“And dancing tigers are?”
Good point.
“We can build an actual-size Trojan horse out of cardboard,” Ajay tells me. “Then we’ll add a horn to turn him into a unicorn.”
“You can name him Cooper,” says Asha. “You’ll be your own school’s mascot.”
Ajay grins. “Exactly!”
“The actual Trojan horse carried about forty soldiers,” I point out.
I know my Greek mythology. I’ve got the comic book.
“Maybe not actual actual size, then,” says Ajay. “But still really big.”
“As long as it isn’t a cow,” I say. “I don’t want to be another cow.”
Asha stands to clear her dishes from the table. “You just don’t want to be another cow’s rear end.”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Will you help?” Ajay asks his sister.
“Let me get this straight,” says Asha. “You want to build a giant, cardboard, fantasy creature loosely based on Greek mythology?”
Ajay nods. “That’s right.”
“Do you really think you’ll be able to keep me away from that?”
Basically, Ajay has the best big sister in the world.
“But first,” Mrs. Kalli announces, “Ajay and Danny have to go to school.”
“What about you?” I ask Asha, who, I just noticed, is wearing a pair of plaid pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt that says FREAKY FRIDAY: THE MUSICAL.
“High school is closed today and tomorrow,” Asha informs me. “Our teachers have some kind of in-service, so I get a two-day vacation.”
“I hope your vacation plans include homework, groceries, and housecleaning,” Mrs. Kalli tells Asha. “And in case you’re wondering, they do.”
Ajay gives his sister a big grin. “Enjoy your vacation.”
Asha rolls her eyes, grabs her cereal box off the table, and then heads for the kitchen. She stops before leaving the dining room. “Hey,” she says. “Check this out.” She reads aloud from the back of the box. “Every time you buy these hearty and delicious flakes and grains, we donate to the Natalie Flores Griffin Foundation, making your breakfast even sweeter!” Asha turns to Ajay and me. “Do either of you ever hear from Natalie Flores Griffin?”
Believe it or not, Natalie Flores Griffin—actress, singer, model, and apparently the founder of the Natalie Flores Griffin Foundation—is from Cuper Cove. As a matter of fact, Natalie and I were best friends from kindergarten through fourth grade. But the summer before fifth grade, she and her parents visited a large California amusement park where a tall, talking rodent invited Natalie to step on stage and sing a song. There was a Hollywood agent in the crowd. The rest is history.
“She and I used to email each other for a while,” I say. “But then she stopped answering back.”
“I heard that her parents divorced.” In addition to being a theater geek, Asha’s obsessed with Hollywood news, celebrity gossip, and the movies in general.
I shrug. “I think she just got really busy.”
“And really famous,” says Ajay, who knows I’ve had a crush on Natalie since forever.
“Maybe that too,” I admit.
“But now,” says Ajay, “Danny has to settle for being president of the Natalie Flores Griffin Fan Club.”
“There’s a fan club?” says Asha.
“There is no fan club,” I tell her.
Ajay stands and squeezes past Asha to bring his dishes to the sink. “Danny has seen every movie Natalie Flores Griffin ever made,” he tells his sister. “I think that counts as a fan club.”
“Why don’t you call her?” Asha asks me.
“Because she’s Natalie Flores Griffin,” Ajay calls from the kitchen.
“Wasn’t she always Natalie Flores Griffin?” Asha says matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” says Ajay, “but now she’s NATALIE FLORES GRIFFIN!”
“Well,” says Asha, “that clears things up.”
I help carry the remaining plates from the dining room to the sink, where Mrs. Kalli offers me a smile. “Natalie might be glad to hear from you, Danny.”
“I don’t know,” I say reluctantly.
“Maybe she and her family would like to visit for the Halloween festival.”
“Mom,” says Ajay, “this isn’t the Pulikali party in Kerala.”
“It’s true,” Mrs. Kalli says a little sadly. “They really know how to throw a party in Kerala.”
Asha shoots me a grin. “Maybe Natalie would like to go with you to the Cuper Cove Middle School Halloween festival dance.”
Ajay grabs a towel and starts to dry. “That’s not going to happen.”
“It could be like a date,” says Asha.
“It would not be like a date,” I tell her.
“As if you wouldn’t love to go on a date with Natalie Flores Griffin,” Ajay says to me.
“Is that true?” asks Asha.
“Going on a date with Natalie Flores Griffin would not be the worst thing that ever happened to me,” I admit.
“So what are you waiting for?” she asks.
Ajay tosses a dish towel at his sister. “How exactly is Danny supposed to ask Natalie Flores Griffin out on a date?”
Asha catches the towel in midair, turns quickly, and whips it at me. “There’s this new invention,” she says. “It’s called the telephone.”
I duck but not before the towel smacks me in the face. “I don’t have Natalie’s phone number.”
“Then send her an email,” Asha says.
“She probably has a new address by now.”
“Or she’s got the same email address,” says Asha, “and she wonders why the boy she used to know back in Cuper Cove stopped being her friend.”
“I didn’t stop being her friend.”
“You probably wouldn’t be a very good date either,” Asha adds.
Mrs. Kalli snatches the dish towel away from me before I can throw it at Asha. “Danny would be a very good date,” she says.
Asha puts her hands on her hips. “Prove it.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?” I pull out my phone and pretend to type a quick message. “Hi, Natalie! Sorry we haven’t talked since fourth grade. Want to be my date for the Cuper Cove Halloween festival dance? Trick-or-treat from—”
Before I can finish my sentence, Asha grabs the phone from my hand and races away.
“Hey!” I shout.
Asha swipes at my screen while she runs back into the dining room. “Hi, Natalie!” she says. “Trick-or-treat!”
“Give that back!” I holler.
Asha laughs. “Want to be my date for the Cuper Cove Halloween festival dance? Hope all’s well!”
“Asha,” Mrs. Kalli says sharply. “Give Danny his phone.”
Asha stops with the table between us. She continues to type. “Happy Halloween from your old friend Danny Constantino!”
“Don’t worry,” Ajay calls from the kitchen. “She doesn’t have Natalie’s email.”
Asha looks up from the phone and grins. “I see Natalie at Natalie the Griffin dot com in your address book. Is that—”
“Yes!” I say. “I mean, no! Don’t!”
Asha laughs. “Relax,” she tells me. “I didn’t hit send.”
I sigh. “Thank you.”
Asha pokes at my screen. “Now I hit send.”
My mouth drops open.
“Danny,” says Asha, “what’s the worst thing that can happen?”
Before I can reply, the low rumble of a diesel engine thrums in the distance. Ajay, backpack already over his shoulders, steps into the dining room. “That’s our bus,” he says to me. “We’ve got to go.”
“But—”
He cuts me off. “Relax,” he says. “None of this matters. Movi
e stars do not go to Halloween dances with seventh graders.”
“Natalie’s a seventh grader too,” Asha reminds her brother.
“She lives in California.” Ajay starts toward the door. “She’s not coming to Cuper Cove.”
“Natalie Flores Griffin can probably fly all over the world anytime she wants,” Asha tells him. “Plus, I bet she still has family nearby.”
“She would be a very lucky girl to go to the dance with Danny Constantino,” Mrs. Kalli offers from the kitchen doorway.
Asha grins. “We’ll see about that.”
“No,” says Ajay. “We won’t.”
“Danny,” says Asha as her brother drags me toward the door, “you were willing to be a dancing tiger. Don’t you think a date with Natalie Flores Griffin would be a better way to spend Halloween?”
Dancing tigers versus middle school dance?
Bring on the dancing tigers.
Chapter 3
rom-com for short
“Your sister still has my phone,” I tell Ajay once we take our seats on the school bus.
“She’ll give it back later,” he promises.
“I wish she hadn’t done that.”
He shrugs. “Welcome to my world.”
I stare out the window while Mr. Beamon, who’s wearing a gray-and-white ski hat patterned to look like a Death Star from Star Wars, drops the bus into gear. “Hold on tight!” he yells. “Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that’d end our trip real quick.”
“We’ll be safe enough once we make the jump to hyperspace,” Ajay tells me as we pull away from the curb.
“If that were true,” I tell him, “there would be one Star Wars movie, and it would only be fifteen minutes long.”
Ajay nods. “Good point.”
Outside, most of the houses and businesses we pass are already decorated for Halloween. In addition to a regular selection of skeletons, ghosts, witches, and carved pumpkins, a hundred different sidewalk scarecrows pose and leap and hang from every imaginable spot. Sidewalk scarecrows have always been a big part of the Cuper Cove Halloween festival. This year, quite a few of them hold signs that say MISSY FOR MAYOR.
More typically, for Cuper Cove anyway, a dozen hay-stuffed football players jog around the high school in full uniform. Downtown, a leather-jacketed scarecrow rock and roll band called Hay Ho Let’s Go stands with guitars and a drum kit in front of Ramone’s Barber Shop. At Saint Abigail’s Church, where an entire sidewalk scarecrow wedding party marches up the front steps, we stop for Zoey Roy, who is in seventh grade with Ajay and me.
Zoey, a small, dark-haired white girl, moved to Cuper Cove at the beginning of last year. She wears cat’s-eye glasses, black jeans, and anime T-shirts. Today, her shirt says GET IN THE ROBOT SHINJI. At lunch, Zoey sits at our cafeteria table and pours craft glue on her hands. She likes to let it dry and then peel it off for fun. Aboard the bus, she stops to stare at Mr. Beamon’s hat. “That’s no moon,” says Zoey. “That’s a space station.”
Our bus driver taps his head. “It’s too big to be a space station.”
Zoey offers him a quick smile, then makes her way up the aisle to an empty seat in front of Ajay and me.
“I didn’t know you like Star Wars,” Ajay tells Zoey.
She gives a noncommittal shrug. “Star Wars is okay. Rom-coms are better.”
From the look on Ajay’s face, it’s clear that he is clueless. So am I.
“Rom-com?” I ask.
“Romantic comedies,” Zoey explains. “They’re my favorite kind of movie. I watch them with my mom. She loves my dad, but she’d trade him in for Mr. Darcy faster than Inigo Montoya can say Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
I am still clueless.
“Who is Mr. Darcy?” says Ajay.
“Who is Inigo Montoya?” I ask.
“That’s a lot to say if you really came face-to-face with the man who killed your father,” Ajay points out.
Zoey shakes her head. “You guys are going to die alone.”
Ajay shoots her a grin. “Inconceivable!”
For some reason, this makes Zoey laugh.
“Remember when Luke kissed Leia in The Empire Strikes Back?” Ajay asks. “Thinking about it now makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth.”
The bus goes over a bump that nearly bounces us out of our seats. Zoey shakes her head. “The Empire Strikes Back is not a romantic comedy.”
“That might be why we like it,” Ajay tells her.
“I bet you’d like Romancing the Stone,” says Zoey. “Or Splash. Groundhog Day is a weird one, but it’s still a rom-com. Love, Simon is surprisingly traditional. So is To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is always wonderful and Sleepless in Seattle, of course.”
“Of course,” I say, even though I have no idea what’s keeping people awake in Seattle.
“And did I mention Shrek?” Zoey asks. “Everybody loves Shrek.”
“Shrek is a romance?” says Ajay.
Zoey’s eyes go wide. “Do you even have a heart?”
“We’re in seventh grade,” says Ajay. “We don’t do romance.” He nudges an elbow into my ribs. “Unless it involves Natalie Flores Griffin.”
“Shut up,” I tell him.
Zoey turns all the way around to face us. “I loved Natalie Flores Griffin in that movie with Bruce Willis.”
Ajay shrugs. “I don’t know that one.”
“The Wall and the Flower,” I say, because Ajay wasn’t kidding. I really have seen every Natalie Flores Griffin movie ever made.
“That was her first big role,” says Zoey. “Bruce Willis plays The Wall, a washed-up professional wrestler, and Natalie Flores Griffin is a little girl who is The Wall’s biggest fan. But then you learn that Natalie is actually Bruce Willis’s long-lost daughter, and she’s trying to get her parents back together. At the end, she’s the flower girl at her own parents’ wedding. Total rom-com, and it made Natalie Flores Griffin a star. Did you know that she’s from around here?”
“Oh,” says Ajay. “Is she really?”
“What part of ‘shut up’ do you not understand?” I ask him.
“How’s this for a rom-com?” Ajay says to Zoey. “Danny just asked Natalie Flores Griffin to be his date for the Halloween festival dance.”
“How did you do that?” Zoey asks me.
“He sent her an email,” says Ajay.
Zoey tilts her head and narrows her eyes. “You sent an email?”
“Actually,” says Ajay, “my sister’s the one that sent the email, but she sent it from Danny’s phone.”
“That’s it?” Zoey asks.
I shrug.
“You need more than an email before you’ve got a rom-com,” Zoey says.
“Sorry,” I say, even though I have no idea what I’m apologizing for.
“The Halloween dance could work,” she offers, “but it’s probably a little too on the nose. Plus, you’re missing a ‘meet-cute.’ You’ve got to have a meet-cute.”
I understand all of Zoey’s words, but her sentences are total gibberish. I look to Ajay for help. He’s got nothing.
“What is a meet-cute?” I finally ask.
“Here’s how your basic romantic comedy works,” Zoey explains. “You open by describing the main characters’ problems. Maybe there’s a girl trying to choose a career instead of love, but nobody takes her seriously at work. Maybe there’s a boy who’s depressed because his fiancée left him at the altar to run away with the circus. Not only that, the old girlfriend took the dog.”
“This is a comedy?” says Ajay.
“Next comes the meet-cute,” Zoey continues. “That’s when the couple who will eventually fall in love meet for the very first
time. It’s usually something clumsy and adorable, but for some reason, they don’t get together. But we all know that they should.”
“Danny and Natalie met in preschool,” says Ajay. “In kindergarten she grabbed his juice box and squeezed so hard that fruit punch shot up his nose and squirted out of his eyes. It looked like he was crying blood.”
“That was not cute,” I say.
“It was more like a horror movie,” Ajay recalls.
“So you’ve known each other since preschool,” Zoey says. “We could work with that. But then you have to add a bunch of complications that force your characters to make one bad decision after another. Do you have any complications?”
“My mom is running for mayor,” I remind her.
“Do you want her to win?”
“Not really,” I admit.
Zoey nods thoughtfully. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Exactly when do the funny parts kick in?” asks Ajay.
Zoey ignores him. “Eventually the complications have to lead everybody to some point of no return. It’s got to be a real dark night of the soul that will force people to choose between two competing goals. Usually love wins out. But not always.”
“This sounds like a total laugh riot,” says Ajay.
Mr. Beamon steers the bus through a hard left turn. Zoey nearly tips off her seat, but she regains her balance. “In the end,” she tells us, “everybody has to sacrifice something. Everybody loses, but it is a joyful defeat because somehow there will be an opportunity to find true love.”
“My sister watches these kinds of movies,” says Ajay. “Now I understand why she’s always crying at the end.”
“But it’s totally worth it,” says Zoey.
“Because of all the comedy?” says Ajay.
Zoey reaches across the back of her seat and gives Ajay a poke. “Because of all the love.”
“Hey!” Ajay rubs his chest. “You’re stronger than you look!”
Mr. Beamon taps on the brakes, and we slow to a stop in front of Cuper Cove Middle School. Everybody stands to gather books and bags and then heads for the door. “Do all those movies really work the same way?” I ask.
Zoey lifts a rainbow-colored My Pretty Pony backpack over her shoulder. “That’s the basic formula.”
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