Confessions of a Not It Girl (2 page)

"I can't believe I'm going over there," I said, collapsing onto my bed. "Do you think something will happen?"

Rebecca knew there was only one acceptable answer to my question, and so she gave it. "Definitely."

After we hung up, I lay there looking at the jeans hanging over the back of my chair and thinking about how cute Josh is. Then I started thinking about how cute Tom is. Then I started thinking about how crazy it would be if both Tom
and
Josh were into me.

10

REPORTER: So, Jan, tell your fellow Lawrence Academy students what it's like to have
two
incredibly hot guys fall in love with you. Were you surprised when Josh confessed his feelings?

JAN:
(Laughing confidently.)
Well, I think it was pretty obvious what was going to happen. I mean,
hello!.
You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that perfect outfit plus witty banter equals totally irresistible.

But you know, I really should not have given that interview (even if it was only in my head). Because in tenth-grade English we read this play called
Oedipus,
which is about how it's a big mistake to get too high on yourself. According to the ancient Greeks, when you get too cocky, it's because you suffer from something called "hubris." And when you suffer from hubris, the only cure is for the gods to take a few minutes off from drinking ambrosia on Mount Olympus, swoop down to earth, and ruin your life.

Which is what was about to happen to me.

In, ironically enough, English class.

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CHAPTER TWO

"Can we please not talk about this right now? Because he's going to pass by here as soon as he's done in there, and I really don't want to be talking about him when he does."

"He can't
hear
us," Rebecca pointed out. "He's on the other side of the street."

"He'll sense that we're talking about him," I said. "People can sense these things."

It was the period after English, and we were sitting outside at Antonio's. Even though I was feeling way too horrified by what had just happened to eat, my story didn't seem to be having much effect on Rebecca's appetite. She had already doused her second slice with Parmesan, cut it up into bite-size pieces, and eaten the cheese and mushrooms off each square. Now she was rolling the dough into little tubes, lining them up, and popping them in her mouth.

"I still don't think I'm picturing it right. Did you, like, do this?" Rebecca pursed her lips and made a kissing sound.

"We're not best friends anymore," I said. "It's official. I hate you."

She laughed and blew me a kiss.

"I think I was suffering from temporary insanity," I

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said, trying not to look across the street to the deli Josh had entered a few minutes ago.

"Temporary
insanity?" Rebecca asked. She rolled another square into a tube and took a bite out of it.

I ignored her. "Obviously I'll be leaving New York and relocating to a small town in the Midwest, where I'll live out my life under an assumed identity."

"Obviously," Rebecca said. "I'm just glad we could share one last meal before you go."

I was only half listening to her. "It was just so
intense,"
I said, staring at the door of the deli in spite of myself.

"Jan, it was
English
class. How intense could it have been?"

Just as she said that, Josh came out of the deli holding a paper bag, and before I could avert my eyes so it wouldn't be completely obvious I'd been staring, he saw me, smiled, and kind of half waved. Then he stood where he was for a minute, as if he was trying to decide something, and crossed over to us. Just for the record, Josh has an extremely sexy walk. It's like he knows where he's going, but isn't in any rush to get there.

"Hey," he said when he got to our table. He nodded at Rebecca and then me. He was wearing a green T-shirt and jeans that, unlike the jeans of most guys at Lawrence Academy, weren't ten sizes too big for him. I tried not to notice how perfect his body was.

"Hey," I said. My greeting might have sounded breezier if I hadn't choked on the "ey" part.

"Did you check out those essay questions yet?" he asked me.

13

"Kind of," I said. I was looking at a spot just beyond his shoulder rather than directly at him, as if the BROOKLYN'S FINEST FOTOsign was so fascinating, I couldn't take my eyes off it.

"Kind of?" he asked. He shifted his backpack higher up on his shoulder and I got a great view of his hands. The fingernails were square and very clean. I looked back at the BROOKLYN FOTOsign.

"I mean, not really," I said. Josh stood there, like he was waiting for me to say something. I, too, was waiting for me to say something, but the only words materializing in my brain were
Pictures in 1 hour or your money back.

"Hey," he said after a minute, "I heard you're babysitting Hannah tomorrow night."

"Yeah," I said. There was a long pause.

"Well," he said finally. "See you around."

"Yeah," I said again. Rebecca was staring at me like I had two heads, something that might have enabled me to think of a better parting line than the one I finally came up with. "See you around."

"Wow," said Rebecca. "Your rapid-fire wit was so dexterous I could barely follow it."

"I want to die," I said, watching Josh's retreating back. "I want to be dead."

"Maybe you
are
dead," Rebecca suggested. "You
seemed
dead."

I was still watching Josh, who was getting smaller and smaller in the distance.

"This is not my fault," I said.

14

"Of course it's not." Rebecca sprinkled some Parmesan on her plate and pressed her finger into it.

"I know we used to think Mr. Kryle was all that, but I lay the blame for what just happened entirely at his feet," I said, shaking some ice cubes into my mouth.

Rebecca licked the cheese off her finger, which she then pointed at me. "Remember, there's always Tom Richmond."

"It's too late for that," I said. "I can't live in the past."

"You can't live in the past?
Jan, yesterday you couldn't shut up about him and his stupid baseball cap," she said.

"That was then," I said, swallowing the last of the ice. "This is now."

Only that morning Mr. Kryle had been my favorite teacher and English my favorite subject, especially since we had just finished reading
Romeo and Juliet,
which, only that morning, had been my favorite play.

English stopped being my favorite subject, Mr. Kryle stopped being my favorite teacher, and
Romeo and Juliet
stopped being my favorite play at approximately 10:56 A.M. eastern standard time, which is when Mr. Kryle ruined my life by calling me up to the front of the room to act out the last scene in the play, the one where Romeo finds Juliet sleeping in the tomb and thinks she's dead.

Normally, I hate when English teachers make me act something out, but this morning I was in such a good mood thinking about how funny and cute Tom Richmond had just been in history that I didn't even

15

mind when Mr. Kryle cast me as Juliet. Plus my part wasn't exactly demanding, considering all I had to do was lie down on Mr. Kryle's desk and pretend to be dead.

Plus, he cast Josh as Romeo.

As I lay down, folded my hands over my chest, and closed my eyes, I was thinking how ironic it was that the
very day
after Sarah asked me to baby-sit Hannah, her son and I were acting out one of the most famous love scenes in the history of the world. I mean, could the foreshadowing of our upcoming romantic evening have been any
more
obvious?

Then Josh started Romeo's speech, " 'O my love! My wife!/Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath,/Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.'" He read his lines perfectly; suddenly nobody was talking or joking around like we usually do when people act out scenes. When Romeo described Juliet's "crimson" lips and cheeks, Josh touched my lips and my cheeks very gently, and it made my skin tingle. At one point, he even twirled a piece of my hair around his fingers, and then he tucked it behind my ear. I had expected to lie there trying to decide who I liked better, Josh or Tom, but once Josh touched my face, I couldn't concentrate on anything except what he was doing. Then I noticed how good he smelled, like shampoo.

At the end of the speech, Romeo's supposed to kiss Juliet. He drinks the poison, says, " 'Thus with a kiss I die,'" kisses her, and collapses. I heard Josh make a noise like he was drinking from a bottle, and then he slipped his

16

arm under my back and lifted my shoulders off the desk.

Now, in my limited experience, when a guy puts his arm around you, like at the movies or something, either he barely touches you or he grabs you so tightly he cuts off the circulation in your arm. Neither one is exactly the sexiest sensation in the world. But somehow, Josh managed to hold me firmly without squeezing me so hard I couldn't breathe. He sort of tucked me against him, too, so along with his shampoo I could smell his skin, which also smelled really nice. My forehead was against his chest, and I could feel his heart beating. I waited for him to say his last line.

But he didn't say it. I waited what felt like five minutes, and then I opened my eyes a tiny bit to see what he was doing. He was just looking at me and holding me against him, and then he took my left hand and linked his fingers through mine. And the whole time he kept staring at my face, like he was trying to memorize it. I was afraid he would see my eyes were open, so I shut them. But he still didn't say his line. He just waited.

Which is when the
true
irony of the situation was revealed.

Because I actually thought he was getting ready to kiss me.

I have no excuse for this except the possibility that, as I told Rebecca, I may have experienced temporary insanity. I mean, I've been at Lawrence Academy since I was four, and not once in all those years have two students, acting out a scene in English class, ever actually kissed.

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Kids barely kiss in the school
plays.
They've actually
rehearsed
kissing, and they still can't do it.

But there was something about how intensely Josh was looking at me, how he was practically cradling my head in his arms, that just made me think,
Oh, he's going to kiss me now.
I even, and I guess this is really the most awful part, I even sort of opened my lips a little and lifted my head a tiny bit to
get ready to kiss him back.
And that's what I was doing when he said his line and Mr. Jenkins and the whole class started applauding and the scene was over. Josh, who clearly had never had any intention of kissing me, let go, and then we both took these mock bows and shook hands, and the whole time I was thinking the same thing:

Did he see what I just did?

Which is why I not only need to change English classes but must enroll in the government's witness protection plan immediately.

Rebecca finished eating and dabbed at the corners of her lips with her napkin. If I even drink a glass of water when I'm wearing lipstick, it gets so smeared that I end up looking like a victim on
Law & Order.
Whereas Rebecca can consume a five-course meal and not even need to reapply her lip liner. When we go out and Rebecca has on a hot outfit and perfectly applied makeup, I'm pretty sure people assume she's my baby-sitter.

"I have to get back," I said. "I need to work on my Barnard application." Stepping out from under the awning into the sun, I felt as if the temperature went up

18

about twenty degrees, which is just not a good thing if you have hair like mine. Last year in art history we saw slides of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and there is no way around the fact that that is exactly what my hair looks like on a humid day. Rebecca put on her sunglasses and waited while I rooted around in my bag for something to prevent my head from becoming a day in the life of ancient Egypt.

"You're not going to Barnard. You can't go to college in New York when you've spent your entire life here," said Rebecca. "You need to get out in the world. Experience other places."

"You wouldn't happen to have any particular place in mind, would you?" I asked. I found a stretched-out rubber band and gathered my hair into a ponytail.

"Why, Jan Miller,
whatever
could you mean?" We headed toward school.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe you were thinking of...Providence."

"Hey, now that you mention it, Providence
is
a great town." Rebecca just happens to be applying early to Brown.

"So I've been told," I said.

At the corner of Clinton Street, Rebecca grabbed my arm. "Wait a minute. Don't you have French now?"

"I 'have' French in the sense that I am scheduled to be there," I said. "I do not 'have' it in the sense that due to a pressing obligation, I will be unable to attend."

"So you're cutting French to work on your application," said Rebecca.

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"Precisely." French class is so humiliating, I'll take any excuse I can think of not to go. I know almost no French, but each year I do just well enough on the final to advance to the next level, thereby ensuring yet another year of misery. Every day is exactly the same. I walk in; the teacher greets me with a big smile; she says,
"Bonjour, Jan";
I say,
"Bonjour, Madame";
and it's downhill from there. Each time she calls on me I stammer out some totally wrong answer that has nothing to do with whatever she's asked, until finally, she gives up completely and ignores me for the rest of the period, which is pretty much a huge relief for everyone.

Right outside of school we ran into Richie, who's also in my French class. Richie lived in Paris for a year when he was in junior high, so it's a complete joke that we're supposedly at the same level. He's helped me a lot over the years, but lately even Richie has stopped promising me that "anyone can learn French."

"Tu vas au cours de Français?"
he asked.

"I have no idea what you just said, but I'm not going to French." Richie was too nice to say anything, but I feel like everyone must be pretty relieved when I don't show up to class. It's like, hey, now we can actually learn a foreign language.

"Do you want me to call you about the homework later?"

"Not especially."

"Aren't you going to take French in college?" asked Richie. He tried to sound neutral, but I think I heard concern in his voice.

20

"Richie, my friend, after June twelfth, you won't so much as catch me sipping a glass of Perrier."

"Well, maybe that's for the best." He turned to head to class. "Hey, do you know that new guy, Josh?" he asked over his shoulder.

Sometimes when I'm nervous or embarrassed my face gets kind of flushed, and I was pretty much sure that was happening now.

"Ah, kind of. He's in my English class."

Rebecca snickered and then patted Richie on the shoulder.

"Well, Cupid," she said, "I gotta dash." She waved good-bye to me. "Call me later."

Richie shrugged as if to indicate that he had never had any idea what girls were talking about and didn't see any reason to try and figure it out at this point.

"He's in my math class," he said. He didn't seem to notice I was having a mild heart attack. "I think I'll invite him for next Saturday. He seems cool." Richie was having a party the weekend after next because his parents were going out of town. Even though Rebecca and I had sworn not to go to any high-school parties now that we were seniors, we were making an exception for his.