Red Girl, Blue Boy: An If Only novel (If Only . . .)

by Baratz-Logsted, Lauren

  And yet the only thing Coach Grigson says after I flinch at the force of the hit is “Reilly, stop clowning around.”

  What? I feel like telling him “Hey, Coach, why don’t you just go back in your office and smoke one of those illegal-to-smoke-in-school cigarettes you’ve got there.”

  But of course I don’t. I ignore him. I ignore everything . . . until it becomes impossible not to.

  But when a second server on my team nails me square in the back with a serve that’s even harder than the first one was, I whirl in place and see Millicent standing there, a smirk on her face as she unmistakably mouths: Wimp.

  That’s it.

  Now I know what’s going on here.

  Ignoring Coach Grigson’s shouts—all some variation on “Get back in your own position, Reilly!”—I close the small space between me and Millicent, grab her by the upper arm and whisper-hiss, “Seriously, Millicent? You’re doing all this because I said I wouldn’t go out with you? I mean, I know that maybe I might have hurt your feelings and all, but I always thought that, underneath it all, we were kind of friends.”

  The reason I whisper my hisses? It’s because, even though I’m madder at her than I have been at anybody in I don’t know how long, if I talk louder, other people would hear. And a public declaration that I turned her down would likely embarrass her. And even though she maybe has it coming to her, for spreading who knows what kind of made-up smack about me, I can’t bring myself to do that to her because I know what public embarrassment feels like. It’s what I feel like right now. It’s what I’ve been feeling all day.

  But Millicent does something surprising.

  Instead of looking—what’s the vocab word?—chastened that I’m onto her little scheme, she laughs.

  Right in my face.

  “You think this is about that?” she says, and may I add, she does nothing to keep her own voice to a whisper. On the contrary, she speaks so loudly, it’s obvious she doesn’t care who hears what she’s got to say to me.

  “You think,” she continues, “that this is some kind of lame payback just because you were stupid enough to say no to me?”

  “Well, yeah,” I say. I mean, isn’t the answer right there in the hostility of her own question?

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she scoffs.

  “Then what?” I demand.

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? Katie. Willfield.”

  What?

  It takes me a moment to realize who she’s talking about: that little pink-suit-wearing First Daughter wannabe. Which makes no sense.

  “What???”

  In books, the phrase “and then she rolled her eyes” has always struck me as being extremely over the top. I mean, like, in real life, who does such a thing? But right then, Millicent does it. She rolls her eyes at me.

  “Need more spelling out, Drew?” Millicent says with a weary sigh. “Fine. I’ll help you out here.” And then she enunciates three words: “That. Morning. Show.”

  I’m still in the dark, which gives Millicent time to lay on one more zinger: “Nobody likes a wimp, Drew. You’re a disgrace to this school.”

  I open my mouth to respond, but it turns out Millicent has three final words for me: “Look it up.”

  For the rest of the day, I handle things by doing what I pretty much always do: ignore all the sound and fury around me. (I got that sound-and-fury thing from Shakespeare.) I go to my classes, keep my head down, and ignore the taunts.

  But then on the bus ride home, after I tell him the cryptic things Millicent said, Sandy makes me realize that this is not a quo I should allow to become my status.

  “If nothing else, dude,” Sandy says, “we have to find out what she’s talking about.”

  “I have to admit,” I say, “at this point, I am morbidly curious.”

  He pulls out his iPhone.

  “So let’s look it up,” he suggests.

  “Not here,” I say.

  In the way of best friends, without having to explain, he immediately understands. Whatever this . . . thing is, I can’t find out about it in a place populated by the cruelest group of creatures known to man: a crowded bus of high school students.

  So we agree that Sandy will call his parents to say he’ll be a little late and instead of getting off the bus at his house, he’ll wait for mine. His parents can come pick him up later.

  The first thing we do when we get to my house is hit the Sub-Zero fridge for something to eat so we can fortify ourselves. After studying the contents, Sandy finally settles on the leftovers from last night’s dinner: something called lobster thermidor.

  As soon as I remove the plastic-wrap covering, my dog, Bowser, comes running, toenails scratching eagerly at the kitchen floor, excited at the smell. “Don’t you remember what happened last time?” I say, holding it out of reach. “Sorry, boy, it’s too rich for you. No way am I cleaning up that mess again.”

  Once we retire to my bedroom—or should I say, my bedroom suite, complete with my own bathroom and sitting room—and shut the door, officially corralling it off as a dog-free zone, Sandy pops a large chunk of lobster into his mouth. Before he even swallows, he says, “Is it okay for me to say that I like coming over to your house better now that you’re rich than I did when you were still poor?”

  I pick up a chunk of lobster and chuck it at him.

  “Yeah,” Sandy says, looking around, “definitely better rich than poor.”

  “Yeah,” I admit, “I suppose the extra space is all right.”

  In the old house, I had to share a room with the twins and one bathroom with everybody.

  When Sandy pulls out his iPhone, I move to my desk and turn on my computer with a screen bigger than the TV in our old house.

  “You won’t get in trouble with your mom for this?” Sandy says.

  As if on cue, the twins open and fill the doorway. Or at least fill it as well as pint-size six-year-olds can. Behind them hovers their Secret Service agent, Clint. All three have on dark sunglasses. Inside.

  “Mom says you’re not supposed to be online,” Max says.

  “I’m telling Mom!” Matt says.

  Matt is frequently the more annoying of the two.

  “I can’t use my iPhone.” I sigh. “But I can still use my computer. I need it for school, don’t I?”

  “Oh,” Max says.

  “Well, okay,” Matt says, “but if you use your iPhone, I’m telling Mom!”

  And they’re gone.

  “Nitwits,” I mutter under my breath. This muttering-under-your-breath thing can be pretty contagious.

  “Is that true?” Sandy asks. “You can still use your computer?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Only they track my history and they’ve disabled IM. Also, they monitor my e-mail.”

  “Dude, when your mom is prez, she’s already going to have all that covert surveillance stuff down pat.”

  I grin ruefully. “I know, right?” But of course, my mom being prez—I don’t have to worry about that, or about my life changing at all, because it’s never going to happen.

  In the end, it’s as easy as looking up That Morning Show on YouTube and plugging “Katie Willfield” into search.

  And there she is, frozen on my big screen in all her red-suited glory.

  “You gotta admit,” Sandy says, “she looks pretty hot in that thing. Maybe a little bit Christmassy, but still.”

  I chuck an eraser at him. Sandy’s got a thing for females in suits. Don’t even get him started on our chemistry teacher when she’s wearing her lab coat.

  I have to admit though: Katie does look pretty cute in that suit. At least, it’s definitely an improvement on that stupid pink one that I have an annoying and confusing affection for.

  I click on the picture. Might as well get this show rolling.

  We watch as the cohost, George Gibson, greets Katie and she greets him back. Then she asks, “But where’s the boy?” And that’s soon followed by, “Where’s the boy going to sit?”<
br />
  I pause the screen.

  Sandy hits me in the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Dude! She’s talking about you!”

  “I know,” I say. “But I told my mom I wasn’t going to do the show. How come no one told Katie?” And why does she seem so concerned about my whereabouts?

  I click the screen to continue and George does tell Katie I’m not coming.

  And that’s when she delivers the diss heard round the world—or at least the world of my school. She labels me a wimp, going on to define the word, courtesy of the Urban Dictionary, as “scared, weak, cowardly.” And then she adds some insane stuff about Romans in the Coliseum. I’d really like to reach through the screen and tell her: the Romans fed the Christians to the lions in the Coliseum, so they were just there as spectators!

  “I can’t believe she’d do that after I tried to help—” I start to say and then stop myself.

  “Help what?” Sandy says.

  But I just shake my head. I can’t tell Sandy that the other day I used his phone to send Katie an anonymous e-mail through that ridiculous blog of hers, warning her against wearing that pink suit. I mean, someone had to tell her, right?

  We watch the rest of the interview in mute horror: not because of anything she says—the rest of the interview is a little self-involved but otherwise it’s fine since none of it involves me—but rather, mute and horrified about what she’s already said.

  “Dude,” Sandy says when it’s over, “like, what are you going to do?”

  “Dude,” I say back, “like, nothing.”

  “Nothing? Are you crazy?”

  “What do you expect me to do—punch her in the nose?”

  I’ve never hit a girl before. I’ve never hit anyone before.

  “Of course not,” Sandy says. “Look, I understand. You like to turn the other cheek. It’s who you are. I get that about you, I’ve always got that, I’ve even admired it. But that won’t work this time. You can’t let this stand.”

  “Sure I can. I’ll just ignore it, pretend it never happened. I don’t care what anyone else thinks about me except you. And if I ignore it, won’t it just go away?”

  “No,” Sandy says. “I don’t think so. Didn’t you see Millicent and the others today? It’s like chum in the water, man. It’s like freaking Jaws. No way is anyone in school going to let this go. You got to nip this thing in the bud. We’re talking about your reputation here.”

  “I don’t care about my reputation.”

  “Fine.” Sandy pauses. “Then we’re talking about your honor.”

  The thing about a really good best friend, one who’s known you your whole life, is that while they know exactly what to say to make you feel better, they also know exactly which button to push when you need motivation to get you to do the thing you need to do.

  It’s like something in my head explodes. I’m out of the chair, racing through the house and searching for my mom, Sandy hot on my heels.

  With a fifty-room house, we’re actually racing and searching for quite some time. Yeah, I did say fifty rooms. I know. The place is like a small palace.

  Finally, we find her in the last place she ever is these days: the kitchen.

  “Drew—oh, hi, Sandy—did you eat the rest of the lobster thermidor?”

  I ignore her question, particularly since, you know, I know she won’t be happy with my answer.

  “I need you to call That Morning Show,” I say.

  “I thought you didn’t want to go on there?” she says, puzzled.

  “Well, now I do.”

  “Fine, I’ll have Ann make the call.”

  “Good. Also, you need to call”—I practically choke on the name of that wool-suited little twit; no girl, no person has ever annoyed me more—“Katie Willfield.”

  “I can’t call up the sixteen-year-old daughter of my opponent, Drew. It’s simply not done.”

  “Fine. Then have Ann call her or have Ann call ‘her people’ ”—I nauseate myself by doing the air-quotes thing—“and get her back on that program same time as me.”

  “Of course, Drew. But what’s this all about?”

  Now I’m so mad, I windmill my arm like a pitcher, jabbing my forefinger in the air as I declare, “I will not have my honor besmirched!”

  Followed by a second windmill, which is accompanied by the gauntlet-throw-down words, “I will meet that little Roman in the Coliseum!”

  KATIE

  I’m relieved to be back in the limo and heading for home. Now that this uneventful day is over, I just want to put it behind me. But no sooner does Kent close the door than I pull out my phone to check for messages. And no sooner do I do that, than I see my father’s text from earlier in the day. Immediately, I again begin to speculate what he wants to talk to me about. At first I’m excited, thinking that surely this must mean he wants me to play a more prominent public role in his campaign.

  But then, remembering how wrong I’ve been about other things today—expecting the boy to be there, expecting a river of accolades just to wind up with only that strange remark from Mr. Snowden—I begin to worry: What if I’m wrong about this too?

  Being wrong about three things in a single day—I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before but I suppose anything is possible.

  But if I am wrong again, then what does my father want to talk to me about? And what if it’s . . . something bad?

  I rack my brains, trying to think of what it could be. But it’s a short racking.

  In fact, the only thing I can come up with is me calling that Drew boy a wimp on TV.

  I groan and hit myself in the forehead—but not too hard.

  That’s got to be it.

  “Dad,” I say, holding Dog under one arm and holding up the other hand like a traffic cop to stop him from speaking after I find him in his office. I ignore Marvin lurking like a depressed mustachioed gnome in the corner of the room. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. Insulting the opposition—what a rookie mistake! If my hands weren’t otherwise occupied right now, I would hit myself in the head.”

  “That’s not—”

  “I know I used to tell you that mudslinging wasn’t for us, that if anyone was going to sling the mud, let the other man or woman do it. We’d be above all that. And then there I go, calling that Drew person a wimp. How could I have been so stupid? If you think it best, I’ll grit my teeth and issue a public apology. In my defense, though, I was thrown by his not being there. Now, if someone had informed me in advance—”

  “That’s not it, Katie.”

  “Then what?” I search my brain. “It can’t be because when George Gibson showed that last picture of me, I failed to elaborate on the context. I know my answer was a little thin, but I also know that we agreed long ago to never publicly discuss using The Godfather for campaign strategy.”

  “It’s not that either, Katie.”

  “Then what?” I don’t usually get so flustered or exasperated with my father, but I’m at a complete loss here.

  “It’s this.”

  He turns his open laptop around so I can see what he was looking at when I walked in.

  “Oh!” I say, surprised and delighted. “My china pattern!”

  But delight soon turns to dismay when I see the stern look on my father’s face.

  “Don’t you like it?” I say. “I personally think the band of gold is quite elegant. And if you’re worried about the floral pattern”—I point at the screen, adding reassuringly—“those flowers are so tiny, I don’t think anyone could accuse you of being insufficiently masculine over that.”

  “The pattern is not a problem, in and of itself,” Marvin puts in.

  “Then what is, Dad?” I say, ignoring Marvin once again.

  “That Morning Show must have researched you online before your appearance and came across this previously obscure . . . blog of yours. That’s why George Gibson made that remark to you about the china pattern. Of course, since they agreed to only ask questions fro
m a preapproved list, he couldn’t ask you about it directly.”

  “Ohh-kay . . .” I still don’t see where this is going.

  “But after you left the set? In the next segment? They displayed this picture from your blog for all of America to see.”

  “They did?”

  “Oh, yes. They even gave the name of your blog, The Kat and Dog Blog.”

  “They did?”

  “Oh, yes,” he says again.

  But this is amazing—what great press! I’m tempted to ask my father if I can use his computer to check StatCounter. My stats must finally be through the roof! But something in his expression stops me.

  “And?” I ask cautiously.

  “And then,” he says, “they brought up Nancy Reagan.”

  Huh. Mr. Snowden also referenced Nancy Reagan. How odd—you don’t think of a person for years and then suddenly they’re everywhere.

  “You do know who Nancy Reagan is, don’t you?” my father prompts when I fail to respond.

  “Well, of course!” I say with a laugh. “Nancy Reagan was the wife of the late Ronald Reagan, the fortieth president of the United States. Nancy Reagan is a Republican icon!”

  “Nancy Reagan was also famously skewered in the press for ordering four thousand, three hundred and seventy-two pieces of very expensive Lenox china.”

  “Did you look that figure up on Wikipedia, Dad?”

  “That’s hardly the point!”

  “No,” I admit ruefully, “I suppose not.”

  “Even though the china wasn’t paid for with taxpayer money—it was privately funded—the public, through the press, was certainly led to believe it was. People were outraged. Over two hundred thousand dollars for a few plates?”

  “Well,” I say in the former First Lady’s defense, “I think four thousand, three hundred and seventy-two qualifies as a few more than a few—”

  “Again, Katie, not really the point!” My father sighs. “What do people say when they want to criticize a candidate for jumping the gun on his own election? Come on, Katie. This is Politics 101.”