The Girl Who Invented Romance (16 page)

No.

The phone didn’t ring.

Oh—it rang. Faith called with her usual monologue about Angie. I didn’t say a word about Will. I still couldn’t share him even with my best friend. Faith wanted the world to tune in to her needs. I
myself wanted no attention, no sympathy, no understanding.

I wanted Will.

The week passed.

School was hard.

Will would greet me in sociology and in history. “Hey, Kelly. How are you?” which was more attention than anybody else got from the guy, but still.

I’d answer, “Fine, thanks, Will.” Which was a lie.

When he had a basketball game that evening, I’d say, “Good luck tonight.” He’d nod and smile to himself, thinking of the game, not me.

In my heart I went back over every sentence we’d exchanged to see where I had gone wrong. If I studied my textbooks that intensely, I’d be graduating first in my class.

I went to two games. One was against Prospect Hill. Blaize was sitting on the away team’s bleachers. In the last quarter, Will got sweaty and angry, leaping high for rebounds, sneakers squeaking, chest heaving. Nothing existed for Will but winning. And nothing existed for me but Will.

No cheers, no food, no gossip, no other people.

I knew now what Faith meant about her crushes. A clone of Will was clinging to me. An undercurrent to every thought and motion. It was like having company that never left. You loved them and hated them for giving you no peace.

Ms. Simms okayed the board game for my project. If I really thought I had something, she said, she would show me how to apply for a copyright. I said I didn’t really think I had something.

I finished the board game on a non-basketball game night.

The board was remarkably pretty. I’d put a lot of effort into decorating and coloring it. Cut and traced a lot of folded paper hearts to get exactly the right sizes for the turns and curves of the game. Bought a lot of rubber stamps and experimented over and over with just the right bouquets and themes. The game was easy and fun to play. But then, I knew it by heart.

Good phrase. I didn’t know the game by eyes, by mind or by fingertips. I knew it by heart.

It was the way I knew Will.

Not by intelligence or experience.

By heart.

Each day was the same. Either I was at school or I was at home. Either place, I was in the grip of this terrible crush on Will and he was in the grip of basketball.

One day I came home to an empty house and found on the hall table a vase of baby’s breath, yellow daisies and white daisies. My father had tried flowers again. This made me feel slightly better. I wished I had been there when
Daddy gave them to Mother. How had she reacted? Had she kissed him? Exclaimed over the flowers? Hugged him and beamed with pleasure?

Or shrugged and said, “Stick ’em in water. I’m too busy.”

I plucked one white daisy and began playing the oldest romance game in the world.

He loves me
.

He loves me not
.

He loves me
.

He loves me not
.

For whom was I playing this game? Me and Will? Or Mom and Dad?

He loves me
.

He loves me not
.

The petals fell on my lap like discarded chances.

He loves me
.

He loves me not
.

Half plucked, the daisy’s yellow center became raw on one side and the stem seemed more fragile. I pulled off two more petals, counting to myself. If I looked at the remaining white petals, my eyes would do an automatic count and I would know the answer.
He loves me.… He loves me not
. I averted my eyes.

“Kelly!” called my mother. “I’m home!”

“Hi, Mom.”

She walked in, saw the flowers I think for the first time and then saw the half-plucked daisy in my hand. “What are you on?”

“He loves me.”

“Good place to stop. If you keep going, who knows where it might end?”

“There are only two endings,” I pointed out.

“When in doubt, it’s
He loves me not
.”

Oh, don’t say it, Mother! Tell me that true love exists. Tell me you are proof of it. Tell me I will have it too.

“Who is the flower for?” asked Mom.

“Will Reed.”

“As in basketball?”

“As in basketball.”

Mother nodded, surprised but interested. Then she drew her own daisy out of the bouquet. A yellow one. My stomach clenched with fear. I had the sensation that if she plucked around and landed on
He loves me not
, she would leave. It would end: the marriage, the family—my life, her life, our lives.

She stared at her flower. “I never questioned it before,” she said.

Daddy loving her? “But you always questioned it,” I protested. “You always needed him to tell you he loved you.”

“I know, but I didn’t
worry
. I just liked to be told. Comforted.”

“It’s okay to need love,” I said, repeating the only advice Daddy had to give his only daughter. It’s okay to need love. You don’t have to fight back.

So who was fighting back? Mother? Daddy? Ellen? Me?

Mother slid her yellow daisy back into the bouquet, lifting fronds of fern and baby’s breath until it blended back into the crowd. We weren’t going to find out whether he loves me or he loves me not.

I felt safe. We were still a family. That bouquet and all of us were still in the water together, still alive, full of color and hope.

“W
hat?” I cried. “Never! Faith, I cannot telephone Will and Angie and ask them to come over to my house and play Romance.”

We giggled insanely.

“You should have told me long ago that you had a crush on Will,” said Faith. “I’ve always told
you
when
I
adore somebody. But when both of us are deep in fruitless hopeless crushes, we need a solution. This works. We coax Angie and Will to come to your house and play Romance.”

I chewed my hair. Bit my fingernails. Twisted my socks. Picked at the seam in my denim bedspread. “I can’t do it.”

“Okay,” said Faith. “Here’s a possibility. We don’t tell
them what the game is. We explain that you have designed a board game for the sociology class project and need to test it. You are throwing a game-testing party. Each person brings a good attitude and a sharp pencil.”

I was getting sick of that bedspread. If I got up one more time and found seam lines imbedded in my skin, I’d set fire to it. “You know,” I told Faith, “there’s no reason I can’t just go buy something new and replace this ugly thing. I’m thinking of a soft, puffy down comforter in pure white. I’ll have about five throw pillows and they will be an array of—”

“Stop changing the subject. You’re just chicken. Are we going to have this party or not? We need to invite twelve people so that we have three games going with four players at each board.”

“I can picture two or three girls having a sleepover and playing this,” I said, “but six guys and six girls in high school? Actually sitting down to The Game of Romance?”

“Yes. This is life, Kelly, and life depends on how you play it.”

“You sound like pillow embroidery.”

“We’re going to play Romance and we’re going to win. I get Angie; you get Will.”

“Faith, what if nobody wants to come? What if they come and somehow I give everybody food poisoning? What if they laugh so hard at the whole idea of my game that they go into convulsions and can’t play? What if my mother hangs around and acts weird?”

“Kelly!” shrieked Faith. “I myself with my calligraphy pens added that beautiful lace around the edges of your previously boring heart paths. I then paid for the color copies of your game. I glued the copies to heavy cardboard that I bought and cut out. I donated all my old Parcheesi game pieces and painted them in romantic nail polish colors for the playing pieces. I talked your very own mother into donating heart and violet gifts of your father’s still in their packaging for door prizes. We are going to invite six boys and two of them will be Will and Angie and we are going to play Romance and that is that!”

So I picked up my phone and telephoned Angie first because I had no stake in the outcome of that particular call.

“Sweet,” said Angie. “You are so clever, Kelly. Nobody else would be able to design a board game. What’s the game about?”

“Secret.”

“And I get to be at the unveiling? What time? You want me to bring something?”

“Just yourself.” I left out the part about the good attitude, which Angie already had, and the sharp pencils, which I figured as hostess I probably should throw in myself.

All the calls went like that.

Megan was delighted, although irked that she wasn’t in on the planning. “I’ll bring paper plates and napkins,” she said. “You might go for plain cheap white, because you think thrift is a virtue. I’ll get beautiful romantic stuff.”

“Don’t tell anybody what the board game theme is, though. It’s a secret.”

“Oh, good,” said Megan. “Because secrets are romantic too.”

Kevin Carlson was astonished and pleased. “Me?” he said. “Sweet. What’ll I bring?”

I had not expected people to offer to bring things.

“How about soda?” he said. “My family pretty much buys every kind of soda there is—no caffeine, high caffeine, no calories, low calories, classic original, whatever—I’ll bring a cooler full.”

Katy Ramseur was beside herself. “I’ll bring dessert,” she said. “I love to bake. I love to show off my baking.”

Julie Tanner couldn’t wait and was disappointed to find that somebody else had already offered to bring soda. She too would bring dessert.

Mario was confused but willing. He said he’d bring all the soft drinks. I said that was taken and he explained you could never have too much.

Honey under other circumstances would be low on my list, but we were limiting guests to the sociology class. Honey was actually polite and offered to supply chips and dips.

Donny McVeigh could not get over the idea that I was including him and was I serious? Did I really want him? Yes, Donny, I really want you. Sweet, he said.

“That’s everybody but Will,” I told Faith.

“Even with him, you’re short one boy.”

“Parker’s coming,” I said. “He knows about the game, he thinks it’s cool, and he can be a host and take some of the pressure off in case I fly into a tailspin from public humiliation.”

I couldn’t bring myself to call Will.

“Kelly,” said Faith. “Calling Will is the point.”

“Leave the room,” I said to her. “Go downstairs. Pray.”

I called Will.

“Oh, hi, Kelly,” said Will. “I was just thinking of you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah. I’m getting started on my sociology project. Have you given much thought to yours? I’ve been so busy with basketball, I haven’t had time to eat any four-hamburger snacks, let alone make phone calls, but how are you, anyway?”

“I’m pretty good,” I said. My heart expanded, filling my body, taking up so much space, I felt like a helium balloon pulling on its tether. He would have made time for me if it weren’t for games and coaches and practice! In truth, that was pretty lame, because two times a day, five days a week, we were in class together and a person could certainly say more than Hi, how are you? during those occasions, but I let it go. “Actually, Will, that’s why I’m calling. I need special help on my project because it’s a board game and I need to have four players at three different boards so that I can test it for flaws. Could you come over Saturday night? I checked to be sure—there’s no game scheduled.”