The Meet-Cute Project

by Rhiannon Richardson

  By the end of my research, I figure I can go about tonight in a number of ways. I could “trip” over something and stumble into a guy I think is cute and then turn it into a conversation. Or I could accidentally spill a drink, but I think most people would get annoyed and not curious about getting to know me, so that’s not a first choice. I could pretend to need help looking for something, even though I’ve been to Nandy Fagan’s house before. I figure that, aside from Ritchie having a girlfriend and ruining everything, us sneaking off to the garage to have a chance to talk was important. We did have a real moment. I felt a connection, and we wouldn’t have been staring so deeply into each other’s eyes if there were people right there, talking loudly. So maybe I can take that successful piece from my practice meet-cute and use it to my advantage.

  And then there’s option three, which is not watching the kettle and letting the water boil. That’s probably going to be the hardest one—since I can’t help but overthink—but I figure I have nothing to lose by trying anything, even if that’s seemingly nothing.

  * * *

  “You almost ready to head out?” Mom asks from the doorway to my room.

  I adjust my belt so that my white gown hangs more like Princess Leia’s.

  “In a little bit,” I tell her, even though I still haven’t texted the group chat back.

  Mom comes in, and when I hear two sets of feet, I look over my shoulder to see Dad pushing my throw blanket farther onto my bed so he can sit down on the edge. I watch in the mirror as Mom parts my hair down the middle and gently forms two high pigtails. Then she twists a bun and fixes the other to match, both at the perfect height on her first try.

  “Thank you,” I say, realizing I still have to find my lightsaber.

  “You look great, of course,” she says, sitting down next to Dad.

  I start digging through my closet, ignoring that weird feeling I get whenever my parents come into my room together. They’re rarely this formal. Most of the time Mom will just text me if something is going on, even if it’s big news like if someone in the family is pregnant. When both of them come into my room, it’s usually to tell me bad news, like someone passed away, or the time I had to get most of my hair cut off because I got gum stuck in it from the tunnel on the playground in my elementary school. Right now, though, they don’t have the bad news aura about them.

  “I think Princess Leia is a great choice,” Dad says. “I mean, if you look at some of the things these girls are wearing for Halloween these days.” I smile to myself at the last part, remembering the Jasmine costume Sloane showed me from the website she was planning to buy it from. Definitely would’ve had to cover it up with a sweatshirt on my way out.

  “I feel like she does a lot more than some of the other princesses,” I say. “Like, Snow White eats an apple and passes out and needs a man to save her. Sleeping Beauty falls asleep and needs a man to save her. And Cinderella is poor and needs a man to save her. But Princess Leia—”

  “Is more like you,” Mom finishes, beaming at me as I extend my lightsaber. I could’ve sworn it was cracked, but maybe it was Sam’s that cracked. Or maybe I cracked mine and then switched it with Sam’s at some point.

  “Her plot is complex and interesting,” I add before collapsing my lightsaber and sticking it through the notch in my belt.

  I push around my pile of laundry until I find my phone. “Okay, I think I’m good to go,” I say, seeing that everyone confirmed meeting at six, and it’s already 5:40. I put my phone, lip balm, travel lotion, and a sanitary wipe inside my wristlet purse. As I turn to leave my room, I notice my parents are still sitting on my bed. “Was there something you had to tell me?”

  They look at each other. Dad’s face doesn’t give anything away, but I see Mom shrug, and she’s doing that thing where she pouts. When she turns back to me, she says, “It’s just that it’s the first year we aren’t driving you to the sleepover. You’re all grown up, heading out on your own…”

  Oh right.

  “Do you want to take a picture or something?” I ask, trying to keep myself from laughing.

  “No. I want to go back in time to when you were five and dressed like Big Bird from Sesame Street,” she says, tilting her head to the side.

  “But a picture will do,” Dad says, standing up.

  He motions for me to go downstairs, and they follow me out of my room. I stand in front of Mom’s indoor wreath hung on the door, in between two pots with seasonal fake plants. For the fall there are eucalyptus, cotton, and these tan-looking fronds. Wrapped around the pots are long plastic strands of orange and yellow oak leaves.

  “Promise me you’ll stay my kid forever,” Mom says, pretending to be dramatic while Dad steadies his iPhone.

  “I promise,” I say, smiling. Watching them look at me, seeing the way they stand next to each other and how the air around them seems to bend so that even though they aren’t touching, you can just sense how much they love each other and how perfect they are together—it makes me smile harder. It makes me genuinely happy.

  The one thing I have always been certain of is my parents being together and loving me, and being ready to take a picture or sign a permission slip, and it has been a fortunate constant in my life. They are who they are individually, in such distinct ways that them being themselves is something you can count on. I get my quiet side from Dad and my questioning side from my mom. I get excited in the same way she gets excited, with uncontrollable smiling and a tendency to create jokes out of joyful situations. I study and focus the same way my dad does, by closing myself into the cave of my room, to think in solitude and to solve my problems without help.

  And together, they’re a scale perfectly balanced. Acting and thinking. Singing off tune and bobbing their heads to the music. Dancing in the middle of the dance floor and watching from the wall. The energy is comfortable, and while Dad flips the orientation of his phone and I watch him and Mom argue about how to pull up portrait mode, I almost wish that we could rewind to when Sam would’ve been standing here with me, before she went off to college and moved out of the house, before all the wedding planning began—me dressed as Big Bird and her dressed as Rihanna from the early 2000s. When the most important thing was getting the most PayDays, my favorite candy.

  “I have to go,” I say after he takes a few more pictures.

  “Okay, okay,” Dad says, handing his phone to Mom for approval.

  I hug them both good-bye and then head to my car. Outside, increasing the distance between me and my annual lie, I feel a weight lifting off my shoulders. Tonight is not going to be another failure!

  * * *

  I park in the street in front of Sloane’s house, since Victor’s truck is parked in the driveway along with Sloane’s parents’ car. As I pass Victor’s truck and notice Grace’s winter coat in the back seat, I feel a little bad for throwing my phone. I could’ve given her a ride.

  “Oh my gosh!” Sloane shouts when she opens the door. Abby and Victor materialize behind her at the kitchen entrance. “You actually make Star Wars look cool.”

  “Shut up,” I kid, laughing a little.

  Sloane pulls me into the house, and we all compare costumes.

  Abby is Cinderella, though her dress is a lot shorter than I remember it being in the animated version. Sloane is dressed as Jasmine and has traded her usual braided weave for a slick straight one that trails all the way down her back, with blue scrunchies cinching her hair at different spots. Even so, I still spot her purple streak. Grace’s Princess Tiana gown is probably the most beautiful. Maybe it’s because green is one of my favorite colors or because her gown is truer to form. It touches the floor—which might simply be because she’s so short—and it poofs out like a princess gown should. Victor is dressed as Tarzan and has on a padded muscle shirt that is impossible not to laugh at.

  “You guys look amazing,” I say finally, noticing for the first time how truly unflattering my Princess Leia dress is.

  “You do too,” A
bby assures me.

  We pile into Victor’s truck, me sitting between Sloane and Grace in the back seat, noticing the way Victor’s right hand rests on Abby’s leg, their fingers entwined, for most of the ride. While Grace watches the Chicago skyline get farther away, Sloane taps my shoulder to get my attention. She mouths Sorry, and I mouth It’s okay, really meaning it. I know that the way my meet-cute went with Ben is not her fault. She did exactly what I asked her to do, and everyone predicted it wouldn’t end well.

  I didn’t tell my friends that I plan to use tonight as an opportunity to scope out a possible date for the wedding. I want them to have fun and not think about the project. Plus, they’ve all taken a turn trying to set me up, and I figure it’s time I have a go at it myself.

  Victor parks the truck, and as Sloane and Grace spill out of the back seat, I take a private deep breath. We turn down Nandy’s pumpkin-lined walkway, falling in step with other groups in costumes. I see Charlie Brown, the Mad Hatter, and a can of LaCroix—an unlikely trio.

  The moment we step through the door, people notice Grace’s dress. It’s bright green and sparkly and hard to miss, especially with Nandy’s fairy light decorations twinkling in the rhinestones in Grace’s crown. I make eye contact with a few people from swim team, and we all migrate in their direction. A few of the boys decided to go as Minions. Shannon dressed up as Beyoncé from Lemonade.

  Miraculously, without getting separated, we snake our way through the house to the kitchen, where there are bottles of soda, juice, and sparkling water all over the counter. On the kitchen table are bowls filled with candy. I pour myself a cup of Pepsi and help myself to a few gummy worms before grabbing an empty chair in the dining room. As more people get up from their seats to go dance, Grace, Victor, Abby, and Sloane all manage to get chairs.

  Sloane holds up her plastic cup of ginger ale and shouts over the music, “A toast to tradition.”

  “To Halloween ‘dinners’ with friends,” Abby adds, laughing.

  We all toast, and as I look around at my friends, I feel some of the nostalgia Mom mentioned. After next year we won’t all be together for Halloween, Grace won’t live a short walk away and be able to come over whenever we need each other, and Abby and I won’t be racing each other in the pool. And Victor won’t be attached to Abby in the way all of us are used to.

  Sloane starts telling us about her six-year-old brother and his friends going trick-or-treating. He’s dressed as a carrot this year, and his friends’ parents coordinated so that one of them is a carrot and another is a jar of peanut butter.

  Grace decides to top off her drink, so I follow her back to the kitchen. We have to wait while a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that I recognize from my history class occupies the counter, making what’s probably a very sugary but gross-looking concoction. We nibble on candy and watch.

  Past the Ninja Turtle, I spot a shiny black dome reflecting the lights hanging from the ceiling in the living room. I follow the figure with my eyes, watching as it moves farther into the house, and just as it falls out of view from the kitchen doorway, I realize it’s Darth Vader.

  “That’s so cool,” I say, though Grace is looking down at her phone and probably didn’t notice.

  She still asks “What?” absentmindedly.

  I step away from her, feeling a pull like I’m swimming into a current. Grace still doesn’t seem to notice, so I decide to just go to the other side of the kitchen and look across the foyer and see. But curiosity pulls me even farther away, and soon I’m weaving between people dancing. Some are people I recognize from school, a few others I know from swim meets at other schools, but the rest are anonymous because they’re wearing masks.

  I don’t see him. At least I hope it’s a him, because if it is, then that means there’s a boy at this party who likes Star Wars enough to also dress like a character from it. Someone that maybe without too much effort I could talk to. I scan the room looking for the all black, but I have no luck. People are crammed in, with Nandy’s furniture pushed against the walls, and since I’m short, it’s like trying to look through a very colorful curtain. A couple bumps into me from behind. At first I think they’re caught up in the song, but when I turn around, I realize they’re caught up in each other. Or, more accurately, tangled.

  When I retreat to the kitchen, I find Grace alone at the drink counter.

  “I was wondering where you went,” she admits, handing me a clean cup.

  “Just wanted to look around, see what everyone else came as,” I tell her.

  We each pour ourselves a cup of Pepsi before going back into the dining room. We weave through a few clusters of people standing around talking, and as we break into our corner, we find Sloane, Victor, and Abby talking to Darth Vader.

  “Oh my gosh, this is her,” Sloane says, pulling me to her. “You guys are matching.”

  “I always tease Mia for being into the original Star Wars, but I guess she’s not the only one,” Abby says, flashing me a huge smile. “I told her she should go as Rey or maybe a really cute feminine twist on Finn because at least more people would get it.”

  “But then she goes on about the original trilogy and how the original cast are slowly dying out,” Sloane chimes in.

  They both look at me, and I sense it’s my turn to say something. Be interesting, I tell myself, nervously looking at Darth Vader. A familiar part of me wants to retreat, to be nervous and stumble over my words and feel shy. Part of me wants to overthink, but as I’m staring at Darth Vader, looking at his helmet and not his actual face, I realize I don’t even know who I’m talking to.

  “Well, they are,” I say, watching Darth’s eyes. I think he’s smiling. “And anybody who calls themselves a Star Wars fan but can’t get original references or recognize the younger versions of the original characters isn’t really a fan.”

  Sloane just rolls her eyes, beaming at me, and Grace sips her drink, looking back and forth between Darth Vader and me like she’s sitting on my couch watching a movie.

  “I like your helmet,” I tell him.

  “I like your space buns,” he says through the voice distorter. It makes me laugh.

  “But you’re wearing the wrong lightsaber,” I say.

  “What?” he asks, looking down at his hand.

  “Darth Vader is from the dark side. He’s supposed to use red,” I say, pulling mine out. I extend the blue baton and knock it against his green one.

  “This was all they had left,” he admits, laughing a little, which sounds funny through the voice changer.

  “Still, very cool costume. You have good taste,” I say.

  “You too,” he says. Then he points his lightsaber at my cup. “Where can I find one of those?”

  I offer to take him, and when I turn around, I discover my friends have deserted me. Darth Vader and I squeeze through the dining room to the kitchen and find ourselves alone. With all the empty space around us, it’s like the house is no longer vibrating with the music. I watch while he figures out what to drink.

  “Are you from Hayfield?” I ask as he pours himself a cup of orange juice.

  “No. I go to Massillon.”

  “That’s cool. Are you also the only one of your friends who likes Star Wars?” I ask, leaning back against the counter.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “You’re alone,” I point out. “They abandoned you like mine do whenever I talk about Star Wars or math team.”

  “Right.” He laughs. “I guess you could say that’s what happened.”

  I look past him at the living room. The music changed and now there’s a faster beat. It’s not a song I recognize, but I like the way it sounds.

  “What kind of music do you like?” Darth Vader asks when he catches me bobbing my head.

  “Mostly alternative. Some rap as long as the lyrics are good. But, yeah, mostly indie alternative stuff.”

  “Like who?” he asks, tilting his helmet up just enough that he can bring the Solo cup to his lips. I glim
pse his neck and chin and see that he’s Black. He also has a well-shaped beard that makes me curious about the rest of his face. I wonder how much hair he’s hiding under his mask. Is it a fro, locks, or a barber fade? Part of me doesn’t even know what I would want it to be, but the mystery makes me buzz a little.

  “I really like Fickle Friends, the Hunna, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise.”

  “No way!” Darth Vader says, his surprise sounding especially funny through the voice changer. “I love Rainbow Kitten Surprise; they’re one of my favorite bands.”

  “What’s your favorite song by them?” I ask, setting my cup down on the counter next to his.

  “ ‘First Class.’ ”

  I stop myself from gushing. “First Class” is one of my favorites by them too. “My favorite is ‘It’s Called: Freefall.’ ”

  “Another excellent choice,” he agrees. “Have you ever seen them in concert?”

  “No. I wish,” I admit. The sugar from the candy-soda combo starts to hit me, and a song comes on that I recognize. I let my hips sway a little to release some of the energy, and I look back toward the living room and see that more people are dancing than sitting.

  “Do you want to dance?” he asks, tilting his shiny helmet in the direction of the living room.

  Do I? I’m not very good at dancing, and I usually get insecure and want to sit on the couches or chairs on the outskirts. Abby and Sloane always dance no matter where we are, whether it’s a party, a club party for school, or an actual dance. They have no inhibitions and I always envy them. I wish that I could let go.

  “Yes,” I say, finishing the rest of my soda. I grab a handful of gummy worms and pop a few into my mouth for good measure.

  We make our way over to the living room, Darth Vader’s cape flowing behind him. When we reach the edge of the room, I spot the purple streak in Sloane’s hair, and without thinking, I take Darth Vader’s hand and lead him through the swaying and jumping bodies. We get bumped around—I take an elbow to my side, and I accidentally step on someone’s foot—but I don’t let go. And he doesn’t let go of my hand. He interlaces his fingers with mine, and when I get pushed, he catches me. He yanks me back before I can lose my balance completely, and I find myself pressed against him. Even though his shirt is loose and his cape makes it hard to see his shape, I can tell that he’s muscular by the way his biceps flex against my arms. As I stare into his mask, making out his eyes through the little holes, I feel like this is our moment. He stares back at me with his brown eyes, looking back and forth between mine—searching.