At Face Value (10 page)

“Exactly.” Eddie slings one of his killer smiles my way, his eyes crinkling on the sides. “Think you could talk to her for me? School’s kind of busy and there are so many people.” He rubs his hands together. “Maybe see if she wants to hang out or talk on the phone or something?”

I pull my arms around my over-exposed self and nod. “Sure,” I say and feel a chill wash over my skin. “No harm in asking.”

“I
’M ALL DONE, I
think,” Leyla yells from her bathroom. I’m sitting at her desk waiting for her to emerge from yet another round of the nervous heaves.

She appears in front of me in boy-cut bottoms and a flannel pajama top, every inch the sweet and pretty girl Eddie described. “I just can’t believe he—Rox—likes me! Oh God, I might do it again.” She holds her stomach. Then she shakes it off. “No. I’m good.” She grins and flips her hair out of her face, securing it in a loose knot. “I can’t believe this! Tell me again.”

I’ve already told her, what feels like a dozen times, about my conversation with Eddie—about how much he likes her, about all the words he used to describe her. I did not include my miserable feelings—my letdown that caused me to stay up until the sun rose, wondering why I can’t get the damn nose job sooner than my birthday and wishing I’d never liked Eddie in the first place. “I’ve told you enough now,” I say and use one of her multi-colored flower pens as a drum stick on her desk. I tap some tune that only makes sense to me and then ask, “So, what should I tell him?”

“Tell him yes. Absolutely.” Leyla goes to her closet and starts flinging through potential Monday morning outfits. “How do I look in green? No. Blue.”

“Leyla?” I watch her hold up a sundress, a skirt, a faded top. “How exactly are you planning on being near him without … you know … losing it?”

Leyla’s face is crestfallen. She stops touching clothing and sits in a heap on the floor. “I know. I know! That’s the thing. It’ll never happen. He wants to get to know the ‘inside of me’ as you said, but I seriously doubt that means getting to know
the inside of me
.” She points to her stomach.

“You’ll be fine. Just take Dramamine or something.”

“Drama class isn’t going to help me,” Leyla says.

“Drama-mine,” I say slowly. “It’s an anti-emetic.” Cue the blank look from Leyla. “Hyperemesis is when you throw up too much. That’s kind of what you have. Dramamine is a medicine that—”

Leyla lies flat on the rug, flailing her arms. “Nope. Not that. It’s so not even an issue about the puking, even though of course that’s not a plus. It’s like …”

I can’t believe I’m here listening to my friend blather on about the guy she likes, who is really the guy I like—but here I am. So I do what any good friend would do. I listen and try to act the way I would if this didn’t involve Eddie. “So what’s the main problem?”

“He likes this …” She waves her hand over her face and body like someone displaying a new car. “But what about this?” She points to her head.

“Your hair?” I touch her thick locks.

“No.” She sits up and frowns. “I mean the brain thing on the inside.”

“The ‘brain thing’?” I can’t help but laugh.

“God, why are you such a nitpicker? Fine. My brain. It’s just, like, Rox is so …”

“Intellectual?” I offer and wish I hadn’t said the “brain thing” comment. It’s just I can’t help it. Sometimes the words just rush out, like water breaking free of a dam.

“Smart, yeah. And he knows so much and here I am not even knowing that dramadedine is for throwing up.”

“Dramamine.” Automatically, I correct her.

“Cyrie, come on!”

“Sorry—we used to go sailing a lot and I was the queen of nausea …” I stop short, remembering feeling decidedly unqueenlike at Night of Knights with Eddie.

Leyla undoes the knot of her hair and looks unkempt and gorgeous as she rolls onto her stomach. She reaches under her bed and pulls out a dusty yearbook and flips to the candids section. The same section I’ve stared at for far too long. And for what? So I can facilitate someone else’s coupledom.

She points to Eddie. “He’s got everything. The outside and the inside.”

“You do, too,” I insist. “I mean it.” She looks doubtful. “Even if I correct you.”

She pauses, thinking of something. “That’s right. You do correct me.”

I nod, feeling bad. “I’m working on it, what can I say? It’s a fault.”

“No, it’s not a bad thing. Not always …” Leyla’s voice holds excitement now. She sits up, her eyes flashing. “In fact, it’s a great thing!”

“What do you mean?” I watch her flit around her room. She goes to her closet and then sits down, then she paces and then, finally, she gets her laptop and slides it between us on the rug. “What?”

Leyla claps her hands, still a cheerleader. “You edit me, right? I mean, you do it all the time at the
Word.
Like that story on lunches and the removal of the soda machines? You were great!”

“Well, thanks, I guess, even if it’s a little bit irrelevant.” I shrug. She can be so random.

Leyla continues, her words Fast. “You always know what to say. And I want to sound great with Rox, you know, get him to like me more, but …” She searches for the best words. “But, like, the best version of me.”

“Leyla, what’re you saying?” I sit cross-legged, wondering where this is leading. She opens her laptop and I hear the familiar start-up music.

“What I’m saying is that he wants to get to know me, but how am I supposed to believe he really just wants to talk, instead of ‘talk’?” She does air quotes, then explains. “Ogling my boobs or something?”

“Leyla … believe it or not, I do know what ‘talking’ is.” I give her a wry smile. “I mean, I do watch movies.” Fine, so I haven’t been to a party where a guy asks me to take a “walk” so we can “talk.” But still.

“No, it’s true, Cyr. Guys in the past—Josh, for one—only wanted to be with me for my looks.” She pushes her hair away from her face, her cheeks rosy with whatever idea she’s hatching. “So fine, Rox seems like he’s different, and I want him to prove it. So, we don’t meet in person, and I don’t puke.”

For once, I’m the slow one. “I’m not following you.” Leyla types into the computer and grins.

“Wait … okay, let me explain.” She turns the screen to face me. On the screen she’s started an email to Eddie but left a few words blank, like a Mad Lib. I suddenly click in to what she’s getting at.

“Whoa … no, wait a second, Leyla.” I hold my hands out like a stop sign.

“It’s perfect, don’t you see? I email him—real emails, not IMs, and you …”

“I proofread them for clarity?” My nerves are starting to prickle, doubt creeping in. It’s one thing to talk to Leyla for Eddie, and another to support her—but something else entirely to be privy to their courtship.

Leyla tilts her head back and forth. “Not exactly. You know how sometimes I use the wrong word? Or, maybe if I say something dumb…” She looks at me with her eyebrows raised as question marks.

“No way.”

“Okay, okay, okay. You won’t pick the words.” She looks at me and I sigh with relief. Then she starts up again. “Then just edit me—not for content, just for spelling and stuff.”

“You have spellcheck.”

“But that doesn’t always work—you know, ‘theirs’ versus ‘there’s,’ and ‘your’ and ‘you’re’…” She waits, tapping her long fingers on her knee.

“Just Dramamine, not dramadenine? Stuff like that?” I ask. She nods at me. I stand up, circling the room and wondering what I’m getting myself into. “So it’s not anything dishonest, right? I just clean up your prose.”

Leyla stands and hugs me. “Exactly. A comma here …”

“A semicolon there.” My stomach does its own twists and turns. I’m up for editor of the year—it’s a big contest all across New England; just to be nominated means you’ve got the right to think of yourself as great in that arena. I am a good editor. And wouldn’t this be the ultimate test of that? If I can edit impartially? “But we don’t tell Eddie?”

Leyla’s smile freezes. “Never. He’ll get to know me through emails, and then when we’re really, you know, close, he won’t care that I don’t know the difference between geography and geology.”

I make a face. “You do, too.”

Leyla grins. “Only kinda. But the point is, you swear you won’t ever tell him about this, right?”

I nod. My brain then goes into editorial mode: logistics and time management. “If I have to come over here or be with you every time you email, this will take forever. Ideally, you should be able to blip things off to him multiple times a day. So …”

“So, I could give you my password?” Leyla offers, going back to her computer.

I stop her. There’s close friends and then there’s too close. “I’m not sure I should have that—you know, with test scores and other emails …” She looks dejected. She’s so willing and open, like an animated fawn or something you want to take care of. Maybe that’s part of her appeal, and what I’m lacking. “But I have a solution.”

“Phew. I got worried there.” She breathes a sigh of relief and waits for me to solve the problem.

I bite a cuticle as I explain. “We create a new account. An email that’s only for this. No e-tail shopping, no chitchat, no other conversations. Only between you and Eddie.” Her and Eddie. My fist clenches automatically but I force it open.

“Rox.”

“Eddie.”

Leyla gives me a pointed look. “I call him Rox and you can’t edit that.”

“No,” I say, the gravity of this arrangement settling in, I can’t.”

Leyla types and clicks and types and clicks and then, “Viola!”

“I think you mean,
voilà
!”

“It’s not viola?” She looks confused and mouths the word to herself a few times.

“Viola is the instrument, like a violin. And
voilà
is the French expression, ‘here it is.’” I stare at the screen in front of us. “Now we just need a screen name.”

“What do you think about ‘Got Me on My Knees’? You know, like that Eric Clapton song, ‘Layla’? Like me, get it?”

“Too sexual.” Editor Cyrie jumps in. “You want something fun but romantic. A name that gets at why you’re doing this.” I think about how Leyla has, in the past, forgotten codes and files. Last year we couldn’t locate the layout document until she remembered she’d filed it under “out.” I think back to sitting on the stage with Eddie, how wrong I was about him liking me.

Then I think about that song I quoted to him by Depeche Mode. It wouldn’t make my top ten from the ’80s, but it’s all about looking for—wanting—that perfect fit with someone.
Innermost thoughts and intimate details
is too long for a screen name, but what about, “
[email protected]
?”

“Taken.” Leyla shakes her head as she types. “Next?”

“Sum-bo-dee,” I suggest, spelling it out.

“Clever,” she says, testing the address. “Yup, it works. Password should be … ?” She looks up at me through the curtain of her hair. “Rox?”

“Eddie?” I counter, smirking. I check my watch. Essays are calling me, as is my article about the school budget, and, yes, prep for my auction-brainstorming session with Eddie tomorrow. Plus, I have to factor in time to mope. All my dreams of crushes working out, of being asked to dance, of going for a “walk” to “talk” with Eddie have been dashed, and it’ll take a while to recover. I stand up, feeling my legs ache. My heart thuds. Are we really doing this? Am I?

“How about just Cyrie?” Leyla suggests.

“But it’s
your
account.” I walk to her bedroom door and wait for her answer.

“But using my name’s too obvious. Besides, the longer it takes for me to think of this and set it up, the more I feel like chickening out.” She crosses her arms. “Please?”

“Fine. Use Cyrie. But I have to go.” I bite my lip, wishing she were the one helping
me
land the guy. That misogynistic fairy tales and pointless myths really added up to the right girl getting what she wants. Then I realize maybe Leyla is the right girl, even if she doesn’t know what misogynistic means.

She enters my name. “Okay. But tell me again how this is gonna work. I don’t want to get my wires crossed.”

I put my hands on my hips. Life would be easier if I could just organize everything and have it turn out the way I want it to. The sunlight streams through Leyla’s window and, across the rug, shadows form—including a long, awkward one. My profile. No matter where I go, I wind up back here.

“I seriously have to go, but here’s the deal: you write an email and save it in your Sumbodee account as a draft. I log on, sign in and check it, make any changes like messed-up words or commas, and then I send it to Rox.”

Leyla snaps her fingers. “Simple as that!”

The room seems like it’s a snow globe, nice and neat and settled and pristine—with a pretty girl on the floor with her laptop that will lead to love. I nod, through tears that spring up unexpectedly in my eyes. “Yeah, simple,” I say blurring the image and feeling the longing spread inside me. I push it back down, pack it away like old clothing I need to give away. “Easy.”

I
N A MILLION YEARS,
I never would have pictured Eddie in a bonnet and Bo Peep-style skirt. But the sad truth of the matter is that even in weird drag, he still looks hot. “Am I a catch or what?” he asks me as he tries to maneuver the hoop skirt and sip his beverage at the same time.

Any Time Now is in full swing, tables filled with Weston’s lesser-knowns, the fringe crowd and the drama-mamas who are busy belting out High School Musical tunes and then switching to Sondheim. Eddie and I have my favorite table, and I try my very hardest not to feel a thing as he offers to share a heart-shaped scone. My appetite isn’t hearty, since I’ve got a nervous stomach from explaining the email scheme to him: Leyla’s account, the no-pressure way of “talking.” I just left out the part about my role in the whole thing.

“Seriously, I’m hot in this, right?” Eddie tilts his bonnet toward me.

“Sure, you’re a catch,” I say in my best sarcastic voice. “Real appealing in frills.” I flick his bonnet. “But back to work.” I point to our list of auction items. We’ve separated them into categories. “We’ve got possible, potential, and probable. Too many in the potentials—we need more sure things.”