by Nina Beck
Marley just pointed at the paper.
“So, we were just coming up with a couple of names as possible Spring Fling dates,” Riley said, moving things around on her touch screen.
Sam looked at each of the group’s members. Brendan was nodding vigorously, very excited (obviously) to be there. D looked like he wanted to die. Marley looked like she wanted everyone else to die.
D looked up and Sam looked away quickly. She wondered what he thought about all this. Was he jealous? Sam realized she wanted him to be, which was silly—he had no reason to be jealous…he didn’t even like her.
D plucked Riley’s iPhone from her hands and glanced at the list.
“You can’t be serious!” D yelled. A librarian walking by shushed him loudly and D repeated it again, softer this time. “Samantha, this is insane, you can’t really be so desperate as to want to date any one of these idiots.”
The word “desperate” was a bad one to use; Samantha flinched at it, as did the rest of the group.
“It’s not about being desperate,” Riley assured her. “It’s about being open to new possibilities.”
Sam thought about it—wasn’t that what her time here was all about? Trying new things? She slowly nodded. “I want to do it.”
“Ugh,” D said, dropping into his seat.
“You don’t have to be here if this is against your moral code or something,” Riley told him.
“Don’t think you’re doing this without me,” D said. “Someone has to protect this girl’s best interests. And you three are obviously off your rockers.”
“D,” Sam started to cut in to defend her friends. Well, at least defend Riley.
“I’m not even going to start on you,” D said, pointing a finger at Samantha.
“I don’t know,” Brendan said. “I think it sounds like fun. Maybe I should do it myself.”
“One at a time,” Riley said, plucking her phone back from D’s grasp. “OK, back to the list!”
Sam left the library with a small sense of foreboding and a huge, huge headache. They now had a list and a plan. She said good-bye to the group outside the library and walked in the direction of her parents’ apartment, and after a few steps, realized she was being followed by D.
She turned to face him. “Are you following me?”
“Um, my apartment is in this direction.”
“Oh.”
D nodded. “It wouldn’t seem like I was following you if you allowed me to escort you home.”
Sam nodded and D caught up with her and then fell in line, walking together up the sidewalk, sometimes bumping into each other when a larger group would walk by in the opposite direction.
At Lexington and 50th they had to avoid a bunch of women and men in suits leaving dry cleaners and small food shops as they hurried from work to home; there were nannies pushing strollers and people walking dogs. Sam and D had to walk very closely next to each other to avoid them all.
Once in a while their arms would bump while they walked, and Sam would feel a sizzle of energy jump up her arm. She willed herself to believe that D was just like anyone else. She willed herself to make small talk so he wouldn’t know how much he was affecting her.
But they didn’t talk. They walked six blocks before either spoke a word to the other, until Sam couldn’t take the silence anymore and said, “I’m sorry about putting you on the spot the other night.”
“There is absolutely nothing to apologize for,” D said softly.
“I feel like I put you in an uncomfortable position, and—”
“Not at all.”
“But you’re friends with my friend, and now I feel kind of awkward,” she explained as she readjusted her backpack on her shoulders.
“Don’t feel awkward, there is absolutely nothing to feel awkward about.” Sam figured he meant that there was no reason to feel awkward because he was so used to girls throwing themselves at him that another one barely made a difference…and she felt even more awkward about it and stopped talking.
“Actually, I wanted to talk—” D said.
“This is me,” Sam said, interrupting, looking up at a very tall building that wasn’t her building at all. Her building was about twenty blocks north of this building…
“This is you?” he said, looking at the building behind her.
“Yup! Well, thanks for walking me home.”
“Oh, um, sure. I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Yup!” Sam waited for him to walk away, but he waited for her to get inside safely (really, safely at four-thirty?), so she smiled, waved a little, and walked toward the doorman.
She made a really strange face at the doorman, which she hoped D couldn’t see, and he opened the door for her and she stepped inside, waved again, and D nodded and began walking up the street.
When he was far enough away that he was out of her line of sight, Sam stuck her head outside and the doorman said, “He’s gone, miss.”
“Oh,” Sam said, straightening. “Thank you.”
“No problem, miss,” the tall man said, straightening the front of his uniform and readjusting his hat before opening the door for her. “May I assist you with anything else?”
“Oh, no, thank you again,” Sam said.
The doorman nodded, and Sam snuck out of the building where she absolutely did not live and walked up the street alone this time.
D BECOMES A STALKER. THIS IS NEW FOR HIM
D stood inside the small grocery a few blocks away from where he left Samantha and fiddled with the cash machine while he kept his eyes locked on the sidewalk in front of him. He had to move eventually, when a little old lady asked if he was going to marry the ATM machine or just get money from it. He apologized and stepped away, but not before he saw a familiar red head bobbing up the sidewalk.
He waited a few moments more and then stepped out onto the sidewalk to follow her. They walked, about half a block apart, for another six blocks until Sam walked into a building where she was warmly greeted by the doorman and didn’t come back out again (D knew; he waited for another fifteen minutes to be sure).
Did she really want to avoid him so much that she pretended to live in a different building? It’s not like D was going to stalk her! Well, not much more than he was doing right now anyway.
When it seemed ridiculous to stay watching her building any longer (well, it was really ridiculous fifteen minutes ago, but who is to judge?) D turned and continued walking uptown toward his own place.
#8 LEARN HOW TO DEAL WITH THINGS IN A MORE PRODUCTIVE MANNER
Samantha was sitting in a very squished booth in a diner by Columbia University with Riley and Brendan. The place was crowded during the breakfast rush with college students who were enjoying being college students; they were talking about interesting things and they seemed so…grown-up. The whole thing made Sam want to go home and work on her writing sample so that she too could be grown-up and sit in a diner with crappy food and be talking about writing with her fellow UCLA writing students. It never occurred to Sam that she wouldn’t get into the writing program, but as time went by it became clearer and clearer that she might end up being just another nameless freshman in the nameless UCLA crowd.
She could barely concentrate on what Riley and Brendan were talking about, and she was sure that she had probably already agreed to more than one thing that she would regret later.
“What’s that?” Sam asked, pointing at the bright orange folder that Riley had pulled out of her bag.
Riley folded up the edge so that Sam couldn’t see the contents of the folder, but she waggled her eyebrows in a way that was seriously getting on Sam’s nerves. “These, my dear friend, are the printouts from all the guys who want to be your date to the Spring Fling.”
“What did she just say?” Sam asked Brendan.
“I have no idea, but we’ve already confirmed four e-mails. Except two are from freshmen, so I don’t know if we are even counting those.”
Obviously Samantha should have been paying clos
er attention to the conversation. “Wait, hold up! Go back, what are these e-mails, who are they from…and how do they know me?”
Riley rolled her eyes. “I just told you, after we talked, I posted a note on my Facebook page—don’t worry, it was private—that said that you were looking for a Spring Fling date and that if anyone was interested, they should e-mail.”
“Ugh,” Sam said, slumping in her seat, causing her hot tea to slosh over the side a little. Brendan quickly dabbed at the mess with his napkin and then, having no place to put the wet napkin, tucked it behind the ketchup and sugar canister. “One, how did you make it private?”
“Well, I made it for Curtis Prep students only—CP has their own Facebook group—so I just linked it—”
“I don’t need all the details,” Sam said, covering her face with her hands and putting her forehead on the table. “So, the entire student body thinks I’m a desperate loser?”
“Not the entire student body,” Brendan said helpfully. “A bunch replied.”
Sam picked her head up to look at him.
“Of course, we’ve only confirmed four were serious.”
Sam’s eyes bugged out of her head.
“So far,” Riley was quick to add. “Only confirmed four so far. But I know more than four were really interested.”
“I don’t even know four guys who go to Curtis Prep!” Sam cried. “I can’t go out with some guy who doesn’t even know what I look like.”
Riley looked off into the distance, at a space right above Sam’s left shoulder. Sam shifted in her seat until Riley had no choice but to look her in the eyes.
“I might have added a picture.”
“What picture?”
“A good one!” Riley assured her.
“Yeah, it was!” Brendan said, nodding emphatically.
“Don’t help,” Riley muttered under her breath. “Anyway, there’s a picture and a really well-written description—I wrote it—and it’s…Samantha, stop hitting your head against the table.”
“This is so ridiculous! I’m going to be the laughingstock of the entire school.”
“You are not!” Brendan cried. “Seriously, this is such a great idea. I’m definitely going to try this when we’re done. Samantha, seriously, stop. People are watching.”
Sam picked up her head and saw there was a group of college boys at the table next to them, staring at her like she was crazy. She smiled and waved at them, and one kid nodded, but the rest just went back to picking at their omelets and French toast.
Sam eyed the orange folder. Orange began to take on new meaning to Sam. No longer just a color, it now represented all that was wrong with the world. This orange folder was the end of her social life (before it even had a chance to begin!). She needed that folder; she wanted that folder.
“Can I see…” Sam asked, reaching for it.
Riley snapped it back. “No, that would prejudice our opinion of each candidate unduly.”
“What is she talking about?” Sam asked Brendan.
Brendan looked at Riley in an assessing way. “I think,” he said, turning to Sam, “that she wants us to discuss them before you give any input so that way it is fair and impartial.”
“She thinks this is fair and impartial? She knows all these people, I don’t!”
“I don’t know all of them,” Riley said. “I certainly don’t know the freshmen. You’re not interested in dating a freshman, are you?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Can I look at the e-mails?”
Riley thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
Sam screamed a frustrated cry, just as the waitress appeared to see if they needed anything. She hurried off while Riley made “Don’t worry, she’s only a little crazy” hand signals.
SAM GETS MORE DATES THAN D CAN HANDLE
Brynna, D’s housekeeper and de facto parent, placed a tray of mini English muffin pizzas on a plate in the middle of the large wooden kitchen table. Brendan grabbed two, Riley was too busy playing with an ominous-looking orange folder, and Marley glanced at the food only long enough to sneer, and then went back to looking bored.
“She totally has to go out with this Walker kid,” Riley said, pulling a page out of the folder and passing it around the table.
By the time it reached D, he already hated the kid. Whoever he was. Even Marley looked interested by what she was reading; when she passed the paper to D, he practically ripped it out of her hands.
Marley just raised her eyebrows. D told her to shut up and looked at the page.
It said:
RED: lovely color of my lips when I finish playing the trombone.
Red hair and freckles do warm this trombone player’s heart. Go out with me?
I will serenade you with my trombone.
I’ll add something…It will be a lovely tune.
Oh! New red-haired girl—Will you please go out with me? I play the trombone.
D snorted. “I think he plays the trombone.”
“Can you tell a girl that you are going to ‘serenade’ her with your ‘trombone’?” Brendan asked, plucking the paper out of D’s hands while shoving an entire English muffin pizza into his mouth.
“She should totally go out with him,” Riley said, marking the e-mail with a big smiley face.
“No, she shouldn’t. I don’t think all these haikus are really haikus.”
The four of them had decided to meet without Samantha present, so they could go over the initial e-mails, which were already up to twenty.
“Twenty?” Marley said. “Twenty boys want to date her?”
“I’m so doing this next,” Brendan said. “Hey, do you have anything to drink?”
D jerked his head toward the cabinet. Brendan got up and opened it. “Um, I didn’t mean alcohol. Do you have anything else?”
D shrugged, and Brendan went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. D wasn’t sure why they were all in his apartment (“For privacy!” Riley had said, like this was a freakin’ state secret), but now he wanted them all to go. And he wanted the orange folder to stay. He wanted to introduce the orange folder to the wonderful gas-powered fireplace in his living room.
“So, how should we go through them?” Riley asked the group.
“I think we should just read and rank them, then the lowest ones go.”
Everyone pulled out pens and started going through the applications. There were one or two that were no-brainers. The ones that should automatically be crossed off the list: the girls, for one.
“I think this Walker kid should get nixed,” D said.
“Write it down and shut up, I’m trying to read,” Marley mumbled, pulling the cap of her red pen off with her teeth.
“No, I like Walker!” Riley cried, snatching the paper from D’s hands and scribbling out the big zero that he had written at the top of the page.
“He’s stalking her. With bad haikus,” D said after a moment of hesitation, realizing that the freshman was stalking her with haikus, but he was actually stalking her. Well, not at the moment.
“They weren’t so bad,” Brendan said.
“They were trombone haikus. This kid is obviously crazy.”
“Or he’s obviously a trombone player,” Riley said.
“Is there anything obvious about a trombone player?” Brendan asked.
“Oh, I thought that whole trombone thing was just a euphemism,” Marley said, tilting her head and looking confused.
“He’s out,” D said.
“In,” the other three responded, and D crumbled. But when the others looked down at their papers, he snuck a small smile. This was going to be easier than he thought: As long as he could keep the dating pool to freshman trombone players (who wrote haikus), he had absolutely nothing to worry about.
SAMANTHA TRIES TO GET BUSY
Samantha had the phone hooked under her ear, against her shoulder, and was lying on her stomach crosswise on her bed while trying to write her new sample pages. It ju
st wasn’t working; nothing she came up with sounded any less trite and boring than the other sample (the other billion samples) that she had already written.
She snapped the notebook shut, sending three pencils flying.
Riley was rattling off something about her first date in her ear, in the midst of stories about Eric and about this really great pair of shoes that she wanted to buy but couldn’t figure out what color to get, so she just got both…and did she mention that one of Sam’s dates was with a freshman?
“I’m not going to get arrested, am I?” Sam asked.
“Of course not. Wait…when do you turn eighteen?” Riley asked.
“Not until the end of the summer.”
“Oh! Then you’re fine…” Riley said, making Samantha cringe. “We picked two already and we’re still getting more e-mails!
“Yeah,” Riley continued, “I think what we’ll do is that you’ll come over here and they can pick you up and then they can drop you off here and you can give all of us—”
“All of us?”
“Yeah, you know, all of us…Brendan…D…Marley…Well, after each of your dates you can come back here and tell us about it and we can then rate your dates based on your enjoyment—both obvious and subtle—and how cute we think the two of you look together.”
Samantha wondered what D thought about this whole operation. Was he as worried about it as she was or was D just happy to have her off his hands? If she had a date for the dance, he wouldn’t have to worry about it. He could even ask someone else to go…
“Was that your idea?”
“No, Brendan’s…We can’t have you walking around with someone who looks totally inappropriate for you.”
“Would it be more important to see if someone feels more inappropriate, and isn’t that something I could judge for myself?”
“Samantha, darling,” Riley said softly. “If that was the case, would we be in this position to begin with?”
“I guess I see your point.”
They said their good-byes, with plans for Samantha to go over to Riley’s house in two nights (on a Thursday!) for her first date. She wasn’t told who she was going out with, or what they would be doing, but she knew he was expected at six-thirty, so Sam had to be at Riley’s house at six P.M.