The Dating Game

by Natalie Standiford

  When summer was over, Holly couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mads and Lina. But when she tried to explain, she suddenly felt shy. They wanted to know every detail, but she was afraid they wouldn’t understand. They seemed to hear the story through a haze of romance. Especially Mads. To her, this was a classic summer love story, and the fact that Holly’s first time having sex was awkward, uncomfortable, and not particularly romantic never registered.

  Holly scanned the questionnaires again, the answers veering wildly between realistic and raunchy. There had to be somebody datable. She tried to read between the lines. Would a boy called “sexgod” be good for Lina or Mads? Could “zarg” be that cute guy in biology class?

  Then she came to “paco.” Under “What kind of person are you looking for?” paco wrote, “Madison Markowitz. Period.”

  Whoa! Who was this guy? Mads had to see this. It was almost noon. Mads should be up by now. Holly couldn’t wait to show her paco’s questionnaire.

  “Good morning, lovey.” Holly’s mother, Eugenia, sat at the kitchen table in silk pajamas and a robe, drinking coffee while Barbara, the maid, cleared up last night’s wine glasses. Eugenia was fine-boned and dark-haired with a raspy smoker’s voice, even though she’d quit smoking five years earlier. “Feel like driving up to Petaluma with your sister and me this afternoon? A friend of Piper’s has an art show up there. Or something. Maybe it’s a performance thing? Whatever.”

  “No thanks. Busy.” Holly fished her car keys out of her bag. “I’m going to Mads’ house.”

  “Be careful on the road,” her mother said. “You’re still a beginning driver, honey.”

  Holly had turned sixteen on January 5 and immediately got her driver’s license. Her parents gave her a new yellow VW Beetle for her birthday. She loved the car, but sometimes she thought Mads and Lina loved it even more. Lina’s birthday wasn’t until July 21, and Mads’ was even later, August 27. Mads gave Holly driving gloves for her birthday and a map showing the route from Holly’s house to hers, even though Holly knew the way cold. Holly was going to be designated chauffeur for a few months. She didn’t mind; she already loved driving. And it was way better than depending on her parents or Piper to drive her around, or worse, Mads’ older brother Adam, who was 19 and away at college anyway. He had to be the most cautious teenage driver on Earth. Holly’s grandma could beat him in a drag race with a blindfold on.

  Holly turned a corner and the car climbed Mads’ winding, hilly street. Holly felt happy every time she saw the Markowitzes’ house. It was built in the seventies and looked like a giant treehouse. Every room seemed to have multiple levels, so that it was hard to tell how many floors the house had. Her mother, M. C., short for Mary Claire, waved to Holly from the organic vegetable garden. She was on her knees, digging, in jeans, a flannel shirt, and red cat’s-eye glasses, her frizzy blond hair tied in a red bandanna. She looked like a blond Lucille Ball, just waiting for some hilarious catastrophe to happen.

  Mads’ parents were warmer than Holly’s, and not as slick. Mads thought they were embarrassingly uncool. Her father, Russell, was a good-natured labor lawyer, easily embarrassed and so mild-mannered his children jokingly called him “the Dark Overlord.” M.C. met him when she escaped her straight-laced parents’ Minnesota farm to go to college at UC Berkeley. She changed careers a lot. She’d been a yoga teacher, an astrological nutrionist, and the owner of a feminist bookstore. Now she worked as a pet psychiatrist, specializing in troubled dogs. Business was booming, Carlton Bay was a pet-shrink kind of town.

  Holly climbed the steep, zigzagging stone steps to the front door. Mads’ eleven-year-old sister, Audrey, opened it. She was dressed exactly like a Bratz doll in a midriff-baring t-shirt and low-riding pink sweatpants, her strawberry blond hair scooped high in a side ponytail. Holly didn’t know how two down-to-earth people like Russell and M.C. could have such a materialistic supertrendoid for a child.

  “Fatison is in her room,” Audrey announced, using her favorite nickname for her sister.

  When she stepped into Mads’ room, Holly was greeted with the rare sight of Mads in glasses. She usually wore contacts. Mads was sitting at her computer, still in her pajamas, reading the questionnaires.

  “I’m the biggest loser in school!” Mads wailed. “Have you read these things? Everybody’s so experienced! Even the ninth-graders. How did I miss out on this?”

  Holly pulled up a chair and sat beside Mads. “You think all these kids are telling the truth? Do you really think three boys in our school have dated Playboy centerfolds?”

  “I guess that is a little far-fetched,” Mads said. “But why would they lie? It’s anonymous. Even though I think I can figure out who some of them are by their answers.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Holly said. “Is Lina coming over?”

  “Sylvia took her into the city for shopping and lunch.” Mads said. Sylvia was Lina’s mother. She was a doctor—an allergist—very smart, elegant, and a little chilly. Lina was intimidated by her. She felt closer to her dad, Kenneth, a tall, handsome banker.

  “She’ll probably come back with another fancy bag to dump in her closet,” Holly said. Lina’s mother was always buying Lina designer clothes, trying to dress her up.

  “It’s good that she’s not here,” Mads said. “Now is the perfect time to match her up with somebody. We’ve got to get her mind off Dan. She’s starting to go all Romeo and Juliet on us. And they both die in the end, you know.”

  “I’m sure this isn’t fatal, but I know what you mean,” Holly said. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like he’s brainwashed her or something. Except Dan’s too goody-goody to do that.”

  Holly scanned through the questionnaires and stopped on a junior named “hot-t.” “What do you think of this guy for Lina?” she asked Mads.

  Mads read it over. “He doesn’t sound offensive, at least. But check out this guy.” She showed Holly a form by another junior, “striker.”

  Striker’s interests were “soccer, soccer, soccer.”

  “Striker” was probably a reference to a position on the soccer field.

  “I think I know who this is,” Holly said. “Jake Soros!”

  “Really? Yeah, that kind of makes sense.”

  Jake Soros, a junior, captain and star of the soccer team. He lived and breathed soccer. Holly suddenly realized that she’d had a crush on him for a long time.

  “I want that one for myself,” Holly said.

  Mads grinned. “Okay. You take striker and we’ll sic hot-t on Lina. Cross your fingers that she likes him.”

  “Now we have to find someone for you,” Holly said. “Mads, look at this.” She reached around Mads and pulled up paco’s form. “You’re going to have a stroke.” Paco’s questionnaire appeared on the screen. “He’s totally crazy about you.”

  Mads read paco’s questionnaire carefully. “Who do you think it is?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” Holly said.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Mads said. “It’s not Sean. Sean’s a senior, and paco says he’s in eleventh grade.”

  “So what? You’re too good to date juniors now?”

  “It’s not that,” Mads said. “It’s just that I want Sean. Do you think he submitted a questionnaire?”

  Holly shrugged. “How could we tell?”

  “I’ll figure it out,” Mads said. “If his questionnaire is here, I’ll find it.”

  “But what about paco?” Holly said. “He’s in love with you!”

  “That’s got to be a joke,” Mads said. “Wouldn’t I know if somebody was in love with me?”

  “Maybe he’s shy.”

  “Forget it. Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t ‘Sean’ the same name as ‘John,’ only Irish? Here’s a senior, code name john,’ who says he looks like Ashton Kutcher except with blond hair!” Sean kind of looks like Ashton Kutcher with blond hair!”

  Sean didn’t look much like Ashton Kutcher, but Holly had to admit that nobody at school looked m
ore like him than Sean.

  “Look—he says he wants us to match him with somebody,” Mads said. “I volunteer. Let’s match him with me!”

  “What if it isn’t Sean?” Holly asked.

  “It’s got to be Sean! I’m going to e-mail him right now.”

  To: john

  From: Mad4U

  Re: Dating Game

  John, you asked us to make a match for you, and we have! Your date will be a sophomore, 15 years old. If you’d like to meet her, name a time and place and we’ll set it up. Congratulations!

  Five minutes later, an answer appeared.

  To: mad4u

  From: John

  Re: oh yeah

  Set it up. How about vineland, after school on Wednesday. Cool?

  Mad4u: Cool. She’ll see you then. How will she know you?

  John: just tell her to find the Ashton Kutcher look-alike.“

  That was easy,” Holly said. “Too easy.”

  “Stop being so cynical,” Mads said. “Isn’t that one of the reasons we started this blog? To make getting dates easier? And it’s working, see?” She saved the e-mail in a special computer file marked “Sean.” “Now we’re all taken care of. Let the dating games begin!”

  5

  Death to the Normals

  To: linaonme

  From: Your daily horoscope

  HERE IS TODAY’s HOROSCOPE: CANCER: Grab your ray gun! An alien life form is about to land on your planet and destroy your life as you know it. This is not a joke.

  Lina: You and Holly and Madison have done an excellent job devising a thesis and plan for your project. Go girl Just be sure to keep careful track of your statistics. I appreciate your offer to let me participate in the study, however, since I’m not a student, I’m afraid my answers would pollute the statistical pool and distort your results. I am looking forward to seeing your first progress report!

  Dan

  Lina lightly touched the smiley face Dan had made on her paper. Did he put smiley faces on everybody’s papers? Only on the good ones? Only on hers? He probably put them on the good ones. He’d left the papers in his outgoing mailbox for all the students to pick up, so anyone could read his comments. Under those circumstances he probably wouldn’t put anything personal on a paper. Still, she liked to think there might be a secret message for her hidden somewhere in his comments. “Go girl”? Could that mean something? Besides the fact that he used dated slang? After all, three girls were working on the project, not just one.

  She folded up the paper and put it away in her bag. She planned to save it in her keepsake box, along with her dad’s school ring, a valentine from a boy she’d liked in first grade, and her “Best Hustle” medal from field hockey, among other exotic memorabilia.

  Hockey and Dan were weirdly linked in Lina’s mind. She loved playing hockey, loved the way the wooden stick rang in her hand when she smacked the ball just right. She remembered a game near the end of last season, against Rosewood’s rival school, Draper. It was a beautiful day and the small bleachers were packed for once, rare for a JV match. Her father had promised to leave work early to catch the game, and she found herself glancing at the bleachers to see if he’d arrived. He hadn’t had a chance to see her play all season, but he was her biggest fan, and once in a while he even put on his old lacrosse pads and played goalie against her in the backyard.

  During the third quarter she spotted Dan loitering near the sidelines, tie loosened, hands in his pockets, dark sunglasses on, watching, and her heart jammed in her throat. Rebecca passed the ball to her. She gave it a mighty whack and it sailed into the goal. The bleachers went crazy. “Good shot, Lina, good shot,” the coach yelled. Lina scanned the crowd for her dad one more time. He wasn’t there, but Dan was, clapping and cheering, and it was almost as good.

  Two months had gone by, and Lina still thought about that hockey game at least once a day. Now she found herself drifting down the hall past the Inchworm office. Through the glass window on the door she could see Dan sitting at a desk, checking proofs.

  If she joined Inchworm, she’d get to see Dan more. She’d thought about it many times. She loved to write poetry, but she didn’t like the poetry Inchworm usually published. Most of it was written by Ramona or her friends Siobhan Gallagher, Maggie Schwartzman, and Chandra Bledsoe. All charter members of the Dan Shulman Cult. It was very cryptic, so only they could understand it. There was a lot of blood, death, knives, skulls, and vampire and religious imagery … Emily Dickinson meets Night of the Living Dead. But since they all worked on the magazine, they controlled what was published.

  “Excuse me.” Ramona and Chandra brushed past her on their way into the office. Ramona’s thin red tie was knotted at her throat as usual. Chandra’s was black. Those stupid ties! Lina hated the ties. They mocked her. Imitating Dan’s dress was no way to pay tribute to his wonderfulness. The best way was Lina’s way—silent, painful worship.

  “Spying?” Ramona sneered.

  Lina was startled. “No! I’m not spying! Why would I be spying?”

  Ramona grinned like a jack-͋-lantern. She’d drawn an exaggerated lip line around her real mouth and painted it in with violet lipstick. A little lipstick trickled down from the corner of her mouth, as if she were bleeding, or drooling grape juice.

  “We’re planning an Inchworm reading for next week, if you want to come,” Chandra said. She was new to the goth thing and hadn’t quite gotten the evil down yet. “We’re going to make the office look a like slaughterhouse, with blood and body parts everywhere. The theme is ’death to the Normals.’”

  “Oh,” Lina said, nodding politely. “Sounds good. I’ll tell all my friends.”

  Ramona heard the sarcasm in Lina’s voice. She waited for Chandra to go into the office. Then she whispered, “I can see it in your eyes, Lina. You think you’re better than we are. But you’re not. Stop hiding from the truth. You’re just like us. Death to the Normals. Don’t worry, we’d spare you. You’re not normal.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Lina stood frozen in place, watching while Ramona went up to Dan with a sheath of hand-scrawled pages. She knew that was supposed to be a good thing, not being normal. To Ramona, at least.

  “I’ve had a breakthrough,” Ramona announced. “My soul has finally reached a higher plane. I stayed up all night documenting it in verse.”

  “You’re so prolific, Ramona,” Dan said. “What would Inchworm do without you?”

  It wouldn’t suck, Lina thought.

  Why did she care what Ramona and her friends did? It had nothing to do with her. But it upset her. Everything about them. Especially the ties.

  She was a normal, popular girl, right? Well, popular-ish. She and Holly and Mads were friendly with the cool kids but they weren’t indisputably the cool kids themselves, not yet anyway. But Lina wasn’t like those fringe-dwellers. She didn’t pierce weird parts of her body or dye everything dyable or worship some made-up goddess of death.

  But she did love Dan. And so did they. Deep down, maybe she was more like them than she wanted to admit.

  6

  Mr. Yuck

  To: mad4u

  From: Your daily horoscope

  HERE IS TODAY’s HOROSCOPE: VIRGO: Someone is broad-casting geek rays—and you’re receiving them loud and clear.

  Mads scanned the parking lot at Vineland for Sean’s car. He drove a Jeep. No sign of it. He must not be here yet.

  She waved to Holly and Lina, who’d dropped her off. They waved back and drove off to wait out the date at Holly’s. Mads walked into the café and looked around. No Sean, and no one else who looked like a blond Ashton Kutcher, either. Mads went to the bathroom to check her hair, makeup, and clothes. This was the most important day of her life. Her first date with Sean!

  Holly and Lina had helped her get ready. Mads insisted she wanted smoky eye makeup for the mysterious look she believed appropriate for a blind date, even a blind date that took place at four in the afternoon. So Lina smudged black eyeliner around her e
yes and Mads wouldn’t let her stop until she looked like someone had punched her. Holly was in charge of the red lipstick.

  Mads studied the results in the bathroom mirror at Vineland. She wasn’t sure how she looked, but one thing she knew, and liked, was that she didn’t look like her usual self. As far as she was concerned, that was an improvement.

  She wanted to look sexy but she didn’t want to overdress. The eternal problem. So she wore fishnet stockings under her short corduroy skirt instead of her usual tights, and high-heeled boots. She left her black hair hanging down naturally.

  She went back into the café and picked out a table. It was four o’clock exactly. She grabbed a magazine and flipped through it, trying to look casual. Ten minutes went by, fifteen. Where was Sean?

  At 4:17, the door opened and a gangly, pallid boy with giant feet and a brown pageboy haircut walked in, flourishing a red satin cape. Mads recognized him. He was a ninth-grader known as Yucky Gilbert. His real name was Gilbert Marshall, and he was supposed to be super-smart. He’d skipped two grades and was only twelve. People called him Yucky because he was beyond dorky, snorted when he laughed, and ate things like peanut-butter-and anchovy-sandwiches for lunch. You could tell because he often had a bit of anchovy paste stuck to the side of his mouth at the end of the day.

  Mads went back to her magazine, but a shadow fell across the page. She looked up. Gilbert, who was tall for his age but skinny, loomed over her.

  “Hello, Madison,” Gilbert crooned.

  “Hello.” Mads went back to her magazine.

  “May I sit down?”

  “No. I’m waiting for someone.”

  “I know.” Mads looked up. How could he know?

  “You’re waiting for me,” Yucky Gilbert said. “I’m ‘John.’”

  Mads swallowed. She felt lightheaded.

  “You’re John? But you can’t be! John looks like Ashton Kutcher! He’s a junior!”

  Gilbert flipped his cape and sat down across from her. “Sorry. I lied.”

  “You lied! That’s not allowed! How can you be matched up with the right person if you lie on your questionnaire?” Mads was furious.