The Boy Recession (13 page)

Pam looms over Josh and starts to raise her voice.

“This is my senior prom. I’ve been on a diet for nine years, I already bought my dress, and I am not going alone. Now, you are a gigantic idiot, but you are a gigantic idiot who looks good in pictures, so sign this prom contract! Sign it!”

Josh ducks his head while he signs the first page and initials the rest. Chung waits until Pam is a safe distance away, and then snickers. “Sucker.”

“I usually hate Pam and her vegan bitchery,” Aviva
tells me as we stop at her locker so she can take off some of her layers. “But at least someone’s laying down the law around here.”

Just then, I see Hunter. He’s leaning against a doorway across the hall from us, and there are three girls with him, one of whom is touching his hair.

“Do you use conditioner?” she asks.

“Nah,” Hunter says. “I just rub a bar of soap on my head.”

The girls crack up laughing. At first Hunter looks confused, but then he smiles. Next to me, Aviva starts to say something, but then she sees Hunter.

“He’s not a slimeball,” Aviva reassures me.

He’s not a slimeball
, I think, as we walk into our classroom,
but he is a king.

K
elly, do you have SAD?” Darcy asks me from across our cafeteria lunch table.

“What? Why?” I ask, looking up from the pasta that I’m pushing around with a plastic fork.

“You seem kind of… blah,” Darcy says. “And your lunch is ninety-eight percent carbs.”

SAD is seasonal affective disorder, a mild depression you can get in the winter if you don’t get enough sunlight. We read about SAD last year in one of Aviva’s
Glamour
articles—actually, we read about the “SAD diet,” which is supposed to help you fight the urge to eat carbs all day.

“I’m going to get that light box back,” Darcy tells me, jotting a note to herself in the presidential-seal notebook
she always carries around. “I’m going to lobby with the administration.”

Last year Julius had this huge fake-sun lamp in one of the exam rooms of the nurse’s office. The school imported it from Sweden or Norway or whatever scarily northern country Björk comes from. They set it up in December and posted this sign-up sheet on the door so we could sign up for fifteen-minute slots of time with the light. That’s how pathetic life is in Whitefish Bay—you have to sign up for a fifteen-minute time slot of fake sunlight. But this year is even more pathetic—we can’t even afford fake sunlight. I guess it was part of the budget cuts.

“Okay, I’ll use you as my case study,” Darcy tells me. “Tell me about your symptoms. And how does it start? What triggers your depression?”

It’s our last week of school before winter break, which is also the darkest week of the year, so I guess technically my mood could be caused by SAD. But I’m pretty sure that events that took place this morning actually triggered my depression.

I was in PMS, and Hunter called me over to use me as an example for his drum lesson. Hunter was showing our kids how to use brushes, instead of sticks, to play the drums. Hunter had me stand in front of his students, and he played my head with the brushes. They actually felt kind of nice in my hair, but they tickled, too. So I was laughing and looking up at Hunter, and all of the kids were laughing, and even Johann was smiling as he watched, when Diva
burst in through the door that connects the band room with the stage.

“Hunter,” she announced. “We have rehearsal right now.”

“What?” Hunter stopped playing on my hair and handed the brushes down to one of his kids. “I’m teaching right now.”

“Well, according to your schedule in the guidance office, you have a study hall now,” Diva said. “Mrs. Martin looked it up.”

I hated her so much. I hated her bossy voice and her too-tight pants and how you can always see the outline of her thong. The point of a thong is so people
can’t
see your underwear, right?

“I don’t have a study hall anymore. I just didn’t have time to change my schedule because I’m busy,” Hunter said. “And I’m busy right now, too.”

I think that was the first time I ever heard Hunter sound pissed off. Actually, he didn’t sound pissed off. He sounded… strict. He even turned his back to Diva and bent down to help his girl student use the brushes on her drum pad.

But Diva didn’t leave. She came over to us and tried to put on her nice voice.

“We really need you, Hunter,” Diva said. “Mrs. Martin wants to do our song. Plus, George is off-key on ‘Mr. Cellophane.’ He needs your help.”

Hunter looked up, but not at Diva—at me. He sighed and gave me an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just… They need me.”

I was thinking
I need you, too
, so hard that I couldn’t open my mouth or I would have said it out loud. But Johann spoke up before I could.

“I can take over the drums,” he said.

Hunter walked out with Diva but turned around and said, “I’ll be back—like, twenty minutes, tops.”

He never came back. After we put the kids on the bus, I went backstage, where Diva and Hunter were rehearsing. As I saw them together, I was thinking one thing on repeat:
I’m losing him. I’m losing him. I’m losing him.

But now, as Aviva comes to the table with her lunch—a large Diet Coke and three chocolate-chip cookies, which is not one of the meals recommended by the SAD diet—I try to push Hunter out of my mind.

“What’s going on?” Aviva asks us.

“Kelly has seasonal depression,” Darcy says.

“Well, I know what will cheer you up,” Aviva tells me. “Let’s have a girls’ night out!”

As soon as she says it, Darcy and I groan.

“Girls’ night out?” Darcy says. “Every night we go out is a girls’ night out.”

It’s true. We spend most of our Friday and Saturday nights at Aviva’s house, at the movies, or at Starbucks. Somehow we got the idea that Starbucks was the place to meet cute boys with glasses who would take us to concerts of bands we’d never heard of. But every time we go there,
it’s all crazy bearded men with newspapers and middle-aged divorcées on
Match.com
dates.

“Okay,” Aviva sighs, breaking off a piece of her cookie and handing it to me. “It’s actually for my column. I’m writing a column about girls’ nights out.”

Aviva’s column, “The Boy Recession,” has been a big success. Actually, it’s titled “The Boy Recession” with a copyright symbol after it, because Eugene threatened to sue her. Her article “Skankology,” documenting the increase in skanky behavior at our school, was really popular. She also wrote a great article about Pam’s prom contract. Occasionally she covers some pretty serious stuff, like skewed gender ratios in China and the Middle East, or boy recessions on college campuses, but mostly she writes about Julius, and her articles get Tweeted and linked on Facebook all over the place.

“No way,” Darcy says, shutting her notebook. “Please don’t publish our pathetic lives so people can spread them all over the Internet. No one wants to read about us getting picked up from the movies by Kelly’s dad in the station wagon. No offense, Kell.”

“No, I completely agree.”

“Well, then, give me some gossip to write about!” Aviva says.

“Wow,” I say. “Look at Bobbi.”

A few weeks back, Eugene unexpectedly broke up with Bobbi. His actions made a lot of girls really mad, and it
proved that Eugene was the King of the Slimeball Kings. Everyone’s been talking a lot of crap about him, except Bobbi, who would have a right to trash Eugene, who hasn’t said one word against him. She keeps crying in the bathroom, but afterward she bravely reapplies her fake lashes and mascara before facing the world of Julius again.

Of course, you can still sense she isn’t her usual carbonated self.

“Hi, girls,” Bobbi says as she walks over to our table. “Hey, Darcy. I wrote up a report for the Healthy Lunch Initiative. I talked to Pam about sourcing some local organic products and projected some costs. I hope it’s helpful.”

When Darcy takes the report, she stares at it like she’s amazed it wasn’t written in pink glitter glue.

“So how are you girls doing?” Bobbi asks Aviva and me, sitting down at our table.

“We’re okay,” I say cautiously. “How are
you
, Bobbi?”

Bobbi’s eyes fill with tears, and I’m frightened for her makeup. Apparently Aviva is, too, because she panics and bursts out: “We’re planning a girls’ night out!”

Bobbi’s face lights up. The eye makeup is saved.

“That sounds like so much fun!” Bobbi says. “We should
totally
do that!”

Darcy tears herself away from the Excel chart long enough to shoot Aviva a death stare.

“We’re actually really boring,” Darcy tells Bobbi. “We just go to Starbucks every weekend.”

“I love Starbucks!” Bobbi chirps, meeting Darcy’s eyes in wonder, like it’s an unbelievably miraculous coincidence that four teenage girls would all like overpriced coffee with whipped cream on top.

“We should all go sometime,” I say, trying to be tactful. “Maybe after winter break? Or after midterms?”

“What about this Friday?” Bobbi suggests. “Are you girls doing anything then?”

I look at Darcy, Darcy looks at Aviva, and Aviva shrugs and says honestly, “No. We’re not doing anything.”

“Look at this place,” Aviva says in disbelief, as the Starbucks door chimes closed behind us on Friday night.

“
Aww!
” Bobbi says, coming in behind Darcy and stomping the snow off her boots. “It’s all Christmassy in here!”

But Aviva isn’t talking about the Christmas decorations; she’s talking about the boys. Right when we walk in, there’s a whole table of college guys in baseball caps and fleeces holding Venti-size drinks. There’s a nerdy cute guy at the corner table, working on his laptop with his headphones on, and two preppy guys are working on a school project by the window.

When we go up to order our drinks, even the guys behind the counter are cute. The one making the drinks, who has a lip ring, gives Bobbi a free extra shot in her caramel latte.

“Okay, I’m kidnapping her and making her my AP physics experiment,” Darcy tells me, dunking her green-tea bag like she’s trying to drown a sixteenth-century witch. We’re waiting for my Frappuccino while Aviva and Bobbi snag a table.

“I mean, this is incredible. All the variables are the same. This is the same Starbucks we always come to. This is the same time we’re always here. The only thing that’s different is that we brought Bobbi. Does she literally
attract
boys?”

It looks like it. By the time Darcy and I bring our drinks to the table, one of the college guys has already approached Bobbi, asking her if he should get a latte or a macchiato. Then the nerdy cute guy takes off his headphones to ask Bobbi if she can unplug his computer for him. He obviously wants to try to talk to her but is too shy. Bobbi just unplugs the computer with a smile, says, “Here you go,” and turns back to us.

“Hey, Bobbi,” Aviva says as she lounges in a big, comfy armchair. “That guy in the hat was kinda cute. I think you two would look good together.”

Uh-oh. Here comes sad Barbie face again.
I reach out and touch Bobbi’s arm.

“Aw! What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I can’t even look at another guy,” Bobbi says, dabbing at her eyeliner with her fake nail. “I’m still so in love with Eugene.”

“
Really?
” Darcy asks. I kick her under the table.

“What actually happened between you and Eugene?” Aviva asks.

“I have no idea!” Bobbi says. “Everything was going great! We had
so
much fun together.”

“Did you fight a lot?” Aviva asks, in her sensitive Oprah voice, nodding encouragingly to prove she’s listening.

“Never!” Bobbi shakes her head.

“Did you sense him pulling away?”

“Not at all,” Bobbi says. “Eugene was the
best
boyfriend. He came to all my tennis games, brought me Dunkachinos to my fourth-period study hall, and learned how to make sushi because he knows how much I love California rolls. He took my dad golfing and gave him stock tips. He called me every night before I went to sleep to tell me he loved me….”

Really? Pervy Eugene did all this?
Darcy and I raise our eyebrows at each other.

“But, Bobbi,” Darcy says, “don’t you think it’s for the best? Honestly, no one thought Eugene was good enough for you. I mean, look at the guys you’ve dated before. Justin Messina was smart and tall and really hot. Plus, he didn’t have to clean out his locker before the cops brought the drug-sniffing dog around school.”

Aviva and I aren’t sure how Bobbi will take this, so we pretend to be very interested in our drinks. But Bobbi isn’t offended.

“Those things don’t matter to me,” she says. “I’ve
dated tall guys and good-looking guys and college athletes and male models and…”

“Obviously the boy recession hits some of us harder than others,” I tell Aviva behind my cup as Bobbi goes on with her list.