Ready or Not

by Meg Cabot

  Dauntra’s convinced that the video store’s policy of having a manager go through employee backpacks before allowing them to leave after their shift is unconstitutional—even though I’d asked my mom about it, and she’d said, technically, it wasn’t. Dauntra refused to believe this, but it’s cool she even cares. Some people I know—well, okay, Kris Parks, to be exact—only pretend to care about issues because doing so looks good on their college applications.

  “I was thinking about pouring Aunt Jemima all over the inside of my JanSport,” Dauntra went on, “so when Stan reaches inside it tonight, he gets a big handful of syrup. But I don’t want to ruin a perfectly good backpack.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can see how that might hurt more than help. Besides, it isn’t Stan’s fault, necessarily. He’s just doing his job.”

  Dauntra narrowed her eyes at me. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s what all the Nazis said in their own defense after World War Two.”

  I didn’t think searching someone’s backpack for stolen DVDs was quite the same as killing seven million people, but I didn’t figure Dauntra would appreciate me mentioning that out loud.

  “Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “how was that new art class? The life drawing one?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Kind of, um, startling.” I still didn’t feel comfortable bringing up the David thing, so I just said, “Did you know life drawing meant nudes?”

  Dauntra didn’t even look up from the manga she’d cracked open over the register’s keyboard.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Oh,” I said, slightly let down. “Well, I didn’t. So I got to see my first—you know.”

  That got her attention.

  “The nude model was a GUY?” She looked up from the comic book—well, it was really a comic novel, or graphic novel. I should start trying to get the terminology correct, since someday I hope to write and illustrate mangas of my own. “I thought nude models were always women.”

  “Not always, I guess,” I said.

  “You know, some guy dropped his pants in front of me on the Metro the other day,” Dauntra said incredulously, “for free. I had to call the cops. And, like, this Susan Boone lady, she pays some guy money to do it?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Dauntra shook her head in disbelief. “Did you feel violated? Because whenever a guy shows me his goods when I’m not interested in seeing them, I feel violated.”

  “It wasn’t really like that,” I said. “I mean, you know. It was art.”

  “Art.” Dauntra nodded. “Sure. I can’t believe a guy gets paid to show off his goods, and people call it art.”

  “Well, not the showing-off-his-goods part,” I said. “But the drawings we make of it.”

  Dauntra sighed. “Maybe I should take up being a nude model. I mean, you get paid just to sit there.”

  “Naked,” I pointed out.

  “So what?” Dauntra shrugged. “The human form is a thing of beauty.”

  “Excuse me.” A tall guy in a beret—no, really, a French beret, although he didn’t happen to look French—approached the counter. “I believe you’re holding a film for me. The name is Wade, W-A-D—”

  “Yeah, it’s right here,” I said quickly. Because the guy in the beret is a regular, and even though I’d only been working at Potomac Video for two months, I knew that if you didn’t head off Mr. Wade at the pass, he’d go on for as long as he could about his film collection, which is extensive, and mostly in black and white.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, when I showed him the DVD we’d been holding for him. “The Four Hundred Blows. You know it, of course?”

  “Of course,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. “That will be fourteen seventy-nine.”

  “One of Truffaut’s finest,” Mr. Wade said. “I have it on video, of course, but it’s really the kind of film you can’t own enough copies of—”

  “Thank you,” I said, bagging the DVD, then handing him the bag.

  “A truly powerful work,” Mr. Wade went on. “A masterful piece of suspense…”

  “Just how big were the guy’s goods, anyway?” Dauntra asked me, in a sweetly innocent voice.

  Mr. Wade, looking suddenly alarmed, snatched up his bag and fled the store.

  “Come again,” Dauntra called after him, and the two of us practically collapsed, we were laughing so hard.

  “What was that all about?” Stan, the night manager, came out from behind the Westerns and eyed us suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

  “Mr. Wade was so excited to get his new DVD, he wanted to rush home to watch it, that’s all,” Dauntra said, in a convincingly sincere voice.

  Stan looked as if he didn’t believe us.

  “Madison,” he said, “some anime fans were in here earlier and got the Neon Genesis Evangelions all out of order. See what you can do about that, will you?”

  I said I would, and ducked out from behind the counter to go check on the anime section.

  Later, after the post-dinner rush, Dauntra was reading another manga while I pulled out the materials the White House press secretary had given me the other day to prepare me for my big speech, and was going over them.

  “What is all that?” Dauntra wanted to know.

  “Stuff I gotta talk about on MTV next week,” I said. “At the town hall meeting at my school.”

  Dauntra looked as if there were a bad taste in her mouth. “That stupid Return to Family thing?”

  I blinked at her. “It’s not stupid. It’s important.”

  “Yeah,” Dauntra said. “Whatever. God, Sam. Don’t you ever resent it, being used that way?”

  “Used? How’m I being used?” I asked.

  “Well, the president’s using you,” Dauntra said, “to spoon-feed his fascist new program to America’s youth.”

  “Return to Family isn’t fascist,” I said. I didn’t mention that, even if I didn’t approve of it, I couldn’t exactly quit being teen ambassador. Not without making things exceedingly awkward with my boyfriend’s parents. “It’s a program that encourages families to spend more time together. You know, to take a night off from soccer practice and TV and just sit around and talk.”

  “Yeah,” Dauntra said darkly. “On the surface, that’s all it is.”

  “What are you talking about?” I waved the papers I was holding. “I’ve got it all right here. That’s what it is. The president’s Return to Family initiative, to—”

  “—encourage people to take a night off from mindless sitcoms and talk to one another,” Dauntra finished for me. “I know. But that’s just the part of the Return to Family plan they’re telling you about. What about the rest of it? The parts they don’t want you to know about…yet?”

  “You,” I said, “are paranoid. You’ve seen that Mel Gibson movie too many times.”

  Conspiracy Theory is one of our favorite movies to watch in the store. Stan hates it, because whenever Mel and Julia Roberts kiss, or are about to, Dauntra and I find ourselves incapable of doing anything but stare at the screen.

  “Well, didn’t he turn out to be right?” Dauntra asked. “Mel, I mean? There was a conspiracy.” She glanced over at the two-way mirror that separated us from the back office. The two-way mirror is supposedly there so Stan or whoever is back there can catch shoplifters. But Dauntra is convinced it’s really so the owners or whoever can spy on the employees. “It’s never good,” Dauntra added, “when the government starts putting its nose in our personal business, like how much time we spend together as families. Trust me on this one.”

  I turned back to my paperwork with a sigh. I love Dauntra, and all, but sometimes I’m not so sure she’s all there, if you know what I mean. Who has time to worry about the government and what it’s up to when there are so many real problems out there? Like my boyfriend, for instance, apparently thinking we are going to have sex over Thanksgiving weekend.

  I thought once more
about asking Dauntra, you know, about David and me, and what she thought about the possible Turkey Day divestment of my virginity.

  The thing is, I knew she’d be all for my losing it. I also knew that, if I told her, it would help dispel my good-girl image at the store, an image I couldn’t quite seem to shake, even with my newly dyed hair.

  But telling my sister was one thing. Telling my fellow Potomac Video employees was something else entirely. I mean, in spite of my affection for Conspiracy Theory, I don’t actually believe in conspiracies…like that Dauntra is really a spy for Us Weekly or whatever, and the minute I let some intimate detail of my relationship with the first son slip, she’s going to report it.

  But still. Maybe Dauntra was right about one thing: It’s better not to let the government—or your fellow employees at Potomac Video—put their noses in your business. Some things really are better left private.

  At least, that’s what I thought then. Funny how quickly your opinion on that kind of thing can change.

  Top ten Potomac Video employee picks:

  10. Fight Club: A disillusioned man meets a stranger who introduces him to a new way of life. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, 1999. Shirtless Brad, disillusionment, and big explosions. What could be bad about it?

  9. To Kill a Mockingbird: A lawyer in the Depression-era South defends a black man falsely accused of rape and teaches his son and daughter not to be prejudiced. Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, 1962. Two words: Boo Radley. Need I say more? I didn’t think so.

  8. Heathers: Popular girl meets a rebel who shows her how to teach the snobby girls at her school a lesson. Christian Slater, Winona Ryder, 1989. Anyone who tries to say this isn’t how high school really is, is a liar. Also contains the immortal line: “I love my dead gay son.”

  7. Donnie Darko: High school boy is haunted by visions of a giant rabbit. Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Swayze, 2001. Okay, I don’t understand it. But I love it.

  6. Napoleon Dynamite: A high school outcast helps a new boy run for student body president, while wooing the girl of his dreams. Jon Heder, Efren Ramirez, 2004. Best dance scene of any movie, ever.

  5. Saved!: Girl at religious school is ostracized by peers. Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, 2004. This movie closely tied with Camp for pure hilarity.

  4. Dogma: Two renegade angels try to get back into heaven. Linda Fiorentino, Matt Damon, 1999. Alanis Morissette plays God. Never has any role been cast so aptly.

  3. Secretary: A secretary begins an unorthodox romance with her employer. Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Spader, 2002. Disturbing in a way that makes you go Hmmm.

  2. I’m the One That I Want: Margaret Cho’s 1999 stand-up comedy routine. Margaret Cho, 2000. Should probably be required viewing for all humans.

  And my number-one top ten Potomac Video employee pick:

  1. Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2: A hired assassin seeks vengeance when she, in turn, is attacked and left for dead. Uma Thurman, David Carradine, 2003/2004. Why do people even bother to keep making movies when Kill Bill exists? Kill Bill has it all. You don’t have to watch anything else, really.

  5

  When I got home from work that night, it was to find a sight so confusing that for a minute, I thought I had entered the wrong house. I almost turned around and went back out again. That’s how bizarre I found what I was seeing.

  Lucy was sitting at the dining room table with a bunch of books spread out in front of her.

  On a Friday night. A Friday night. Lucy is never home on Friday night. Up until recently, she’s always either been at a game or out with Jack, who travels down almost every weekend to see her. Lately, of course, she’s been working the Friday night shift at Bare Essentials, over in the mall.

  But not this Friday night. This Friday night, she was going over SAT vocabulary words with—and this was the part that had me convinced I had the wrong house, the wrong sister, the wrong everything—Harold Minsky.

  There are a lot of places I might have expected to see Harold Minsky. Potomac Video, for one, in the very anime section I’d just spent an hour organizing. Or possibly the sci-fi shelves. I would definitely have expected to see him in the computer lab at school, where he practically lives, in his capacity as teacher’s assistant to Mr. Andrews, the computer lab supervisor.

  I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Harold in the manga aisle at our local Barnes and Noble, or standing in front of Beltway Billiards, where he and his friends spend hours attaining high scores on Arcade Legends.

  But I can’t say I expected, in a million years, ever to find Harold Minsky in my house…much less sitting across the dining room table from my sister Lucy.

  “Waggish,” Lucy was saying thoughtfully as I walked in. “You mean, like a dog?”

  Harold said, in a bored voice, “No.” Then, when there was no reply from my sister, he prompted, “It’s an adjective.”

  “Waggish.” Lucy looked up at the ceiling, as if expecting the vocab fairy to tumble down from the chandelier and help her out. Instead, she noticed me standing in the doorway with my mouth sagging open.

  “Oh, hi, Sam,” she said brightly. “Do you know Harold? Harold, this is my sister Samantha. Samantha, this is Harold. You know. From school.”

  I did know. Harold was my computer lab TA. I said, “Uh, hi, Harold.”

  Harold nodded at me, then turned his bespectacled head (how could it not be, when his parents had named him Harold?) back toward Lucy. What could they have been thinking, by the way? Didn’t they know that naming a kid Harold was a self-fulfilling prophecy, guaranteed to turn him into all that the name stood for: glasses, a crop of weedish brown hair that was badly in need of cutting, an unsteady gait stemming from a frame that had shot up six inches over the previous summer, making him one of the tallest guys in school not actually on the basketball team, and an orange Hawaiian shirt, the tail of which flopped out from the waistband of his too-short Levi’s?

  “Come on,” he said in a no-nonsense tone that I’m sure no male member of the species had ever used on my sister before in her life. “You know this one. We just went over it.”

  “Waggish,” Lucy said obediently. Then, to me, added, “Oh, I got that thing for you, Sam. That thing we talked about the other night? It’s on your bed.”

  At first I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then, when she winked slowly, it hit me—and I blushed. Deeply.

  Fortunately, Harold was too caught up in getting my sister to come up with a definition for waggish (SAT word meaning “mischievous in sport; roguish in merriment or good humor; frolicsome”) to notice me.

  “Lucy,” he said severely, “if you aren’t even going to try, I see no point in wasting my time and your parents’ money—”

  “No, no, wait,” Lucy said. “I know this one. Really, I do. Waggish. Doesn’t it mean ‘happy’? Like, the football victory left him feeling waggish?”

  I had to pass by the living room to get upstairs. My parents were both sitting in there, pretending to read. But I knew they were listening to Lucy and her new tutor.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom said, when she saw me. “How was work?”

  “Workish,” I said, keeping my head ducked in the hope that she wouldn’t notice my still-bright-red cheeks. “How long’s that been going on?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, toward the dining room.

  “Tonight’s their first session,” Mom said. “I called the school, and they told me this Harold is the best SAT prep tutor they’ve got. Do you know him? Do you think he’ll be able to help her?”

  “Well,” I said slowly. “If anyone can, I’d guess it would be Harold.”

  “They tell me he’s a shoo-in for Harvard,” my mom said. “All the Ivies, actually.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like Harold, all right.”

  “I asked for a female tutor,” my mom said, making sure to lower her voice so that Lucy and Harold couldn’t overhear her, “because I didn’t want there to be any…romantic complications. You know how boys can be about your sister. B
ut when I saw Harold in action with her, I knew he’d be perfect. It’s almost as if he doesn’t even realize she’s…well, the way she is.”

  It was nice of my mom not to come right out and say what we were all thinking: That Lucy is so gorgeous, guys on the street routinely fall in love with her on sight, and often trail after her, holding out scraps of paper with their cell phone numbers scrawled on them, which Lucy always politely takes, then deposits without a second thought in her bedroom trash can when she cleans out her purse every evening.

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah. That’d be Harold, all right. He doesn’t go in for that popularity stuff.” Or girls much, really. Unless they’re named Lara Croft and live inside a Playstation.

  “I don’t care if he falls in love with her,” my dad said, roughly turning a page of the newspaper he was holding. “So long as he gets her score up, I’ll be happy.”

  “Oh, Richard,” my mom said. “Not so loud. David called while you were at work, Sam. He said to call him back when you get a chance.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Great.”

  Only I didn’t mean great. I actually meant the opposite of great. Because I knew why he was calling. To find out what Mom and Dad had said. To find out whether or not we were going to get together over Thanksgiving to play Parcheesi.

  And the truth is, I’ve never actually been the hugest fan of board games.

  What would he do, I wondered, if I said no? No, I don’t want to go to Camp David with you for Thanksgiving, David. Would he dump me? I mean, if I just came out and told him that while he might think we’re ready for sex, I’m not so sure?

  No. No way. David’s not that kind of guy. For one thing, he’s a total nerd—I mean, card carrying, with his vintage Boomtown Rats T-shirts, Converse high-tops, and long, strictly sci-fi related TiVo To Do list. And let’s face it, nerds simply don’t dump their girlfriends for not putting out, the way jocks seem to. Or so I’ve heard, not actually being acquainted with any jocks.

  And for another thing, I know David really loves me. I know that because of the way he can be making fun of my hair one minute, and nibbling on my neck, telling me how hot he thinks I look in my new Nike shirt the next. I also know because I’m the last person he speaks to every night before he goes to sleep (he never forgets to call my cell….if I’m already asleep—or pretending to be, like I was last night—he leaves a message) and the first person he calls when he wakes up (not that I always answer, since I am not fit to be spoken to before my morning diet Dr Pepper).