On my way to the kitchen to grab the cookies and Sprite, the front door opens and Sloane and Abby burst in.
“Mia, have you looked at the field hockey picture I texted you? Please tell me you did.” Sloane loses herself to a fit of laughter. “Oh my God, there’s this picture of Katherine Veena where she’s bodychecking this girl, midjump. Her mouth guard is falling out, and the look on her face—” She can’t finish the sentence without doubling over in laughter. I can’t help but smile as she pinches the bridge of her nose, breathless.
“I haven’t checked my phone since I started getting ready for movie night.”
“Sloane, you’re not supposed to send yearbook photos to your friends,” Grace says. Though she admits, “However, it was very funny.”
Abby hangs her coat in the closet by the door while Sloane tosses her shredded jean jacket over by Grace’s shoes before pulling the scrunchie out of her hair so that her braided weave can tumble down from the top of her head.
“Are the purple strands a new addition?” I ask as we all find our usual spots.
I sit in the corner between the couch and the chaise extension. Abby sits between Grace and me, and Sloane lies down on her stomach in front of all of us with her feet tucked under the cushion that we use as a table.
“They are.” Sloane flashes me a smile over her shoulder as she rolls around until her blanket hugs her like a burrito.
“So, what are we watching?” Abby asks through a mouthful of popcorn. She leans forward to look at the cookies and frowns.
I open Netflix and cue up the Ted Bundy documentary.
“I’ve been dying to watch this,” I tell them, grabbing the car cookie.
“I don’t want to watch this,” Abby says, setting down the popcorn. She zips her Sherpa jacket and holds it tighter around her.
“Yeah, this is going to give me nightmares,” Sloane agrees, rolling over to face us.
“Come on. This is interesting.” I look from Sloane to Abby and see that they’re not convinced. I look to Grace last, waiting for her to stand by me, but she just shrugs her shoulders.
“Why can’t we watch something fun? I don’t want to watch a movie about someone who killed a bunch of girls,” Abby says.
“It’s my weekend to pick, and I think this is going to be really good,” I say, even though I can tell it’s a losing battle.
“Movie night rules mandate that if no one wants to watch the chosen movie, we can vote on a new one,” Sloane says, freeing an arm to hold out her hand for the Roku remote.
I relinquish control, knowing I can’t beat all three of them, and watch the TV as she immediately browses the movie section and clicks on the romance genre. How predictable.
“The Holiday is back on Netflix. We could watch that,” Grace notices.
“I’m fine with that,” Sloane says, biting off a piece of a noose cookie.
“Me too,” Abby agrees.
I roll my eyes and pull the plate of cookies into my lap. If they don’t want to watch the documentary, then they don’t deserve the documentary-theme cookies.
Instead of going upstairs to get my laptop, I open my phone and go into my Google Docs, where I was working on my English essay. I start clicking on the links to my sources until I find exactly where I left off. At least I’ll have something to do while my friends hijack my movie night.
“Why are we watching a Christmas movie when Halloween hasn’t even happened yet?” I ask.
“It’s not a Christmas movie. It’s a romantic comedy,” Abby says through the collar of her jacket pulled up to the bridge of her nose.
“Do you know how ridiculous this is?” I ask. “They meet ‘randomly’ through some website where they can stay at each other’s houses. They don’t know each other. One of them could be a thief or a murderer, and the producer is just welcoming this woman into her home to steal her stuff and lie about her departure date.”
“Shhh,” Sloane hisses.
“What’s with you and murder this weekend?” Grace asks.
“Yeah. Anything you want to confess?” Sloane asks, winking at me.
I ignore her and stare down at the open article on biographical literary criticism on my phone.
Just when I allow myself to think the night can’t get any worse, Sam saunters into the den with the stemless wineglass that’s been glued to her hand for the past few weeks.
“Aww, you guys still do your little movie nights?” she asks, sitting on the armrest of the couch. Even though Sam has been going between living at her apartment and spending the night here sometimes, this is the first weekend she’s stayed over during our movie night.
No one answers her, even when she says, “Oh, I know this movie. It’s the one where the girls trade places and they flourish in each other’s lives.”
I laugh, thinking about the similarities between pre-house-swap Amanda Woods and Sam.
“What?” Sam asks.
“Nothing,” I say, not looking up at her.
“Hey, did Mia tell you guys about how she’s playing bachelorette?” Sam asks.
Sloane immediately hits pause, and all three of my friends turn to look up at Sam.
“Go mind your business,” I tell her before she can say more.
“My wedding is my business,” she says, leaning down to poke me between my eyebrows. “She needs a date to my wedding. As of today, her groomsman is no longer attending and she’s desperately in need of a suitor. I thought it would be simple, but this morning she practically threw a tantrum about it, and I don’t know, maybe you guys can help her out?”
“Literally, leave,” I say, staring into her unblinking eyes.
“Literally, grow up,” she says, mocking me. “Just thought I would help you along in your quest,” she lies, standing up. “Enjoy your movie.”
Once Sam is out of the room, Sloane rolls all the way over with her arms still tucked inside the burrito. “Well, that explains it.”
“Explains what?” I ask.
“Why you’re so snarky today,” Grace answers.
“I am not snarky.”
Sloane looks to Abby, who looks to Grace. They all share a glance, and I can tell they’re doing that thing where they talk with their eyes instead of their words. It’s something I’ve never been able to understand, and I hate when they do it in front of me.
“Guys!”
“So, you need a date to the wedding. It’s not a big deal,” Grace says.
“That’s easy for you to say. All of you already have dates. I don’t even know who to ask.”
“Why can’t you go alone?” Sloane asks, wiggling out of her burrito and reaching for a cup of Sprite.
“Because Sam said all of her pictures will be uneven, and Brooke convinced her that I could find a date.”
“That nasty Brooke, believing in you, thinking you’re a hot commodity,” Abby kids, though her sarcasm doesn’t help.
“Brooke’s date is an outline in all of Sam’s planners. She dates someone new nearly every week. Of course she thinks it’s easy to find someone last-minute,” I explain, feeling frustrated.
“Well, even if Brooke doesn’t count, we still believe in you—” Grace starts saying.
“Please don’t say that,” I interrupt. “I don’t want you guys to have to believe. It just goes to show that no one thinks this is going to be easy, and that shows it’s not all in my head.”
I feel a lump rise in my throat as my mind flashes back to the spring fling last year. We all went bowling after the dance, and at one point I was the only one sitting at our lane. Sloane and her date were playing the arcade game where you ride a motorcycle, and she was sitting on the back with her arms wrapped around his chest, in complete bliss. Abby and Victor had snuck off to “use the restroom.” And Grace and Shelby were still together back then. They’d taken an Uber back to Shelby’s house, because her parents had been out of town for the weekend. I was sitting alone, dateless, feeling like a sack of weak genes, reminding myself to smile an
d give a thumbs-up when Abby winked at me as she walked away arm in arm with Victor, and reminding myself to wave at Sloane when she looked for me over her shoulder at the motorcycle.
The feeling comes to me again as I imagine all my friends slow dancing at Sam’s wedding. Sam and Geoffrey at the center of it all, my parents dancing somewhere close to them. And me, sitting at a table next to Jasper while he plays his Nintendo and mumbles pickup lines to me.
“We don’t think it’s going to be hard for you to find a date! Why don’t we just help you figure out where to start?” Abby asks, her voice soft as she wraps her arm around my shoulder.
“We didn’t mean to make you feel insecure,” Sloane says apologetically.
“Sam meant to,” I mumble against Abby’s shoulder.
No one objects, and I sigh at the realization that it’s possible that Sam wants me to fail so that I’ll have to pose in all the pictures with Geoffrey’s little brother. Instead of her pictures being uneven, they would be comedic, something she can hold over my head for the rest of my life. Then again, comedy isn’t really her thing.
“Why don’t you ask someone from school?” Sloane asks.
“I don’t know. I started making a list, but the more I think about it, the weirder I feel about asking them,” I admit.
“Let’s see the list before you write anyone off,” Grace says, holding out her hand.
I quickly run up to my room and grab the piece of paper I wrote the names on. Back downstairs, I drop the list into Grace’s lap before sitting between Sloane and Abby where they’ve formed a tight circle. They all lean their heads together and read the list.
“No,” Abby murmurs.
“Weirdo,” Sloane says, pointing to a name.
“Douchebag,” Grace whispers.
“Smells bad,” Sloane says.
“Not photogenic,” Abby adds.
I cover my face with my hands.
“What about Ben Vasquez?” I ask.
“No,” all three of them say in unison.
“I veto. You’re not spending your sister’s wedding talking about equations with Ben Vasquez, who is a butthead, by the way,” Abby decides.
“He’s not a butthead,” I say, laughing. My heart starts fluttering just thinking about him. “Also, who uses that word anymore?” Abby sticks her tongue out at me. I picture Ben and me holding the math team trophy from last year’s championship, how our hands were so close, they nearly touched.
Ben Vasquez is the math team captain, a soccer star, and occasional drama club member—when the semester play is one he wants to be in. Generations of his family have attended Vanderbilt University, and he plans to be no exception.
“If Ben goes with me to my sister’s wedding, maybe he’ll have a good enough time that we’ll hang out more and get to know each other and… well…”
I imagine what it would be like to have his arms around my waist and to kiss his pillowy lips.
“Just, no,” Abby cuts in, drawing me out of my blissful Ben bubble. “Next.”
“If not him, then maybe Joey Delmar?” I ask.
“That won’t work,” Sloane says. “There are murmurings in yearbook about him and Cynthia. I think they hooked up at a party a couple of weeks ago and they low-key want to do it again.”
“I think I put Paul Springfield on the list,” I say, grasping at straws.
“The slowest swimmer on the team.” Abby laughs.
Sloane takes the paper out of Grace’s hands and tears it down the middle.
“Hey.” I reach for the papers, but Sloane tears them again and again.
“Maybe the answer isn’t you asking someone from your classes or a club. Maybe you have to meet someone new,” Sloane says.
“Preferably someone hot,” Abby adds.
“I’ve got it.” Grace stands up like she’s about to give a speech. “You should have a meet-cute.” She reaches for the remote and cues up Hitch. She starts fast-forwarding and presses play at the scene where Hitch swoops in to save Sara from some random man flirting with her at a club.
I roll my eyes.
“No, Mia, look. If you bump into someone and have a moment with them, it gives you the perfect opportunity to start a conversation and see where it goes,” Grace explains.
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of a meet-cute? If it’s planned and on purpose?” I ask, feeling ridiculous that we’re even entertaining this idea.
“Well, maybe you just need to give yours a little nudge. Like you see a cute guy walking down the hallway, and you accidentally drop your notebook right in front of him—”
“Or you stumble into his arms and he catches you,” Abby cuts in, wrapping her arms around herself theatrically.
“Or maybe you spot a hottie who dropped something and you stop to help him,” Sloane suggests.
“Either way,” Grace continues, “you see a guy, you make an excuse for you two to interact, and whatever happens, happens.”
“That kind of stuff doesn’t just… happen.…” As I say it, watching the meet-cute unfold on the TV, I remember Harold bumping into Gladys this morning, the way he hoisted her out of the pool, and how from that moment forward she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Okay, so—let’s say I decide to do this meet-cute thing. Where do I even find the guy? If none of the ones I suggested work?”
“You find someone new in someplace new,” Grace says.
“How about you can’t meet them at school. You have to meet them out in the world. It’ll be more interesting that way,” Sloane suggests, carefully dropping the torn-up pieces of my list into the now empty bowl of popcorn.
“No way. I don’t want to bump into complete strangers. Any one of them could be in a relationship. And what’s worse is that none of us would know anything about them. They could be a weirdo or a creep or something.”
I can picture it now, me dropping my purse on the sidewalk downtown in front of some gorgeous guy. We both bend down to pick it up. Next thing I know, he suggests we stop into a café to get coffee and he leads me down an alley, and I’d never be seen again. Or we’re hanging out at the Art Institute and his girlfriend shows up to throw a slushy in my face.
“We’ll pick the targets,” Abby suggests.
“We’re calling them targets now?”
“We each will pick someone that we know, that you don’t know. We’ll go through social media and figure out the best way for you to ‘bump into’ them, and then bam—you have a meet-cute with someone who isn’t a complete stranger—”
“And they aren’t a boring weirdo,” Sloane adds.
We fall silent.
“Mia, you’re running out of reasons to say no,” Grace says, already smiling at the victory.
I admit that she’s right. I can’t tell if I feel relief or if my stress has just been reallocated to their crazy plot. But even a guy I’ve never met has to be better than Jasper.
CHAPTER FOUR
I count down the seconds before lunch. Even though Mrs. Eldredge is still lecturing, I pack up my notes and slip my pen back into its case. The second the bell rings, I hop out of my desk and file into the hallway just in time to catch Grace leaving her algebra class.
“So, what have you guys come up with?” I ask as we turn down the hall toward our lockers.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you,” Grace says sheepishly, stopping to turn her locker combination. “Plus, we’ve only had one night to come up with names, Mia.”
“If I guess who you put on your list, will you tell me if I’m right?”
Grace laughs to herself, which she knows frustrates me. She tells me to hold on a second, so I step a few lockers down and get my lunch before catching up with her to head to the cafeteria.
“Have you guys picked anyone yet?” I ask as I sit down, and then I see Sloane staring at a half-full piece of paper. She has a stick-figure diagram that I can barely make out, except for the hearts floating between two poorly drawn heads.
“I’m still working out the logistics of mine,” Abby answers without looking up from her notebook. She’s created a folder fort around herself so that no one can see what she’s writing.
“Keep yours hidden,” I hiss at Sloane when I notice a few people glancing down at our lunch table. “I don’t need the whole school to know about this.”
“Maybe if they knew, someone would just come up to you and ask to be your date and we wouldn’t have to jump through all these hoops,” Sloane offers, gathering her braids into a ponytail.
“But then who would get the Starbucks gift card?” Abby asks, biting her lip.
“What Starbucks gift card?” I ask as Grace returns to the table with her tray of pizza, salad, and apple juice. The pizza would be the perfect thing to stress-eat right now.
“Even though we love you and you finding a date and being happy is reward enough,” Sloane says sarcastically, “we figured we’d up the stakes for ourselves by including a prize for whoever’s meet-cute wins.”
“Wins?”
I stare down at my turkey sandwich and glance over at Grace’s oily pepperoni pizza. She catches me watching, so I quickly reach over and snatch a piece of pepperoni, figuring she had to know it was going to happen.
“If you go to the wedding with the date I choose, then I get the gift card,” Grace explains before erasing a line of writing on her paper.
I look at each of them, wondering what they could be writing. How hard is it to come up with a list, and why would you write a list in paragraph form? Grace turns between a few pages filled out in her blue journal.
“What is that anyways?”
“My plan for your meet-cute,” Grace answers, sliding her tray to hide the paper when I try to take a look.
“Why do you have a plan? I thought I was just meeting people that you picked out for me.”
“Okay, so we did some deliberating and decided that it should be more guided than just throwing you and someone else together,” Grace says.
“We love you, and have full faith in you, but you’re not the smoothest when it comes to boys,” Sloane adds, stealing one of my Pringles.
The Meet-Cute Project Page 3