The Queen of Cool (17 page)

“Oh, are you talking to me? I thought I was being ignored by everyone.”

“I’m my own person, man, dig it?”

“Yeah.”

He looks down at his feet. Then back up at me.

“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “You’re going to get through this.”

“How do you know?” I say.

“Because I know you,” Sid says.

How can he know me? I don’t even know me anymore.

He pulls the earphones he has slung around his neck and offers them to me.

“Listen to this,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. I put the earphones in.

He presses a button, and my ears come alive. The music is melodic and hopeful and tender and delicate.

“Did you write that?” I ask.

He nods.

“What’s it called?” I ask.

“It doesn’t have a name,” he says. “What do you think it’s called?”

I think for a moment. The bell rings. The hallway floods with people moving from one room to another.

“‘Rare Birds,’” I say.

“That’s a good one,” Sid says. “Very original.”

He takes the headphones back from me and walks off to class. Even in the crowded hallway, I notice, he stands out.

I follow the laughter in the library like bread crumbs, which lead me straight to Tina.

I stand quietly by the shelves until she notices me and hushes everyone up.

“Everybody, this is my very good friend, Libby,” Tina says. Then she motions for someone to get me a chair, and where there was no room at the table before, now there is a special place just for me.

I sit.

I open my yogurt. But I can’t eat.

“Do you remember when we were working with the tapir?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Tina says.

“That was like one of the most fun days I ever had in my life.”

“It’s too bad that they’re an endangered species,” she says.

“You know what I think?” I ask.

“What?”

“I think we’re all kind of like that. We’re all kind of endangered.”

“Are you okay?” Tina asks.

“I thought that the zoo was the stupidest thing that ever happened to me. I hated it. I didn’t even like you, really. I was pretending. I was just fulfilling my duty, ’cause I signed up for it. ’Cause everything else seemed so boring. But now, everything seems boring if I
don’t
get to go to the zoo. The zoo. Being responsible. Using my brain. That’s been the best, most important thing I’ve ever done.”

“It is pretty cool,” Tina says.

“What am I going to do now?”

“Maybe you should take your own advice.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Like you told Sheldon to tell me he liked me,” she says. “You should tell Mrs. Torres how much you love working at the zoo.”

When she says this, my heart floods with warmth.

Tina is right. I should take my own advice.

I have to
do
something. I have to tell Mrs. Torres how I feel. I have to
try.

“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Torres asks. “I thought we had this conversation the other day. You put the animals in jeopardy with your friends. You’re excused from this internship. End of story.”

“I know,” I said. “I just thought maybe I could still come and help. You know, without the grade.”

“No.”

“Then can I come back?”

“What?” she says.

“Can I do the next internship?”

“Why are you doing this, Libby?” Mrs. Torres asks.

“Because I love working at the zoo. I couldn’t admit it before. I was stupid. And now I won’t be stupid like that again. And when a person knows, I mean,
really knows,
that they have been galactically stupid and they want to try again, you should give them another chance.”

“Libby, you do good work.”

“Really?”

“But you can’t finish this internship. You fail this round. However, I might consider letting you do it over,” Mrs. Torres says.

“Really?”

“Let’s call it a probation.”

I go outside and find Sheldon and Tina.

“Hey,” Sheldon comes up to me. “What are you doing here?”

“Did it work?” Tina asks. “Are you back on Blue Team?”

“Not officially,” I say. “But I can come back to the zoo.”

“Cool,” Tina says. “We’re on gnu duty today. Want to watch us work?”

“Yeah, I’ll give you pointers from the bench.”

Mom is smiling sitting right next to Dad in the breakfast nook. She pushes the newspaper over to me.

“Look,” she says.

There is an article about the Alphaville Theater collective, and in the middle of the article it says that they are doing a staged reading of a “hot new play” by Mitchell Brin.

“Wow,” I say. “I’m so proud of you, Dad.”

“I feel good,” Dad says, smiling. He puts his arm around Mom. “It was good to have the support of you girls while I did this.”

“Yes,” Mom says. “And I’m glad you’re taking on some freelance work. That makes me feel less crazy.”

My eyes linger on the newspaper. I flip the pages till I reach my horoscope. I want to know how my day is going to be.

But I don’t read it, because the column next to it, “This Week in Science,” catches my eye instead.

That’s what gives me the idea for tonight’s fun.

It’s eight-thirty p.m., and for the first time I’ve done all my homework. I didn’t know that I could feel so good about something so simple. But there it is, all easily done without that much more effort than usual, and I feel settled inside. Accomplished.

I pick up the phone and call Sheldon.

“Hey, Sheldon. Did you read about Gruener-Wild in the newspaper today?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s going to be visible at ten p.m. I thought maybe we could gather the troops and go over to the observatory and set up your telescope.”

“I thought you were grounded,” Sheldon says.

“Not really,” I say. “Some things never change.”

“I’ll get Tina and meet you there. Wear a sweater.”

I go to my closet and I get a ski cap and a sweater. Then I go back and I get an extra one. When in the field, scientists must dress appropriately.

On my way to the observatory, I make a stop. I park the car in front of a modest house. I count three windows over and then pick up a pebble from the ground.

I throw the pebble at the window. It taps against the glass.

I’m afraid, but I get up and go over to the window and stand under it. Finally, Sid appears.

“Hey,” I say. “Come down.”

“What do you want?” he whispers.

I wave for him to come down. He throws his hands up in the air, frustrated. I wave again.

He disappears from the window, and after a few minutes, the door opens and he emerges.

“What?” he says. “It’s a school night.”

“I want to show you something.”

“Okay, show me.”

“Not here. At the park.”

“You want me to come with you?”

“Yeah. There’s a star party at the observatory.”

The night chill gets to Sid. He rubs warmth into his arms.

“I should go get dressed,” he says.

“No, I brought you a sweater, and I have a blanket.”

“What is it? Like a moon picnic?”

I smile.

He so gets it.

When we get to the observatory, there are crowds already gathering around telescopes set up on the lawn. Sid and I weave in and out of the throngs until we find Sheldon and Tina.

Sheldon has already set up his telescope. He and Tina are lying together on the blanket they have spread out on the lawn.

“Hi, Sid,” Tina says. “This is my boyfriend, Sheldon.”

“Hi, Sheldon, nice to meet you,” Sid says.

Sid looks around at the crowds.

“Wow. Some party,” he says.

Sheldon looks at his watch.

“Should be a couple of minutes,” he says.

I dig into my bag and pull out a bottle of sparkling apple cider and pass out cups.

“So I spoke to the Drama Club advisor, and she’s going to let me share the part of Puck with the other girl,” Tina says.

“That’s great,” I say. “Let me know if you need to run lines or anything.”

“That’s really thoughtful,” Tina says.

“That’s what friends are for,” I say.

The crowd starts oohing and aahing. Strangers point into the sky.

“Showtime,” Sheldon says.

My eyes follow the pointing fingers.

“I don’t see anything,” Sid says, looking at the sky.

“Here, look through the telescope,” Sheldon says.

“What is it?” Sid asks. “A smudge?”

“It’s a comet,” I say.

“I thought comets had tails, like a big streak in the sky,” Sid says.

“A comet has a nucleus of rock and ice, and as it nears the sun on its orbit, the ice begins to evaporate, making a tail,” Sheldon explains. “Its distance from the sun and to us affects the tail and how we see it.”

“Astronomers think that this comet was here before, like four hundred years ago,” I add.

“Back then, comets were feared,” Tina says. “When one appeared in the sky, people thought it meant that there’d be a famine, or a plague, or that it heralded the death of a king or a queen.”

Sid looks up from the telescope, right at me.

“Wow,” he says. “Amazing.”

“I think this comet is a
good
omen,” I say. “A sign of change.”

“Me too,” Tina says, putting her arm around me.

I can’t help smiling.

The Queen of Cool is dead,
I think.

Long live the Queen.

When you wrote your first novel,
Boy Proof,
did you envision the successive novels,
The Queen of Cool
and
Beige
(May 2007), forming a related trilogy?

It was actually when I wrote
The Queen of Cool
that I had another idea for a novel that would take place in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles and would have to do with music. That’s when I started referring to all of the books as my Los Angeles Trilogy. I think of these books as loosely collected novels about girls in Los Angeles, with the city as the thread. They also highlight three areas of L.A.: the movie industry
(Boy Proof),
the sciences
(The Queen of Cool),
and the music scene
(Beige).