The Girl Who Invented Romance (2 page)

Faith shuddered. “If chance gives me Chuckie, or Avery, or Kenny, I’m leaving town.”

“Maybe you’ll get Angie, though.”

Faith started to tell me about how wonderful Angie was, but I knew that as well as she did, so it was a boring conversation. If she went and had a crush on, say, Kenny, who belongs on zoo-cage-cleanup detail, it would be interesting.

Sickening. Humiliating. But interesting.

So I interrupted her. “We’ll figure out some kind of countdown that we cannot know until class begins. Then we’ll do some sort of Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Mo and find out who each of us plays the game with.”

“But what’s the game?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Don’t rush me. We creative types need time.”

“If we’re going to spend that much time,” said Faith, who, when it comes to me, does not have as much faith as I would like, “I’ll get out the Monopoly game, because we’re going to be up till dawn anyway.”

Faith and I began playing board games with Candy Land when we were really little, and we’ve never abandoned the pleasure of board games. They’re always waiting for you in those rectangular boxes, full of surprises and satisfactions. You know how when you’re in the car, you can talk over anything, whether the driver is your parent or your friend? Cars just help you talk? It’s true of board games. They help you talk.

Not that I am usually needy in that area.

Faith finished her right hand and began peeling tiny silver decals and placing them diagonally on her long perfect nails. Faith is very pretty in a sweet, plump way.
Plump
is an exaggeration. She’s a little thick in the waist. It’s just that I’m so thin, I get carried away by other people’s figures. I’m not thin-attractive, calling to mind words like
willowy
or
slender
. I’m thin-scary, so that other people’s mothers are always muttering in undertones, “Does she have anorexia?” “No, Mom, Kelly’s shaped like a pencil. There’s nothing she can do about it.” “She could try eating.”

“Okay, here’s the plan,” I told Faith. “We get our boy. Then we have to start down a path, like squares on a Monopoly board, to attract him.”

“If it’s Angie, I like it. If it’s Kenny, pardon me while I gag.”

“Just gag over the denim spread, will you? I’m trying to ruin it.”

“Nothing will ruin it. You will give it in perfect condition to your grandchildren.”

“Now there’s a happy thought. It implies that I’m going to get married one day, which means I will surely go out with at least one boy.”

“You won’t be so happy if you draw Kenny.”

I ignored her. “We’re going to take dice into class. The first number we roll is the vertical seat row. The second number we roll is the seat within that row. That’s the boy we get.”

“Except what if you roll a girl?” said Faith.

I had forgotten about girls. There were quite a few in sociology.

“We’ll come back to that,” said Faith kindly. “Get to the good part. What are the moves?”

I tapped my palm with a pencil. I always think better with a pencil. It’s a problem in computer class. I have to hold the thinking pencil in my teeth. “Square one,” I said, reflecting on every magazine quiz, self-help article and lovelorn letter I have ever read. Thousands. Possibly millions. And how improved am I? Maybe I should ask for my money back on all those issues. “First move is, you have to smile at him.”

“I can handle that,” said Faith. “My braces are off and my lip gloss is new.”

“Square two. Notice him.”

“You said that very intensely, Kelly. In what way are we supposed to
notice
him?”

“Absorb every detail. Be terribly aware. Soak it up.”

“Why?”

“Future reference.”

“Okay,” agreed Faith. “Square two, I’m noticing him. What’s square three?”

“Talk to him.”

“In public? If I land on Kenny, I’d rather have anthrax.”

“Everything has to be in public. That way we develop poise.”

“I doubt it,” said Faith. “This already sounds like something a ten-year-old would do and we’re sixteen.”

“You have no faith,” I accused her.

Faith just looked at me. She detests her name. She feels that F names are frowsy and frumpy and fat. Whereas Jodie or Laurie or Ally (taking the traditional name route) or Swin or Cherith or Zandra (the nontraditional route)—those are names romance can take and run with.

“Square four,” I said, “will be
sit next to him
.”

Now we were at the tricky part.

We do not have assigned seats in sociology or anywhere else except study hall, where there are so many of us, they don’t check off by name, but by position on a grid—which leads to a lot of deceit and cover-up—but nevertheless, people tend to sit in the same places every day. Back-row people get tense and anxious if forced to approach the front row, and outer-edge people get very worked up when placed in the middle. People who have to be next to a best friend or die, and people who have to be at a great distance from an enemy or kill—they tolerate no change.

Sociology class is not full. I think there are nineteen or twenty of us. So there are extra desks but the same ones are always empty. If Faith or I suddenly shifted into one, people would get all confused. And if one of us took somebody else’s seat, that person would get all irritable. And what would the explanation be? “Oh, I’m just in square four; don’t worry about a thing.”

“Hmmm,” said Faith, regarding seat position.

“You are willing to do anything for Angie, aren’t you?” I coaxed.

“Yes, but this is a game of chance. If I get Chuckie or Kenny, the only thing I’m willing to do for them is destroy their photographs so the yearbook editor doesn’t know they exist.”

It was at this moment that my bedroom door was flung open hard enough for the handle to dent the wall. Megan came in sobbing and my life changed.

Megan did not come in with that purpose in mind. She came in hoping to change
her
life. (Actually she wanted to change her boyfriend Jimmy’s life; she wanted him dead, which is as major a change as most of us will ever encounter, but she was
pretending
she wanted to change
her
life.)

“He dumped me,” said Megan dramatically, shaking so hard with sobs that her tears spattered on Faith and on me.

“Have a seat,” said Faith, patting the bed.

Megan, Faith and I have shared things forever. That’s the trouble with living in a development. All our parents
bought new houses in Fox Meadow when we were babies. There was never a meadow, let alone foxes, but there were supposed to be hundreds of houses. Something went wrong and they built only a few dozen. I’ve known every family in Fox Meadow since nursery school. When I was little, I loved this. If your mother didn’t have any good snacks around, you could wander through Megan’s kitchen or Faith’s kitchen. And if Faith’s mother wouldn’t let her watch a particular television show, there was sure to be room in front of the Smith television, and Mrs. Smith had so many little kids, she never noticed one more or less in front of the tube, and she certainly never cared what they watched.

But now that I am sixteen, I would rather not live in Fox Meadow. I am tired of knowing all about everybody. I am tired of them knowing all about me. Mrs. Smith, for example, saying, “Since you’re always free on Saturday nights, Kelly, can I sign you up to babysit for the next two months?” I am especially tired of Megan landing on me whenever she needs company, without even knocking on the front door, never mind my bedroom door.

“He dumped me,” she repeated tragically. “I hate that word
dump
. Can’t you just see this obscene pile of refuse, thrown down by massive trucks, seagulls circling overhead like small white vultures, and me—lying on top. Dumped.”

Megan always has dates.

In fourth grade, when the rest of us hadn’t even gotten our braces
on
, never mind
off
, Megan was holding hands
with Ricky out on the playground. I remember how we’d say, “Eeeeuh, Megan, yuck! Why do you want to touch a boy?”

So it was hard to be sympathetic about Jimmy. Next weekend, she’d just go out with somebody else. Megan had an inexhaustible supply of boys. I could never figure out where she met them, let alone how she attracted them.

“Dumped for a girl he met when he went bowling,” said Megan. “It makes me quite ill. Bowling. It has no status. He could at least dump me for a girl he met skiing. Hand me your tissue box.”

I knew then that Faith and I would never mention my silly little romance game, not with Megan and her ten hundred previous dates sitting on the bed with us. I looked down into the open Monopoly game box. There were extra dice there. I might just take one to school and play my silly game by myself.

“You know what I want?” said Megan, sniffing.

Presumably Jimmy.

“I want an affair like your mother’s, Kelly.”

I was outraged. “My mother is not having an affair.”

“The affair she’s having with your father, dummy. Every time I come here, he’s just bought your mother chocolate or a bouquet of violets or a special card. And how long have they been married? Forever. Longer than any of us have even been alive.”

“I should hope so,” I said grumpily.

I disliked talking about my parents’ romance. It is beautiful
and I do love seeing them. They’re forty and still setting the standard by which everybody in Fox Meadow goes—notes to each other tucked under the windshield wipers, the special silver charm, the perfect surprise. But it’s hard to live in a house that is wall-to-wall romance and not be able to participate one single red rose’s worth. My older brother, Parker, literally closes his eyes whenever they get romantic. I used to think it embarrassed him, but now I think he’s disgusted by it. Maybe he thinks they’re too old and too married.

But then, Parker himself was such a mystery to me right then that who knows?

Because my brother, Parker, was dating Wendy Newcombe. Wendy is the Queen of Romance. Exquisitely pretty, very funny, terribly smart. She writes a daily school soap opera, which we listen to after the principal’s announcements. She dates only princes, like Jeep.

Now, Parker is nice. In fact, very nice. When he graduated from middle school, he was voted Nicest Boy and I don’t think anybody would change that vote four years later. But what kind of adjective is
nice
? You can’t call Parker dramatic or romantic or handsome. He’s my brother and I love him—everybody loves him—but Wendy dumped Jeep for my brother Parker and that’s amazing.

Jeep has about eight hundred wonderful qualities, from sexy to sweet, from athletic to gorgeous. Park has one wonderful quality. You wonder what Wendy had been
thinking of to make that trade. Whatever it was, she was thinking of it constantly.

You should have seen Wendy follow Parker around.

She ran the long way through the corridors between classes just to catch a glimpse of my brother going into chem lab. Once in sociology she actually forgot to take a test, and when Ms. Simms said, “Wendy? You’re not taking the test?” Wendy said, “Oh my goodness! Oh dear!” and blushed and added, “I guess I was thinking about Parker.”

Parker isn’t in our sociology class, but Jeep is. Jeep cringed. He has good features for cringing, although I prefer to imagine his features in terms of kissing and serenading. I can think of no time I would put Parker’s features ahead of Jeep’s. Even though he’s my brother and I’m very loyal. Well, sort of loyal.

Sometimes I think romance is a mystical game. You’ve been dealt cards you don’t know what to do with. You play by rules nobody else seems to be following because they were given a different set of instructions. Or maybe you don’t play at all. You can’t seem to toss the right combination to start the game.

“Oh well,” said Megan, mopping up the last of her tears and throwing Jimmy out with the tissue. “Let’s play Monopoly. I’ll be banker. Next to boys I like money best.” She said, “Oh well,” with the reverse inflection. Instead of her voice sinking with despair, it lifted cheerily. Her “Oh well” was looking forward to a new day.

“I’ll be the iron,” said Faith, choosing her game piece.

“I’ll be the Scottie dog,” said Megan, choosing hers.

The phone rang.

I keep my phone under the bed because there’s so much essential junk on my bedside table. I leaned over backward so that my vertebrae made splintering noises, and I reached down under. My hair, which is absolutely straight and very thin, like my body, fell around me like a silvery gold waterfall and splashed on my carpet. About the only thing I really like about myself is my hair. Yellow silk ribbons.

I groped for the phone and clicked it on. “Hello?”

“Hello, Kelly? It’s Wendy. Wendy Newcombe?”

The princess of Cummington High is in two classes with me and has been dating my brother for three months and she thinks I won’t recognize her name? “Hi, Wendy,” I said. “He isn’t home. He’s at play practice.”

Parker was stage manager of the school production of
The Music Man
. Wendy didn’t like this. She wanted Park to take her to the basketball games. Parker didn’t like that because he would certainly be compared to Jeep, out there racking up baskets and generally being a top-notch jock.

“Oh,” said Wendy sadly. “I thought he’d be home by now.”

Wendy’s voice is very expressive. I had to bite my lips to keep from offering to run over and stay with her until Park got back. “Shall I give him a message?” I said. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” said Wendy, all forlorn, like a little girl who’s lost
her mother in the crowd. “I just wanted to talk. No subject. Just … hear his voice.”

Wendy Newcombe, Queen of Romance, so in love with my brother Parker she just had to hear his voice.

What if I never got a phone call from a boy who just had to hear my voice? What if the only tears I ever shed were not from love, but from lack of it?

“What’s the matter, Kell?” said Faith. “You stuck under there?” She and Megan yanked me up and I shrieked to cover the sounds of my backbone twisting and to change my face from the despair I felt.

We arranged ourselves cross-legged around the Monopoly board, which we spread in the middle of the bed. We put props under the board so it would lie evenly and the pieces and cards wouldn’t slide down onto our toes. I decided to be the top hat and I picked it up, looking down at the familiar squares. Railroads, utilities …