Thwonk (9 page)

“I don’t want a robot! I want a boyfriend!”

“Everyone reacts differently to love,” he added. “How Peter Terris reacts, we have no control over. That, my dear, was the piece of information you didn’t care about earlier on!”

Three lowly freshmen had stopped to watch me shout and gesture to the air. I swung around.

“
Do you mind?
” I bellowed. They scattered like squirrels. I brushed off my jacket. Never underestimate the supremacy of senior year.

“A.J….” It was Trish Beckman, looking Very
Worried. She was holding her psychology textbook open to chapter twenty-one—“Word Association.”

“I’m going to say a word, A.J., and you say the first thing that comes into your mind. There are no wrong answers. Your subconscious will give us important clues so that we can get to the bottom of”—she winced—“your situation.”

“I can’t cope with this, Trish…”

“Mother,” she said, her number-two pencil poised.

“Trish, please…”

“
Mother
…,” she insisted.

“Food,” I said, sighing.

Trish shivered and wrote that down. “Father,” she said.

“Cereal.”

She sucked in a stream of air. I was flunking. “Love,” she tried.

“Arrow,” I said.

Trish considered my responses and said that she knew a fine psychiatrist in New Leonard who specialized in adolescent stress. She said she’d walk me to my next class because I shouldn’t be alone. I patted her shoulder and said I’d manage, really, hoisted my book bag, and headed toward Oz. I leaned against the art-room door. It had a poster that read,
ART IS THE DOOR WE OPEN TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES
. I tried opening the door; it was locked. Figures. Jonathan tapped his arrow on my book bag and hovered in my face.

“How,” I muttered, “can something so small make me so crazy?”

“
What?
” Donny Krumper shrieked, frozen in my path. Donny was the smallest person at Ben Franklin High and took everything seriously.

“You think small people don’t have feelings?” he bellowed.

“Donny, I wasn’t talking to you, I was—”

“
Sure!
” Donny spat. “
Sure!
Walk all over small people! We’re cute! We’ll bounce back! You’re going to get yours someday, McCreary!”

He stormed off, but it was clear I’d already gotten mine. Jonathan placed his arrow in his quiver and zoomed upward like a B-1 bomber.

I was sitting on the World Peace Bench in the Student Center contemplating the vicissitudes of life. This was not easy because the World Peace Bench was the most uncomfortable bench ever concocted: the back forced you forward, the seat forced you into contortions. It had been given to the school by last year’s graduating class in the hope that everyone who sat on it would think about world peace. I shifted my weight and rubbed my lower back. The only thing I ever thought about when I sat on it was sitting somewhere else.

It was four o’clock; afternoon shadows crept across the Student Center. Jessica Wong hung a poster about the King of Hearts Dance that was five days away and
stood back satisfied. She had a date. I’d never make the dance. I was so lame, I couldn’t even get a guy to fall in love with me with a poisoned arrow. Nina Bloomfeld came by, shaken. She had just seen Eddie Royce, her rotten ex-boyfriend, with another girl. I motioned her to sit down. I patted her hand. I’d been there a hundred times.

She beat her fist in the air. “He cheated on me! He humiliated me! Who he dates shouldn’t bother me! I should be celebrating that he’s out of my life! Why, A.J., does it have to be so hard?”

I said I didn’t know, but I knew how much it hurt. I had no idea how love even survived.

“Does it get better, A.J.? Does time heal?”

“Yes,” I lied.

Nina nodded, lowered her head, and shuffled off. I leaned forward in despair. My parents were coming home tonight all lovey dovey, probably, from their weekend. They would ask how I was.

“Just ducky,” I’d say.

Unloved.

Massively unappreciated.

“
Hey, A.J.!
”

I looked up.

“Over here!”

I looked up at the person who was waving at me with great emotion. I rubbed my eyes as he came closer. It couldn’t be, but it
was.

Peter Terris was running toward me!

My sinuses clogged with ecstasy. He was wearing sandy pants and a baby-blue sweater and he looked like a recruiting poster for Hunks from Heaven.

“How’s it going?” he asked, smiling big and wide.

I shook off the cobwebs of despair. “Not bad…” I was breathing through my mouth.

He nodded and looked around. “So…” he said, grinning.

“So…,” I said, waiting.

“I was just thinking that…” He coughed.

Yes?

“Uh, it’s kind of surprising, isn’t it, A.J., that we’ve never gotten…” He stopped here and looked embarrassed.

I sat ramrod straight. Gotten
what
? Engaged, married…

“Gotten
together
,” Peter said. “You know…”

I certainly did.

I crossed my leg nonchalantly and tried not to hyperventilate.

“Would you like to do that sometime—go out?”

I felt that answering by leaping into his arms would have been forward, so I said, “Sure,” nice and casual and sat on my hands (they were shaking). I crossed my other leg, which had fallen asleep and now dangled from my thigh like a thick dead weight.

“Could I have your number?” he asked.

Could he?

Peter held out his English Lit textbook and a Bic and said to write it on the inside. I opened the book just as cool as could be. There were lots of phone numbers written there. My mind stopped.

“Your number,” he said again.

I wrote 555; the pen went dry. I scratched it up and down to get the blasted ink moving, because Bic pens were never supposed to fail. Even if you forgot to take them out of your jeans and they ruined every last piece of decent clothing you had in the dryer, they went right on writing. Peter looked through his pocket. “I don’t have another one,” he said.

I tore open my purse, dug through Kleenex, anti-histamine, nose spray, breath mints…no pen.

Peter looked down and cleared his throat as Julia Hart walked toward us, scowling.

“Just tell me,” Peter said anxiously. “I’ll remember.”

“Five five five…,” I began.

“Yeah…?”

“Five five five…” I blanked. I couldn’t remember my own phone number! I knew it when I was in kindergarten; they wouldn’t let you go home unless you did. Myra Tanninger couldn’t remember hers and had it pinned to the inside of her coat in complete humiliation. I stood there like a massive stiff as Julia Hart walked faster and faster to claim what was unrightfully hers!

“Five five five,” said a trusted voice behind me, “four two eight six.” It was Trish Beckman, Best Friend in the Epic Pinch. I turned to her gratefully.

“I’ll call you tonight,” Peter said quietly, and walked quickly to Julia’s curvaceous side.

He steered Julia past Big Ben, down the hall, past Mr. Zeid’s room…

Trish turned to me, her mouth agape. “He approached you, A.J., in the presence of Death Incarnate!”

“He did, didn’t he?”

Her eyes searched my face for uncurbed neurosis. She grabbed my arm. “My mother is waiting for me outside. I’m going to the dentist and will get Novocain and won’t be able to speak, so I’ll say it all now.
What is happening?
”

I grinned. “You’re a wonderful friend, Trish.”

“I want to know everything else!”

“I’ll call you,” I promised, and tried to look normal. “I’m fine now, Trish. That other stuff was—”

Her mother was honking the car horn like a hungry seal in the Fire Lane. “You are to call me, A.J., as soon as you hang up with him—the very second, do you understand? Don’t go to the bathroom, don’t stop for reflection, don’t talk to yourself anywhere! It doesn’t matter what time it is!”

I drove my Volvo home from school as only a truly desirable person can. I smiled at stranded motorists. I grinned at bad drivers. I drove past Comstock’s Card Castle, past the Valentine cupids on display that had always seemed tired and inane until now.

I loved Valentine’s Day!

I pulled into my happy two-car garage on top of which was my merry studio, and danced up the back steps to the kitchen, where Stieglitz, Boy Wonder Dog, greeted me in epic loyalty.

“Has anyone
called
, boy?” I danced to the phone and patted it. “Anyone gorgeous and witty and urbane?” Stieglitz had no idea, but took full advantage of my mood; he rolled on his back to have his stomach rubbed. I stroked his long, soft fur. “Wait till you meet him, boy! He is crazy about me!”

Stieglitz growled, sensing competition. I ran upstairs and pulled out the fabulous red dress I’d bought at retail for last year’s King of Hearts Dance, the one I’d never worn because Robbie Oldsberg had dumped me two days before the dance and gone with Lisa Shooty, breaking my heart into a zillion pieces.

I put the dress on; the red silk hugged my body in all the right places—even my waist looked small. I pranced before my antique floor-mirror, a person in control of her destiny.

Take
that
, Robbie Oldsberg, you massive toad!

I turned from side to side, swishing my dress, shaking out my hair. I tore through my closet for the red heels with the little sequins (fifty percent off at Berringer’s) that matched the dress perfectly. I squeezed into the shoes that were snug, did a little twirl, and raised my arms in victory.

Peter would call any minute, totally succumbed, and I would know devotion for the rest of my rich, full life.

The phone rang.

My heart stopped.

I let it ring three times because I didn’t want to
seem anxious. I whispered an earthy hello. It was Trish, mumbling through Novocain displacement.

“Nothing yet,” I said.

Trish garbled that she wouldn’t sleep until I called, and hung up.

My stomach growled with anticipation—approaching ecstasy makes you hungry. I took off the dress and wrapped myself in my extra-large tartan robe and found microwavable sustenance in the kitchen—one of the perks of being the child of the Emotional Gourmet. I nuked a slab of herb bread and a container of Mom’s drop-dead Chicken Paprikash. I washed this down with a bottle of Orangina and two cherry fritters. The phone rang again. I counted two rings this time, not wanting to push my luck, and breathed my sexiest hello.

“
Mrs. McCreary
,” said the pushy voice. “And how are you this evening?”

“I’m not Mrs.—”

“Stan Hurlehan,
Mrs. McCreary
, of the Triple A Siding Company, with a special offer that could change your life!”

Keeping the phone line free was the only thing that could change my life. I said I was waiting for an emergency call. Good-bye.

It was eight-eighteen; Peter still hadn’t called. Maybe he was injured. I did the direct, today’s assertive female thing: called his house, heard his voice, and hung up. Calling had to be
his
idea. I glared at the phone.

“
Ring!
” I shouted.

It didn’t.

Peter was
home
; worse than that, Peter was home and not calling me!

I hadn’t walked Stieglitz. I hadn’t done my homework. I hadn’t figured out what I would say to my parents when, in one hour, they would be landing at LaGuardia Airport, fresh from two fun-packed days and nights in New Orleans. I hadn’t exercised in days; I ran up and down three flights of stairs for thirty minutes, which kept me in the presence of the Nonringing Phone. I curled into a lump, wheezing on the kitchen floor, and wondered if I could get arrested for manipulation. I shook creeping angst from my soul and made the wedding list, keeping it just under three hundred on my side with only eight bridesmaids. Trish called again and said she was just checking the phone line.

“
Ring!
” I shouted at the blasted phone.

It did; I yanked it off the wall. “
Hello!
” I shrieked.

“A.J.,” said the golden voice of my dreams…

“Speaking…,” I crooned.

“This is—”

“Peter…,” I said dreamily.

“I have to see you,” he nearly shouted. “Something’s happened…I can’t explain.”

Love is like that.

“Can I come over, A.J.? Please?”

“Yes, Peter! I’m free! I live at—”

“
I know where you live!
”

Right.

I kissed the phone.
It was happening!
I ran upstairs to become gorgeous, although with Jonathan’s arrow trick I could probably answer the door in arctic slipper socks and a sack and nothing would deter Peter’s heart. But I wanted to give him a good show when he scooped me up in his arms.

At least that’s what I thought he would do.

Succumbed people act normally, right?

A small knot twisted in my stomach. I put on my lavender sweater that made me look sexy but sincere, and brushed out my hair until it shone and flounced with honesty. Truth seemed to be a recurring theme as I was getting dressed.

Guilt trickled over me. I’d been anything but honest.