by Robin Palmer
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t?”
I sighed. “Well, not, you know, officially. Because if it were official, I would have put it in the log. And I haven’t. Yet. But now that we’ve had this conversation . . . I may think about doing so.” Phew. As the words left my mouth, my knees buckled a little. Who knew it felt so good to tell the truth? Even if it meant she’d probably no longer want to be my friend, let alone my best friend. “And just so you know, a large part of why I recently decided that I had an unofficial crush on him is because you’re always on me about choosing a local crush, and because we live in the same building, you can’t get much more local than that.”
As I babbled and blurted and blovershared, Beatrice just stood there with a look of horror on her face. When I finally bit my tongue to shut myself up, I waited for her to let out some long giant scream or go running down the street like the main character did in the movie Mall Food Court Massacre that Laurel and I had watched the other night on cable. (She had been offered the lead and had luckily turned it down because it was REALLY bad.) But all she did was scratch the side of her nose.
“Well, it was fun being BFFs while it lasted,” I went on. “If you want, I’ll give you Malia as your new one, and I’ll just stick with Laurel. I don’t mind not having one at school.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, confused. “Why would I want a new BFF?”
I shrugged. “Because you’re always going on about how annoying Blair is. And stupid. And gross. And how any girl who had a crush on him was in need of serious mental help.”
She shrugged. “Well, yeah, he is all of those things. And I have to say, I have no idea why when there’s nine billion boys in the world, you’d pick him as your official local crush—”
“But I just told you he’s not my official local crush,” I corrected. “It’s not in the log yet. There’s a big difference.”
“Fine. Whatever. But if it’s between you liking him and having you as my best friend, of course I’m not going to stop it.”
“You’re not?” I asked, surprised.
She shook her head.
I was so relieved I was sure it was bringing on my period that very second. “But how’d you know?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just did.”
That was one of the cool things about being BFFs with someone—the whole mind-reading thing, like how you could finish each other’s sentences, or psychically know who they had crushes on. Actually, that part wasn’t so good, but the finishing-the-sentences part was.
“I guess it’s the way, when we’re hanging out in my apartment, you always ask where he is, and when he’s coming back,” she continued. “Or how, when he’s home, you end up going to the bathroom a bunch of times because it means you have to walk past his bedroom to get there.”
I did? Whoops.
“Or how, when I bring his name up, your face turns red—kind of like it is now—and when I mentioned that girl Lori Spellman who he danced with at his bar mitzvah last year, you kept asking me all these questions about her. Or how—”
I felt like my cheeks were going to burst into flames any moment. “Okay. You can stop now,” I interrupted. “I get why you may have possibly thought that I sort-of-kind-of been a little interested in him. So . . . you’re not mad at me?” I asked. “For keeping it a secret?”
“No. I mean, if it were me, I’d be embarrassed to admit it, too,” she replied. “But I was thinking . . . seeing that he’s your official local crush—”
“Beatrice!”
“Okay, fine—unofficial official crush. That you should probably ask him to the dance.”
I looked up at the sky again. “Wait a minute—another sign?” I shouted.
“Why do you keep doing that?” Beatrice demanded.
I ignored her question. “Really? You think I should ask him to the dance?”
“Yeah. Not because I want him there—because obviously, I don’t—and if he did anything to embarrass me, I’d make sure my moms punished him for it, but it would be weird to not have you there. Sure, Malia and Alice will be there, but you’re my best friend. It just wouldn’t be the same without you.”
I smiled.
“And because you won’t just ask Mark Bialy—”
The smile faded. “I keep telling you, Mark Bialy smells gross. And he spits when he talks.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s not like you can afford to be all picky when the dance is only days away. So as I was saying, because you won’t ask him, you should probably just ask my brother. Even if he is stupid. And an embarrassment to society.”
“But what if he says no?” I asked.
“Then you can watch that thing on hoarders you want to watch. But at least you’ll know you had the courage to at least ask.”
That sounded exactly like the advice I had given Anxious on Amsterdam. I took a deep breath. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it,” I agreed.
What was the worst thing that could happen?
Other than his saying no.
I guess it would be . . .
His saying yes.
Which would bring up a whole new bunch of problems.
Dear Dr. Maude,
I don’t have a lot of time to write, but I just wanted to pass along a good piece of advice that I think might be very interesting to your viewers and readers. (You know, the readers of your website and books—not the ones who you e-mail back after they e-mail you directly, because I don’t think that actually ever happens.)
The advice is this: If you’re ever confused as to what you should do about something, try praying for a sign. If you’re not sure how you feel about God, that’s okay, because what you can do is just pray to a doorknob, and it’ll still totally work.
The reason I know this is because that’s what I did, and I didn’t just get one sign, but TWO, like one after another. But make sure to tell your fans that if they’re thinking of kneeling when they pray, they might want to think about putting a blanket or a towel underneath their knees. Otherwise, they’ll get sore.
In case you were wondering (not that you were, because if that was the case, you would’ve probably written back and asked), I had asked for signs about whether I should (a) tell Beatrice that I might-but-am-not-definitely-sure have a crush on her brother, and (b) ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. And they came! Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time to write at the moment because now I have to actually go ask him.
Anyway, feel free to share that advice with your fans. You don’t even have to say that it came from me, although it would be really nice if you did. So that you’re not being a plagiarizer.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
P.S. Sorry if I’m being a little cranky with those comments about how you never write me back. I think I’m very PMS-y at the moment. At least I’m hoping I am.
* * *
If I wasn’t PMS-y when I wrote the letter, and my period wasn’t about to arrive any second, then I’m pretty sure it was as I made my way down to the tenth floor to launch Operation Ask Blair. With every floor number, I got more and more nervous. And more and more nauseated. By the time the doors opened up, I was worried I was going to throw up all over myself, which would NOT have been good, seeing that, for luck, Laurel had let me borrow her robin’s-egg-blue cashmere sweater that I loved so much.
I made my way down the hall to Beatrice’s apartment, and I thought of everything that could go wrong. Like, say, when I opened my mouth to ask him, I ended up crying. Or choking. Or not being able to open my mouth at all because all my nervousness would have paralyzed me to the point where I just stood there like a statue until finally I was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.
Or, if I did manage to ask him, he laughed in my face. And then rushed over to his computer to log on to Facebook and post “Blair Lerner-Moskovitz was just asked to a dance by Lucy B. Parker and now can’t stop laughing because her thinking I’d say yes is the dumbest thing in the entir
e world” as his status update.
I buzzed the buzzer. I had to hold on to the molding around the door in order to keep myself from running away. I had just come up with the perfect excuse to leave—I had remembered that I had left my desk lamp on by mistake and I needed to rush upstairs and turn it off so I didn’t waste any more electricity—when Beatrice opened the door.
“He’s not here,” she announced.
“But you said he was!” I looked down at my sweater. “I got changed and everything.”
“Well, he was here when I texted you, but he just went over to Larry’s.” Larry was Blair’s BFF. According to Beatrice, Larry was even more gross than Blair, but I wasn’t sure what that meant on account of the fact that I didn’t think Blair was that gross. She shook her head. “And I can’t believe you dressed up for this. It’s a total waste of Laurel’s clothes.” She squinted. “And you put real lip gloss on, too? Not just Lip Smackers?”
I swiped at my lips to wipe it off. “You promised you wouldn’t keep saying stuff like this!” I cried. Talk about making a person feel embarrassed.
“Okay, okay,” she agreed. “So you want to come in and hang out?”
I shook my head. “No. I want to go upstairs and take off this sweater so I don’t ruin it. And wash this gunk off my lips. I’ll text you later.”
When I got back upstairs, I changed into sweatpants and Mom’s old Smith sweatshirt, which is where she went to college. It was old, and a bit holey (not, like, in a religious way, but in a bunch-of-holes kind of way) but super-soft and comfy. After scrubbing the lip gloss off, I started my homework.
As I tried to stay awake while reading about the industrial revolution (I’m sorry, but a lot of history was really boring), my phone buzzed. He’s back. But he’s leaving again in a few minutes for karate. I’ll text u when I’m back from piano, Beatrice had written.
Once when I was overlistening, I heard Mom tell Alan that with all the extracurricular activities that Blair and Beatrice did, she bet their moms had to take out a second mortgage on the apartment. I wasn’t sure what that meant, and obviously, I couldn’t ask because just the day before that I had gotten in trouble for overlistening as Mom talked on the phone to Deanna about how the women in her Pilates class had had so much plastic surgery that their faces didn’t move.
Knowing that if I didn’t ask Blair to the dance right then, I’d probably chicken out completely, I rushed out to the hall, not even bothering to change my clothes. And then, when the elevator didn’t come, I even took the stairs. By the time I got down all eleven flights and rang the buzzer, it was hard to catch my breath.
“Hey,” Blair said when he opened the door. As was always the case, he was wearing a food-stained T-shirt, this one with what looked like a pie with a piece missing that said Pac-Man underneath it. If we did end up going to the dance together, I wondered if it would be rude if I asked him if he could wear something nonstained. “Beatrice isn’t here. She just left for piano.”
“I know,” I panted. “I’m not here to see her.”
“You’re not?” he asked suspiciously. “Well, who are you here to see then?”
I slunk down behind the door. Great. I hadn’t even gotten to the asking part and already this was completely humiliating. “Umm . . . you?” I mumbled.
It kind of looked like Blair turned a little red. But then I decided it was just that my vision was screwed up from not having any air in my lungs.
“Well, come in then,” he said gruffly, moving aside.
I tried to move, but my purple Converses felt like they were glued to the floor. I looked up at the ceiling. “Really? You got me this far, and now You’re pulling this?” I mumbled.
“Who are you talking to?”
“No one,” I replied quickly.
“Well, are you coming in or not?”
Jeez, he really wasn’t making this easy. Finally, I managed to move my legs and shuffled inside the foyer.
“So what is it?” he asked. Why was he looking at me funny? Was he psychic? Did he know what I was going to ask him?
“Oh wow—look at this!” I said, pointing to a framed playbill from a play called A Woman’s Worth, written by Beatrice and Blair’s mother Marsha. “I never noticed this before!” Okay, so maybe that was a bit of a lie. Maybe I had noticed it the very first time I had been there, and every time since then on account of the fact that the colors on it—red, green, and yellow—were so bright you almost needed sunglasses. As Blair stood there staring at me, I stood there staring at the playbill.
Finally, I turned to him. “Why are you looking at me weird?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s just . . . you have . . .” He motioned to his face.
I rolled my eyes. “You think I’m going to fall for that again?” When we were shooting my campaign video, Blair had tried to fool me with the whole you-have-a-booger-hanging-from-your-nose thing. Back then I fell for it, but now? No way.
He shrugged. “Okay. So what do you want?”
“I, uh, have a question for you,” I began nervously.
He waited for me to go on, but I just stood there. Maybe I was having some sort of allergic reaction to my nervousness that was making my tongue swell up.
“I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but I’m missing the Best Moments in Slasher Movie History special on MTV right now,” he said.
“Okay, okay.” Before I began, I snuck a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Only to discover that I had gobs of zit cream dotted all over my face. I had completely forgotten I had put some on when I changed into the sweats. The good news was things couldn’t get worse than this. I was absolutely, positively 175 percent humiliated. “Just so you know, this isn’t zit cream,” I said. “It’s . . . sour cream. It’s good for your skin. I learned it from Laurel. Anyway, the question is . . .” I took a deep breath. “Do you like the hot pretzels from the cart at the corner of Broadway and Eightieth, or the ones from the one at Eighty-fourth and Columbus?”
He looked confused. “You came all the way down here to ask me that?”
“Well, yeah. That, and . . . uh, remember Pete told you that we have a dance coming up at our school?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. Beatrice hogged the entire dinner conversation last night talking about it. Who wants to talk about a school dance when they had just done live brain surgery on America’s Grossest Operations? At least that’s educational.”
Not to mention disgusting. “Yeah, well, the reason I’m bringing it up is because I was thinking of going. You know, because of the president thing. Not because I want to go or anything like that, because I think it’s stupid, too. But because I feel like if I don’t, people might get the wrong idea and impeach me.”
He nodded. “That makes sense.”
“So do you want to?” I asked nervously. It was a really good thing I had put a minipad over the maxipad I was wearing because I just knew I was getting my period from the stress.
“Do I want to what?” he asked, confused.
“Go with me,” I replied, mopping my forehead with my sleeve. It was also a good thing I was wearing a ratty old sweatshirt rather than Laurel’s expensive sweater. Please—whatever you do, don’t start bloversharing, I thought to myself. You said what you needed to say. Now just be quiet. I looked down. “It’s not like I want to go with you because I have a crush on you or anything like that,” I blurted, “but I just thought because we’re neighbors, asking you would be a nice neighborly thing to do. And because it would conserve energy,” I babbled.
“How would it conserve energy?” he asked, confused.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know it will,” I said firmly, biting my lip so hard to shut myself up that I was surprised I didn’t draw blood. “Ouch. So do you want to go?” I demanded.
“To the dance?”
Was he making it hard for me on purpose? I bet he was. Maybe Beatrice was right. Maybe he was too annoying to have a crush on. “Yes. To the dance.”
“When
is it?”
“This Friday.”
“I’d like to—”
“Really?!” I yelped. Wow. Who knew everyone was right about that whole you’ll-never-know-unless-you-ask thing! I sure hope Anxious followed my advice, because if she did, and it worked out like this was working out, I’d be the best advice giver in the world!
“—but I can’t. It’s the finals of the Chess Club tournament.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said as my neck disappeared into my sweatshirt like a turtle. Pleasedon’tstartcrying, pleasedon’tstartcrying, I thought to myself. The fact that Blair had said he would have liked to should have made me really happy, but instead I found myself feeling like I was going to burst into tears. Why was I so upset? I mean, it’s not like I really wanted to go.
And if Laurel was right about this stuff, then technically, I was a hero because I had done something that I had been afraid to do. “Well, I just remembered that I left my desk lamp on and I need to go turn it off so I don’t waste energy,” I mumbled. “So I’ll see you around.” If I could just make it to the elevator, I could cry as soon as I got in there.
“All right. See you,” he said. At least that’s what I thought he said, but I was running so fast it was hard to hear.
But when the doors closed, I was too embarrassed to cry. Sure, he said he would have liked to go, but who knew if he really meant it? What else was he going to say? He may have been annoying, like Beatrice said, but he wasn’t mean, and only a mean person would say, “Why would you ever think I’d want to go anywhere with you?” which was what he was REALLY thinking.
I may not have had to worry about asking Blair to the dance anymore, but now I had a bigger problem: how to get Mom and Alan to agree to move to Brooklyn, because there was NO WAY I could keep living in Manhattan and risk running into Blair.