How Ya Like Me Now

by Brendan Halpin

  “Gee,” Alex said, “I didn’t know panhandlers got a staff! You gonna have some begging-for-change trainees? Talkin’ ’bout ‘Shake the cup like this, sonny!’”

  Before Kelvin could reply, Tanya busted out with “So what did you get on your proposal?”

  “Eighty-three!” Kelvin said. He stood up, puffed out his chest, and said, “What? What?” staring at Tanya.

  “I don’t know why y’all are over there talking about ‘What, what’ when the only reason we got an 83 is because I did all the work,” Gisela said.

  “Aw, you know that’s a lie,” Kelvin said.

  “Well, we got a 90!” Tanya said. She stood and said, “What? What? Oh, you ain’t got so much to say now, do you, Kelvin? Yeah, better know the facts before you open your mouth next time!”

  At that moment, Kenisha walked in with her head down. “Sorry, everybody,” she said. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”

  “That’s okay,” Alex said, “but Savon gets to punch you five times.”

  “Shut up, Alex,” Savon said. “All right, let’s get this meeting started, and somebody please tell me you got something for me. Left Eye, you start.”

  Oh no. They were all looking at him, looking for him to save the day. And he was just no good at thinking of stuff on the fly like Alex could. This was not going to be pretty.

  “Well, uh …” he began.

  “I’m sorry, Eddie, is it okay if I go first? I think I have some good stuff,” Kenisha said.

  “Uh, well, sure, I guess,” Eddie said.

  “I called my cousin who works at Hot 95, and he said there is no way their advertisers would ever go for this kind of thing, because it’s mostly suburban white kids—sorry, guys”—she smiled at Eddie and Alex—“but anyway, suburban white kids who listen to the station, and the station’s afraid they’ll lose their richest listeners if they seem too ghetto.

  “So I got off the phone with my cousin, and I tried to call Hanh, but she didn’t answer, so I had to log on to my e-mail to send her a text message, since my grandmom won’t let me have a cell phone, and there was this ad next to my in box where you can sign up to get sports scores and stuff messaged to your phone. So I thought that we could—that people could sign up to get the information messaged to their phones, and then there could be an ad with the traffic report, you know, like ‘Eat at Costa Pizza’ or something.”

  The group was silent. Finally Savon spoke. “That’s some good stuff. I’m throwing my idea away right now.”

  “Way, way better than what I had,” Eddie said, drawing an approving look from Alex.

  At the end of the day, Eddie headed to the stairwell and waited there until Alex walked in. “Hi, honey!” he said to Alex. “No time to make out today, big meeting with Mr. Lewis!”

  “Aw, come on, Eddie, man, five minutes. What’s it gonna hurt?”

  “Dude, it’s going to hurt you if we lose more points and I let Tanya get after you.”

  “Yeah, you’d like to get Tanya after you.”

  Eddie blushed and pulled Alex by the arm into the hallway. “Shut up about that.”

  “Ooo, touchy!”

  They saw Hanh in the hall, and Eddie said, “Meeting. Lewis. Can’t be late.” He looked over at Alex, who was pointing at him with this “Can you believe this guy?” expression on his face.

  They arrived outside of Lewis’s room at the same time as the rest of the group. Tanya looked at them and smiled approvingly. “Okay then, Left Eye. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Damn, I’m glad you are on this team, or we’d be waiting for his sorry ass all afternoon.”

  Eddie could feel himself blushing, and he wished he had some clever comeback, but all he could come up with was “Uh, well, uh, okay, um, I guess everybody’s here, so, uh, let’s go in.” Mr. Smooth. Whatever smoothness Alex had did not seem to run in the family, or at least not over to Eddie’s side.

  Lewis practically gushed over their plan. He said “push marketing” so many times that it started to sound kind of dirty, and Eddie thought he would crack up if Lewis said it one more time or if he looked at Alex, who he could tell was holding back a laugh himself. So he kept his head down and took notes. After what seemed like forever, Lewis said, “Very impressive. I am genuinely looking forward to the next phase. That will be all, and good day.”

  Afterward, the group convened in the hallway. “Okay,” Savon said. “The way I’m thinking, we need a Web site designed where people can sign up for the service, we gotta get some advertisers to pay the bills, and we need some ads of our own to attract customers to the site. Oh yeah, we also need traffic reporters. I think it makes more sense for us to split up and work on different tasks instead of us all trying to do everything at once. I can probably do the Web design and research how we send these messages out from a server.”

  “Great!” Alex piped up. “Kenisha and I will hit some businesses asking whether they’d be interested in this and how much they’d pay for it. Eddie and Tanya can work on the marketing.” He shot Eddie a look. Eddie believed it meant something like “You can thank me later.” He hoped he wasn’t turning red again, but his face and ears were starting to feel hot.

  “Why are you dividing it up that way? You know you need Left Eye to make you do any work!” Tanya said.

  “Because Kenisha explains this really well, much better than anybody else, because it’s her idea. And because I have the charm that every good salesman needs.”

  Tanya said, “Oh yeah, ‘I’m late ’cause I couldn’t get out of the bathroom.’ Real smooth.”

  “Shut up, Tanya. What, are you gonna be like, ‘Oh, I’d love to explain this to y’all, but you know I do have to go braid some hair, so bump you.’”

  “Okay, okay, remember the love, and save the attitude for Kelvin,” Savon said, and everybody but Tanya smiled.

  “Okay, well, at least if I’m with Left Eye, I know some work is gonna get done,” Tanya said, and Eddie saw Alex get that glint in his eye like he was going to make some joke about getting to work, or working it out, or something like that, but thankfully he didn’t.

  Eddie and Alex didn’t say anything until they were on the bus. Then Alex busted out with “So you gonna thank me, or what?”

  Eddie didn’t know what to say, so he punched Alex on the arm.

  “Okay, I see how it is. This is the thanks I get. You know they would have put us together so you could babysit me, but I worked out the preemptive strike. So now you get to work on some puuuuuuuuuush marketing”—he drew that phrase out and made it sound way dirtier than it already did—“with Tanya instead of looking at me every day after school, but that’s fine, go ahead and punch me, I don’t mind, I just do good deeds for the sake of doing them.”

  Eddie laughed. And then he started to imagine actually spending time working alone with Tanya, and he started to feel terrified. He’d never really talked to Alex about Tanya before, but he’d kept the secret about Hanh for so long, and he knew so much about Alex from living with him, that Alex wouldn’t dare spill his business. “I don’t know, do you think Tanya, I mean, do you think she … could I …” he trailed off because he was so embarrassed that it actually hurt.

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean, honestly, I’ve never known her to go out with a white guy before … I mean there was that one guy who looked kinda white, but I guess he was Dominican or something. But then again, she has never felt the pull of that Eddie magnetism before. Maybe you could be the first. Anyway, you know you won’t have a chance if all you do is stare at her in advisory.”

  Eddie took a minute to chew on this. It didn’t sound good. Tanya was hot, and he wasn’t, but she did seem to appreciate that he was helping the group. Eddie had no idea if this was the kind of thing that impressed girls, since he hadn’t really had any experience talking to or trying to impress girls before this year. He knew at OHS that “Hey baby, I got a hell of a good grade on my project” would have gotten you laughed at by pretty much any girl. But it was okay t
o get good grades at FA-CUE, so maybe the girls here actually would be impressed by an A.

  And what about her not dating white guys? Eddie didn’t really know what to think about that. He believed in his mind that anybody could date anybody. He never thought it was weird for a minute that Alex was going out with Hanh, or sneaking around with Hanh, or whatever you called it, but now when he found that the white girl he liked might not date white guys, he felt weird. Would he feel weird if he heard that a black girl didn’t date white guys? He didn’t think so.

  He wondered if learning to talk a little more black like Alex and Tanya did would help his case with Tanya. Or did he even have a case? He didn’t know.

  He probably wouldn’t know until he and Tanya got together for training at Jamison Creative so they could create some marketing materials. He had a hard time falling asleep that night, because he was trying to imagine how exactly he would approach Tanya about this. He knew it was pretty simple, really—just go up to her and say something like “So when do you want to do this?” but he couldn’t figure out exactly how he was supposed to do that without stumbling over his words and acting stupid and having everybody knowing he liked her. Although if Savon and Alex knew already, maybe everybody else knew. Which would be bad.

  As Eddie drifted off, he realized again that even if this stuff about Tanya was a stupid dream, it was a lot more fun than worrying about his mom.

  16

  The next morning, Alex was still feeling buzzed from his success at implementing phase one of Operation Tanya. Nobody could say that he had done anything selfish, and doing something good for somebody else actually made him feel kind of good, too. Of course, getting Eddie closer to Tanya might just mean that he was closer to getting his feelings hurt. Well, you can’t win if you don’t play, like they always said on those lottery commercials. Alex wasn’t going to drive himself nuts thinking. That was Eddie’s job.

  Although now that he was doing some thinking, he had to admit he was a little worried about how stuff was going with Hanh. She had been nice and forgiven him and even met him after school at Melville’s, where they held hands like a real couple and drank their lattes, and it was corny as hell, but Alex didn’t care. It was fun and exciting, too. He just wondered how they were going to find time for each other with all this project stuff. Already she had gotten pissed when he accidentally blew her off and stayed home, and he figured she would probably be twice as pissed when she found out he had to spend a whole bunch of days running around town with Kenisha. Though if she looked in the mirror, she’d realize she had nothing to be jealous about, but Alex knew that girls’ minds didn’t work that way. Or at least Hanh’s didn’t.

  While they were waiting for the bus, Eddie stammered, “Um, so, uh, let me ask you something,” and started blushing immediately, so Alex knew it was about Tanya.

  “Shoot,” Alex said.

  “I have to ask her, you know, just about working together, and stuff—”

  “I’m sorry, who are we talking about?” Alex grinned. He knew he was being obnoxious, but he just couldn’t help it.

  “Ha ha. Anyway, so I don’t know how to—I mean, I don’t want to make her think I like her or something …”

  “Even though you do.” When Alex said this, Eddie looked around like he thought somebody from school might be at the bus stop, though there was nobody there except some yuppie lady in a suit and her boyfriend, who was all shabby-looking.

  “Yeah. Okay, yeah. So I just … I’m afraid … I’m going to sound goofy and stupid like I’m doing now, only with Kelvin pointing and laughing.”

  “I think maybe you need a calendar or something. Just have some times and dates ready and then you can stare at the calendar the whole time and try not to look down her shirt or think about how incredibly hot she is.”

  “Jesus, Alex, I wasn’t even thinking about looking down her shirt!” Eddie said, then turned around. Alex noticed the yuppie and her hippie boyfriend smiling.

  The bus came, and they rode in silence to the Francis Abernathy Center for Urban Education. As they were getting off the bus, the yuppie lady, who was sitting sideways near the front of the bus, said to Eddie, “Just tell her, kid. Life’s too short.” Her scraggly boyfriend shook his head no and made these hand signals that said, “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” and then stopped when she looked over at him.

  Alex figured that just about summed it up. As much as he pretended to be Mr. Smooth because he had his fifth girlfriend in two years, he didn’t really know what Eddie should do. Nobody knew anything when it came to this stuff.

  They got into 212, and Kelvin was arguing with Gisela and Aisha, apparently about whether women could rap.

  Alex sat and took out his history notes and thought he might study for today’s quiz, mostly because this argument was boring. Tanya was actually studying, and Alex watched approvingly as Eddie made sure to approach her while Kelvin was busy yelling at Gisela and Aisha.

  Alex still had his notebook open and pretended to study while eavesdropping on Eddie and Tanya.

  “Okay,” Eddie said, staring at his little assignment book, “so I guess we need … um, we have to …” Oh no! He was going down in flames! Alex wanted to rescue him, but he knew Eddie had to sink or swim on his own here.

  Fortunately for Eddie, Tanya herself came to his rescue. “Okay, we gotta make an appointment at Jamison, so can you do that today because I have to be at the shop right after school. Just tell me when it is and I’ll get off work. Obviously we gotta meet before we go in there to figure out what we’re doing, but I’m mad busy and I can’t stay after, so here’s my cell phone number, call me after eight tonight and we’ll work it out.”

  Unfortunately for Eddie, there had been a silent break in the argument as Tanya said the last part, which meant that Kelvin had heard.

  “All right, then, Left Eye!” Kelvin said. “My boy! Got the digits! That’s what I’m talking about! And Tanya was all, call me and we’ll work it out. Yeah, Left Eye! Who’s the mack?”

  Alex looked over at Eddie, who looked very much like he wanted to crawl under a table and die as Tanya said, “We’re talking about project stuff, dummy! See, that’s why I hate this advisory, because y’all are mad ignorant and always got something to say even when you don’t know nothing. Always gotta open your mouth, talkin’ trash.”

  “Okay, Tanya, you want to play it off, I understand, you know, don’t want the whole advisory up in your business, I understand, embarrassed about your little thing with Left Eye, I understand that, too,” Kelvin said, and Alex felt like he had to jump in.

  Amazingly, though, Eddie beat him to it. He actually had a smile on his face instead of looking embarrassed or mad. “Yeah, Kelvin, and you’re just embarrassed about your little thing.”

  “Oh!” Gisela roared, clapping Eddie on the back as everybody laughed. Savon called out, “Check please!” Kelvin, for once in his life, had absolutely nothing to say.

  Stuff was pretty quiet after that. Kenisha came in and gave Alex a list of businesses they were meeting with, along with contact names and a paragraph summary of what each place’s business was and how they currently marketed to urban teens. So all Alex had to do was basically show up and BS these guys into saying they thought the idea was great. He loved working with Kenisha.

  Harrison arrived with the usual boring announcements, and Hanh came in late. Alex tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t even look at him. What the hell was that about? They had coffee yesterday! There was no possible way he’d done anything wrong between then and now. Was there? He tried to remember if there was something that he hadn’t done, but he couldn’t think of anything. Did he say something to piss her off yesterday? He didn’t think so. They just sort of talked about what happened in school and then sat there holding hands and not saying anything. Was he in trouble for that? He was used to getting in trouble for things he said at school and at home, but this looked like it might be the first
time he’d ever gotten in trouble for something he didn’t say Well, whatever. He wasn’t buying any flowers for this one. He decided not to worry about it.

  Except he sort of did. He didn’t see her after school, so he called her while he and Kenisha were waiting (and waiting and waiting in the cold) for the 22 bus. He figured that if Kenisha and Hanh were calling and messaging each other, she probably knew what was going on. In any case, Kenisha was not the kind of person to go running to tell Kelvin stuff.

  Hanh picked up on the fourth ring. “Hey,” she said in a kind of flat way.

  “Hey!” Alex tried to bring enough enthusiasm to the conversation for both of them. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Just trying to get my homework done. I’m supposed to meet with some fools from the 216 advisory to study for a math test, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “Mmm. Who is it?”

  “It’s really just one person I don’t get along with, but it’s a long story, and I gotta go.”

  Well, that was quick. “Uh, okay, sure. I’m just … uh … are you okay?”

  Sounding tired, annoyed, and like she was lying, Hanh said, “Yeah, I’m fine, everything’s fine, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

  Before Alex could say anything, Hanh had hung up. Alex took a minute to just look at his phone and feel puzzled.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” Kenisha said, smiling.

  “What? What do you know?”

  “Come on now, Alex, I would never betray the confidence of a friend. You know Hanh’s my girl. I can’t go around telling people what she tells me.”

  “Come on, Kenisha. We’re partners here! We gotta work together! And anyway, 212 is like family, you can’t have secrets in a family!”