The Girl Who Invented Romance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  We were sitting on my bed. Park was slumped against the headboard.

  “Oh, Park.” I felt sick for him. “You’ll find somebody else, though,” I said cheerily. “Don’t worry too much.”

  What a jerk I sounded like.

  I loved my brother for standing up for me, and yet if this was the result, he should have laughed with Wendy. But he was nice. He wouldn’t laugh at anybody, even me.

  “I don’t want somebody else.” The despair in his voice matched the lines on his face.

  It’s better to have played the game and lost, I thought, than to be like me, not playing at all. Nobody’s voice had ever sunk in despair because of me and I had never felt despair over anybody either. At least Park could feel pain.

  I tried to explain that.

  “Kelly,” said my brother, “that’s like telling a cancer victim that now that he’s dying, he can appreciate life. It’s stupid. I don’t want to be a better, stronger person because of this. I want to be plain old me with Wendy at my side.”

  When Parker went into his room, I sat on my bed to stare at my romance board. Currently it featured a great heart with three paths: pink, pale pink and white. You went around the heart three times and ended up in the center, resting on Cupid’s arrow. Little cherubs danced around and wedding bouquets fell into your final square. I’d spent a lot of money on rubber stamps with exactly the right pictures and I was artistically delighted with the result.

  The paths were divided into squares. Each was a Good Thing. Nice dates, sunny weather, sleek cars, lovely gifts, strong hugs, passionate kisses. I’d had such fun making up the dates. I’d never written so many exclamation points in my life.

  A picnic by the sea! Sunburned but happy!

  A bicycle built for two! Windblown and in love!

  You two go hang gliding! In heaven with a heavenly boy!

  But in our house, my brother was devastated, my mother terrified, my father furious, and I was simply lonely.

  How pitiful the game was. In real life, nobody deals you a perfect anything, let alone rows of delightful boyfriends. And to spend every day, every square, doing a Good Thing with this splendid person?

  I kicked the board game under my bed to get it out of our lives.

  CHAPTER

  7

  “No,” said Megan. “Absolutely not, Mrs. Williams. Since you’re asking, I will tell you. That outfit is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  My mother looked longingly into my full-length mirror.

  “You have become invisible,” Megan told her. “You are wearing a skin-toned dress. Flesh-colored makeup. Clear nail polish. You can’t seriously want to wear this to the reunion.”

  “Of course I can. And there’s nothing wrong with this outfit or being invisible,” said my mother.

  “Then you’re a success,” Megan told her. “People won’t be able to shake hands with you because they won’t be able to find your hand against that dress.”

  My mother was no match for anyone in those clothes. It was odd how I too had come to think of Ellen as competition to be fought down. I wanted my mother to win easily. We ought to have one winner in the family at least.

  “Go put on that purple dress,” said Megan firmly. “Really. No kidding, it’s perfect. The saleswoman who talked you into buying it had excellent taste and was right. Put it on and then we’ll accessorize you.” Megan turned to me. “God knows, after all these years of gifts from your father, she must have more accessories than the department store anyway.”

  “But not many that go with purple,” said my mother.

  “Yes, you do,” I told her. “You have at least a billion violet things.”

  “Violet is not purple. Violet is sweet dark lavender. That dress I paid a small fortune for is as purple as strobe lights.” Mother heaved a huge deep sigh and slunk back to her room to try it on.

  “I had no idea high school reunions were so scary,” Megan said to me. “Especially when it isn’t even her reunion.”

  I did not explain Fear of Ellen and how it ranked in our family. I did not want that problem to become Fox Meadow property. “Mom thinks she’ll be on display and she’s nervous. Now go back to telling me about Will. You actually turned him down?”

  Megan gloated. “Yes. I loved turning him down. I felt so good afterward.”

  I lay back on my bed. In the next room I could hear Mother rustling, slithering out of one dress into the next. I could feel the many seams of the patchwork denim spread making lines on my skin. I could feel myself inside my clothes. But I could not feel what Megan was feeling.

  “Power,” explained Megan. “Jimmy had such power over me. He could ruin my schedule, reduce me to tears, leave me feeling foolish and ugly and unloved.”

  “But that was Jimmy. This is Will.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Megan. Which was certainly true. “Jimmy likes that drippy little bowling freak better than he likes me. Did you take a look at her? A loser. It’s worse losing out to a loser than to a winner.” Megan made a series of terrible faces and admired each expression in my mirror.

  Perhaps Ellen felt that way. Perhaps now she thought she’d been wrong to leave my father. Did she wonder how Dad could choose Mother after beautiful brilliant Ellen? Perhaps Ellen felt that Dad had married a loser.

  “I’ve never been dumped before,” confided Megan, “and I plan never to be dumped again. I’ll always be the dumper, not the dump-ee.”

  “You mean,” I said slowly, “that you said no to Will because it made you feel better about Jimmy?”

  Megan nodded. “Ooooh, great nail polish,” she said, landing on the gift boxes Faith was always raiding. “I saw this advertised and I meant to get it for myself. May I try it, Kelly? Thanks.” She unscrewed the top and began stroking color over her nails.

  Poor Will, I thought. He had no importance to Megan. She didn’t even turn him down because of him. He wasn’t even worth turning down. She turned him down because of Jimmy, and Will will never know that. He’ll wonder if it was his breath or his personality, his bony face or his smelly feet. (Actually I don’t know if his feet smell. I never had the opportunity, if that’s what you’d call it, to find out; it was just an example.)

  My mother came back into the room wearing another old dress, and not her new one, and Megan glanced over and said, “No! Mrs. Williams. That color is vomit green and the style is for old women when they’re weeding in their gardens. You should not even have it in your house.

  “Anyway, Mrs. Williams, don’t be mad at me for saying this, but it makes you look fat,” added Megan, dealing the ultimate slam on the green dress. “Other people at the reunion will be thin.”

  My mother cringed.

  Megan rammed her point home. “They’ll lord it over you if you look fat.”

  “I’m dieting,” said my mother desperately. “Really. I’m down two pounds.”

  If there is a God, I thought, he could make Ellen gain weight between now and the reunion. Develop a craving for cream-filled doughnuts so she has to show up in size forty-four polyester pants.

  But Ellen was the kind who would never get fat. I knew from her yearbook picture. She would always manage to be superior to the rest of us. The way Megan was superior to me.

  Megan was helping with Mother’s clothes, but she wasn’t doing it to be helpful. She was showing my mother that she, at sixteen, knew more about style than Mother ever would. She was enjoying every minute of being the expert with the beginner.

  Do I even like Megan? I thought. She’s my lifelong friend and now I’m not sure I like her. I don’t like how she treated Will and I don’t like how she’s treating Mom.

  I thought about how Daddy was treating Mother. He had stopped bringing presents and cards. I thought he was annoyed over the whole Ellen behavior but Mom thought it was proof that his dreams were about Ellen.

  Over Ellen, who lived two thousand miles away, they were going to break down.

  What terrible timing it all
was.

  Perhaps what my board game needed was an element of timing. Good timing and bad. Things that came together by accident as well as by planning. Things that would fall apart when nobody wanted them to and things that would never have an explanation.

  Mother came in wearing the purple dress.

  “Yes!” shouted Megan, clapping. “It’s you. Streamlined, but feminine. Flared romantic hemline and just a speck sexy at the neck. I love how that fabric falls. And it’s your color. Utterly. Yes. Excellent!”

  I liked Megan again. My mother was smiling. Nervously, but smiling.

  “You’ll make a real splash, Mom,” I told her. “I love it.”

  Mother looked hopeful.

  “Now you need a really good necklace,” said Megan authoritatively. “Something that makes a statement.”

  Mother looked helpless.

  “That enormous silver violet on the silver rope Daddy gave you years ago,” I suggested. “The one you thought was too big to wear and you let me wear it on Halloween when I was a Gypsy.”

  My mother made a face. “It’s way too large.”

  “Not with this dress.”

  “I think I don’t have it anymore,” said my mother hopefully.

  “Forget it. I know just where it is.” I raced to my parents’ bedroom. All Fox Meadow houses have walk-in closets—two per master bedroom. Mother’s flows over into Daddy’s and she keeps the presents she doesn’t know what to do with in their gift boxes tucked in the corners. Megan went with me because she loves to snoop. “When is the reunion?” she wanted to know. “Tomorrow?”

  “Of course not. It’s a whole month away. In this household we like to leave lots of time for panicking.” I unearthed a vast silver violet.

  “Ouch,” said Megan. “Well, let’s try it.”

  We went back and draped it around Mom’s neck. “It is large,” admitted Megan, “but the effect is awesome. Wear it. Well, I have to run. Places to go, boys to see.” She smiled brilliantly and raced out of the room, narrowly missing Parker coming up. The house was a thoroughfare.

  “I wish I had someplace to go that made me so happy,” said Park, glancing after Megan. “Listen, Mom, do we have anything good to eat in this house?”

  “Yes. And if you’ll eat every bit of it, then I won’t. Deal?”

  “Deal. Awesome dress, Mom,” said Park.

  I was stunned. Wendy had accomplished something worthy. Parker was aware of women’s clothing and knew enough to say so. Way to go, Wendy.

  They went downstairs companionably while I fished out my board game and the boy cards I’d crunched up and thrown in the wastebasket. Nothing was wrinkled beyond repair. I got out my iron and ironed the papers, which worked quite well. Then I erased every fourth or fifth Good Thing on the board and stuck in terrible, painful, agonizing, inexplicable stuff instead. That was much easier to think up than Good Things.

  I erased Sunshine. I wrote: He never calls; you never know why. Lose one turn.

  I erased a Delirium of Love square. I wrote Abandonment.

  I got rid of Crazy with Happiness and tossed in Depression. Then I replaced Depression with Melancholia. That sounded really depressed.

  The phone rang.

  I picked it up absently.

  “Hi, Kelly. It’s Will.”

  If I was surprised the first time, I was astounded the second time. “Hi, Will.”

  “You do your sociology yet?” he asked.

  “I breezed through the chapter. It was the English assignment that killed me. William Faulkner. I haven’t understood a word since page one but somehow I’ve arrived at page seventy-three.”

  That was my stable marriage score, I thought. It’s got to be significant.

  “That’s a lot to plow through,” said Will. “We’ve been spared Faulkner in my English class.” He began discussing a particular law of physics that was giving him problems for an upcoming exam.

  “And what about Megan turning you down?” I said, before I thought.

  Oh, what’s the matter with tongues? Why aren’t they securely latched to minds? Now he’d know that we had gossiped about it and that Megan had told everybody.

  Into the silent phone I babbled, “It was mean of her, Will, but it didn’t have anything to do with you. It was about Jimmy. She’s still mad at him for dumping her. It made her feel good to take it out on a boy. Any boy.”

  The silence continued.

  I had run out of babble.

  Will said, “I think you are the first girl I’ve ever run into who says things honestly. Truth and all that. You are remarkable, Kelly.”

  Forget remarkable, I thought. Tell me sexy and beautiful.

  We began talking. For almost an hour we talked. We covered girls, dates, Megan, Jimmy, truth, lies, Ms. Simms, Wendy’s soap. I loved it. I could have talked all night. The more Will talked, the more I liked him. The less conceited he sounded. The more my crush came back.

  Do I want it back? I thought.

  Do I have any choice? I thought five minutes later.

  “It’s pretty late,” said Will finally. “And I haven’t actually started my homework yet. I’d better go.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I had more to say.”

  “Me too. See you tomorrow, Kelly. Thanks for listening.”

  I held my cell phone after he hung up as if he were still part of it, as if the little black oblong contained some of him and some of me. Then I went into my bathroom to look at myself in strong light and see if there was a girl in the mirror whom Will Reed could have a crush on.

  There were two ways to read “See you tomorrow, Kelly.”

  One: We shared fourth and sixth periods and at some point his eyes would naturally focus in my direction and he would see me.

  Two: He could hardly wait for the next day to come so he could see me, Kelly Williams, good listener.

  I wasn’t sure I liked that closing line of Will’s. “Thanks for listening” sounded sisterly. I had friends; I was a sister. I wanted dates.

  I wandered back to my room to find Parker lying on my bed, holding my board game over his head, reading the squares and laughing like a maniac.

  “You rotten worthless brother. You spy. Get up off my bed. Stop reading that. Stop laughing at me. That’s private, Parker. I hate you.”

  Parker merely swung the game out of my reach and kept laughing. “Kelly, the game is terrific. It’s so funny. I love it.”

  I didn’t want it to be funny. I wanted it to show the sweet side and the bleak side of romance.

  “But, Kell,” he said, sitting up and crossing his ankles and spreading the game before him, “you’ve designed it so that only girls can play. Revise it. Make it so boys can play as well. Girl cards and girl pronouns and girl names as well as boy names and stuff.”

  “How can I do that? That’s too hard. Anyway, name me a single boy on the face of the earth who would be caught playing The Game of Romance.”

  Parker ignored this. “Your sentences read He loves you and He brings you flowers. Change those to Your date loves you. Your date brings you flowers.”

  It wouldn’t take much except to erase. I could even redo the game on fresh paper.

  “He takes you to Europe,” read Parker. “He brings you a dozen red roses. He teaches you to water-ski.” Parker frowned. “You’re sexist, making the boy do everything.”

  “I am not sexist. This is my game. For me. What am I supposed to put—He or she brings you a dozen red roses?”

  Parker began erasing. He put Your date brings you. He was a very careful eraser. As he erased, I rewrote. It was kind of pleasant to be a team.

  “Furthermore,” said Parker, “exactly how old and exactly how rich are these dates of yours? Instead of skiing in Switzerland or a cruise in the Caribbean you should share milk shakes or go bowling.”

  Eraser specks flew. He took out really good ones like Explore a coral reef together in your new scuba equipment and wrote You run into each other at the delicatessen.


  “Now we need some really crummy boring rotten dates,” said Park, warming up like a baseball pitcher and getting mean.

  I watched him add crummy boring rotten dates.

  “I don’t want that much reality,” I protested. “This is a romance game. The way you’re setting it up, a person could have a flat tire and the dog gets carsick and you miss the movie and you lose your credit cards and then the person you love moves away and never writes. What’s romantic about that?”

  Parker just blew eraser specks away. They dusted my face. “Park?” I said. “Do you think Wendy planned to break up with you? Was she just waiting for the moment she could blame the end of your romance on you? So she could script it the way she wanted it? Rescue by Jeep from the clutches of Park?”

  Park erased quite a few squares we hadn’t discussed yet. I memorized them as they vanished so I could write them back in later.

  Parker straightened up, stretched his legs, tucked them back and began sorting through my boy cards. “These are good,” he said in surprise. “Here you’ve got reality. Some boys are funny, some are fat. Some are rich and some have eight hundred zits.” He read each card slowly.

  I really ought to have the opinions of boys on my boy cards, I thought.

  I could not quite imagine myself inviting Will and Jeep and Angie over to study my romance game and give me a few hints.

  “When she was leaving with Jeep,” said Park, “Wendy told me it was all an act. She never loved me. She kept tapping me with her purse instead of touching me with her hands.”

  Wendy carried a teeny lime green purse, square, on a long thin leather loop. The purse had exactly enough room for her driver’s license and some cash. Her cell phone fit into a little pocket on the exterior and her pencils and pens she clipped to her notebook. Faith said once that there wasn’t room in that purse for Tampax. We decided Wendy didn’t have periods. They weren’t romantic enough.

  I could just see Wendy giving Parker little miniature bruises with her little miniature purse. But the bruises were enormous and real.

  “Her voice breaking on the phone with you?” I said. “Her hugging you and leaning on your shoulder? An act? I think we should go after her with a shotgun. Queen of Romance? Parker, she was Queen Bitch.”