Every time Ava brought home another mediocre test score, Ava’s mom defended her to her dad: “She’s figuring out who she is, Firouz. She obviously has a great role model for how to be brilliant”—she pointed to herself ironically—“but no one around here can show her how to be brilliant and beautiful at the same time. That’s a burden only she can bear.” Ava’s dad would laugh, and the storm would pass.
    In the void after her mom’s death, Ava had found herself wanting to study for the first time. And it turned out her mom was right—she was smart. Her dad noticed the change in her behavior and her GPA, and constantly told her how proud he was. Teachers began to take her seriously.
    That is, until Nolan Hotchkiss sent all her hard-won efforts crumbling to sand.
    â€œThe crime genre is one that’s changed shape dozens of times over the years, always morphing to provide a commentary on the moral stance Americans take at any given point in time.” Mr. Granger’s voice pulled Ava back to the present. “A lot of crime movies investigate the idea of a gray area of morality, where