Raisin Rodriguez & the Big-Time Smooch (3 page)

I need to cover up that eyesore with a baseball hat, throw on a plain button-down shirt and a pair of jeans, and move on with life.

PS—Thank goodness I'm not dressing for the Fiona and Haileys anymore. If accidentally revealing their innermost secrets in my blog a couple of weeks ago while uncovering my desperation for their acceptance hadn't severed our relations, this outfit definitely would have.

PPS—Unfortunately, I am dressing for CJ, who may still go for the severed-relations option.

 
12:45 PM, EST

Help! I've created a Franken-Jeremy.

Remember when he was my sweet and loyal friend whose biggest problems were a couple of freckles and a simple case of loudyitis? Well, ever since I wrote that article about him for the school newspaper—about how strong and brave and good at prank calling he is—his head has swelled to a million pounds. And who could blame him, really? Everyone's treating him as if those things I said about him were true.

Including Lynn!

I had no idea how widespread it had become until today at lunch.

It started out as normal and innocent as any other lunch. With a Sparkles fashion-check stop.

It began with him waving his arm up and down the length of my outfit as if he were an inspector at the airport. “New Girl. A button-down shirt and jeans? With a baseball hat? Is everything okay?” he asked, his perfectly tweezed eyebrows crinkling in concern.

“I had a rough morning,” I told him, lifting my hat to show him what I had done.

He covered his mouth in shock.

“Don't tell me!” he said, jutting out his hand to give me the stop signal. “You were trying to look good for a certain someone whose initials are C and J and you burned your hair with a clothes iron.”

It's incredible. I don't know how he does it. When I nodded, he took me in his arms and hugged me. Then we swayed back and forth, locked in our heartfelt embrace.

Suddenly I heard a very loud voice from behind me.

“Rae. Did you hear the good news? Lynn appointed me guest editor at the zine.”

I knew I had to be hearing things—the stress from this morning and all.

“Did you hear what I said, Rae? I'm working on the 'zine.”

This time it sounded so real, I had to unlock from Sparkles to see if the voice had a body.

It did. A body with freckles all over it.

“Isn't that awesome, Rae?” the freckled body asked. “You and me working on the 'zine, collaborating together? You doing all that funny creative writing that you do, me coming up with assignments for you. . . .”

“That's great, Jer . . . really great.”

“You coming up with all those fantastic zingers, me helping you see what works and what doesn't. . . .”

“Really, Jer, I can't wait.”

“You pumping out the jokes, me deciding whether they're funny or not. . . .

“Oh, and don't worry. I won't boss you around too much,” he said, giving me a little wink as he reached for a plate of flounder.

“Okay, Jeremy, I get the picture.”

I just can't believe Lynn invited Jeremy to join CoolerThanYou. It was supposed to be my special thing. I mean, who's Lynn going to invite next? Galenka Popodakolis? Not that there's anything wrong with Galenka. It's just that if she writes anything like the way she talks, people might think her stuff's funnier than mine.

Well, I guess the good news is that with Jeremy as guest editor, I can make sure I get to keep working on the cartoon strip with CJ .

 
5:55 PM, EST

Unless of course Jeremy takes it upon himself to make sure that I don't.

After school, Jeremy met me at my locker and asked me if I'd show him how to get to Lynn's house. I was anxious to get there early so I could have a few minutes alone with CJ before the meeting started. The last thing I wanted to do was be slowed down by Jeremy and his Great Pumpkin head. On the other hand, it was as good a time as any to mention that I wanted to stay on the strip.

Before we even stepped foot out the door, Jeremy had already come down with a horrible case of lecturosis, which is in the same family as talktoomuchitis but much harder to shake. Ideally, the patient should be quarantined.

He kept using the word vision and saying things like “I want to get people re-excited about reading CoolerThanYou,” and “I'm exploring the possibility of turning this issue into a video game.” I was dying to tell him that he had way too many freckles to be using the word vision and that if he wanted to be taken seriously in the e-zine industry he should probably rethink using made-up words like re-excited. But he wasn't even taking pauses. Then came this zinger:

“Hey, would you mind showing me what you did for the last issue?”

I reached into my bag to find the cartoon strip, but it wasn't there. Amid all the hair drama of this morning, I'd left it at home. Could bringing an iron too close to your brain be bad for your memory?

“That's okay; you can go home and get it. I won't count it as a lateness. This time,” he said, winking at me. For the second time today.

“Jeremy, I don't need to get it. The new issue doesn't go live until the end of the week. Roman can scan it in for us tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I'd like to have a look at it today. Just to give me a sense of where we're at.”

He was one freckle away from sending me into a conniption. But I chose to look at Jeremy's request as an opportunity. An opportunity to change out of my ridiculous boy suit and throw together something dazzling enough to call attention away from my fright wig before CJ got to the meeting and had a chance to get a good look at me.

So I ran home, put on my chocolate brown velour sweatpants—the ones with the word bum embroidered on the bum. (Which would hopefully keep CJ's eyes away from my hair—at least for as long as it took him to read it.) The matching velour hoodie (I could conveniently slip the hood over my head in the event of unwanted hair gazing). And the turquoise tank, which effortlessly pulls the whole outfit together.

I slicked my bangs back with some gel and pulled my hair into a short ponytail. Then I let Lola run her hands over the top for added security. (Turns out small traces of fluffernutter and finger paint serve as the perfect elixir for unruly locks.)

Feeling much better about the way I looked, I grabbed the cartoon strip, pretended not to notice Sam's boyfriend, Sid, sneaking into the house through the second-floor porch, with his sexy rat's nest hairstyle and low-slung jeans, and was out the door. I couldn't wait to see CJ. I knew that the moment he laid eyes on me (or at least on my bum) he'd admit that he'd only used the speech as a cover because he was feeling shy. Then our love affair would finally begin.

Unfortunately, by the time I made it to the meeting, all my plans had been foiled.

There before me, at a little card table in a corner of the Weingarten basement, was a tragic sight. If it had been a scene in a movie, a violin would have been playing. If it had been a painting, it would have been dripping with black paint. If it had been an outfit, it would have been a brown polyester jumper with a dark green cardigan a size too big and tube socks.

It was Dylan Mulroney, seated next to my CJ.

Dylan Mulroney is a transfer student. She just started Franklin Academy a couple of weeks ago. The reason I've never mentioned her is because she's

But marriage license or no marriage license, she still was sitting in my seat. So I headed over to the card table and wedged myself into the tiny space in between them, made even smaller by the rolled-up Banana Republic shopping bag underneath the table—the one that makes CJ so irresistible, because he hides his violin in it.

“Hi, CJ. Hi, Dylan. We haven't met yet, but I write the captions for the strip,” I said, almost knocking Dylan off the bench.

“That's weird,” Dylan said as she regained her balance. “Jeremy told me that I would be writing for the strip this month. Do you want me to double-check with him?”

I knew that couldn't be right. Jeremy couldn't have started changing things around already.

“That's okay,” I told her. “I'll go ask him.” Then Dylan got up to let me out before I sent her tumbling a second time.

“It's true,” Jeremy told me when I confronted him. “I'm moving you to the entertainment review.”

Suddenly I saw my perfect kiss with CJ flashing before my eyes. How were we supposed to spend hours working side by side, finally finishing the last panel of our cartoon at sunrise before collapsing into an exhausted-yet-passionate embrace followed by The Kiss if we weren't even working on the strip together?!?!

I swallowed hard.

“But Jeremy,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I was put on the strip because I'm funny.”

“Actually, the strip's not going to be funny in this issue.”

“But that's the whole point of a cartoon. It's supposed to be funny.”

“Yeah, well, this month we're trying something new,” he said in full loudyitis mode, so everyone could hear him bossing me around.

“Well, I can be unfunny,” I pleaded.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I wish there was something I could do.”

He had me there. Clearly there was no way he could go back on such an important decision without threatening his reputation, not to mention the state of the 'zine's and, quite possibly, of magazine publishing as we know it.

“I was thinking we should have a music review this month. All these local bands have been sending us their CDs and no one's even bothered to listen to any of them,” Jeremy said, pointing to a ginormous box of CDs on the floor. “So why don't you have a seat, start listening to some tunes, and pick a band to write about?” He motioned for me to take a seat at this little desk. The kind that has a blackboard top and comes attached to its own little chair. I wondered if he was expecting me to write my review on the board in chalk so that he could read along with me as I wrote.

As I shuffled through the CDs, it occurred to me that I wasn't at all qualified for the job.

“Jeremy,” I started as I followed him up the stairs and into the Weingartens' kitchen. Then I noticed that he was sneaking a cup of instant coffee for himself. “Wait—I never knew you drank coffee,” I said.

“I don't . . . hate the taste of it. But now that I'm on the 'zine, I need something to keep me awake,” he said as he threw three tablespoons of sugar into his cup.

I nodded as if his response made perfect sense. Never mind the fact that it was only five in the afternoon, our deadline for the new issue was no less than thirty days away, and he was breaking Mrs. Weingarten's rule against going upstairs.

“You should really put me back on the strip where I belong,” I told him. “I don't know anything about the music on those CDs. It's all bands with words like rage and destruction and chaos in the titles. The bands I lis- ten to have words like Jessica and Britney and Ashlee in the title.” He looked at me funny. Like he knew I wasn't being entirely straight with him. “Okay,” I admitted, “so maybe there's an Avril in the group, but that's as hard-core as it gets. I swear.”

“It's not that,” he said, spitting the coffee out into the sink. “This coffee sucks. It tastes like steaming-hot dirt.” He rinsed out his coffee cup and filled it with water. Then he headed back down to the basement and I followed him.

As we walked down the steps, he started talking again. But all I heard was, “Wamp wamp wamp wamp wamp fresh point of view, wamp wamp wamp wamp give it a try.” The rest was hard to decipher over the gales of laughter coming from a certain card table.

Apparently Ms. People Pay Me to Sit Around in My Underwear was doing some kind of hilarious comedy routine for CJ. Who knew that in addition to being a model, she was also a budding young stand-up? At least that explains why Jeremy put her on the strip.

I had to find out what was making them laugh. Probably me and my pathetic lack of experience.

The only way to find out for sure was to eavesdrop. The trick was that I had to do it while appearing to work. Which was actually perfect because I could put on the headphones and stare directly at them while reading their lips. Maybe I'd have to strain a little to hear their conversation, but they'd never know the difference. They'd think I was just gazing off into space while concentrating on the music.

But even with the headphones on, I still couldn't make out what they were saying to each other. If I wanted to hear anything, I'd have to move closer.

I got up and tried to slide the chair back with the bottom of my foot. The only problem was that I forgot the chair was attached to the desk, so my body weight threw the whole desk off balance, forcing it to tip over and fall on its side with a great big thud and me still in it. It was awful. Everyone was staring at me. It was like they'd never seen a girl lose control of her desk before.

“Are you okay?” Jeremy rushed over to try and help.

“I'm kinda stuck,” I answered.

“What happened?” Jeremy grabbed my arm to pull me up.

“I was trying to move the chair back and I forgot that it was connected to the desk,” I answered.