TITLE: Being Perfect

RATING: PG-13

DISCLAIMER: Not mine, all Fox and Josh Schwartz's. Quote is from "The Ties that Bind", from Kirsten and Theresa's conversation over lunch.

SUMMARY: "But perfection hadn't stopped her falling pregnant at 17, had it?" Kirsten angst.

"Nothing's perfect. Sometimes things…just happen."
"Yeah, but never to someone like you, right?"

She'd had the abortion when she was 17, when abortions were only just becoming legal in California, at a small dirty clinic in the backstreets of a place near Chino. She'd gotten the address from a girl with a reputation for being 'easy'; she'd figured that if anyone at her school would know where an abortion could be performed for cash and no questions asked, it would be her, and she'd been right.

The girl had looked at her with a slightly sad expression before she'd slipped her a fifty to keep quiet, because Kirsten had a reputation to maintain, after all. She'd never understood the reason for her sad expression until after the abortion, when she cried on the steering wheel of her father's convertible.

She hadn't realised she was pregnant for a few weeks because her periods were few and far between because of her weight. She'd always been skinny, but the stress of college applications and extra-curricular activities and maintaining her perfect mask in public had gotten to her and she'd been finding it harder and harder to keep food down, or even eat at all. She'd redone the test three times because she'd only slept with Jimmy a few times, and she'd thought that they'd been careful enough.

It turned out that she was wrong.

- - -

She didn't tell anyone about the baby, not even him. She didn't want to admit to anyone that she wasn't perfect, that she was flawed and capable of mistakes and not as wonderful as everyone thought.

Because she was Kirsten Nichol after all, the brilliant oldest daughter of Caleb Nichol, the richest man in Newport, Head Debutante at her Cotillion, President of the student body, 4.0 GPA, most popular girl in school. She was blonde and beautiful and teachers loved her.

She kept up her barriers, lured people in just far enough so that they could see how wonderful she seemed but not far enough that they saw the damaged teenage girl underneath trying desperately to keep her life under control and keep the people around her happy.

She'd spent her entire life trying to please her father, taking an interest in his work, taking economics and business classes even though she'd prefer to take art and history. …trying to be perfect enough, successful enough that he'd spend some time with her, rather than giving her his credit card, kissing her on the top of the head and telling her to 'go buy herself something nice.'

When she wasn't pleasing her father, she was pleasing everyone else in the world who loved the girl she pretended to be, Jimmy, who looked at her like she was the best thing in the world, her teachers, who thought she was just brilliant, and so dedicated, her mother, never quite healthy, always on the fragile side, who she needed to be strong for, her sister, already rebellious....

For all of them she was a different person, the loving and obedient daughter, the inspiring big sister, the perfect girlfriend, the best student in the class. And they loved her for it, blinded by her chameleon-like ability to be whoever they wanted her to be.

Because in the end, all Kirsten Nichol wanted was to be loved, and she had figured then that it was better to be loved by everyone, even if they loved the part of her that wasn't real, than to be alone for being herself.

Besides, if she pretended to be perfect and to have everything under control for long enough, maybe it would become real.

And so she kept being perfect, kept doing everything to make everyone love her, going to the right parties, sleeping with Jimmy, hanging with the right crowd, taking the right classes and saying the right things to the right people at the right time.

And after awhile it became so that plastering a perfect smile on her face as she left her bedroom every morning was almost an unconscious gesture, and she didn't cry herself to sleep in the dark so often, loved by everyone but not knowing why she was so desperately unhappy with her life.

But perfection hadn't stopped her from falling pregnant at 17, did it?

- - -

She had the abortion on a Thursday afternoon. She can't remember the date, just that it was a cold and gray Thursday afternoon in October, and the doctor's name was Dr. Philips, and he was a sleazy old man who looked at her strangely and made her feel uncomfortable, but she just lay back and tried not to think of what she was doing.

She'd read about the procedure of course, but nothing that anyone had said to her had come close to preparing her to the reality that was getting an abortion, the gentle vacuuming sound that the machine made as it sucked the foetus out of her, the tears that came after they had finished, the way that the nurse, only a few years older than she was, held her hand after they'd finished up.

She'd only just made it out of the clinic before she started crying, tucking her head into her arms and sobbing onto her designer clothes in her car.

It was a miracle that she'd made it home at all, really, with the way that she'd been driving, physically shaking with sobs all the way back to Newport.

She'd timed her appointment so that her mother was out with Hailey, and her father was never home before 10pm anyway. There was no one at home when she returned except their housekeeper, Annie, who she waved off as she ran up the stairs to her bedroom, trying to hold back her tears just a few more seconds.

She'd known that she had no choice, that this was the logical way out for her. She couldn't have kept the baby, not with her life and her world and her family. Her father would have disowned her, or forced Jimmy to marry her, and there was so much that she wanted to do. She wanted to leave Newport, travel the world, meet people who didn't force her into being someone she wasn't….she wanted to grow up and have a life and she wasn't ready to have a baby, not now, not yet, not here.

But she still cried all that night, and feigned a stomach bug the next morning to Annie, who patted her forehead and nodded, telling her that 'one day off school was hardly going to ruin her perfect record anyway' and that she'd bring her some dry toast to settle her stomach if she wanted.

She wasn't sure why she was crying, or whether the tears that came were for the baby that she'd never have, or for the unhappy, guilty girl she had become, or both. She had nightmares the next night, about a small girl that looked exactly like her, and a little boy who was the spitting image of Jimmy, and she dreamt that they looked at her and called her "Mommy" and she woke up in a cold sweat crying again, both guilty and relieved and feeling like it wasn't the baby who had died but her.

It's then that she realises that perfection hasn't saved her from this, that it can't hold back the guilt and fear and sadness anymore, that maybe some things in her life were beyond her control no matter how hard she tried to control everything around her.

- - -

She's still not sure what to think about her abortion, the one thing in her life she's never told her husband about. She'd like to be able to say that she had no regrets just as much as she'd like to be able to say that she regrets not keeping the baby. Because she does regret it sometimes, regrets that Seth doesn't have an older sister or brother to keep him company, protect him when he gets beaten up by bullies and she can't be there to take care of him. But she doesn't regret it a lot of the time when she looks at Sandy and her job and her house and career and the life she's built for herself. And she knows that a life being Kirsten Cooper, just another carbon-copy Newpsie woman would never have made her happy, even with a child to raise.

In the end, she supposes that she did what she had to do, and that's the most she can say about it.

But for the rest of her life she'll still dream about the little girl that could have been, and wonder what if.