This Girl Isn't Shy, She's Spectacular

by Nina Beck

  “What the heck is gay-stuffing?” Riley asked.

  “Can we please keep on topic!” D shouted, and everyone quieted down.

  Brendan was the first one to speak up. “D, you like Samantha?”

  D thought about it for a second before answering. “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t you say so? Or better yet, why didn’t you just ask her out?” Brendan asked.

  “Yeah, I have better things to do with my Thursday nights,” Marley replied with a yawn.

  “Like the football team?” Brendan asked.

  “We don’t have a football team, Captain.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Could both of you shut up,” Riley said to Brendan and Marley. Both of them had the grace to look embarrassed and down at their feet. “So, what’s the story?”

  “I like her, OK?” D said.

  “I know, but what’s the story?”

  “I don’t know. I like her.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What else do you want? A written document that says my feelings are pure and that I want to be with her forever? That she completes me?”

  Riley didn’t say anything, just sat watching D for a moment.

  “Look, you’re not going to get that. These things don’t last. I’m not going to make her believe that I want her forever when really—who knows?”

  “Oh, great,” Marley said. “Now I need a drink.”

  “Shut up, Marley,” Riley said.

  Riley stood up and crossed the room to stand next to D. She gave him a big hug. Riley knew him better than anyone else in the world and perhaps a little better than he knew himself.

  “I think if you like her this much, you need to admit it to yourself,” Riley said.

  “Yeah,” Brendan said, nodding before Marley elbowed him.

  “I already admitted I liked her,” D said.

  “No, I mean you have to admit you like her and then give her the opportunity to crush you,” Riley said, waving her hand in the air, dismissing it.

  “Thanks, that sounds pleasant.”

  “D, the entire part about being in a relationship is trusting the other person enough to hurt you, to crush you, to break your heart!”

  “And you know this from the whole seven months you’ve been dating Eric?” D yelled.

  Riley stuck out her tongue.

  “Nice, Ri—nice.”

  “I’m still right,” she said.

  “I just don’t know.”

  “Well,” Marley said, “you can’t keep her from dating guys and meeting someone who can give her that.”

  “What is that exactly?” Brendan asked.

  “D, maybe you should think about it. Like, really think about it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess.” D patted down his pockets, checking for his wallet and keys. “I think I’m going to get out of here.”

  “You don’t want to be here when she gets back from her date?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Riley nodded, Brendan pursed his lips, Marley flipped the page of her magazine.

  D walked out of Riley’s thinking about what she said—it didn’t really make sense to him, but he did like Sam. He was trying to be better and trying harder to be worthy of her, so what if he wasn’t ready to get close to her yet. That was really for her own good, not his.

  If he got close to her and then he couldn’t be the person she needed him to be, then he was really going to hurt her.

  He was doing this for her own good. Perhaps, he thought, he should back off, then—because, really, for her own good, maybe she would find someone who liked her and who she liked. Someone who was worth liking.

  #11 FIND SOMETHING TO DREAM ABOUT

  Justin picked Sam up for their date and took her to the 92nd Street Y. For a minute Sam thought he was bringing her to exercise and felt really bad that she wore boots, but when they walked inside, Justin pulled out two tickets, handing her one.

  “I bought us tickets to see this author speaking. Riley told me he was your favorite, so I thought…”

  Sam looked at the ticket that had PETE BRYANT written across it in large letters. Her heart skipped a beat. Samantha’s favorite author. Samantha’s idol, and the man who stood between her and the writing program of her dreams.

  “This is amazing, Justin, thank you!” she said, hugging him tightly. When she pulled back, he looked a little embar-rassed but really pleased that she liked what they were doing on their date.

  Pete Bryant had changed Samantha’s life. Probably in a way that would be uncomfortable for him to hear, almost as uncomfortable as it would be for Samantha to explain. But the first book of Pete Bryant’s that Samantha had read, Apples & Oranges, changed her life.

  Some people can point to a family member who mentored them through adolescence, some people can point to a movie or a song that really had meaning for them and gave them the strength to do the difficult things that needed to be done. Apples & Oranges was all those things to Samantha.

  The book, about an invisible girl who never realized she was invisible—instead believing she was just unimportant and unloved—seemed to Samantha the most important book in contemporary literature. Perhaps, if she thought about it carefully, she’d see her own feelings in that book, but just like in the book, Samantha wondered if she was just waiting around for the one person who could see her to come around and show her what the world really was.

  And, for a long time, Samantha thought that person should be Pete Bryant. Obviously, he helped the character in Apples & Oranges, he could help her. In fact, he had practically written about her! But, as Samantha got older, so did Pete Bryant. And then he got married and had three small children and what started as a childhood fantasy turned into a professional crush.

  But being so close to him brought back all the childhood adoration that she thought she had culled from her personality. But it was like she was a fanatical fan and she did the best she could to remain calm and try not to giggle and jump up and down as the staff worker opened the door to let the audience into the auditorium.

  They headed in, Sam grabbing them seats as far in front as they could, and when Pete Bryant came out, it was like Sam only had eyes for him. He read from his recent book and then took questions from the audience. Sam was trying to figure out if she had enough guts to ask the question she really wanted to ask, and then she did. She raised her hand and Pete Bryant, the Pete Bryant, called on her from the small stage in the front of the auditorium.

  “Red-haired young woman in the third row,” he said.

  …And she couldn’t say a word. It was like her tongue was frozen or stuck to the roof of her mouth with glue. This was horrible! She was going to look like an idiot in front of Pete!

  “Hi,” Justin said, standing up next to Samantha, taking her elbow. “My friend here just wanted to say she was a really big fan.” That drew a few chuckles from the audience and, when Samantha nodded like crazy, a chuckle from the author as well. “And she wanted to know what was the most important thing to you when you decided to become a writer.”

  “Great question, red-haired young woman’s friend,” Pete Bryant said, and the audience laughed again.

  Samantha sat down, her pulse racing. Justin reached over and gave her hand a squeeze and held it there, and Sam let him.

  “I always want to remain true to the experience,” Pete said. “Whether I’m writing about killer unicorns or hunting in Wales, it’s important to leave a little bit of yourself on the page. It’s the part that feels authentic to readers. It was important to me to be able to do that, so I could connect with my readers.”

  And then Pete Bryant, idol of all literary idols, winked at Samantha.

  And Samantha fell in love. All over again.

  Samantha went home after her date with Justin because she had promised her parents that she’d spend time with them.

  “I feel like we haven’t even seen you since you came home,” Samantha’s mom said over their late dinner. Sa
mantha’s dad nodded while spooning some of Sam’s mom’s mashed potatoes onto his plate; he was nodding but only half paying attention. A sports game was playing in the background and he had his head swiveled around to watch while he ate. Sam’s mom always threatened to turn off the television, and her father’s solution was always to move the TV farther away—because, he contended, he didn’t want to watch it, he only wanted to listen—but that only resulted in her father having a long stretch of his neck and food trailing over most of his shirts from his waistline to over his left shoulder. Her mother had once told her, while she was still away at school, that she had thought about moving the television into the dining room so that she wouldn’t have to spend so much money getting his shirts specially laundered, but she didn’t necessarily want him to “win” either.

  Samantha found the entire domestic scene half comfortable, half very unusual. She still felt like New Horizons was her home and this apartment where her brother lived with her parents was a place she visited during short stretches when she couldn’t stay at school.

  She felt a little awkward about being answerable to her parents in a way she wasn’t while she was at school, like she was always trying to remember what the rules were and when she had to ask for permission.

  This hadn’t been a problem at school: There was nowhere to go anyway.

  But at home, she supposed, she hadn’t been at home as much as she would’ve been expected to be.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said, putting her fork down. “I didn’t—”

  “No, no,” her mother cut her off, waving her hand in the air. “I’m glad you’ve got friends and a social life here. It’s great.”

  At the phrase “social life” her younger brother started miming kissing as he made out with the back of his hand. He stopped abruptly when his mother shot him a confused look. Sam smirked. He smirked back.

  “Sam’s got a boyfriend. Several, actually,” Andrew said, smirking some more.

  Before Sam had a chance to defend herself (and denounce and then kill her brother), her mother caught him off guard. “Why should that be surprising? Sam’s a beautiful young lady and of course there are boys who are interested in dating her. Isn’t that right, Charles?”

  Samantha’s father turned back around, a glob of gravy hitting him square in the chest as he nodded. “Yes, she’s quite lovely. Why—who are we talking about?”

  Sam’s mother sighed. “Your daughter.”

  “Oh, yes,” Sam’s father said enthusiastically. “Always felt she was quite nice, must come from good stock.”

  Samantha laughed and her mother rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously, Charles, we’re talking about Sam’s boyfriends.”

  “Boyfriends?” Sam’s father turned to look at her. Uh-oh, now they had his full attention and that was a scary thing. He wiped off his shirt, getting the small glob of gravy, all the while concentrating on her.

  “Not a boyfriend, Daddy,” she said, smiling.

  “How many times have you been out with this boy?”

  “Um, once,” she said, unsure about who she was talking about—but “once” seemed like the safest answer available.

  “Oh,” he said, “all right, then.”

  “Yes,” Sam continued, “we’re going to the Spring Fling together.”

  Sam could see her father bristle. “A dance?”

  “Oh, Charles!” her mother cried. “It’s just a dance! They go to spend time together and listen to music—”

  “I know what a dance is,” Sam’s father said stiffly. “We met at a dance.” He raised an eyebrow that effectively cut off Sam’s mother from whatever she was about to say, and suddenly Sam wondered what happened at the dance. And then, remembering it was her parents, she decided not to give it another thought.

  “Who is this boy?” Sam’s father asked.

  “Um…” Sam’s brain began churning. Who was she going to the dance with—D? Probably not. Probably she wanted to. But did he? And how about Justin? Justin was great and he probably wanted to go to the dance with her. “Justin Pembroke.”

  “Justin Pembroke,” both of her parents repeated.

  “Do you know him?” Samantha asked, praying they didn’t.

  “Yeah,” Andrew said, snorting, “they are religious followers of the prep school social scene.”

  Samantha made a note that she would definitely have to beat her brother up later.

  “Well, I look forward to meeting this young man,” Sam’s father said.

  “Yeah, eventually…” Sam trailed off, thinking eventually she would stop talking to him, and then him meeting her parents (her father, especially) would be completely unnecessary.

  “Eventually…before the dance,” her father finished.

  “What?”

  “Before the dance, Samantha,” he said, turning back toward his sports game, leaving Samantha sputtering and Sam’s mother simply shrugging while she sipped her glass of wine.

  Samantha was in her room, changing into her pajamas, when her mother knocked on her door.

  “So, this was a good date, then?” Sam’s mother asked.

  “It was OK,” Samantha said.

  “Are you going to the dance with this boy?”

  “I don’t know…” Samantha hesitated.

  “Oh, don’t mind your father, he’s not nearly as bad as he sounds,” Sam’s mother said, a smile creeping onto her face. Sam noticed that her mom smiled like that whenever she talked about her dad. Sometimes it was gross, but right now it was kinda cute.

  “No, that’s not it. I just…well, I like this boy.”

  “Justin.”

  “D.”

  “I’m confused, Sam. Is this the boy you went out with tonight?”

  “Noooo!” Sam said, falling onto the bed, face-first, into her pillow. “I like someone else.”

  “Honey, I can’t understand what you’re saying when you’re suffocating yourself with your pillow,” her mom said, pulling the pillow out from under Sam. Sam turned to face her mom.

  “I like another boy, but he’s not going to ask me to the dance.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And I can’t ask him, because I already asked him if he wanted to hang out, and he said no, and then I asked him if he’d kiss me and he didn’t say anything!”

  “Oh. Um. Hmm.”

  “So, I don’t know what to do!”

  “Well,” Sam’s mom said, stroking the top of Sam’s head gently. “I think you should go with the boy who asked you. You’ll see this other boy there, won’t you?”

  “Maybe—what if he goes with someone else?”

  “What if he does?”

  Samantha shrugged.

  “Go to the dance, honey. Enjoy yourself…and, uh, don’t tell your father that you asked a boy to kiss you.”

  Sam laughed and sniffed a little. “OK, I won’t.”

  “Good night, darling,” Sam’s mom said, standing up to leave the room. “It’ll be OK, I promise.”

  Sam nodded as her mother turned out the light, and Sam realized that she’d just been tucked into bed. Again. But this time, she didn’t mind so much.

  D IS AFRAID OF SUCKING

  The dance was in a week and D had been avoiding everyone, including Riley, but he had heard through the grapevine (OK, Marley had told him in the hallway—and now D was sure that Marley was some sort of sadist who simply liked to see him squirm) that Samantha would be going to the dance with Justin. It was Saturday night and D was doing something he had never done before: his homework.

  He had done homework before, but not on a night when he could be out drinking and flirting and whatever else he did in the city. D was about ready to give up on his history homework, which was literally putting him to sleep while he read, when Riley texted him that she was outside.

  He jumped up from his desk and ran to the elevator. When he got downstairs, Riley was waiting for him. He slowed down, took a deep breath, and walked up to her.

  “Evening,” he said.


  He noted, with disappointment, that she was alone. And with more disappointment that she was dressed to go out. This would be a short reprieve, apparently.

  “Evening,” she said, sitting on a fire hydrant that stuck out of the ground near the front wall of his building. D leaned against the wall next to her, took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered Riley one. She shook it off, so D lit one for himself and took a deep drag.

  “I thought you quit smoking those,” Riley said, pointing to the cigarette.

  “So did I.”

  “So why—”

  “Did you come here to lecture me?”

  “Yes,” Riley said, and D was sorry he asked. He took one more puff, then threw it down onto the sidewalk and stamped it out. “That’s not what I was here to lecture you about.”

  “Think of it as a bonus,” he said.

  “Excellent,” Riley said. “Sam’s out with Justin right now.”

  D sighed heavily and brushed the hair back from his face. He had been happily avoiding the idea of Samantha and Justin on dates. “So the first date went well?”

  “Yup,” Riley said.

  “And now they are out again,” D said, wishing he hadn’t stomped out his cigarette.

  “Right,” she said.

  “That’s great. Can I get back to my college application now?” he asked.

  “You’re applying to colleges?”

  “Didn’t I just say so?”

  “Wow, don’t be so testy!” Riley exclaimed. D took a deep breath and tried to relax. “And don’t worry, I’ll write you a recommendation, no problem.”

  “Just what I need,” D said, then paused and looked at Riley. “I’m not doing well with this, am I?”

  “Nope.”

  “What do I do?”

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I want to not want her,” he said.

  “That it?”

  “No, I want her to stay the hell away from Justin.”

  “Barring that?”

  “I want her to fall madly in love with me and stay home until I’m done with these stupid applications, at which point she will do and be everything I want her to be,” he said. Riley snorted. The two stood up and walked out together.