Character Analysis
You might guess that a character who's "the third" would have some ancestors to live up to, and that's definitely the deal with Andre, the lone black narrator out of Perfect's four. His grandfather was an early computer visionary who moved to the Bay Area long before the Google bus, and his dad's a real estate speculator who's made a fortune in the mortgage game. As for his mom, she's a doctor—a plastic surgeon, to be exact. So, you know, no pressure.
What It Looks Like
Andre enjoys the fruits of his parents' labor. He says:
I like driving a pricey car, wearing
clothes that feel
like they want to be next to my skin.
I love not having to be a living, breathing
stereotype because
of my color. (4.8-9)
He drives an Audi Quattro and goes to a private school, and if he wants a few bucks (or a few hundred) to go shopping for a new wardrobe, all he has to do is stop by his mom's office between nose-job consultations and ask. "Perception is everything to Mom," he tells us, "and style/is a vital component./She wants her son to be a fashion trendsetter" (8.25). Again we see the high value his family places on excellence.
Andre also has plenty of girls to fool around with, even among the small, nerdy student body of the elite Zephyr Academy. As he puts it, "That's not to say/that there aren't any cute girls here./There are a few, and yeah, I've had some/casual sex with one/or two. (Okay, maybe three)" (12.12-13). He feels slightly guilty for preferring white girls, but not guilty enough not to sleep with them. After all, he's a rich, good-looking guy with a nice car—black, white, purple, or plaid, chicks dig him, and he digs them back.
How It Really Is
Andre secretly pines for a far less lucrative career than his parents', and therein lies his conflict. What he really wants is to be a dentist—just kidding, he wants to be a dancer.
He's good at it, too. As his teacher Liana tells him after he talks to a fellow student, "Shantell is right, you know./You were destined to/dance. If you try to ignore that, you'll be/completely miserable" (36.49-50). And yet try to ignore it he does.
Complete misery seems the most likely path for Andre. His parents want him to go to a good college, major in something sensible like business, and start earning money the minute he earns his degree. When he tries to tell them he wants to go to art school, his dad asks if he's gay. Ugh.
Why Hello, Boozy Young Lass
When Andre meets Jenna, he's found the white girl of his dreams. Well, sort of. She doesn't like jazz… or ballet… or really anything other than drinking. But she's great in the sack, and as we all know, great-in-the-sackness can blind people to a lot of other flaws. Jenna has few inhibitions and even less clothing, so she's Andre's dream girl, at least for a minute.
While their romance is doomed from the start, being with her teaches him how to love. He can't save her from making bad choices, but he can save himself by rejecting his parents' dreams and living his own. He seizes the chance to audition for a dance-competition television show, an opportunity about which he was initially ambivalent. If it hadn't been for Jenna, Andre might never have realized the disastrous consequences of a lack of motivation and, in doing so, gotten his butt in gear.
Andre's Timeline