Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (13 page)

“Lisa needs my lips,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”

He walks away backwards, making the magician motions with his hands again.

I stand there for a second, not knowing what to do. I look towards the kitchen. I try to think of another girl. “Bring the hotness,” as Eytan used to say. But instead of the hotness, an image of my mother pops into my head. Probably not what O. had in mind.

“Andy,” April says from behind me.

O. was right. She came to me. I turn around slowly, trying not to smile.

“How’s it going?” I say.

“We’re friends, right?” April says.

“Friends? Um, yeah,” I say. I drink the beer and try to channel O. “We are good, good friends. Or we could be. If you play your cards right.”

“Why are you acting funny?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m happy.”

“Okay, listen,” April says. “I want to tell you something. But you have to promise you won’t say anything.”

“Don’t have a hemorrhage,” I say. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

She grabs my arms and pulls me towards her, all the way in so our faces are practically touching.

“I mean it. You can’t say a word to anyone.”

“Okay,” I say. I’m smiling now, wondering what’s about to happen.

April stares at me intensely. Her eyes are huge, her cheeks flushed with excitement.

“What’s the big secret?” I say.

“Oh my God,” she says. “I have such a crush on O.”

the nice/mean/nice theory.

I’m lying in bed looking up at the stars swirling around my ceiling. Dad and I put glow-in-the-dark cutouts up when I was Jessica’s age. For some reason I never took them down. Maybe I’m still a little drunk, because when I look up, it feels like I’m flying.

There’s a tap at my door and Jessica cracks it open.

“How did it go?” she says.

“You should be asleep.”

“How can I sleep when you’re at a football party?”

It sounds like something Mom would say.

“How did the clothes work?” Jessica says.

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“I looked good. You did a good job.”

Jessica beams. She comes into the room uninvited and sits on the edge of my bed.

“Did you meet anyone famous?” she says.

“There’s no one famous at Newton.”

“O. Douglas,” Jessica says.

“How do you know about O. Douglas?”

“What do you mean? Everyone knows.”

I lie back and groan. I wish my ceiling was really the sky, and I could take off and never come back.

Jessica says, “You smell like beer and Listerine.”

“How do you know what beer smells like?”

“From the weddings, stupid.”

Jessica lies down next to me. I don’t think she’s been in my bed since she was five. She used to try and get me to play dolls with her. Sometimes she’d want to sleep with me when she had a bad dream.

“What am I going to do?” I say.

“About what?”

“I have problems,” I say. “You wouldn’t understand.” But as the words leave my mouth, I realize she might actually understand. She’s popular. She’s got boys chasing her. Even if she’s only twelve, she probably knows more about this than I do.

“Jessica, what would you do if you liked a boy, but he didn’t like you back?”

“That would never happen,” she says.

“Hypothetically.”

“What does that mean?”

“Okay, pretend
your friend
likes a guy, but he likes another girl instead. What advice would you give her?”

“I’d tell her to be mean to him.”

“Be mean?”

“Sometimes when you’re a jerk, guys notice you more. Or wait, it’s even better if you’re nice, then mean, then nice again. That confuses them.”

I can’t believe I’m taking advice from a twelve-year-old. But I think about O. telling me to walk away from April. It was kind of the same advice. Maybe Jessica is on to something.

“So what’s O. Douglas like?” Jessica says.

“I’ll introduce you some time.”

“No way!” Jessica says. She gets so excited, she kicks her feet and makes the bed shake.

O. seems to have that effect on people.

Especially girls.

thighs dancing in fluorescent light.

I get to AP History before everyone else. I look around the class. It’s hard to know where to sit these days. My old desk next to Eytan is out of the question. The left side in the back is the April zone. The front is Nancy Yee brainiac territory.

I decide to pick the most neutral area. Center of the class, one-third of the way back. Switzerland.

When April comes in, I hold my breath and put a nasty look on my face. I figure I did nice the other night, so it’s time for mean. Just like Jessica suggested.

April glances at her regular desk in the back left, but she doesn’t sit there. She walks up to me instead.

“Hi, Andy.”

“What do you want?” I say. I try to say it like Jessica would, like I’m annoyed by everything in the world, especially if it has a pulse.

April totally misses the point. She touches the chair next to me. “Anyone here?” she says.

“It’s free,” I say, like I could care less.

I’m thinking she’s going to sit down quickly and ask me a question, but she sits and settles, putting her books underneath, wiping off the desk, arranging various thinks like she’s decorating a house. For a second I imagine we’re married, and she’s puttering around our living room moving furniture and watering plants.

Eytan walks in and heads straight for his old desk. He doesn’t even look at me or April.

“You and O. seem like friends,” April says.

My breakfast does a backflip in my stomach.

“Friends?”

“You’re always hanging out together and talking, laughing about things.”

“We’re helping each other out,” I say.

“I don’t think he likes me,” April says.

“Why do you say that?”

“The party was the first time he’s ever talked to me. He usually ignores me. It’s like he’s got a problem with me, but he won’t say it. Or maybe someone else has a problem with me.”

She waits for me to say something. I think she’s talking about Lisa Jacobs, but I can’t be sure.

“Does O. hate me?”

“I don’t think so.” I try to swallow, but my mouth is completely dry. “Why do you care?” I say.

“He’s the captain,” she says.

“So?”

“It’s important.”

“What’s important?”

“It’s a reputation thing,” she says. “If he likes you, your stock goes up.”

The door opens and Nancy Yee walks into class. She’s wearing a short dress over jeans, and she’s got a jacket over the dress, and something like a sweater over the jacket. It looks like she’s wearing three different people’s clothes at the same time. Jessica would have a coronary.

Nancy doesn’t sit at her usual desk. She crosses past April and me and walks to the back of the room. To Eytan.

“What’s up, little lady?” I hear him say.

Nancy smiles wide and flips her bangs. Is it my imagination, or has her acne cleared up a little?

“Anyone here?” she says.

“There happens to be an opening,” Eytan says, and he brushes off the chair like a maître d’.

Nancy giggles and sits in my old chair.

“Andy!” April sighs, frustrated because I’m not paying attention.

“You said you didn’t care about stuff like that,” I say.

“Like what?”

“Reputation. Remember that day in the hall? You said you didn’t care whether I was a jock or not. That isn’t what you’re about. That’s what you told me.”

“I don’t care, but it’s still important. Not to me, but to the
other girls.” She looks at me for a long second. “Don’t play dumb,” she says. “You know your stock has gone way up.”

“Has it?”

“Sure. People talk about you now. People who didn’t know you existed before.”

“You mean because I’m on the team.”

“Um … yeah,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

I’m not really playing dumb. I am dumb. What do I know about all this? There are popular kids and unpopular kids, losers and winners, geeks and players. That much I know. But the variations on the theme, whose stock is up and whose is down, the nuances of it all—I’ve got no idea.

People are coming into the room now, and April is leaning all the way over with her forearm crossed over mine. I can feel our thighs touching under the desk like they’re dancing.

April presses the top of my arm. She leans over until her lips are an inch from my ear.

“Will you talk to him for me?” she says.

Be mean. That’s what I keep reminding myself.

“Talk to him yourself,” I say.

“How can I do that?”

“I’m tutoring him after school. We’re meeting at Papa Gino’s.”

Oops. I was trying to be mean, and I think I just invited April for pizza.

“Oh, I could kiss you!” she says.

I hold my breath, waiting to feel April’s lips against my skin—

But it doesn’t happen.

Instead she sits back in her chair, opens a notebook, and pops the cap off a Hello Kitty pen.

I hear Eytan laughing behind me. I turn quickly, but he’s not laughing at me. He’s looking at something Nancy Yee drew in her sketchbook.

I turn back to April. Her smell is all around me, the fruity April scent that I remember from the first time I met her back at the wedding. It’s delicious and painful at the same time, like the smell of a fresh-baked pie you know you can’t have.

april sucks my straw.

“Dude, you’re going through that pizza like a buzz saw,” O. says.

I’m halfway through a large extra cheese with hamburger, and O. hasn’t even started on his second slice yet. I pick off a big chunk of burger and pop it in my mouth.

“I’m hungry,” I say.

“It’s cool with me. Keep your weight up. It’s a good thing.”

“What do you care if I have a heart attack, right? As long as I make the blocks for you.”

O. puts his slice down.

“What’s up with you today?” he says.

I close my copy of
Huckleberry Finn
and put my Diet Coke on it like it’s a coaster.

“You screwed up,” I say.

“What are you talking about?”

“At the party the other night. April doesn’t have a thing for me. You were wrong.”

“But she came right up to you. I saw her. She was all over you.”

“She was all over me because she’s interested in you,” I say.

O. looks at me, wide-eyed.

“But I have a girlfriend,” he says.

“Like that matters.”

O. is so dense sometimes. He doesn’t get that he’s a star. For all I know, that’s part of being a star. You can pretend you’re not one because everyone already knows.

Suddenly April walks by the front window.

“Crap. I messed up and told her we’d be here. I didn’t think she’d actually show up.”

“April’s here?” he says. “Okay, let’s nip this in the bud.”

April catches my eye. She waves in a goofy, fake-surprised way and comes towards us.

“Wow. What a coincidence,” she says. “What are you guys doing here?”

O. sits there silently with his arms crossed.

“Studying,” I say.

“That’s cool,” she says. She looks down at the table.
“Huckleberry Finn
. One of my faves.”

“Yeah, it’s a good one,” I say.

“It’s lovely to live on a raft,” April says.

A quote from the book. Pretty impressive.

O. motions towards me. “My boy is taking me through it,” he says. “He’s a genius, this guy.”

“I know it,” April says.

Silence.

“Well, I don’t want to interrupt you guys,” April says.

“You want to join us?” I say.

O. shakes his head like I’m nuts.

“Sure!” April says. “But just for a second. I mean, I’m picking up something to go.”

I have to give April props. She’s an amazing liar.

She sits down between O. and me and adjusts her genius glasses. She’s wearing a tight blouse that shows off her cleavage. I’ve never seen her wear anything like that before. I notice O. glances down.

“Lisa tells me you’ve been helping her out,” O. says.

April says, “Yeah. We’re doing Chem together. A lot of people have trouble with it, but it’s a cinch for me. I have a science background because of my dad.”

“Lisa’s not really a science-and-math type,” O. says. “But she’s good at other things.”

He grins like he might have just said something crude.

“Everyone’s good at different things,” April says. “And if you’re not good, you can always learn.”

“You just need the right teacher,” O. says.

He reaches up and arranges his hair. Which means
he’s nervous. Which means I’m in deep shit unless I do something.

Now.

I start talking really fast. “That’s what it’s like for me on varsity,” I say. “At first I didn’t think I could do it because of—you know—the immense physical challenges. But the guys rallied around me, and when people believe in you, well, anything is possible. It’s like you suspend disbelief and there’s a shift in the universe. Something like that.”

April and O. stare at me.

“What the hell are you talking about?” O. says.

There’s a long, uncomfortable pause at the table. It reminds me of sitting with Dad.

April finally breaks the tension. She says, “Can I have a sip of your DC, Andy?”

She doesn’t even wait for an answer, just takes my Diet Coke and drinks from my straw. She looks at O. the whole time.

“Lisa said you guys were having some trouble with Calc.”

O. grabs his stomach. “Don’t mention Calc. I’ll heave up a loaf of French bread.” He makes a face like a little kid. “The pain … dear God, the pain …”

April laughs, and as hard as I try to keep a straight face, I end up laughing, too.

Damn it. I don’t want to like O. right now. But when he turns on the charm, it’s hard not to.

April says, “Seriously, though. If you have any math questions, I’m happy to help.”

O. looks at me. “How are
you
with Calc?”

“I haven’t done it yet,” I say.

I didn’t know April was two years ahead in math. Great.

“I’ll give you my number. Just in case,” April says.