Perfectly Miserable

by Carolina Downie

I absolutely hate Paige Case. I am typically not a hating person, but I seriously do not like Paige. She’s like, Miss Perfect. She gets good grades. She plays the flute really well. She’s got billions of friends, and grownups love her.

And she’s a good basketball player. Like, really good. As in, I-can-make-every-foul-shot-I-take good. I am not that good. I do get good grades. I am the best clarinet player in the 6th grade band. And I guess I have a good amount of friends and some grownups like me. In basketball, I’m not horrible, or anything, but I’m still learning. Paige finished learning about basketball a long time ago. Paige thinks that she’s so perfect.

Every single school year, Paige has been in my class. Now that I’m in sixth grade. it’s really starting to get on my nerves. At every parent-teacher conference since 4th grade, my teacher always tells my parents something along the lines of: “Amelia and Paige are so similar, it’s surprising that they aren’t friends. They always seem to avoid each other.”

Well, duh. You can’t be friends with your enemy in battle. Paige and I have always been battling for the top. We’ve always wanted to be the best. I even avoid walking past the “Board of Achievements” in front of the office. I’m sure Paige’s name is written all over it. Being friends just won’t work, and for some reason, no one seems to understand that. It beats me.

As I was shutting my locker door at the end of the day, I felt someone tap my arm. I snapped my lock shut, and turned around to find Paige staring at me.

“Urn, hi,” I said glancing around to see if she was really there to talk to someone else.

“Amelia, so I’ll see you tomorrow, at the game. You know, us versus you?” Paige asked.

Did she think I was stupid? Of course I knew what game she was talking about. It was the game that I had been dreading the entire season. “Uh, yeah. Tomorrow. I’ll see you then. Don’t forget to get your math test signed for homework,” I answered, trying to change the subject. I waved, and walked down the hail to my bus.

Saturday came, and the game was looming in the near future, a mountain that I somehow had to climb over. The game started at 2:00 pm, so for the whole morning I walked around the house worrying.

“Honey, you need to do something to get your mind off of basketball. Do your piano,” my mom told me.

“No,” I answered. “I can’t. No one cares about piano. Everybody cares about basketball, and sports, and stuff,” I said. And everything else Paige does, I thought to myself. “I’m like down there,” I pointed at the floor, “And Paige and everybody else is up there,” I pointed at the ceiling.

“But Amelia,” my mom said. “You’re good at a lot of things.”

But today it didn’t matter. Today it was about basketball and Paige.

Soon enough it was 2:00.

Amelia, you do jump ball. And win it,” my coach ordered.

I nodded my head. If there was one thing I could do, it was jump ball. I was a good jumper. We set up, and I saw Paige standing on the other side of the half court line.

“Okay, here we go,” the ref said, and threw the ball up into the air. I jumped up. and knocked it out of Paige’ s reach, but just barely. The game had started.

By halftime, the game was tied, 18-18. We were doing okay, obviously, and Paige was on fire, as usual. Paige, who happened to catch every possible pass thrown at her, whether it was by her feet, above her head, or coming straight at her, had scored half of her team’s points so far.

“Amelia, next half, I want you guarding Paige. instead of Ellen.”

My coach turned to Ellen, and said, “You weren’t guarding Paige well enough.” He turned back to me. “Amelia, keep an arm distance away from her, but when she picks up her dribble, get on top of her, and don’t even let her breathe. Got it?” My coach glared at me.

“Got it,” I said weakly.

Right away, Paige attempted to drive by me, just as she had done to Ellen. Moving quicker than I thought I could, I defended her without letting her drive past. When she picked up her dribble, I got on top of her. When she tried to shoot, I blocked her shot, surprising Paige, as well as myself. I was doing okay. The rest of the game went by in a blur, and pretty soon I was staring at the scoreboard, which read 39-34. We’d lost. In the car ride home, I heard my parents telling me what a good game I had played, but I didn’t really listen. I felt this pang of anger towards this game. It was weird. We had lost worse to other teams before. We had only lost by five points, which showed that we played a good game. But I knew why I hated losing this game the most. We were playing against Paige. If I had won this game against Paige, I would have felt like I was a good player. Losing to Paige made me feel as though I were the worst player ever. Why was Paige so good? Not just at basketball, but at, like, life. Who did everybody like? Paige Case, with her straight, auburn hair, good grades, athletic abilities, and friendly smile. Why was I born Amelia Anderson instead of Paige Case?

Luckily, the next day was a Sunday, so I didn’t have to see Paige. But too soon I heard my alarm clock ringing, and whoop-de-do, it was Monday morning. As I stumbled Out of bed and started to get dressed, I decided that I would tell Paige that she had played really well on Saturday. You know, just to be nice and all.

I caught Paige as we were walking down the hail to math class.

“Paige,” I walked faster to catch up to her. “Um, good job on Saturday in basketball. You were good,” I tried to smile, but I’m almost positive that my smile turned out a little more grimace-y than smile-y.

“Thanks. You too.” And with that, Paige walked into the classroom, without another word.

Four periods later, as I was heading down to the cafeteria for lunch, I got caught behind a group of loud boys that slowed down when one of the guys stopped to talk to a friend. The guy’s locker happened to be two lockers away from Paige’s. I looked around to see if there was an open space between any two bodies through which I could escape. Honestly, being a sardine in a can would have been more comfortable than being in this hallway. I glanced over to Paige’s locker.

Paige was talking to herself (yet another thing we have in common). As loud as it was in the hallway, I still couldn’t help but hear some of what she was saying.

“— and of course Amelia said, ‘You did a good job’. ‘Cause she is always so nice. And great. Like, who made it into All-County Chorus? Amelia. Who got a 100 on her math test? Amelia.”

I pushed through the crowd of boys, and racked my brain to figure out what other Amelia there was that Paige could have been talking about. I mean me, are you kidding? Paige was jealous of me? Yeah right. Something was definitely wrong. Or maybe I was just wrong.

I listened to Paige’s comment over and over again in my head, like the way a radio station plays the number one song all the time, when I got to the cafeteria. I slowly chewed my sandwich.

“—Amelia. Amelia, anybody home?”

My best friend Alexandra waved her hand in front of my face. I scrunched up my nose and slapped her hand away.

“Hey, Alex. What’s up with you?” I asked.

“No, what’s up with you?” Alexandra pointed at me. “I asked you if you wanted to come to the library with me for recess, like, a million times, but no answer came from your mouth. You were off in La-la land or something.”

“Sorry. I was out there. I was thinking about my project in Art,” I told her, trying to make sure Alex didn’t figure out what I had really been thinking about.

Alex shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. She thinks I think too much. “A-nnnnnnnyway. Back to the original question: Do you want to go to the library with me? I have a pass.”

I threw my trash away and we headed up to the library. We were looking through the shelf of new books when Alex pushed me aside and stuck her head out of the space between the two shelves.

“Hey, it’s Paige. I actually wanted to see her at some point before 8th period, so I could talk to her about our Humanities project,” she whispered to me.

“Do you mind if I go talk to her a sec?” she glanced back at me. I sighed, even though I tried to hold it in.

“What?” she asked.

“When did you become so pro-Paige? I thought you were my best friend,” I whispered, with an edge to my voice.

Alex rolled her eyes. She has always known that I don’t like Paige, but I’ve never really told her enough for her to understand my feelings. “I am your best friend. But I don’t understand why you are so anti-Paige. What did she ever do to you?” she whispered back.

Alex waited for an answer, and when she didn’t get one from me she started to walk towards Paige. Of course I could explain why I hated Paige. She was so perfect, and I wanted to be perfect. I was so far from perfection, especially on the basketball court when Paige was around.

Still, I felt myself searching for a reason to hate Paige. The only reason I could come up with was jealousy, and I have to admit, it was not a very good reason. As far as Paige being stuck up, after hearing Paige talking to herself at her locker, I couldn’t even convince myself that she thought she was great. She sounded as hopeless as me.

I started to feel pretty stupid, because I didn’t even have an answer. Even though my feet were digging into the floor the way roots from a tree dig into the ground. I lifted my legs-turned-roots and started to walk towards Paige. Alexandra was at the computers, in another section of the library.

I gulped. “Hi,” I whispered.

Paige looked at me, and gave me a tiny smile. Even though it was the smallest smile I’d ever seen in my life, it still was a smile. Hey, it was a start.

-End-