by Robin Palmer
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“And you understand that your belief that you don’t deserve love is an outdated idea that comes from some traumatic event in your childhood, and it’s time to put that to rest and move on and seize your destiny, right?” I asked.
“What traumatic event?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Plus, who said anything about love?!”
“Okay, not love,” I corrected. “I meant a date for the dance.”
“Lucy, what does that whole thing you just said even mean?”
“Um, I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted. “But Dr. Maude says it to almost every guest, and every time she does, the audience goes nuts.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I really need to look some of those words up on dictionary.com before I say yes or no.”
I sighed. “Okay, I’ll try this another way. You know how you told us that story a few weeks ago about how, for years, you were scared to try and do a back walkover in gymnastics?”
She nodded. Not only could she draw, but she was good at balancing. I, on the other hand, couldn’t even do a cartwheel because of my coordination issues.
“What I want to know is, why would anyone want to do a back walkover?” Beatrice asked, taking a bite of her sardine sandwich. Beatrice ate a sardine sandwich every day for lunch. Other than fried clams from Friendly’s, I couldn’t stand anything fish-like, so the fact that I was BFFs with someone who (a) was a fish lover, and (b) only wore all black while I was so into color was very strange. “I heard about this girl who actually broke her neck doing one—”
“Beatrice, you’re not helping,” I said. I turned back to Malia. “And then without even knowing what you were doing, like you were in a trance or something, you just leaned backward and did it?”
“I saw this TV show once,” Alice interrupted, “where this guy named the Amazing Elroy put this woman in a trance—”
“Alice, that sounds fascinating, but I’m in the middle of trying to convince Malia of something,” Once more, I turned back to Malia. “And then, after that, you weren’t scared ever again?”
A big smile came over her face. “Yeah. And not only that, but it was what won me the silver medal in the mock Olympics at my school in Milan.” Malia’s dad was Italian, so she had spent the last two years in Italy, which was really cool. Especially because she was fluent in Italian, which meant that the guy at Lombardi’s gave us free garlic knots.
“Well, it’s kind of like that,” I said. “If you never ask Sam to the dance, you’ll never know if he’ll say yes. And if he does say yes, then from then on, you won’t be afraid to ask other boys to dances.” I left out the “Although I don’t know why anyone would want to ask a boy to a dance anyway” part, because I didn’t think it would help the situation. “But even if he says no—which, from what you just told us, doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen—at least you can be proud of yourself for trying.” That part I had stolen from my dad. He was very big on the “be proud of yourself for trying” stuff which, when it came to anything coordination- or math-related or vegan food, was about as far as I got.
She thought about it. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “Okay—I’ll ask him.”
“You will?!” I asked excitedly.
She shrugged. “I guess.”
Beatrice turned to me. “Huh. That was pretty good,” she said, impressed.
“Thanks,” I replied gratefully. It was hard to impress Beatrice.
“Okay, but what about me?” Alice asked. “I need some advice about Max. Pleeeeeeassse,” she moaned, leaning over the lunch table and clutching my arm.
I tried to yank it back, but I couldn’t. With her knobby knees and arms that looked a little bit like spaghetti strands, Alice was on the scrawny side, but when it came to anything having to do with Max Rummel? Watch out. It was like the mere mention of his name brought out all this super-human strength in her. Max had been her local crush since second grade. He referred to Alice as “the Stalker.” If someone had called me that, I’d be beyond embarrassed, but Alice was proud of it. (“He thinks about me enough to have taken the time to come up with a nickname for me!” she squealed when she found out.)
It was either come up with something, or have to walk around with her glued to my side saying “Pleeeeeease . . . pleeeeeease” until I did. I sighed. “Okay, I think in this particular situation, what’s needed is some . . . reverse psychology,” I said. Dr. Maude was also big on the reverse-psychology stuff.
“What does that mean again?” she asked.
“It means . . . doing something the opposite way that you want to do it, or how someone would think you’d do it, but getting the result you want,” I replied. At least that’s what I thought it meant.
“Ooh, I like that!” Alice gasped. “So what do I do?”
I thought about it. “Okay, you know how Max already knows you like him and that you want to ask him to the dance?”
“You think he knows?” she asked.
Beatrice rolled her eyes. “Alice, people all the way in China who don’t speak English know it.”
I turned to Beatrice and brushed the hair out of my eyes. To most people, it wouldn’t have looked like anything, but because we were BFFs, she knew that it was a Please-don’t-be-mean-or-else-this-is-going-to-take-even-longer look. That was the great thing about BFFs—you didn’t have to waste a lot of time or energy when you were communicating.
“Okay, okay,” she grumbled. “Go on.”
I turned back to Alice. “So what you do,” I continued, “is, next time you’re stalk—I mean, next time you happen to be around him—instead of trying to get his attention like you always do, you . . . ignore him.”
She gasped. “Ignore Max?”
I nodded. “Yeah. And really loudly you say something like ‘The Sadie Hawkins dance is coming up. Too bad there’s no one even halfway interesting in this school to ask.’” That part wouldn’t be hard for Alice on account of the fact that her whisper was about twenty times louder than most people’s outside voices.
“Who do I say that to?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Whoever’s with you,” I replied.
“But what if I’m alone? Then do I just say it out loud to myself? Will that seem a little weird?” she asked. “Will he think I’m crazy, like I have multiple personalities or something? Because I saw a movie on cable once where a woman had those and—”
I sighed. It was a good thing I was a lot nicer than Dr. Maude, because if Alice was on her show, Dr. Maude would totally yell at her for asking such dumb questions. “Alice, I’m sure you’ll figure that part out,” I interrupted. “But the thing of it is, you need him to think that you suddenly changed your mind and you don’t like him anymore.”
“I do?” she asked, confused.
I nodded. “Yeah, ’cause then he’ll start getting all worried.”
“He will?” she asked, even more confused.
“Not to be mean or anything,” Beatrice said, “but personally I think he’ll probably be really relieved.”
“See, that’s the thing—you’d think he would, and he’d probably say he would, but the truth is, he’s a boy. And boys get freaked out when girls who like them don’t like them anymore.”
“They do?” asked Malia.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I mean, I don’t actually know that from personal experience, but I remember that Madison once did that in an episode with one of her crushes, and it totally worked.” Madison—the character Laurel played in her series The World According to Madison Tennyson—was even more boy-crazy than Alice. Laurel didn’t have a lot of experience with boys. In fact, before Austin Mackenzie (the male equivalent of Laurel in the teen superstar world), who she was kind-of-sort-of-dating in the way that huge stars who live in different cities can date, she had never had a boyfriend.
“Really? Well, if it worked for Madison, it’s good eno
ugh for me,” Alice said. She was a huge Madison fan. She had every single one of the trading cards and the almost-impossible-to-find sleeping bag.
“But that’s a TV show,” Beatrice said. “And everyone knows that stuff always works out right in a TV show after the character learns a lesson, even if it’s at the very last minute.”
I turned to Beatrice and scratched the side of my nose, which, in BFF speak, meant, Please be quiet so we can stop talking about this.
“Fine. Okay, so what about me?” Beatrice asked. “What should I do about Chris?”
Chris Linn was Beatrice’s local crush. I didn’t know him all that well because he was in the drama club, and I tended to stay away from the drama kids because they were always asking me a zillion questions about Laurel and her “process” with her acting. But the few times I had talked to him, he was really nice and funny. If Beatrice and I hadn’t been BFFs, I probably would have chosen him as my local crush. Plus, he had a dog named Buster who, from the pictures he had on his Facebook page, looked really cute.
Chris was in Beatrice’s tae kwon do class, which was right after school on Thursdays (something Alan had been on me to try before I convinced him that people with coordination issues weren’t good at that kind of stuff). Sometimes they ended up riding the subway together. That would be a great time for her to get to know him, if he actually talked to her, but he never did. Instead, she said he focused on the subway ads as if they were really interesting, even though I knew from experience that after the first five times you read them, they got boring. Even Dr. Jonathan Zizmor’s, who promised that “Now you can have beautiful clear skin!” even if you didn’t have the money to pay for it right away.
“Well, you can always—” I started to say.
“So this is what I’m thinking,” Beatrice said, cutting me off. “Right before tae kwon do, I’m going to say, ‘Chris, you’re coming to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me—’”
I loved Beatrice, but she could sometimes be what Mom called a “control freak” (I overlistened to her describing my grandmother one time). “Um, maybe you want to think about—” I started to say.
“And then I’ll say, ‘And you’re going to wear all black,’” she went on, “‘so we match. And you’re going to have to get a haircut because your hair is too shaggy—’”
“Whoa, Beatrice!” I finally yelled.
“What?”
“Can I give you a piece of advice?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess so. It depends on what it is. What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
Wait a minute. Had she not asked me for advice in the first place? “Have you heard the phrase ‘You catch more bees with honey than peanut butter’?” I asked.
“Actually, I think it’s ‘than with vinegar,’” Malia said.
I thought about it. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” Malia was a big reader, so she knew these things. Dr. Maude always used that phrase, but most of the time when I watched her show, I ate apples with peanut butter, which is why I think I screwed it up.
“What does that mean?” Alice asked.
“It means that if you want someone to do something for you, you’re going to have a lot more luck if you’re sweet. Not, you know, ordering them around.”
“Did you hear that from Dr. Maude?” Beatrice asked.
“Maybe,” I lied.
They looked at me.
“Okay. Fine. Yes. Yes, I did. But I would’ve come up with it on my own,” I said. “I mean, it’s just plain logic.” As someone who didn’t understand why clothes had to be put away in drawers when they were just going to be taken out again, I was very good at logic.
“Well, I’ll think about it,” Beatrice said. “It might work.”
I took my advice notebook out from my tote bag so I could add the bees and honey thing in. Now that we had covered all of them and how they were going to get dates for the dance, that just left me, and I did not want to go there. Especially since I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to pull off Operation Broken-But-Not-Really Ankle. “So how about the new paint color in the girls’ bathroom near the gym?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject. “Would you say it’s light blue or lavender?”
Malia turned to me. “What about you, Lucy? Who are you going to ask?”
Great. Just when I had thought I had managed to make it out alive. “To what?” I asked innocently.
“To the dance,” Beatrice replied.
“Ohh, the dance!” I exclaimed. It was a good thing I had no interest in being an actress like Laurel, because from the looks they gave me, I clearly wasn’t very good at it. “I don’t know.” I pointed to my foot. “I twisted my ankle pretty bad this morning, and if it doesn’t get better, I might not be able to walk let alone dance, so it’s probably better if I just stay home that night.”
“But it’s still three weeks away,” Malia said.
“Yeah, but it was a very twisty twist,” I replied.
“But you have to go!” Alice exclaimed. “You’re class president.”
I dug in my tote bag for the Official By-Laws of the Student Government of the Center for Creative Learning packet that I carried around with me at all times. “Actually, I checked and there’s nothing in here that says I do.”
Beatrice’s eyes narrowed. “Is this because you don’t have a local crush to ask?”
“No,” I replied. It wasn’t completely a lie. I actually did have a local crush—I just hadn’t gone public with it.
“I bet I could get my cousin Timmy to go with you,” Alice offered. “He’s got a lazy eye, so it’s hard to know where to look when you’re talking to him, but, still, he’s a boy—”
Luckily for me the bell rang to signal that lunch was over. But this was not good. I may have been able to give my friends good advice, but what was I going to do about me?
“Okay, so lemme make sure I got this straight,” Pete said later as he sat at his doorman desk in our lobby while I sat on the couch. It was really comfy, and perfect for sprawling, but Pete had told me that because it was a fancy building, the people who lived there looked down on that kind of thing. “Nowadays the girls gotta ask the boys to dances?”
“Well, not always,” I replied, pulling down on my hair to make it grow, which was something Alice had read in a magazine. So far, I hadn’t noticed a difference, other than the fact that it made my scalp hurt, but I was giving it a try. “But to this one, yeah, because it’s a Sadie Hawkins dance.”
“Who’s Sadie Hawkins?”
“Some cartoon character from the old days,” I replied, trying not to sound impatient. Unlike a lot of adults, Pete paid attention to kids when they talked, which was nice. However, that meant he asked a lot of questions, which tended to make conversations drag on forever.
“Okay. Got it. So you’re thinking that if you ask anyone, it’s gonna be Blair Lerner-Moskovitz because you recently decided that he’s your official local crush even though you haven’t told Beatrice yet because you’re afraid that she’ll think that’s a bad choice.”
I slid down on the couch. Even though there was no one in the lobby at the moment, did he really have to announce it like that? “Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.” I pointed to my foot. “But I hurt my ankle kind of bad this morning, so I don’t think I should go because I probably wouldn’t be able to dance anyway—”
He shook his head. “Your ankle is fine.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a doorman. We know about these things,” he replied. Apparently, doormen knew about everything. “But the answer to this thing is easy.”
“It is?”
He nodded. “Sure.”
I leaned forward. Although I already had an idea of what he was going to say, I was hoping I was wrong. In fact, I didn’t even bother to take out my advice notebook.
“You just have to follow your heart and be yourself,” he announced. “And who yourself happens to be is someone who has a crush on Blair Lerner-Mosk
ovitz.”
Yup. I was right. More of this “be yourself” stuff. Just hearing Blair’s name made me turn red. “Can you just say B.L.M from now on?” I whispered.
“Fine. B.L.M. You have a crush on B.L.M., and you want to ask him to the dance.”
I turned even redder. “Do you really have to say the words B.L.M and crush in the same sentence?” I was really not liking this whole crushing-on-a-boy thing—it was so embarrassing!
He sighed. “All I’m gonna say is that if Beatrice is a true friend—and she is—then even if she questions your taste in boys, ultimately she’ll respect the fact that because it’s a free country, you can like whoever you want.”
I sighed. “Okay, okay.”
“Because if you’re not yourself, and you’re not honest about your feelings, it always ends up biting you in the butt,” he added.
I sighed again. “I know.” I had learned that a bunch of times in the last year, especially when it came to Laurel, Dad, and Mom. As scared as I had been to do it, I had had some really honest conversations with them about stuff—like how I was feeling ignored—and in each case things ended up working out. Not only that, but talking about stuff made whatever stomach pains I was having go away. Actually, the more I thought about it, maybe I should talk to Alan about this whole hobby and college thing, too.
“So are you going to do it?” Pete asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
Which was better than “absolutely positively not.”
Dear Dr. Maude,
This is going to have to be short because instead of studying for my algebra test, I just spent the last two hours watching Surf Safari on cable. Connor Forrester’s in it. He and I have become really good friends through our Triple S’s (Skype Snack Sessions). I had to watch out of loyalty, even though I’d already seen it five times. I wish I didn’t find him so goofy because he’d be the perfect celebrity crush for me—especially since we ended up kissing in the parking lot of In-N-Out Burger that time I was out in L.A. with Laurel. But I don’t like him like-him. He’s just not my type. He’s too . . . movie star-ish. Which would make sense, seeing that he is a movie star. And also he’s what my dad would call “not the sharpest tool in the shed.”