Don’t ask me how it happened, but even with our best efforts at privacy, breakfast wound up being the next thing to a party. Lissa and Carly sat at the other end of the table, as promised, but before long the seats in between were filled by Shani and a couple of kids from prayer circle, plus two or three from the Science Club who seemed to float around Lucas as though they were hoping to absorb more brilliance by osmosis.
Lucas seemed to take it pretty gracefully. I mean, he wasn’t completely in Vanessa Talbot’s crowd (thank goodness), and at least he knew we were his friends—and we certainly had a lot more fun than Vanessa and Brett and Dani and Todd Runyon ever seemed to.
“What’s the definition of popular?” I asked Lucas, glancing at the table in front of the window facing out onto the quad. Dani and Emily took turns trashing people as they went by (my assessment, anyway). Brett was trying to tell Vanessa something, but she seemed to be more interested in her manicure than anything else.
“I’ve never given it much thought.” Lucas’s gaze followed mine. “Not relevant.”
Shani leaned over. “Do people like you? Do they think you’re fun to be around?”
“People like
us
,” Carly said from her end of the table. “That means we must be popular.”
“Gillian, wasn’t it you who asked me once if I wanted to be friends with people who like me just because I get up in the morning, not because there’s something in it for them?” Lissa asked. “I know which I’d rather have.”
“It’s not about people liking you at all,” Lucas said. “Popularity is all about who has the most. Looks, money, stuff, whatever. Look at Vanessa.”
Our heads swung, just as she looked up.
Oh, you bunch of losers
, her bored expression seemed to say, before she picked up her tray and walked out of the dining room, Brett close behind.
“That was rewarding,” Lissa remarked.
“I didn’t mean you should actually
look
at her,” Lucas said impatiently. “I was using her as an example. She’s beautiful, she has a trust fund, and her parents are famous. That’s why she’s popular.”
“Huh,” Carly mused, deadpan. “And here I thought it was because of her winning personality.”
Next to me, Shani snickered.
I was still recovering from what Lucas had just said. “You really think Vanessa is beautiful?” Guys weren’t supposed to say things like that in front of their girlfriends, were they? Or even people they thought might be their girlfriends. Maybe he was just making an observation, along the lines of “Look, the sun came out.”
“Oh, yeah.” He spooned more Demerara sugar on his oatmeal. “She’s pretty bright, too. I had low expectations with the tutoring last term, but it worked out.”
“I heard Annie Leibovitz wanted to photograph her when they lived in New York, but she turned her down,” Shani put in. Whose side was she on, anyway?
“I find that hard to believe.” I’d seen her myself, pretending to dodge photographers while she made sure they got her best side. How else did she show up on places like whowhatweardaily.com?
He shrugged. “Truth is truth, whether you choose to believe it or not.”
I sat back, rebuffed and a little hurt. Why were we talking about Vanessa Talbot, anyway? “That isn’t truth. It’s just something somebody heard.”
“Besides,” Shani said, “defining what’s beautiful is like defining what’s popular. It’s just people’s opinion.”
Way to redeem yourself, girl.
“But usually people’s opinions form critical mass in a given society. And that’s when you get definitions of both,” Lucas said. “So for our little society right here, a girl with high cheekbones, puffy lips, big eyes, and a trust fund is defined as beautiful.”
I considered my non-cheekbones, wide mouth, Asian eyes, and hair that did whatever it wanted. If he thought Vanessa was so beautiful, what was he doing having breakfast with me? Did he have a crush on her? Was he just using me to fill time until she dumped Brett and left the field open for him?
I pushed my half-eaten oatmeal away.
“Personally,” Lissa said, “I define beautiful as a girl with a big heart, a big smile, and a sharp brain. So that makes Gillian a beauty in my book.”
Bless you
.
Lucas nodded. “Under that definition, she is.”
My throat prickled and I blinked back stupid tears. “Sitting right here,” I said hoarsely. “Knock it off, you guys.”
He smiled at me. “Didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
Better embarrassed at a compliment than jealous over nothing. My cheeks might be burning, but a happy little warmth blossomed inside me. Time to change the subject. “Do you have any plans today?”
“We should all do something together,” Lissa said. “There must be tons of stuff going on around here.”
“In February?” Carly asked.
“We could go to the de Young and see the new exhibit,” I suggested. “Or to Ghirardelli Square to eat chocolate.”
“Or Pier 39,” one of the guys said. Jeremy Clay, that was his name. “It’s crab season—we could hit Fisherman’s Wharf and get one right out of the pot. Eat it on the sidewalk.”
“Gross.” Shani’s whole face scrunched up in distaste. “I’d rather go to Alcatraz and be locked in a jail cell.”
“We could do that. Or we could go to Angel Island,” Lucas said to me. “Have you ever been there?” I shook my head
—
I’d never even heard of it. “There’s a ferry that runs out there, and you can hike all around it. No cars. ”
“The fog’s lifted,” Lissa said with a glance past the coveted window table, now empty, to the sky above the classroom wing opposite. “I don’t know about you guys, but I could really stand to get out of this place.”
She wasn’t the only one. “Let’s do it,” I said. “It sounds like fun.”
And maybe, while we were busy hiking around, I’d finally get some time alone with the guy who, while he might admire another girl’s cheekbones, thought I had a big smile and a big heart.
I
F I HADN’T KNOWN
it was February, I would have sworn we’d been fast-forwarded to May.
I stood at the rail of the Blue and Gold ferry and let the ocean breeze blow my hair straight back. Fortunately, I’d thought to dig my sunglasses out of the bottom drawer of the dresser, so I wasn’t dazzled by the sun sparkling on the Bay as the little ferry churned its way toward the island.
“What a great view.” Lissa, Carly, and Shani ranged along the rail on my right, while the boys from the Science Club (probably still congratulating themselves on their luck) tried to talk to them. Shani is the outgoing type, and Lissa will try to make anyone feel comfortable, even a science geek, but Carly didn’t know what to say.
That poor girl. If she were going to get Brett Loyola’s attention, she’d have to learn to talk to boys in general. Though I suppose a fascinating conversation about knots versus miles per hour wouldn’t help much. Still, when you were just practicing, sometimes you had to take what you could get.
Listen to me, running on like I knew it all when the truth was, after the comment about being a beauty, I’d once again lost the ability to say anything at all to Lucas. Either he was going to think I wasn’t having fun, or he’d think I was still mad about last night.
Where was my magpie mouth when I needed it?
Leaning on the rail to my left, Lucas pointed at the city skyline. “Nice, huh?”
I nodded. “I’ve never seen it from here before. Only from the air, flying in.”
“There’s the Golden Gate Bridge.” He pointed off the stern. “I wonder why they call it that when it’s painted orange?”
“My Aunt Isabel says that the old folks call San Francisco ‘Old Gold Mountain,’” I offered. “Maybe it has something to do with finding your fortune.”
“Maybe.” He pointed at the bridge ahead of us, the more ordinary one that stitched Oakland and San Francisco together. “It’s more interesting than ‘Bay Bridge,’ anyway.”
So much for the history and geography lesson. What was the matter with me today? It wasn’t like this was a real Valentine’s date. It was more like a group adventure—something to get us all out of our rooms and blow the winter cobwebs away. No pressure, no need to impress, just a bunch of friends out for fun.
So why had my brain locked up?
“You’re awfully quiet,” Lucas said, and I felt like sliding under the rail and dribbling into the Bay, never to be seen again.
“You just read my mind,” I said. “I guess I’m kind of nervous.”
“What about?”
You. Me. Whether you think I’m pretty. If we’re really going out. If you like me as more than a friend. If today’s the day I might actually get my first real kiss.
“I don’t know.”
“I was hoping it would be just you and me out here,” he said in a tone so low that only I could hear it.
Gulp
. “Sorry,” I murmured back. Lissa leaned on the rail about two feet away from me. “I didn’t know. I just sort of blurted it out and then everybody at the table invited themselves along.”
“That’s okay.” He moved his elbow on the rail a little, so that his shoulder bumped against mine. “It’s a big island. Maybe we’ll get lucky and get lost.”
I nearly pinched myself. Was this really me, dorky Gillian Chang, standing beside a gorgeous genius who wanted to be alone with me?
“Maybe we will,” I agreed. I hardly dared to say any more in case he changed his mind or I woke up.
When the ferry docked, I discovered that Lissa had done a little advance research. “We’re going to do a one-hour tour,” she told us as the deck shuddered under our feet with the gentle impact. “On Segways.”
“What?” Carly’s voice spiked. “Those rolling wheelie things? I thought those died.”
“Those personal mobile machines, you mean. And they never died,” Jeremy corrected her. “They use them at Pixar to get around the campus. Cool!”
A Vespa I might be able to handle. But a platform between two wheels? Was she kidding?
A college student named Megan met us at the dock. “This way, people. We’ll run through the features of your Segway, get you helmeted up, and we’ll be on our way in half an hour.”
The breeze on my face felt cool, but the sun made up for it as I pulled my helmet on and tried to listen to Megan’s instructions. If she thought we’d be driving these things in half an hour, she was pretty optimistic. With the eight of us lined up in a row, she ran through the controls and safety features. Then it was time to get on.
I stepped onto the platform and waited for it to do something.
“Turn it on with the key, then lean forward to go ahead, and lean back to reverse,” Megan told us for the third time. “Easy does it. Everybody go forward five or six feet, then back.”
“Yikes!” I said as the thing rolled forward. Instinctively I jerked back, and it reversed under me, picking up speed.
“Gillian, straighten up and it’ll stop,” Lucas called.
Easy for him. He rolled forward and back like he’d been doing it since birth. Lissa jerked one way, then the other, as incompetent as me. Ha. Misery loves company.
“Take a few minutes to practice, and then we’ll go over the basics of turning,” Megan called, rolling smartly out of Jeremy’s way as he tried to avoid a collision with Shani.
“Whose idea was this, anyway?” I heard Lissa mumble as she rolled past at a snail’s pace. At least she was rolling. I still couldn’t get it to go forward without jerking. Learning to drive a clutch had been easier than this.
“Gillian,” Lucas said, motoring up to me, “don’t look at the controls. Look at where you want to go, and lean toward your goal.”
Guhhhh
. I got off the thing, moved it around so it finally pointed away from people, and tried again. I lifted my gaze to the end of the practice lot and before I could even take a nerve-choked breath, I found myself rolling smoothly toward the road.
“Whoa!”
“Now straighten, and back up to where you were,” Lucas suggested.
With a glance over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t kill anything, I did it. I actually did it.
After mastering that, learning to make turns with the controls on the left-hand twist grip wasn’t so bad. And before fifteen more minutes had passed, even Lissa and Carly had stopped running into things and had made it to the end of the lot and back without injury to themselves or anyone else.
“We’re off,” Megan called. “Try not to lose sight of me, and stick to the roads only. You’ve got off-road tires, but no four-wheeling on these things, all right?”
We rolled out of the parking lot at a dizzying pace that someone doing a fast walk could probably keep up with—but hey, at least we were moving. We strung out along the road in twos and threes, gaining confidence with each minute. Jeremy leaned forward and opened it up so that he kept pace with Megan. I thought he looked a little out of control, but I had enough to do with my own machine. Megan would have to rescue him if he wound up flat on his face in the weeds.
Lissa, Carly, and Shani were just ahead of Lucas and me, keeping a tight little formation that was probably more fear than design. With a firm grip on the handles, the wind in my face, and Lucas beside me, I began to relax and enjoy myself. The rain of the week before had made fresh green grass come bursting out of the pale soil, covering the hillsides. Madrone trees, with their curly branches and peeling red bark, shaded the road as we sailed over a shoulder of the hillside and headed down a gentle slope toward the water.
“This is a good place to practice a nice, tight turn,” Megan called.
“You’d have to keep it nice and tight,” I muttered, “or you’d wind up in the Bay.” Now that was motivation for you.
Jeremy and Lucas took the curve at what looked like warp speed, and Lissa and I shook our heads. “Show-offs,” I said.
“I think Jeremy’s trying to impress you, Shani,” Lissa teased.
Shani snorted and tossed her sixties-style ponytail. “That boy could use a dip in the drink. Cool him off before he kills himself.”
We took the turn at a speed slightly above a crawl, but hey, at least we made it. We rolled up the hill in the hot sun and followed the road back into the trees while over her shoulder, Megan gave us some history of the island. Not that I was really listening. I was too busy wondering where along this road Lucas might drag me away from the others. Would we hike to the summit of this hill? Would he kiss me up there on the top, where we could see everything and be seen by no one? How were we going to lose the group without looking like we’d done it on purpose?