Making Out (3 page)

But what was the point in looking fabulous when not one single guy at St. Claire's Academy had ever asked her out? Not unless you counted Bennie Berger, who had begged her for three solid weeks to go to Homecoming their freshmen year.

Heather and Lisa Marie claimed that guys were afraid to ask her out because she was so gorgeous. They were sure she'd turn them down.

Yeah, right. Bennie Berger was living proof of that.

She jogged back onto the field and flopped down on the damp grass to stretch her hamstrings. The ground was cold. She was going to have a big wet spot on her butt when she stood up.

“Bend it, Kazanjian,” Brad Morganthal teased, jogging past her and purposely kicking her shoe.

“Just try to keep up with me,” Marianna teased back. Morganthal had been running in last place on the team for several weeks.

“What do I get if I do?” Morganthal called over his shoulder, but he didn't wait for an answer.

Is he flirting with me?
Marianna wondered. She glanced over at Jennifer Giles, the only other girl with any talent on the cross-country team.

“Go for it,” Jennifer said. “I don't care. Brad and I broke up months ago.”

Marianna blinked, surprised. “I didn't even know you were going out,” she said truthfully.

Jennifer shrugged and started to say something, but Coach Robinson called her away.

“So what was your time on Friday?” a voice right behind Marianna asked.

Still leaning forward, reaching for her toes, Marianna twisted her head around to see who was asking.

Luke's soft blondish-brown hair flopped over his sky blue sweatband. He grinned at her as he bent and twisted, loosening up.

Was he actually talking to her? She couldn't quite believe it.

Too quickly, she sat up and stammered, “My time? I ran 29:14, but I didn't do tempo training last week, so I think I can improve.”

“I doubt it,” Luke said.

“Why?” Marianna's heart folded in half. Luke Perchik, the love of her life, was finally talking to her . . . just to dis her?

“Because you're already running about ten times better than anyone else on the team,” he said.

He bent at the waist, hands on his hips, and swiveled back and forth, shooting her a grin each time he turned in her direction.

“Thanks.” Marianna pretended to stretch again, although she was more interested in making sure her hair didn't fall the wrong way and her tank top didn't bunch up, making her look fat. Her pulse started racing. There had to be some way to keep this conversation going . . .

Say something, Marianna,
she told herself.
Anything.
Her brain went blank.

“So, uh, what time did Coach say to meet at Warburton on Saturday?” she asked.

So lame.

“Ten, I think.” Luke answered like he wasn't sure himself. Then he squatted beside her. “Listen . . .” His tone sounded half worried, half nervous. “I was thinking . . .”

Just then, Coach blew his whistle. “Move it, Perchik!” Robinson called. “I want to see your stride before you hit the road.”

“You were thinking?” Marianna prompted him, wishing he'd finish his sentence. She had the vague feeling that he was trying to ask her out. Wishful thinking, no doubt.

“You, too, Kazanjian!” Coach shouted.

Luke ran off without answering. In the distance, she could see him taking a lap around the track before he hit the trail that led into the woods. She thought about following him, trying to catch up, but she didn't want to be too obvious.

She took a lap to warm up, then Coach Robinson called her over to give her a few pointers about her stride. Finally he let her go, and she pounded toward the trail, entering the woods right behind Jennifer Giles.

The trees were bare except for the evergreens. A few young buds poked out of some maple tree branches. Still, the woods were darker than the field, and quiet. Marianna loved the feeling she had when she was running in there: free and alone.

“Hey—hold up!”

Her head jerked around, but her training was deeply ingrained: never stop running. Luke was behind her, trying to catch up. Apparently he'd been waiting in a clump of pine trees just off the trail. With his powerful, long stride, he was even with her a few moments later. They jogged along side by side for a minute, and she sneaked a look at his sweaty chest.

Luke was the definition of
hot.
He was the right height, too. At five foot ten, Marianna was taller than a lot of senior guys, but Luke towered over her.

“Hi,” she panted, her voice jerky as her feet hit the earth.

“Hi. You're hard to catch, you know that?”

“I've never seen you trying,” she said cautiously, in an effort to sound just a little bit flirty, but not too much, in case she'd misunderstood.

“Listen,” he said, his voice pounding, too. “I've been wanting to ask you. Do you, uh . . . maybe . . . want to go out sometime?”

“Sure!” She blurted out her answer without thinking, her face bright from both pleasure and the heat of the run.

“Great. How about a movie on Friday?” Luke asked. “They're showing the 1970s version of
King Kong
at the Retro Metro. I thought it would be a kick.”

“Definitely.” The minute she said yes, her stomach formed a knot. How was she going to get away with this? It was one thing to tell her dad she was studying with Heather on a Tuesday night, and then she and her friends would all sneak out to go shopping.

But a real date? Luke might expect to come over, meet her parents, pick her up. What were the chances that her dad would be okay with any of that?

“Excellent. Okay, I've gotta make time, or Robinson will axe me,” he said, powering forward. He sprinted ahead of her, waving over his shoulder. “I'll, um, talk to you.” Then he turned down a path that was a shortcut through the woods, and was gone.

Oh, man. Marianna was so pumped, she could barely keep herself from sprinting through the woods, leaping over fallen branches, darting past Jennifer Giles and two of the other fastest people on the team. So what if self-restraint was one of Coach Robinson's five favorite “Power Words for Winners”? She didn't want to restrain herself right now. She was going on a date!

Somehow.

“So what
exactly
did you do to get his attention?” Lisa Marie asked at lunch, when Marianna had told her friends what happened. “I need pointers here. I'm single again, remember?”

“Nothing. That's the problem. I have no idea what I did, so I'll never be able to tell you. But if this doesn't work out with Luke, I swear I'll be dateless for the next ten years.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Heather said. “Any guy would be crazy not to want to go out with you.”

“It's fabulous,” Lisa Marie said. “I
told
you you'd have a date for the prom!”

“Do you think?” Marianna didn't want to get ahead of herself, but that's what she'd been secretly fantasizing about all day.

What if Luke asked her to the prom? It would be amazing, perfect, wonderful.

But what if her dad wouldn't let her go?

“I'll bet he's going to ask you,” Lisa Marie predicted. “I mean, look at it this way. It's prom season. Guys start to get fidgety. A lot of them are lining up dates already.”

“Yeah, but Luke and I haven't even gone out
once
yet,” Marianna worried out loud. “He might not be into me after he gets to know me.”

“Not a possibility,” Heather said.

“Well, even if he asks me, you know my dad. I'm lucky if he lets me out of the house to take out the trash! How am I going to talk him into letting me go to the prom at all—let alone with a guy?”

“I know, I know,” Lisa Marie agreed. She chewed her finger. “You're right, we've got prom issues. Plus Heather and I have no prospects. I'm seriously freaked about being single right now.”

“We could say we're all going to the prom together,” Heather suggested tentatively. “The three of us. Your dad would be okay with that, wouldn't he? And if none of us gets dates, we can actually do it.”

Marianna wasn't sure her dad would buy it, but it sounded like the best shot she had.

“That's perfect,” Lisa Marie chimed in, clearly relieved she didn't have to stress quite as much over not having a date.

“Yeah,” Marianna agreed. “That might work. Maybe I can tell my dad that prom has changed, and now it's a girls-only event. Do you think he'd buy that?”

Lisa Marie laughed. “Tell him it's a community service event. Just say we're dressing up and going to a nursing home to read to the elderly and cheer them up.”

“Yeah, and you're getting a Girl Scout badge for it,” Heather added. “The prom badge.”

Marianna tried to laugh, but nothing about her dad was too funny.

Besides, Luke hadn't even asked her to the prom yet. And maybe he wouldn't.

Definitely he wouldn't—unless she could figure out a way to talk her Neanderthal dad into letting her go on one single date.

Just one.

By Friday.

 

 

 

 

My best friends are nothing like me,
Heather thought with a pang, getting up to clear her lunch tray a few minutes early. She'd been listening to Marianna and Lisa Marie ramble on about trying to snag dates for the prom for the last twenty-two minutes, and the strain was killing her.

How long could she go on pretending to be interested in dating guys when she was so not into them?

She scooped a pack of Saltine crackers into her lime green Marc Jacobs handbag, straightened her short little green and blue plaid pleated skirt (the best part of the St. Claire's uniform) and left the lunchroom. The route she had to take from lunch to her locker to chemistry was the longest one in the school, up two staircases, around a corner, down another hall . . . blah, blah, blah. She hated to rush, hated to be jabbed and elbowed by the crush of people who were racing to make it to class on time.

Better to leave early. That way she could take her time and engage in her latest favorite hobby as she strolled through the halls: staring at each and every girl at St. Claire's Academy and wondering,
Is she gay?

Am
I
gay?
Heather wondered for the hundredth time that day.

For the past year, she'd been seriously considering that she might be. For one thing, how else to explain the fact that she just didn't seem to be into guys at all? Some guys were okay—as friends—but she had no desire to get up close and personal with any of them. She had dated a few guys her sophomore year, and had made out with one of them. But it was like her battery was dead. She never felt that thing you're supposed to feel.

Girls, on the other hand . . . that was a different story. Lately, she'd been getting a definite buzz when she was around certain female people. Not Marianna or Lisa Marie, of course. That would be way too weird, practically incestuous. They'd been like sisters to her for as long as she'd known them.

But other people . . .

She caught Katie Morgan's eye across the crowded hallway. Was she gay? Heather wondered. Hoped. On days when she admitted the truth, Heather knew she was developing a crush on Katie Morgan, but she had no idea whether it was pointless or not. How was she supposed to find out?

It all started when what she called The Moment happened during a school trip last spring. The St. Claire's Academy Chorale took a trip to New York City to sing with other elite high school choral groups at Lincoln Center. Marianna's father wouldn't let her go—big surprise—and Lisa Marie didn't sing. So Heather wound up rooming with two girls she barely knew.

One of her roommates was Serena Moss, a senior who was openly gay. Serena wasn't exactly beautiful, but she carried herself with such utter assurance that everyone thought of her as gorgeous. Tall, with naturally copper red hair, she was surprisingly busty for a girl with slim bones. Heather, by comparison, was average height, a perfect size eight, with shoulder-length dirty blond hair and no reason to shop for a C cup.

Sharing a room for three days, it was hard not to think about Serena—and hard not to notice her parading around in her underwear. Too often, Heather found herself watching and then wondering: Was it normal to stare? Was Mandy Hartsfield, their other roommate, staring, too? Was it just some sort of hormonal imbalance?

Or did it actually mean something? Was it a memo to Heather, saying:
Wake up. You're gay, too?

On the second night of the trip, a bunch of girls had gathered in someone's room to drink beers out of the minibar and talk about their plans for the summer. All the seniors were bragging about letting loose, and Serena said, “I'm going to spend a month sunbathing topless on the deck in a tiny villa off the coast of Greece.”