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Courtney was jealous of Bridgette. And she didnt really know why.
Well, realistically, she did know why. The blonde was just so... easy-going. Calm and quietly determined, with an air of confidence despite her laid back attitude. She got along with almost everyone - striking up conversation with her was so natural, even the high-strung overachiever in Courtney was able to let her (many) guards down whenever the surfer was around.
The brunette sometimes wished she could be like that... just able to go with the flow and not be worried about any tidal waves or choppy storms, able to take things as they came. It would certainly be much simpler than staying up at night rethinking over every little detail and planning conversations in her head to make sure they go just as she wants.
She likes control, but god, wouldn't she love to just let go for once.
But she knows she can't, or else something will come back to bite her. She learned that lesson young. "Failing in for the weak" is what her parents had drilled into her. "Friends will come and go, but success is forever." Whenever those kids in her grade rolled their eyes whenever she gave a presentation, it would hurt - but in they would all be resitting grades while she passed every class with flying colours. And failure would hurt a lot more than a few cutting playground remarks ever would in her books.
Courtney knew she had to be perfect.
To please her parents.
To show she had worth.
To keep up the act.
But more than all of that, she had to be perfect because she didn't know what would happen if she wasn't.
So she dedicated every second of her life to maintaining that.
And that's why Courtney was so jealous of Bridgette - she seemed perfect, untouchable almost. But it seemed like she didn't even notice or care, or even try to be. She just... was.
And, as someone who strived for perfection no matter the cost, Courtney would give anything to be like that.
So she tried to learn how to be like that.
At first, she just watched from afar. She watched her friend through the windows of her cabin as she effortlessly flirted with Geoff, listened intently to Lindsay's ranking of her nearby shoe stores, made plans with DJ to take him diving in the ocean after the show was over. Her smiles were genuine, her laugh contagious - nothing staged or forced.
So Courtney practiced her smiles in the bathroom mirror, making sure it looked real and not too much teeth was showing. But it didn't work ; her eyes were just a little too wide or her laughs a little too sharp, causing an air of slight insanity.
So next she tried to join in on these conversations, see if it was the things she was saying rather than the way she acted that drew people toward the surfer. She saw how Bridgette asked Harold how to beatbox and got him to give her a lesson, she sat Cody down once more and tried to explain why Gwen was rejecting his advances, and sometimes she didn't talk but instead just listened when people needed it - like when Gwen needed to rant about how infuriation Heather had been, or when she sat in stunned silence as Izzy recounted another (hopefully fake) mad story about her childhood.
So Courtney tried to replicate these kind of conversations. But when it was her asking Trent about sports or talking to Beth about her pets, it just wasn't the same. She was missing something... some charisma that made the whole thing click.
She'd finally found something she wasn't able to perfect, and she wasn't happy about it.
She practiced and practiced every little detail she'd noticed. Her mouth hurt from smiling, her voice became hoarse from repeating the same sentence starters over...
and over...
and over again.
But still she couldn't crack the code.
And it was tearing her up.
But she didn't give up, because those two words didn't exist together in Courtney's universe. She just needed to clear her mind, get back into the right headspace, and keep pushing forward. If Bridgette had figured out the secret to perfection, surely the CIT could find a way to figure it out too.
One evening, after a particularly enfuriating meal that consisted of Duncan flinging his food onto the roof to get it to stick and simultaneously getting it stuck all over the her jacket, Courtney walked down to the beach to get some space away from the hustle and bustle of her other campers.
She wasn't often a fan of the beach - annoyingly, the sand between her toes was a texture that gave her an ick, so she never really gave it the time of day. But now, with the sun setting just on the horizon and making the sky into a watercolour painting of pastel oranges and dusky pinks, the tiny yellow grains didn't even enter her mind.
She settled down, taking a deep inhale as she stared out at the water.
"Mind if I join you, Court?" A soft voice asked from behind the girl settled on the sand. Without turning her head, and knowing it was the surfer, she patted the area next to her in a welcoming motion. Soon enough the blonde had slumped down onto the beach beside her.
The two sat in a content silence for a while, the only noise coming from the occasional lapping of waves or the call of a nearby bird in the woods.
"How do you do it, Bridge?" Courtney voice strained slightly, her eyes not leaving the spot they rested on as she stared at the horizon.
"Do what...?" The other girl asked, slightly perplexed as she turned her head to face her friend.
Sighing deeply, Courtney shuffled to face the girl next to her. "You're just so... so perfect, all the time! I don't get how you do it. You're so chilled out and relaxed, and people love you and I... I just don't get how you do it! I've tried so hard but people just stare at me like I've gone mad..." She put her hand to her forehead in an exasperated motion, closing her eyes. "I want to be like that so much but clearly I have no idea where to start..."
Bridgette sat in a stunned silence for a while as she processed what she'd just heard, her eyes slightly wider than before.
"Wait, you, Courtney, think I'm perfect? You're literally a straight-A student! Wonders never cease..." She laughed light heartedly and gave a small grin.
"I'm not joking, Bridge." She muttered quietly, gaining her friends attention properly. "You're freinds with everyone. You know just what to do and say. It's like nothing bad has every happened to you before, you're immune to all this shit. I don't get it!"
Courtney felt a light hand on her shoulder. "I'm not perfect, Courtney. Far from it. Bad stuff happens to me too. Nobody's perfect, though I reckon you're the closest any of us on this god awful island will get to being it." She gave a small laugh and averted her gaze back to the sea.
"But you seem so... unaffected by everything. How do you do it?" The brunette sniffled. She mentally was angry with herself for coming across like this, so vulnerable and insecure, but now didn't seem like the time to think about it.
"I just stopped caring about what other people think about me. I spent way too much of my life doing that."
Bridgette sighed, turning her attention down to her hands as she nervously picked at her nails. "About a year and a half ago, a guy I'd liked for ages started to notice me, but it was only after I'd started surfing properly and lost a little weight."
The surfer didn't notice as Courtney's eyes opened and watched her expression intently.
"I thought that maybe that was the problem, and that people hadn't liked me before because I just didn't look good enough for them. So I started dieting, and told myself I'd stop once I reached a certain weight." Bridgette still wasn't taking her gaze off of her nails, her hair falling further over her face as she spoke.
"But once I'd hit that, my brain just.... told me it wasn't enough. And so I set another goal, and another, and another. I skipped meals, exercised like mad, all because I thought people wouldn't like me if I looked like what I did previously."
She paused to take a slow breath, her voice shaking a little.
"And the worst thing was that it worked. People noticed me more. Boys took interest in me. So my brain rewired itself more, told me I had to keep going, because what people viewed me as mattered so much back then."
Courtney sat in utter silence, unaure of what to say.
"And then it got too our of control and I couldn't stop. I started fainting if I stood up too fast, and well... eventually I had to go to hospital to get better, even though I thought I was better than ever before."
She paused, swiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie. "That's all like, way simplified stuff though. I don't wanna get into everything now." Courtney gave a small nod of agreement.
"I'd spent so long caring about other people that... I'd forgotten to care for myself, y'know?" She chewed on her lip, giving an anxious laugh. "And I get that sounds cheesy but..."
"No, it doesn't. I get it." Courtney piped up, giving a small nod and locking eyes with the surfer. "I'm sorry that happened to you."
"Don't be, not like you can change it or anything." The two stared out at the ocean for a moment, watching as the clouds rolled along the sunset.
Bridgette gave a sad sigh, continuing to speak. "It took a ton away from me, like how now I can't surf professionally like I'd always dreamed incase I relapse and all that, and sometimes just thinking about dessert makes me terrified... but I've pushed through it. I know who I am now."
Bridgette twirled a loose strand of hair around her finger thoughtfully. "And I'm not perfect. I know I'm not. But I'm happy with who I am. Just like you should be."
"But I have to be perfect, Bridge." Courtney argued, running her hand through the sand. "I have to be."
"You don't have to be perfect to be happy, you just have to be yourself. Being real matters a ton more than any test score you'll ever get, y'know." The blonde smiled at her friend. "It took me a long time to realise that... Not the test part that is, I've never been the brightest in the bunch."
The two giggled slightly before returning to their original positions of stating at the sunset, that had now grown darker and deeper, with the odd star popping into view.
"Not everyone will like you, Courtney. Hell, when I first met you I didn't like you all that much." Seeing the brunettes hurt face, the blonde quickly explained. "It's just you seemed too good for all of us. You kinda... looked down on everyone."
"I didn't!" Courtney argued, making Bridgette grimace.
"It just... seemed that way. Probably because you were so focused on being 'little miss perfect' all the time. But now I know you, like properly know you, I like you a lot Court. The real you is a pretty great person. I just wish I'd seen her sooner."
Courtney gave a relived smile.
"I wish I'd been like that sooner. But, it's just... hard."
"I know."
Bridgette stood up and offered her friend a hand, which was graciously accepted. The two stood side by side on the beach, and Courtney wrapped an arm around Bridgette's shoulders. "Thanks, Bridge. And if it makes you feel better, I still think you're quite bright."
"Yeah, if bring bright is defined as naming every sea creature found in the Pacific, then I'm practically Einstein!" She laughed as the two turned back toward their cabins, linking arms.
Courtney wasn't perfect.
She'd came to that harsh realisation, finally.
Being that imperfection? That was what made her perfect.