Boy Proof (2 page)

I slam the fridge door shut. I have found a bag of baby carrots and some leftover mac and cheese.

“My meal will be fluorescent orange tonight,” I say. “Very futuristic.”

“It’s eleven-thirty.”

“Since when do I have a curfew?” I say.

“I hate you walking around the neighborhood at night.”

“There are people around,” I say. “And I’m not a baby.”

“If you don’t want to be treated like a baby, don’t act like one.”

The mask, now completely dry, is flaking off onto her pink silk bathrobe.

“Mom, you look like a lizard,” I say.

She throws her hands up in the air and goes to the bathroom to wash the mask off.

I go to my room.

Mom always starts acting more motherly toward me when she hasn’t had an acting job in a while. It’s like all of a sudden she has too much time on her hands and nothing to do except get in my face about everything.

I wish she would just let me live with Dad. Dad is perfect, even if he is so focused on his work that you can’t even say anything sometimes or he’ll blow up at you.

Mom has to ruin that as well.

“He’s just perfect because you only see him once a week,” she says.

“You are just jealous because of how well Dad and I get along,” I always say.

“You think I make your life hell? Living with your dad would make me seem like a kitten.”

“Meow, meow,” I hiss at her, clawing the air with my hands.

I can’t wait to go to college and be on my own.

I’m dreaming about Zach Cross. He takes me to an L.A. Kings hockey game. They’re playing the Toronto Maple Leafs. He’s from Toronto. He rolls up his program and whispers into my ear that he would like to make out with me but the paparazzi are watching. I think it is so great that he notices things like that. Later in the dream we find a utility closet at the Staples Center and make out. I am making out with Zach Cross. It is out of this world.

That stinky new guy arrives late to AP Global History, my favorite class. He sits in the front row right next to Mr. Gerber’s desk. Right in front of me.

“Nice of you to join us,” Mr. Gerber says. “I expected you in this class yesterday.”

“Hey, no problem, man,” the new kid says, and I notice he takes out a little sketchbook and places it on the corner of his desk.

Mr. Gerber turns back to the board and writes
The French Revolution
in his obnoxiously perfect cursive. Mr. Gerber is wasting no time getting right back into the semester. I like that. Then he turns back to us, his mostly sleepy students, and he leans his hands on the back of his chair and asks us, defeated, “Who can tell me what they learned about the French Revolution in their required winter-break reading?”

My hand shoots up in the air.

“Is there anyone else who’s done the reading who wants to try before Miss Jurgen enlightens us once again?”

The class just shifts in their seats.

“It’s called required reading, folks, because I
require
you to read it,” Mr. Gerber says, exasperated. “This is an AP class. You actually have to do the work.”

And then that new guy raises his hand.

“Mr. Max Carter, I’m pleased you’ve decided to jump right in. Do tell us all you know about the French Revolution.”

I leave my hand in the air.

“Mr. Gerber, I always answer the question first,” I say. “I always enlighten the class.”

“Miss Jurgen, please,” Mr. Gerber says.

This is my special class. This new guy doesn’t know the protocol. So I lean forward and enlighten him.

“I always say my piece and then Mr. Gerber adds on to it,” I say.

“Interesting,” Max says. Then he flips open his little black sketchbook and jots something in it.

I hear everyone in the classroom start to snicker. I can imagine Rue behind me pressing her lips together and Nelly shaking her head down at her desk.

I don’t care what they think.

“Max, why don’t you share what you know about the French Revolution and use your free time later to sketch,” Mr. Gerber says.

“All right, Mr. Gerber. Basically when the monarch of an absolute monarchy is weak, it is easily brought down. The king, Louis the Sixteenth, was a very weak monarch. The nobles wanted power that had been taken away from them by the monarchy. The bourgeoisie resented the privileges of the nobles, and the bourgeoisie and the peasants criticized the tax system . . .”

Blah, blah, blah.

I stare at the back of Max Carter’s greasy head. I want to look right into his brain and erase all he is saying.

He’s showing off by adding little splashy details.

“Well, most of that isn’t from the required reading; it’s from the PBS documentary
The Revolution,
” I say.

Max turns around and stares me down. He knows nothing about boundaries or personal space. He is looking too intensely at me. He is looking right down deep inside of me. I don’t like it.

“I know,” he says. “My dad made that documentary.”

Oh, shit. Max
Carter.
His dad is Flint Carter, the documentary filmmaker.

I can hear the class breathing as one. They want to see what’s going to happen next. They’re dying to see the fireworks.

“Well, Miss Jurgen,” Mr. Gerber says, his mood brightening a little bit. “It looks like someone is finally going to give you a run for your money.”

Then Mr. Gerber turns back to the board and pulls down a map of France and begins his lecture on the origins of the French Revolution.

Max is still turned around in his seat looking at me.

“Turn around, face front,” I say to him.

“Yes, ma’am. Good to know who the autocrat is,” he says, chuckling, and turns his eyes back to the front of the room.

“Is that an insult?” I ask.

“Yeah, you could definitely take it that way.”

“And I’m a miss, not a ma’am,” I say.

“Actually, you’re neither. Those words apply to women of refinement,” he says. Then he opens his sketchbook again and jots something down.

I jostle my desk into the back of his seat.

“Hey!” Max says. “Relax.”

Rue, who is sitting behind me, reaches out and takes my arm.

“It’s okay,” she says to me. I shake her off.

“It is not okay,” I say.

Mr. Gerber turns around. Clearly, I have committed some kind of classroom crime by slightly shoving my desk. I’ve never seen Mr. Gerber look so disappointed in someone before. I have been his best student all year.

“Miss Jurgen, I don’t know what the problem is, but why don’t you leave the room until you can calm down,” Mr. Gerber says.

I shove my books into my army bag and walk out. Fuck that guy Max. He’s a jerk. I notice he’s the only one not freaked out by my behavior. He’s not scared. He’s actually chuckling as I leave the room. He’s like a hyena, always laughing.

I head straight for the library. Straight for the history section. Straight for the French Revolution. I will know more about it than Max Carter and his stupid genius father.

As a rule, I eat by myself, under a tree on the far side of the quad. But today I don’t make it past the corner table, where the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club sit every day, unseen.

“Egg! Egg!” Rue is shouting for my attention. She’s so loud, I can’t ignore her.

I’m caught.

Rue is patting the empty seat on the bench next to her with one hand and motioning for me to join them with the other.

Martin looks up at me with his moon-round face and smiles.

Martin is pear-shaped and doughy. His eyelashes are extremely long. He is sensitive and smart, but not as smart as I am. Rue is his girlfriend. She is thick-waisted but not really fat. She wears a scarf and a fedora hat all the time because she loves
Doctor Who,
but they don’t go with her glasses and my mom would say that the browns wash out her pale skin. I think she should at least get rid of that old fedora or get over
Doctor Who;
I don’t know which is more outdated.

Martin and Rue are so in love it makes me sick. They are in the kind of love you want to be in. They respect each other. They give each other space. They have individual personalities but they complement each other. I envy them.

I hate anybody in love.

I mean, how did two such geeks luck out so young? I think Rue is just as boy proof as me, and yet she has a boyfriend and I don’t. Not that I would want Martin. Not that I care about any of the boys around here. I’m the only other girl in the club, but I wouldn’t date any of these guys even if they were the last men on earth.

I want someone as cool as Uno.

“Question for you, Egg,” Martin says.

“Shoot.”

“We’re having a debate about the most influential classic sci-fi film. I say it’s
Star Wars.
Rue says it’s
2001: A Space Odyssey.
And Hasan says
Blade Runner.
I’m sure you have an opinion.”

Martin is so formal in his speech. He is a nerd and he has the unfortunate luck to sound all nasally like one, too. It makes me cringe.

“It’s
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
” I say.

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that one,” Martin says.

“That’s the one I meant. I change my answer to that one,” Hasan says.

“Classic,” I say. “Plenty of films borrow from it. Message of peace and all that.”

“Egg, why don’t you sit down and join us? Lunch is half over and you still haven’t eaten,” Rue says, patting the empty seat next to her again.

Mental note: Take different route over to tree at lunchtime.

“I gotta do homework,” I say, making a hasty retreat.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Max.

“I’m just sitting in my assigned seat,” he says.

He’s more interested in what
he’s
doing than in me. So I bang around my books and the chair and the desk to show him how pissed off I am that he’s sitting next to me again.

“Careful. You don’t want a repeat of this morning,” he says.

New tactic: Take matters into your own hands.

I push my way up to the front of the room and confront Mrs. Perez.

“I’d like for that new kid to be moved away from me,” I say.

Mrs. Perez has her arms crossed and she’s looking me over. She is sucking on a lozenge, which is making the hairy mole on her lip jump around. She always has a lozenge in her mouth, because she’s always screaming and her throat always hurts.