The Girl Who Invented Romance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  It was the way I knew Will.

  Not by intelligence or experience.

  By heart.

  Each day was the same. Either I was at school or I was at home. Either place, I was in the grip of this terrible crush on Will and he was in the grip of basketball.

  One day I came home to an empty house and found on the hall table a vase of baby’s breath, yellow daisies and white daisies. My father had tried flowers again. This made me feel slightly better. I wished I had been there when Daddy gave them to Mother. How had she reacted? Had she kissed him? Exclaimed over the flowers? Hugged him and beamed with pleasure?

  Or shrugged and said, “Stick ’em in water. I’m too busy.”

  I plucked one white daisy and began playing the oldest romance game in the world.

  He loves me.

  He loves me not.

  He loves me.

  He loves me not.

  For whom was I playing this game? Me and Will? Or Mom and Dad?

  He loves me.

  He loves me not.

  The petals fell on my lap like discarded chances.

  He loves me.

  He loves me not.

  Half plucked, the daisy’s yellow center became raw on one side and the stem seemed more fragile. I pulled off two more petals, counting to myself. If I looked at the remaining white petals, my eyes would do an automatic count and I would know the answer. He loves me.… He loves me not. I averted my eyes.

  “Kelly!” called my mother. “I’m home!”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  She walked in, saw the flowers I think for the first time and then saw the half-plucked daisy in my hand. “What are you on?”

  “He loves me.”

  “Good place to stop. If you keep going, who knows where it might end?”

  “There are only two endings,” I pointed out.

  “When in doubt, it’s He loves me not.”

  Oh, don’t say it, Mother! Tell me that true love exists. Tell me you are proof of it. Tell me I will have it too.

  “Who is the flower for?” asked Mom.

  “Will Reed.”

  “As in basketball?”

  “As in basketball.”

  Mother nodded, surprised but interested. Then she drew her own daisy out of the bouquet. A yellow one. My stomach clenched with fear. I had the sensation that if she plucked around and landed on He loves me not, she would leave. It would end: the marriage, the family—my life, her life, our lives.

  She stared at her flower. “I never questioned it before,” she said.

  Daddy loving her? “But you always questioned it,” I protested. “You always needed him to tell you he loved you.”

  “I know, but I didn’t worry. I just liked to be told. Comforted.”

  “It’s okay to need love,” I said, repeating the only advice Daddy had to give his only daughter. It’s okay to need love. You don’t have to fight back.

  So who was fighting back? Mother? Daddy? Ellen? Me?

  Mother slid her yellow daisy back into the bouquet, lifting fronds of fern and baby’s breath until it blended back into the crowd. We weren’t going to find out whether he loves me or he loves me not.

  I felt safe. We were still a family. That bouquet and all of us were still in the water together, still alive, full of color and hope.

  CHAPTER

  14

  “What?” I cried. “Never! Faith, I cannot telephone Will and Angie and ask them to come over to my house and play Romance.”

  We giggled insanely.

  “You should have told me long ago that you had a crush on Will,” said Faith. “I’ve always told you when I adore somebody. But when both of us are deep in fruitless hopeless crushes, we need a solution. This works. We coax Angie and Will to come to your house and play Romance.”

  I chewed my hair. Bit my fingernails. Twisted my socks. Picked at the seam in my denim bedspread. “I can’t do it.”

  “Okay,” said Faith. “Here’s a possibility. We don’t tell them what the game is. We explain that you have designed a board game for the sociology class project and need to test it. You are throwing a game-testing party. Each person brings a good attitude and a sharp pencil.”

  I was getting sick of that bedspread. If I got up one more time and found seam lines imbedded in my skin, I’d set fire to it. “You know,” I told Faith, “there’s no reason I can’t just go buy something new and replace this ugly thing. I’m thinking of a soft, puffy down comforter in pure white. I’ll have about five throw pillows and they will be an array of—”

  “Stop changing the subject. You’re just chicken. Are we going to have this party or not? We need to invite twelve people so that we have three games going with four players at each board.”

  “I can picture two or three girls having a sleepover and playing this,” I said, “but six guys and six girls in high school? Actually sitting down to The Game of Romance?”

  “Yes. This is life, Kelly, and life depends on how you play it.”

  “You sound like pillow embroidery.”

  “We’re going to play Romance and we’re going to win. I get Angie; you get Will.”

  “Faith, what if nobody wants to come? What if they come and somehow I give everybody food poisoning? What if they laugh so hard at the whole idea of my game that they go into convulsions and can’t play? What if my mother hangs around and acts weird?”

  “Kelly!” shrieked Faith. “I myself with my calligraphy pens added that beautiful lace around the edges of your previously boring heart paths. I then paid for the color copies of your game. I glued the copies to heavy cardboard that I bought and cut out. I donated all my old Parcheesi game pieces and painted them in romantic nail polish colors for the playing pieces. I talked your very own mother into donating heart and violet gifts of your father’s still in their packaging for door prizes. We are going to invite six boys and two of them will be Will and Angie and we are going to play Romance and that is that!”

  So I picked up my phone and telephoned Angie first because I had no stake in the outcome of that particular call.

  “Sweet,” said Angie. “You are so clever, Kelly. Nobody else would be able to design a board game. What’s the game about?”

  “Secret.”

  “And I get to be at the unveiling? What time? You want me to bring something?”

  “Just yourself.” I left out the part about the good attitude, which Angie already had, and the sharp pencils, which I figured as hostess I probably should throw in myself.

  All the calls went like that.

  Megan was delighted, although irked that she wasn’t in on the planning. “I’ll bring paper plates and napkins,” she said. “You might go for plain cheap white, because you think thrift is a virtue. I’ll get beautiful romantic stuff.”

  “Don’t tell anybody what the board game theme is, though. It’s a secret.”

  “Oh, good,” said Megan. “Because secrets are romantic too.”

  Kevin Carlson was astonished and pleased. “Me?” he said. “Sweet. What’ll I bring?”

  I had not expected people to offer to bring things.

  “How about soda?” he said. “My family pretty much buys every kind of soda there is—no caffeine, high caffeine, no calories, low calories, classic original, whatever—I’ll bring a cooler full.”

  Katy Ramseur was beside herself. “I’ll bring dessert,” she said. “I love to bake. I love to show off my baking.”

  Julie Tanner couldn’t wait and was disappointed to find that somebody else had already offered to bring soda. She too would bring dessert.

  Mario was confused but willing. He said he’d bring all the soft drinks. I said that was taken and he explained you could never have too much.

  Honey under other circumstances would be low on my list, but we were limiting guests to the sociology class. Honey was actually polite and offered to supply chips and dips.

  Donny McVeigh could not get over the idea that I was including him and was I serious? Di
d I really want him? Yes, Donny, I really want you. Sweet, he said.

  “That’s everybody but Will,” I told Faith.

  “Even with him, you’re short one boy.”

  “Parker’s coming,” I said. “He knows about the game, he thinks it’s cool, and he can be a host and take some of the pressure off in case I fly into a tailspin from public humiliation.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to call Will.

  “Kelly,” said Faith. “Calling Will is the point.”

  “Leave the room,” I said to her. “Go downstairs. Pray.”

  I called Will.

  “Oh, hi, Kelly,” said Will. “I was just thinking of you.”

  “You were?”

  “Yeah. I’m getting started on my sociology project. Have you given much thought to yours? I’ve been so busy with basketball, I haven’t had time to eat any four-hamburger snacks, let alone make phone calls, but how are you, anyway?”

  “I’m pretty good,” I said. My heart expanded, filling my body, taking up so much space, I felt like a helium balloon pulling on its tether. He would have made time for me if it weren’t for games and coaches and practice! In truth, that was pretty lame, because two times a day, five days a week, we were in class together and a person could certainly say more than Hi, how are you? during those occasions, but I let it go. “Actually, Will, that’s why I’m calling. I need special help on my project because it’s a board game and I need to have four players at three different boards so that I can test it for flaws. Could you come over Saturday night? I checked to be sure—there’s no game scheduled.”

  “I’m glad you’re including me. Yes, I’ll come. What’s the game about?”

  “Secret. What’s your project about?”

  “Not secret. I’m a Cummington native, the only one I know of. I’m going to find out what percent of the town was born here, and of the ones who moved here, I’m breaking it down into one year, five years, twenty years ago categories. I thought I’d also ask who plans to move on and when, so we can see how transient a town we are. Statistically correct phone poll. What do you think?”

  “I think,” I said, my mind racing forward at the speed of romantic light, “that we could do a second party for that. We’ll ask everybody playing my game to show up another night and bring their cell phones and we’ll have a poll party for you.”

  “Awesome!” said Will, laughing. “That would be so great. Because I don’t really like the idea of calling strangers. Actually, I hate being on the phone. Maybe I can delegate phone powers and I’ll just collate the answers.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I said.

  “I’m on my way to the library,” said Will, “because I need to look up any statistics they might have in annual reports and abstracts. Want to come?”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, I want to come.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Faith thought this was approximately a perfect conversation. I agreed.

  Faith went home.

  I was so buoyed up, I couldn’t even stay in the house but went outside to sit on the curb and wait. The weather was raw and nasty but I had inner heat from excitement.

  Parker suddenly appeared next to me. “Mom is hyperventilating,” he said. “I can’t stand it. I’m going to freeze out here with you instead.” He sat down next to me.

  “Do you think there’s more to it than we know? Do you think Mom has some facts and some details that we don’t know about and we don’t want to know about either?” I said.

  “Like a girlfriend? Like a long-term long-distance affair with this Ellen?”

  “You wouldn’t have said that so fast if you weren’t wondering too.”

  “I think it’s only Mom who’s wondering,” said Parker. “I don’t believe Dad has done anything like that.”

  The cold came up into my body from the stone curbing.

  Parker amended his statement. “I don’t want to believe it, anyway.”

  “Did you tell Mom that’s her same old ostrich-in-the-sand posture?”

  “Sand is pretty nice, you know. Think Florida. A person gets a tan, does a little swimming, listens to the radio, checks out the girls. There’s plenty to be said in favor of sand.”

  Will’s car turned into Fox Meadow, past the silly development sign with its gold-leaf foxes playing in high green grass, past the first three houses, which were raised ranches, and into our section of houses, which were phony Colonials.

  How tall Will was in that driver’s seat. His head was pressed right up against the roof. We live just before the traffic turnaround, so Will passed me, turned around, came back and pulled up with the passenger door facing me. Parker opened the door for me.

  “You coming as chaperone?” asked Will cheerfully.

  “Nope. Just butler. Opening and closing the doors.” Park went back in the house, and I knew that he was going to try to brace Mom and I loved him for it.

  “I’m actually incredibly hungry,” said Will. “I think it was the length of the drive over here. So before we go to the library, let’s get hamburgers.”

  We went to the drive-in window and I had a small fries. I like to nibble, working my way up a single stick.

  Will pulled into a parking space and ate pretty heavily until the edge was taken off his starvation. Then he turned sideways in the driver’s seat, leaned back against his door and said, “So what’s the board game?”

  Right away I knew that front seats of large SUVs did not qualify as romantic. We were very far apart. We both still had our shoulder straps and seat belts on. Between us were enough cup holders for a basketball team who drank only supersize.

  I leaned toward him for a little more intimacy. The strap held me when I’d gone halfway.

  Will leaned toward me. His strap held him.

  I arched beyond the grip of my shoulder strap.

  He arched beyond the grip of his.

  “It’s good you’re so tall,” I said to him. “I think we may actually meet in the middle.”

  “It isn’t really the middle,” said Will. “I’m way over into your territory.”

  “One more inch,” I said to him.

  He covered the final inch. Our lips met. The kiss was salty and ketchupy and perfect. We kissed away the salt and kissed again and then Will straightened up, and when I started to straighten, the seat belt caught and hauled me back, like a chaperone displeased with the activity it saw.

  “We’ll get back to that,” said Will. “It’s better in installments. So you’re not going to tell me about the board game. How’s your family? Get that out of the way and we’ll have our second installment.”

  “You’re kind of pushy,” I said.

  “All that basketball. Working on my offense. Come on, spill it.”

  I spilled it. Will was a better listener than Faith, who gets so involved that it doubles my anxiety. Better than Megan, who accuses me of things such as needing a guide dog. “It’s a flimsy marriage after all,” I said finally. “When I thought it was all romance.”

  “I think it’s very romantic. Your father accepts his wife’s insecurity as part of life and he’s been nice about it year in and year out. That’s true love. He’s willing to sacrifice financially, and emotionally he’s willing to spend lots of time. I suppose maybe she could use counseling, but they used romance instead, and it worked.”

  “Till now.”

  “I bet when they’re at dinner with Ellen, your dad will go out of his way to be terrific with your mother, and keep his arm around her, and open doors for her, and tell great stories about how great she is.”

  “But I don’t want a wimpy mother.”

  “At least you’ve got a strong father.”

  “And what if my mother’s view is right? What if he’s had an affair and she has reason to be afraid and the flowers are all some kind of cheap bribe?”

  Will had some fries. “You’re making that up. You don’t have a bit of evidence. You’re just try
ing to justify your mother’s behavior. If I were you, I’d rather believe my mother was insecure and dumb than believe my father was sleeping around.” Will fed me a fry and I ate it down to his fingers, and his fingers wandered over my face and held my cheek. “So what’s happening at the party?” he said.

  I was glad to drop the problem of my parents, but not glad when his hands dropped back to his food. “We’ll play the game and see if it works and if it’s fun,” I said, “or if I need more stumbling blocks or more chances to accomplish things or more squares because it goes too fast, or if it’s better with two players at a board instead of four. So people have to be critical, or I won’t learn anything, but they can’t be very critical or I’ll cry.”

  Will laughed. “I’ll stay in the noncritical camp. That looks safer. You know, Kelly, you’re a mystery to me.”

  “A mystery? I’m an open book. I’ve told you things I haven’t even told Faith.”

  “Really?” Will was immensely pleased. He savored that. “You’ve told me things your best girlfriend doesn’t know? I thought girls shared everything. That’s one of the things that make me so nervous when I face packs of girls.”

  I could not imagine Will nervous about anything. “Kelly Williams, woman of mystery,” I said. “It has a nice ring. But maybe we should head for the library, because it sounded as if you had a lot for us to work on.”

  “I don’t have any interest in working on anything at the library and I never did,” said Will. “It was a ruse to get you in the car with me.”

  Boys.

  They are all men of mystery.

  CHAPTER

  15

  “Mother? How could you? After I swore you to secrecy, you went and told the whole town?”

  “It wasn’t the whole town. It was just Katy, Kevin, Donny and Julie. I ran into them at the mall.”

  “I can’t stand it. They’ll laugh at me. They’ll tease me. They won’t even come now! They’ll be embarrassed to play a game of romance. I’ll be embarrassed. I’ll die.”

  Mom thought that was a bit dramatic. She made a face at me and drove slower. The more she talks, the slower she drives, so that if she’s really involved in her story, you’re crawling along, an accident waiting to happen.