Totally Joe (3 page)

That's funny, right? Correction: That's hilarious. Me! He wanted to be like
me. Nobody
wants to be like Joe Bunch, and who wouldn't want to be like Colin Briggs? He is:

1. Totally cool.

2. Smart.

3. A jock.

4. Really nice.

5. To everybody, even if they're
not
totally cool, smart, a jock, really nice, or popular.

6. Popular.

7. Cute.

8.
Seriously
cute.

9. Especially when he smiles.

In other words, we had, like, zero in common. But then I found out last Thursday that we
did
have something in common. And now (drumroll, please): COLIN BRIGGS IS MY BOYFRIEND!

I can't believe I just wrote that. I probably should have written: Colin Briggs is my boyfriend. But I want to shout it. I mean, I have had this major crush on Colin Briggs since fifth grade. (Fifth grade was a big year for me, figuring-out-who-I-was-wise.) And now he's my
boyfriend—
and all because I'm not afraid to be myself, and he likes that!

Still, I'm a little worried about what Kevin Hennessey might do if he saw this declaration of boyfriendship in writing. Picture it: I'm walking down the hall, and Kevin grabs my notebook and tears it open and yells so the whole school can hear (because he really doesn't know the meaning of “indoor voice”): “Hey, get this—Colin and Josephine are boyfriends! Ooo, we always knew you were a faggot, Bunch, but didja have to turn Briggs into one, too? Youse two are
disgusting!” Okay, so he probably wouldn't say “youse two.” I mean, we live in Paintbrush Falls, New York, in the twenty-first century, not Brooklyn in the 1940s. (I have been watching
way
too many old movies with Bobby.) But that doesn't mean he wouldn't do something really … well, I don't know what he'd do, but it would probably involve pain.

I was almost sure he'd figured it out on Friday when Colin and I were at the school dance together. Of course, no one knew we were “together.” We were with our friends the whole time, but it
was
unusual for our groups to be mixing. I mean, Colin and I had never spent any time in school hanging out together before then, unless you want to count our being seated near each other because of our last names: Briggs and Bunch.

Kevin and that ________ (fill in the blank) Jimmy Lemon noticed us right away and kept coming over and making little kissy noises.

Finally, Kevin said, “You girls gonna dance together?”

I came back with, “Why don't you and Jimmy show us how?”

Jimmy Lemon laughed at that. I think mainly because he wasn't smart enough to have figured out what I was saying. But Kevin didn't like it at all. He turned to Colin
and said, “You better watch out, Briggs. You hang out with queers, you end up with—”

Skeezie cut him off and said, “A fabulous eye for color?”

“Hardy-har, greaseball,” Kevin retorted.
(It seems like Kevin must have slept through the assembly the day before when Bobby gave this big student council campaign speech against name-calling, which everybody in the whole school thought was awesome.) (Except, obviously, Kevin.)

“What I was going to say was, if you hang out with queers, people might think
you're
a queer.”

Colin turned white. I mean, whiter than usual, since he has this really fair complexion. I thought,
Well, it's been nice having a boyfriend for, let's see, thirty-two hours and forty-seven minutes
, figuring, you know, that he wasn't going to be able to take the heat, and probably the minute Kevin walked away, he'd tell me it was nice knowing me and see you around.

But then before Skeezie or any of the rest of us could think what to say, Colin blurted out, “You and Jimmy have been trying to hang out with us since we got here, Kevin. I wonder what people are saying about
you.”

That was so funny. I almost hugged Colin. (Except of
course I wouldn't have with Kevin and Jimmy standing there.) (Besides which, Colin and I hadn't hugged each other
ever
, and it was so not going to happen for the first time at a school dance.)

It did make Kevin Hennessey leave us alone for the rest of the evening, though. And when I asked Colin later if he was worried about what Kevin thought, he just said, “No,” in that quiet way of his, and I felt sure I'd have a boyfriend for a lot longer than thirty-two hours and whatever minutes.

Did you ever have a dream you thought could never come true? I mean, it just seemed totally impossible? Like walking into the Candy Kitchen to get an ice cream soda and … Oh. My. God. Isn't that
Julia Roberts
sitting at the counter? And she's waving you over! And you spend the whole rest of the day hanging out with her, laughing, and … well, Colin being my boyfriend seemed even more impossible than that!

My crush on Colin Briggs started the first time I saw him two years ago. He had just moved here from Someplace, Ohio. Mrs. Kubrich introduced him to our class and then asked me to move back a desk and asked Colin to take my old seat. I couldn't believe it! He was sitting right in front of me! I spent the entire rest of the
day looking at the back of his head and thinking … well, to be honest, I was thinking that the back of his head was shaped like a melon, which is probably what everybody's head is shaped like, but we had just had melon for dessert the night before and I had made such a production out of telling my mother that I hated melon that, well, now it was deeply disturbing to find myself falling in love with someone whose head kept reminding me of a fruit I had taken a stand on
never eating even if it was the last edible substance on the face of the planet
like, just fifteen hours earlier. Of course, melons don't have feathery blond hair. And Colin's head did. So that helped.

When I wasn't thinking about how much I hated melons or how much I liked Colin's hair, I was trying to figure out what I would say to him after the bell rang. I thought maybe I'd say something about cleaning out my old desk, which was now
his
desk, but that was so lame. Then I thought I'd ask if he wanted to have lunch with me, and then I remembered where I actually sat in the cafeteria, and I thought maybe it would be insulting to ask him to sit with the least popular kids in the entire school. By the time the bell rang, I hadn't thought of anything better than, “I like your head, even if it
is
shaped like a melon.” Fortunately, I was saved from the death sentence
of saying that out loud because Drew Geller came right over to him and said, “Come on, Colin, I'll show you where the cafeteria is. You can eat at our table.”

I hated how Drew said the word “our.” Like: “We're the best.” But I couldn't really hate Drew, because he probably didn't mean it that way. Drew is nice, even if he is popular, and I knew at that moment that Colin was going to be popular, too. I decided then and there that I should be grateful to have a one-sided relationship with the back of Colin's head and not hope for anything more.

For the rest of fifth grade and all of sixth, Colin and I said maybe fifty words to each other. I wrote his initials maybe five hundred times. And I stared at the back of his head maybe a thousand. (I sat behind him all through fifth grade and in two classes in sixth.) I never, ever,
ever
imagined that he would like me the way I liked him, and I hated myself for liking him the way I did.

“Why can't I like girls?” I asked Bobby once. He was the only one of my friends I could tell about Colin and know that a) he would understand, and b) he would keep it a secret.

“Have you ever
tried
to like girls?” Bobby asked. It was the night before my eleventh birthday party. I had just gone through three weeks of stomachaches trying to
decide whether or not to invite Colin, knowing the whole time there was no way I would.

“Sure,” I told him. “I imagined myself married to Julia Roberts once, but all we did was talk about her clothes. I don't think my father has ever had a conversation with my mother about her clothes, except to go, ‘Uh-huh,' when she asks him if he likes her new sweater or something. So I figured I wasn't really the marrying kind.”

Bobby just shook his head. “I'm not a good person to ask about this,” he said. “I don't think I'm ever going to get married or even like anybody. I can't imagine it. I'll live alone. I might have a dog.”

“Dogs are nice,” I said. “Maybe I'll get a dog and name it Colin. Because dogs love you back, right?”

Bobby is a good friend. He didn't laugh at me when I said that. Instead, he asked me what kind of dog I would get, but all I could think to say was that it would have to have blond hair and a head shaped like a melon.

My party was on Saturday. It was pretty good. My aunt Pam, who had moved in with us a few weeks before, baked this amazing cake that looked like the
Titanic
just before it went under. (I was in my
Titanic
phase.) But what I remember most is the wish I made when I blew out the
candles. I thought,
Well this is a waste of a perfectly good wish
but I couldn't help myself.

On Monday, a mini-miracle happened. Colin turned around while Mrs. Kubrich was writing some vocabulary words on the board and said, “Happy birthday.” (Monday was my actual birthday.)

I said, “How did you know?”

He said, “Oh, a little bird told me.”

I never found out who the little bird was, because Mrs. Kubrich said whoever was talking had better stop, and Colin turned back around.

Up until last week, Colin wishing me a happy birthday was just about the best thing that had ever happened in my whole life. And then last Thursday he told me he liked me, and it turned out my eleventh-birthday wish hadn't been wasted at all.

LIFE LESSON
: There's no such thing as a wasted wish.

TWO WEEKS AGO, ME AND MY FRIENDS—ADDIE, BOBBY, AND SKEEZIE—WERE ALL
single. Now—except for Skeezie, who is Mr. Don't-Talk-To-Me-About-Love-It-Makes-Me-Want-To-Puke, even though we all
know
he has a thing for one of the waitresses at the Candy Kitchen (WHO IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE HIS OLDER SISTER, BY THE WAY!)—we're all dating. I am soooo excited—and also, at the same time, confused.

Addie is going out with DuShawn. Bobby (who thought he would never like anybody, remember?) is going out with Kelsey. And I'm going out with Colin. But everybody knows that Addie is going out with DuShawn and that Bobby is going out with Kelsey. And Colin and me, well, we're kind of in the closet. What I mean is, Addie and DuShawn have already been seen holding hands in the halls, so of course everyone is talking about them. And Bobby and Kelsey are always blushing around each other, which is
so
Disney
Channel. If I hear one more person say how cute they are … well, I'll probably nod and go, “Uh-huh,” because, I'm sorry, they
are
cute. It's just that I want people to think Colin and I are cute, too, and I want to hold hands in the halls.

(Seventh-Grade Reality Check: You are two boys. Hello. No one is going to think you're cute. At best, they'll go, “Ick.” At worst… well, let's not go there, okay?)

So what is the point of dating if we have to keep it a big fat secret?

Are
we even dating?

Our three big conversations so far:

Where:
Out by the flagpole

When:
Last Thursday after school

The first part:
Blah blah um er how's it going blah blah blah

The important part:

Colin: There's something I want to tell you. I, um, like you.

Me: Really? I, um, like you, too.

Colin: I have since last year.

Me: Really? I've liked you since fifth grade.

Colin: Really?

A loooooooong pause
.

Colin: Do you want to, you know, go out?

Me: Go out?

Colin: I mean, we don't have to, if …

Me: No, I mean, yes, I want to.

Colin: Okay.

Me: Okay. So I guess we're going out, then.

Colin: Right.

Me: Okay.

Colin: Sweet.

Me: Excellent.

Where:
On the phone

When:
Thursday evening, three hours and twenty minutes after Conversation #1

Colin: Hi, it's Colin.

Me: Oh, hi. So, what're you doing?

Colin: Calling you. What're
you
doing?

Me: Being called.

Colin
(laughing):
You're funny.

Me: No, I'm funny when I'm not nervous. Right now, I'm nervous. When I'm nervous, all I am is nervous. And fairly stupid. And I talk too much.

Colin: Well, I'm nervous, too.