How to Be Popular (7 page)

What did
that
mean? That they liked my idea?

Or that Mark should just ignore me and go on?

“Um, I think a, um, talent auction,” Mark said, his hazel eyes looking right at me—no,
burning
right
through
me—where I had dissolved into my own seat…only not from a fit of the giggles, but from sheer mortification, “sounds like a great idea.”

“WHAT?”

The word—which had come out of Lauren—cracked through the auditorium with the explosiveness of a starter’s pistol down by the drag racetrack.

Everyone looked at Lauren, whose face was a comedic mask of outrage.

Or at least
I
thought it was comedic.

Mark looked from Lauren back to me, his bemused expression clearly indicating that he, Mark Finley, had
no idea what his girlfriend’s problem was.

“Great,” Mark said to me. “So, is it okay if I put you in charge of signing people up for that, Steph? The, um, talent thingie?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Great,” Mark said again. “Then all we need next is a Bloomville Fighting Fish Slap….”

And then Mark led us all in our school chant, a ridiculous thing you do with your arms, flapping one against the other to make a slapping sound like a fishtail on the water.

Then the bell rang.

STILL D
-
DAY
MONDAY
,
AUGUST
28, 1
P
.
M
.

Everyone took off for lunch.

Everyone, that is, except for me.

And Jason and Becca, because they were pinned into my row by the fact that I wasn’t moving.

But of course, I COULDN’T move. Because my knees were still wobbly. On account of what had just happened.

And things didn’t get much better when everyone was filing past us, and people like Gordon Wu stopped by our row to say things like, “Great idea, Stephanie,” or, “Do you think I can auction off drawing lessons for, like, little kids? Because I can draw. Does that count as a talent?”

Even Dr. Greer stopped by my seat on his way to his next round of golf and said, “Very nice suggestion, Tiffany. It’s good to see you taking part in school activities for a change.” He flicked a glance at Jason and Becca.
“Your friends here might want to follow your lead.”

“It’s Stephanie,” Jason said as Dr. Greer went away. “Her name’s Stephanie.”

But Dr. Greer didn’t appear to hear him.

Not that it mattered. Who cared whether or not the principal knew my name? Mark Finley knew it.

And that was all that mattered.

I knew Mark Finley knew my name because as he came down the aisle next to my seat, he grinned and nodded to me.

“Cool idea, Steph,” he said. “See ya.”

And, okay, his arm was around Lauren Moffat’s neck as he said it.

But that’s only because she picked it up and put it there. I SAW her do it. She was waiting as Mark came down off the stage and pretty much threw herself at him as soon as he set foot on solid ground.

And sure, she sneered at me as she went by, even as the guy she was attached to at the hip was smiling at me.

But who cares? MARK FINLEY SMILED AT ME.

Which is exactly what Becca said after everyone was gone.

“Mark Finley smiled at you.” Her tone was reverential. “He SMILED. At YOU. In a NICE way.”

“I know,” I said. I could feel the strength slowly starting to return to my legs.

“Mark Finley,” Becca murmured wonderingly. “I mean, he’s like…he’s the most popular guy in the whole school.”

“I know,” I said again. Empty, the auditorium is a very different place than it is when full. There is something almost restful about its echoey size.

“What the hell,” Jason, who up until that point had been strangely silent, finally burst out, “is the matter with you, Steph? Did someone pour crack all over your cornflakes this morning, or something?”

“What?” I asked, trying to look—and sound—like I didn’t know what he was talking about. And not about the crack, either.

“Don’t give me that,” Jason said. “You know exactly WHAT. What was all that back there? What’s a talent auction? And what’s with you volunteering to participate in one? What’s with you showing SCHOOL SPIRIT?”

By that time my legs had stopped shaking, and I was able to climb to my feet.

“I just wanted to help out,” I said. “I mean, someone’ll do the same when it’s our turn to go to Kings Island next year.”

“You hate Kings Island,” Jason said, climbing out of his seat. “You threw up on the log flume the last time we went there and refused to go on any more rides.”

“So?” I said with a shrug. “Does that mean I’m not allowed to try to help other people enjoy something, just because I don’t like heights?”

“Yes,” Jason said, loping after me as I started up the aisle toward the exit to the rest of the building. “Because that is perilously close to school spirit. And you don’t have school spirit.”

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about that, and—”

“Oh no,” Jason said, reaching the doors before I did and barring the handles with his own body to keep me from slipping out before he’d had his say. “Don’t even try to go there with me, Steph. How in hell can you want to help those people have a good time on their senior trip when all they’ve ever done is make your life miserable?”

“That wasn’t them,” I pointed out. “That was Lauren. She’s not going to Kings Island.”

“So what?” Jason demanded. “She’s the enemy—and they’re her friends. Ergo, they’re your enemies.”

I just stood there and looked at him. Well, not like I had much of a choice, since he was blocking the doorway.

“You’re being really childish about this Jason,” I said in my most reasonable voice. “There’s nothing wrong with showing a little school spirit by trying to help out others who might be in need. We’ve only got two more years in this place. We should really try to enjoy the short time we have left.”

At least, that’s what it said in The Book. You know, about how you should try to enjoy your high school years while you can, because you will never get them back.

Jason, obviously, hadn’t read The Book. But it was clear from his reaction to what I’d said that even if he had, it wouldn’t have made much difference.

Because what he did next was reach out and plant a
hand on my forehead as if he were feeling for a fever.

“Does she seem hot to you, Becca?” he asked. “Because I think she might be coming down with something. Lassa fever, or maybe Marburg’s. Either that or she’s been body-snatched and replaced with a very clever clone. Clone!” He took his hand away from my forehead and peered down into my eyes. “Tell me what game Steph Landry and I used to play in the big dirt pile they made while they were digging my family’s pool, back when we were both seven, or I’ll know you’re an alien replacement and you’ve got the real Steph up in your mother ship!”

I glared at him. “G.I. Joe meets Spelunker Barbie,” I said. “And stop being so ridiculous. We have to go. We’re going to end up at a bad table for lunch.”

Finally Becca spoke up.

“I thought we were going out to lunch,” she said. “You know. Since Jason’s got a car now.”

“We can’t go OUT to lunch,” I explained to them both. “Don’t you get it? Lunch is the most important time of the day for social interaction in the school setting.”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized how they sounded. They were, of course, a verbatim quotation from The Book.

But Jason and Becca didn’t know anything about The Book. So naturally, they’d find the statement perplexing, as it did not actually sound the way I normally talk. I could tell they were confused before I even finished speaking.

“What I mean is, I can’t just not show up down there,” I explained in what I thought was a very reasonable tone of voice. “I have to be available, in case anyone wants to sign up. You know, for the auction. Do you see what I mean?”

“Oh,” Jason said, nodding. “We see what you mean, all right. And if this isn’t part of some greater diabolical master plan—one that involves talking the school into buying nonexistent swampland in Florida or something—then we’re out. So. Is it?”

I shook my head. “Is it what?”

“Part of some diabolical master plan to take out Mark Finley as senior class president and take over yourself, or something?”

I didn’t know what to say. It
was
part of a diabolical master plan, of course. But not the kind he was hoping for.

He seemed to realize this without my having to say anything. Turning to Becca, he said, “Come on. Let’s go.”

Becca hurried to his side, eyeing me warily the whole time as if I were a rabid dog, or a fried Twinkie, or something.

Still, I didn’t get it. Not right away. Because the truth was too horrible to believe, I guess.

I was like, “Good.” I actually felt relieved. I actually thought they understood. “Now, we’ll just go down there and hit the salad bar or whatever, and then sit by those plants the horticulture club puts out, and if anybody comes by, we’ll—”

“WE won’t do anything,” Jason said, throwing open the doors and leading Becca out into the hallway.

“Well,” I said, following them, still not getting it. “No, I mean, of course not, I realize this is my thing, and all. You guys don’t have to help. But if—hey, where are you going?”

Because instead of making the turn for the cafeteria, they’d made the turn for the student parking lot.

“We’re going to Pizza Hut,” Jason said. “You’re welcome to come with us, if you change your mind.”

I just stood there, staring at them, not understanding what was happening. Jason and I ALWAYS ate lunch together. I mean, except for that fight in the fifth grade…ALWAYS.

And now he was ditching me? Just because I’d shown some school spirit?

“You guys,” I said. I guess a part of me thought they might be joking, or something. “You can’t be serious. I mean, come on. We can’t be moody malcontents our whole lives. We’ve got to start participating in school activities, or people will never get to know us and realize how fantastic we are. They’ll just be all, ‘Don’t be such a Steph’ for the rest of our lives—you guys? You guys!”

But it was too late. Because I was speaking to an empty hallway, since they’d left.

STILL D
-
DAY
MONDAY
,
AUGUST
28, 2
P
.
M
.

The Bloomville High School cafeteria is a scary place, and not just because of the food. It’s a lot like Main Street—the place to see or be seen—if you are a teenager in Bloomville, Indiana. The tables in there are round and only fit about ten people. This means that if you, like me, want to sit at a table filled with popular people, you have to find one with a space left for you to squeeze into.

More importantly, you have to find one the people sitting at will LET you squeeze into.

When I left the salad bar and stood there surveying the landscape before me, I saw that—just as I’d predicted back in the auditorium to Jason and Becca—almost all of the good seats were taken. There was a seat or two left at the “head” table…where Lauren and Mark and their entourage, including Alyssa Krueger and the rest of the
football team, were sitting.

Meanwhile, there was PLENTY of room left at Gordon Wu’s table. In fact, seeing me standing there, Gordon actually stood up and waved at me, and then moved his backpack off the chair next to him, as if he’d been saving me a place.

Which was very nice of him, and all.

But if I sat next to Gordon Wu, I’d still be no further away from jettisoning my Don’t Pull a Steph reputation than I’d been this morning.

Which was when I noticed there was still a space at Darlene Staggs’s table, right next to Mark and Lauren’s table. Normally Darlene would have been at their table.

But since she grew what I have to say are probably the most impressive set of knockers in Greene County during winter break last year (some less generous people, like Jason, say Darlene’s breasts are “store-boughts,” but I refuse to believe that any parent—even mine—would be irresponsible enough to let their sixteen-year-old daughter get a boob job. You aren’t even done growing at sixteen!), she’s had to move to her own table in order to accommodate her ever-growing retinue of male admirers.

Darlene Staggs is possibly the dimmest person I have ever met who was not actually in Special Ed. Once in eighth grade biology, she finally figured out that honey comes from bees, and she was so grossed out that her favorite condiment came, as she put it, “out of a bug’s butt” that she actually had to be sent to the nurse’s office
to have a cool compress applied to her forehead.

But while God was shortchanging Darlene in the brains department, He went overboard on the beauty. Though even before the miraculous Christmas visit by the boob fairy, you could tell Darlene was the kind of girl who, in a couple of years (after she’d become some banker’s trophy wife and squeezed out a kid or two), was going to experience the same kind of battle with gravity that I am facing at the moment.

But for right now, she’s the prettiest girl in our whole school and so is constantly surrounded by boys, who flock to her in hopes of someday being able to sink into her soft good-smellingness.

The other thing about Darlene is, when she, Lauren, Alyssa Krueger, and Bebe Johnson were in line to get meanness from God, Darlene must have seen a butterfly and gone running after it, or something, since she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body. But Lauren still lets Darlene hang out with her and the other Dark Ladies of the Sith, because Darlene’s too pretty not to keep her around, in case one of them needs to catch her dregs.

Which was why, with an apologetic smile to Gordon Wu, I made a beeline for the empty chair at Darlene’s lunch table, which was just feet from where Lauren and Mark were sitting.

“Hi, Darlene,” I said, putting my tray down across from hers. “Mind if I sit here?”

All eight of the guys at Darlene’s table yanked their gazes off the front of her chest and looked at me. Or the
area just above the sticky part of my thigh-highs, to be more exact.

“Oh, you’re that girl from the convocation today,” Darlene said amiably. Because that’s how she does everything. “Sure, hi.”

So I sat down and started in on my baked chicken, carefully peeling off the skin to avoid adding unnecessary saturated fats going to the Butt.

“Like your socks,” Todd Rubin said to me with a grin I could only call lecherous.

Instead of being all, “Gross, get away from me, and by the way, in your dreams,” as I might have done before reading The Book, I smiled at Todd and said, with a sly look, “Why, thank you, Todd. Say, Todd. Aren’t you in my Advanced Trig class?”

Todd looked nervously in Darlene’s direction, as if someone mentioning his math prowess might queer his chances of scoring with someone whose combined GPA was probably equal to the number of state capitals she could name off the top of her head.

Which, having been in World Civ with her last year, I happen to know is two.

“Yeah,” Todd said cautiously.

“Maybe you could sign up for the talent auction, then,” I said. “There are probably tons of cute freshmen girls who would bid to have you as their tutor for a day. Don’t you think?”

Todd, with another glance at Darlene, who was staring at him vacantly as she nibbled a carrot stick, looked
a little less alarmed, since what I’d just done was give him a compliment. In front of the woman of his dreams.

“Well,” Todd said. “I mean, okay. I mean, whatever.”

“Excellent,” I said, and whipped out the clipboard I’d stolen from the main office on my way down to the lunchroom. “Sign yourself up, then. Wow, we’ll probably make a fortune off this—enough for the senior class to go to France, at this rate. How about you guys? Anybody interested in having girls bid for you?”

Five minutes later, every guy at the table had signed up, listing, under the heading
TALENT
, skills as various as
LAWN MOWING
;
THREE WHEEL ATV TRAIL GUIDE
;
TWO HOUR FISHING TRIP ON GREENE LAKE
;
WILL HOLD YOUR BAGS WHILE YOU SHOP AT BLOOMVILLE MALL
; and
ALMOST PROFESSIONAL CAR DETAILING
. As other people noticed the guys at Darlene’s table talking so animatedly, they stopped by to see what was going on, and then signed up themselves. By the time the next period bell rang, I had almost thirty volunteers—most of them A-crowd—including Darlene herself, who’d very charmingly asked, “But you guys, what about me? I have no talents.”

“Of course you do, Darlene,” I told her in the same animated voice I’d been using with all the guys. Because The Book says people are drawn to extroverts and other cheerful types. “Look how pretty you are. Why don’t you volunteer to give someone a makeover?”

“Ooooh,” Darlene said excitedly. “Like at the Lancôme counter in the mall?”

“Um,” I said. “Yes.” Then, seeing she clearly didn’t
understand, I added, “Only you would be the one GIVING the makeover, not getting one. You’d probably have to use your own makeup on whoever wins it.”

“Oh,” Darlene said, looking disappointed. You could tell she’d totally thought she’d somehow be getting free makeup out of the whole thing. Which, given the fact that Darlene is probably given free stuff every minute of the day, is understandable. “But what if nobody buys me?”

“Don’t worry, Dar,” Mike Sanders hurried to say, since no human being could stand to see Darlene looking sad. “I’ll get my mom to bid on you. She could totally use a makeover.”

Darlene brightened. “Really, Mike?” she asked. “Would you really?”

“Of course, Dar,” Mike assured her. And all the other guys at the table hurried to assure her their moms were dogs who needed makeovers, too.

It was as this was happening that the bell rang and everyone started getting up to go…including Mark Finley and Lauren Moffat, who ended up walking behind me as I was jotting down the names of some last minute sign-ups.

Even though Lauren had Mark’s arm wrapped around her neck again, he didn’t seem to be paying her much attention. He was looking at me, as a matter of fact.

“Hey,” he said with a smile, nodding at my clipboard. “Gotta lotta names there, huh?”

I smiled at him sunnily, while at the same time avoided meeting Lauren’s scowl.

“We do,” I said chirpily. “People seem really into it. What I’m going to do next is take out an ad in the
Bloomville Gazette
, letting the people in town know about the auction, so they can come bid. What night do you think we should have it? The auction, I mean?”

“Thursday? Is that enough time to get the ad in?”

I said that’d be cutting it close, but that I’d take care of it.

“Hey, did you, uh, mean it?” Mark wanted to know, his hazel eyes looking almost green in the fluorescent lights. “That thing you said in the auditorium, about people maybe bidding on me to do advertising for their business?”

“Absolutely,” I said. I darted a look at Lauren to see how she was bearing up, you know, under the circumstances. The circumstances of her boyfriend talking to me, I mean. She had her eyes half-lidded like a lizard’s. It was clear she was wishing herself anywhere but there.

“Do you want to sign up?” I asked Mark, holding out the clipboard. “It would probably get a lot more people, you know, if they see your name on here.”

“You think so?” Mark asked. But he was already reaching for the pen and scribbling his name. “What should I put for talent?” The smile he cocked at me was lopsided, a charming blend of uncertainty and self-effacement. “I don’t know if ‘spokesmodel’ has the right tone.”

“I’ll put spokesperson,” I said, smiling back at him. And, because I didn’t want her to think I was trying to ignore her, or anything, I said to Lauren, “Would you like to sign up, Lauren? Maybe you could offer to chauffeur people in one of your dad’s BMWs, you know, off his lot.”

The look Lauren gave me was glacial. “Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “But I’m not going to drive some schmo around all day in one of my dad’s brand-new cars.”

And, to emphasize just how bad of an idea she thought it was, Lauren flicked a glance at Alyssa, who nearly choked on her diet soda, she laughed so hard when Lauren added, “God, could she be more of a Steph?”

Mark, however, didn’t seem to see anything funny about the situation.

“Jeez, Laur,” he said, looking down at her pointed little rat face, framed by his (comparably massive) arm and shoulder. “It’s for charity. Well, I mean, for the senior trip. What are you giving her such a hard time for?”

Now Alyssa actually
did
choke on her soda. She sprayed a mouthful of it across the (by now almost empty) cafeteria.

Lauren, for her part, looked up at Mark and, her rat face tightening, said, “Gawd. I was just kidding.”

Then she snatched the clipboard away from me, scrawled her name on it, and wrote,
WHATEVER
, under
TALENT
.

Which is probably best, since I don’t think there are
that many people who would bid to see Lauren KISS MARK FINLEY’S ASS, since we get to see that for free every day.

I made a mental note to remember to repeat that to Jason later, since I knew how much he would appreciate it, as witticisms go.

“Happy?” Lauren asked, shoving the clipboard back at me.

“Great, thanks so much,” I said as if I were completely oblivious to her rudeness. “This is really going to make such a difference. You wait and see.”

Then I gave her a final smile and a wave, and turned around to head to my next class.