Perfect (Book Three)

Five: Aria's All For Literary Reenactments.

Aria perched on the back of Sean's Audi, skimming through her favorite Jean-Paul Sartre play, No Exit. It was Monday after school, and Sean said he would give her a ride home after he grabbed something from the soccer coach's office...only he was taking an awfully long-ass time. As she flipped to Act II, a group of nearly identical blond, long-legged, Coach-bag-toting Typical Rosewood Girls strode into the student parking lot and gave Aria a suspicious once-over. Apparently Aria's platform boots and gray knitted earflap hat indicated she was surely up to something nefarious.

Aria sighed. She was trying her hardest to adjust to Rosewood again, but it wasn't easy. She still felt like a punked-out, faux-leather-wearing, free-thinking Bratz doll in a sea of Pretty Princess of Preppyland Barbies.

"You shouldn't sit on the bumper like that," said a voice behind her, making Aria jump. "Bad for the suspension."

Aria swiveled around. Ezra stood a few feet away. His brown hair was standing up in messy peaks and his blazer was even more rumpled than it had been this morning. "I thought you literary types were hopeless when it came to cars," she joked.

"I'm full of surprises." Ezra shot her a seductive smile. He reached into his worn leather briefcase. "Actually, I have something for you. It's an essay about The Scarlet Letter, questioning whether adultery is sometimes permissible."

Aria took the photocopied pages from him. "I don't think adultery is permissible or forgivable," she said softly. "Ever."

"Ever is a long time," Ezra murmured. He was standing so close, Aria could see the dark-blue flecks in his light-blue eyes.

"Aria?" Sean was right next to her.

"Hey!" Aria cried, startled. She jumped away from Ezra as if he were loaded with electricity. "You...you all done?"

"Yep," Sean said.

Ezra stepped forward. "Hey, Sean is it? I'm Ez—I mean, Mr. Fitz, the new AP English teacher."

Sean shook his head. "I just take regular English. I'm Aria's boyfriend."

A flicker of something—disappointment, maybe—passed over Ezra's face. "Cool," he stumbled. "You play soccer, right? Congrats on your win last week."

"That's right," Sean said modestly. "We have a good time this year."

"Cool," Ezra said again. "Very cool."

Aria felt like she should explain to Ezra why she and Sean were together. Sure,he was a Typical Rosewood Boy, but he was really much deeper. Aria stopped herself. She didn't owe Ezra any explanations. He was her teacher.

"We should go," she said abruptly, taking Sean's arm. She wanted to get out of here before either of them embarrassed her. What if Sean made a grammatical error? What if Ezra blurted that they'd hooked up? No one at Rosewood knew about that. No one, that was, except for A.

Aria slid into the passenger seat of Sean's tidy, pine-smelling Audi, feeling itchy. She longed for a few private minutes to collect herself, but Sean slumped into the driver's seat right next to her and pecked her on the cheek. "I missed you today," he said.

"Me too," Aria answered automatically, her voice right in her throat. As she peeked through her side window, she saw Ezra in the teacher's lot, climbing into his beat-up, old-school VW Bug. He had added a new sticker to the bumper—Ecology Happens—and it looked like he's washed the car over the weekend. Not that she was obsessively checking or anything.

As Sean waited for other students to back out in front of him, he rubbed his cleanly shaven jaw and fiddled with the collar of his fitted Penguin polo. If Sean and Ezra had been types of poetry, Sean would have been a haiku—neat, simple, beautiful. Ezra would have been one of William Burrough's messy fever dreams. "Want to hang out later?" Sean. "Go out to dinner? Hang with Ella?"