The List

by Melanie Jacobson

  I slumped against the counter behind me with a sigh. I’d been looking forward to our date, but it wasn’t like my plans wouldn’t keep. I thought it would be fun to go check out the Pageant of the Masters that Matt had mentioned on our Sunday excursion, but it ran all summer. Plenty of time to do it another night. Anyway, it wasn’t smart to spend all my free time with Matt. It might send the wrong message. He was my summer good-time guy, which is exactly what I wanted when I wrote “summer fling” on The List. I might have been heavily influenced by the sweet summer romance between John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in Grease, a DVD in heavy rotation at my house my senior year of high school, but whatever. Going away for the summer and meeting a cute guy sounded fun when I was eighteen, and now at twenty-four, with Matt Gibson in the picture, it sounded even better. I had the added bonus of the utter surety that there wouldn’t be any sticky entanglements when school started in the fall. I couldn’t suddenly run into him like Sandy did when her parents moved to the same town.

  I sent Matt a quick answer. No problem. Call me later. It wasn’t until an hour later when I sat soaking up the last of the bath water’s warmth, my muscles unknotted and the smell of fried food rinsed away in jasmine salts, that it occurred to me to wonder why Matt canceled. All he said was, “Something came up.” That could mean anything from being called in to help negotiate peace in the Middle East to getting a flat tire.

  Or another date.

  Huh. I sat up a bit. What if that was it? Maybe he figured since he already saw me this morning that he ought to spread the love to some of the other girls who kept him in high demand. I turned that possibility over a few times and then sank until the water rose to my chin again. Whatever. Matt was a great guy, but a good-time guy nonetheless, and he was welcome to his free time too.

  When the water cooled too much to be comfortable, I shrugged into my rattiest, comfiest old bathrobe, a survivor of both college and my mission, and wandered down the hall to my shared room with Celia. My aunt and uncle had four bedrooms, but the fourth housed Aunt Trudy’s sewing supplies, and I’d much rather inconvenience Celia than my aunt, so we doubled up. My cousin looked up when I walked into our room.

  “Feel better?” she asked.

  “Way better.”

  “You definitely smell better,” she said after a cautious sniff.

  I made a face and collapsed on my narrow twin bed, plucking at the quilt tie beneath me. One of Aunt Trudy’s sewing projects, probably. She was a quilting maniac, turning out three for Relief Society projects and one for a baby shower since I’d been here.

  “Celia . . .” I began, knowing I sounded hesitant.

  That caught her attention since it’s a rare condition for me.

  “Yeah?”

  I paused before spitting my question out, not wanting to sound obvious, but deciding the more I dithered, the worse I would make it. “Do you know if Matt’s dating anyone else right now?”

  She looked at me strangely. “No. I told you that when you hatched your grand plan to get him to teach you.”

  “I asked if he had a girlfriend. I guess I’m asking about casual dating now.”

  She thought about it, then shrugged. “Yeah, he goes out but not usually with the same girl more than a few times. Why? You want to size up the competition?”

  “Not really. I’m just trying to figure out why he’s still single. It seems like there are plenty of girls ready to fill the significant-other position.”

  “It’s probably hard for him to keep a girlfriend because of his winter schedule.”

  “What about it?”

  “He works super long hours.”

  “Is the winter surfboard business that demanding?” I wrinkled my forehead in confusion.

  Celia shrugged. “I don’t know. I know he travels a lot, but I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s following the waves. A lot of guys here go down to Mexico or Costa Rica to surf in the winter. Or maybe he goes on buying trips at surf fashion shows during the off season.” She grinned at the picture she’d painted.

  I was intrigued. My conversations with Matt centered around surfing or the occasional goofy analysis of abstract art. Thinking about it, I realized he was very good at extracting information from me and somehow never leaving an opening for me to return the questions in kind. It was a little odd.

  “You should ask him about that stuff when you guys go out tonight,” she said.

  “We’re not going out anymore,” I answered. “He said something came up and asked for a rain check.”

  She studied me for a few seconds. “That doesn’t bother you, does it?”

  “Nope,” I said, and it was true. Mostly.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Celia. He’s just number seventeen on The List, and he can do whatever he wants. I don’t want him to get all attached to me and stuff.”

  She stared and then burst out laughing. “You’re a piece of work, Ashley. Every other girl in the Beachside Ward would sign away their future firstborn to get a date with him, and you’re worried that he’s going to get too attached?”

  “It happens to me a lot,” I said. “Guys think I’m playing hard to get, and then they chase me even harder, and it turns into clinginess somewhere along the line. I want to keep my summer low-key.”

  “But you are playing hard to get,” she pointed out.

  “No, Celia. I am hard to get if someone’s looking for more than a few fun times. I’ve got too much going on to get sucked into a relationship right now.”

  “Either way, Matt’s either too busy or too bored by his current options to date anyone seriously, I think. I haven’t seen him go out with anyone more than a few times since I’ve been in the ward, and that’s almost two years now. I’m sure he’s not looking to settle down with you or anyone else.”

  I leaned back against the wall, mollified. “Good,” I said. “Time to work on number twenty-four.”

  “The List again?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. I’ve got the wonderful world of Internet dating to explore.”

  “Why are you bothering with the online thing when you’ve already got Matt to hang out with?” she asked.

  “I’m setting things up for the fall. If I’m lucky, I might have something all ready to go by the time the semester starts.”

  “But you don’t want a relationship.”

  “No, I don’t. But I do want someone to hang out with from time to time.”

  “But you’ll be at BYU. Won’t you have tons of guys in your ward or apartment complex or whatever to date?”

  “Maybe,” I shrugged. “But if I meet someone online, I can skip all the time wasted trying to get to know someone and then finding out that you’re a bad fit, anyway.”

  Celia shot me a doubtful look but said nothing and buried her nose in her book as I hauled out my laptop. When I logged on to my LDS Lookup page, I found eleven messages waiting for me. Eight were from the same guy. Using the screen name ChickMagnet, he had sent me the first message two days ago saying, “Hey. Wassup?” Even if I had logged in anytime in the last two days to check my account, which I hadn’t, his moniker and greeting left a lot to be desired. Six hours after his first message, a second one came in reading, “Cat got your tongue? I’m good with shy chicks.”

  Charming. They improved steadily from there, if by improved you mean “grew increasingly demanding and intrusive.” The second-to-last one screamed, “why won’t you talk to me?” followed by a surly good-bye promising, “I hate stuck-up chicks. I’m not e-mailing you anymore.” Well, I could only hope. I deleted the stream of his craziness from my inbox and moved to the next messages.

  A guy named PaulOnion sent a “wave,” a preformatted icon provided by the LDS Lookup site that was used to say hello. I couldn’t decide if this was shy or lazy. His picture showed a sweet but faintly dorky looking guy in an ill-fitting Western-cut plaid shirt. Deciding PaulOnion and I were probably not predestined soul mates, I sighed and deleted his wave too. Dis
couragement crept in as I scrolled through to my last two messages, deepening when I opened the next one. HandsomeDan, who, based on his profile picture, was overstating the case somewhat, had sent me a message to let me know that he thought I was hot. That was it. “I think ur hot.”

  Exasperated, I sent him to the recycle bin along with all of my other rejected admirers. How was I supposed to try Internet dating if I couldn’t even find anyone I wanted to e-mail back, much less meet for a date? I clicked around the site for a while to reassure myself that there were cool people I might actually want to meet and found a few intriguing possibilities. One guy calling himself BoardRyder had a really cool profile. His picture didn’t show much, just him in some snowboard gear taking a mogul, but he liked some awesome bands and movies. His info said he was in Salt Lake. Why couldn’t a guy like that e-mail me?

  A tap sounded on the bedroom door, then it flew open to admit Dave. He staggered two steps in and threw himself on the floor, muttering something like “I hate girls,” into the carpet.

  I raised an eyebrow at Celia, who closed her book with a sigh. “I guess we’re going to have to explain the female species to him,” she said.

  “Again?” I asked. “Can’t he just watch Dr. Phil or something?”

  Dave moaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Celia asked.

  “Don’t act like you care,” he mumbled into the carpet. “I’ve been lying here forever.”

  “Forever minus all but thirty seconds, maybe. Spill it.”

  “I already did,” he said. “I hate girls.”

  Celia blew out an irritated breath that sounded suspiciously close to a raspberry. “Sit up like a man and say that to my face,” she said.

  Dave hauled himself to a sitting position, discouragement radiating from every line of his hunched over body. “I don’t understand girls at all,” he complained. “How am I ever supposed to figure you out if you never talk to me?”

  “Uh, we are talking to you, cuz,” I pointed out.

  “Not you, specifically. I mean girls in general.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how you missed that,” Celia chimed in. “He was clear as mud.”

  He slumped a little lower. “It’s no use,” he said.

  “What isn’t?” asked his sister.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well, thanks for clearing that up,” she said.

  I listened to the exchange in amusement and decided to intervene before it turned into a flame war.

  “Dave, did something happen at Institute tonight?” I asked. He attended Sister Powers’s Book of Mormon lectures every week.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I saw that girl again.”

  “What girl?” I prompted. Drama seemed to limit Dave’s communication to short-syllabled sulking.

  “The girl from FHE.”

  I racked my brains and came up empty. “Uh, Dave? There are lots of girls at FHE. Could you give us some details here?”

  “Wow, you guys don’t hear anything I say, do you? If her name was Matt Gibson would it help you listen better?”

  I threw a pillow at him but he ducked it. Luckily, Celia’s flip-flop caught him in the chest a millisecond after he deflected my shot.

  “Remember we were all sitting around the table while you guys ate gross cereal and talked about how Ashley is the biggest stalker in the world?”

  “I remember that part of the conversation . . .” Celia said, and I glared at her.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “Remember I was saying I might try ignoring this cute chick at FHE to see if it would work for me too?”

  “I do, actually. And I remember telling you to leave that tactic to the pros,” I said.

  “No kidding. It didn’t work.”

  “Maybe you better break it down for us,” Celia said. “What happened?”

  “Well, I was sitting at Institute waiting for class to start, joking around with Blake Thomas about some stuff when that girl walked in. She sat down a couple of rows ahead of me, and so I was all like, ‘Hey! You should come sit here,’ and she ignored me.”

  “Ignored you how?” Celia asked. “Maybe she just didn’t hear you.”

  “I wish. She heard me, all right. She turned around when I said hey and then just whipped back the other way and squished down in her chair. Then Blake laughed at me, and I had to punch him in the arm.”

  “It’s good you know how to handle negative emotions,” I said.

  “Says the girl who just threw a pillow at me.”

  “Good point. What else happened? Did you try to talk to her again?”

  “No. Because I decided to do the ignoring thing. Then the teacher walked in and the girl got up to play the piano, and I took off after class so I couldn’t get publicly burned again.”

  “You’re lucky you have someone who actually plays the piano in your class,” I said. “We just have someone who pushes the button in ours.”

  “That’s what I meant,” he said. “She didn’t actually play.”

  I perked up at that. “What does this girl look like?”

  “She’s cute.”

  “Oh, her,” Celia joked.

  “Details, Dave. I need details,” I said.

  He thought for a minute, then shrugged. “She’s pretty, you know? Blonde hair, nice skin, medium height.”

  Celia rolled her eyes at his version of “details,” but I pressed him a little further.

  “Have you ever heard her talk?”

  “To me? No.”

  “No, I mean have you heard her talk ever? Has she ever answered a question in class or said a prayer or anything?”

  He thought for a minute. “I’ve only seen her a few times, but I don’t think so. She’s kind of quiet, you know?”

  “I do know,” I said. “One more question. Does she hang out with a girl named Megan?”

  “You mean that one that’s never quiet? Yeah.”

  “Well, your mystery woman is named Laurel, and I don’t think she was ignoring you.” I delivered my revelation with a small degree of satisfaction.

  “You know her?” Celia asked.

  “Sort of. She’s always with Megan who, like Dave pointed out, never shuts up. Maybe she uses up their word allowance when they’re together, and Laurel doesn’t get to say anything.”

  “Meow,” Dave said.

  “Megan bugs,” I said.

  “You don’t hang out with her so why do you care?” Celia asked, then giggled. “Wait, don’t answer that. I know. It’s because she’s always hanging around Matt Gibson.”

  “Not like it does her any good,” I said. “And I don’t care.”

  “Of course not,” Celia said and then exchanged looks with her brother.

  “I saw that.”

  “Megan’s harmless,” Dave said. “She’s always glomming onto some dude or another. She’ll be on to someone new next week.”

  “Maybe not,” Celia contradicted him. “She’s been stuck on Matt for longer than usual. Not that Ashley cares.”

  I sniffed. “I don’t. And this is not about me or Megan. This is about Dave and his deep love for Laurel.”

  “I think she’s cute. I’m not going to propose yet. Early marriage is a Barrett thing, not our side of the family.”

  Celia snickered, and I shot her an evil look.

  “So,” he prodded me. “What’s up with Laurel? Why doesn’t she talk to me? I’m a good-looking guy.”

  “You’re not supposed to say that out loud,” Celia said. “You’re supposed to act like you don’t know that you’re good-looking.”

  “I’ve only seen her twice,” I said, “but I think she’s kind of shy. Maybe she just doesn’t know what to say.”

  “But I made it easy for her. I invited her to sit with me and everything. Even a shy girl can say yes to taking a seat.”

  Celia chimed in again. “Did you say you were sitting with Blake already?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Maybe the idea of t
aking you and Blake on together is overwhelming,” she explained. “You guys are super rowdy, you know.”

  “I think that’s about right,” I said.

  “Then what do I do now?” he asked. “You guys are supposed to be helping me.”

  “Obviously, you need to talk to her without a wingman.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I have no idea how shy people think, but I’m guessing one-to-one odds are going to scare her a little less. Maybe I can go with you to talk to her on Sunday, and she’ll be more comfortable with another girl there.”

  He shook his head. “I see where you’re going with that, but I haven’t seen her at church. Just activities and Institute and stuff.”

  “Interesting,” I mused. “Okay, next plan. When will you see her again?”

  “Probably Monday night for FHE. That’s where I saw her the first time.”

  “That’ll be perfect,” Celia said. “It’s more relaxed than church, anyway. Now you have to pick an outfit.”

  “Why? That’s like, five days from now. I don’t even know what will be clean by then.”

  “Oh, man, Dave. It’s really good you came to us. I had no idea we were going to have to go into remedial dating strategies,” I joked.

  “Are you saying I don’t have game? I got game,” he said. “I’ve got lots of game.”

  “People who have game never use the phrase ‘I’ve got game,’” his sister argued. “And besides, if you pick out something now and put it aside, you can be sure it’ll be clean by Monday, and you can look halfway decent.”

  “I have nice stuff,” he said. “I wear all the name brands.”

  “You wear all the surf name brands,” I said. “It’s a little different. It’s good for a girl to know that a guy owns more than just a closet full of Quicksilver tee shirts.”

  “Hey! They’re cool shirts.”

  “I know. But I think we can compromise. How about you can wear a Quicksilver shirt but it has to have a collar?” I said.

  He hedged for a minute. “Can I still wear shorts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then I’ll wear a collared shirt.”

  “Good.”