“Okay, okay,” he says. “Well how about this: We’ll go pick Missy up at her house and then drop the girls off at the park. You and I will go out for a nice dinner right down the street from the park and pick Lizzie up when we’re done. We’ll be close by in case Lizzie needs anything.”
“I don’t see why you’re bending over backwards to take her to some silly concert,” my mother says.
“Maybe I’m bending over backwards to take my wife on a date,” my dad answers.
“Don’t expect to stay late at this thing,” she says, turning to me. “You be ready to come home at 9:00.”
“Okay, sure, 9:00,” I say, standing up from the table. They are going to let me go! I can hardly believe it. My dad really is the best. I have no clue how he puts up with my mother.
I help clear the table and load the dishwasher, and then I wait for my mom to leave the kitchen before calling Missy to tell her the news.
* * *
It’s been drizzling all morning.
“I don’t think you should go in the rain,” my mother keeps saying. “They’ll probably cancel.” But they’re holding the battle of the bands in one of the picnic pavilions where the rain won’t make a difference, and the website says rain or shine, so I’m ignoring her.
My biggest problem right now is deciding what to wear. Even though it’s raining, it’s hot as hell, being August. The rain hasn’t cooled things off. Everything is sticky. I can’t wear jeans. I’ll roast, and besides if it does turn to an all-out downpour, they’ll be heavy and miserable. I always have my trusty jean skirt, but in the heat my legs will stick together and be ridiculously uncomfortable. I’m going to be uncomfortable enough in a crowd of strangers—my clothes at least have to be okay. At the beginning of the summer my mother bought me a pair of long shorts, “Bermuda shorts,” she called them. I have worn them once. I’m pretty sure they are not flattering on me (I have never met a pair of shorts I could agree with), but they are black and sort of dressy-looking for shorts. I can wear them with a black t-shirt and look okay, if my mom’s fashion sense is to be trusted.
Maybe with the right jewelry, I can even make my outfit look cool. I have this habit of buying funky jewelry when my family goes on vacation, but aside from vacation I never manage to wear it. Chunky necklaces or bracelets, dangling earrings, colorful beads—it all just looks over-the-top when I look at myself in my bedroom mirror at home. But I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, to be more outgoing, to get noticed a little. I take out the coral-colored bangle bracelets and a silver necklace with a coral pendant I got in Hawaii. I lay out the outfit and study it. Put together but not overly coordinated like an old lady. The jewelry is stylish. My poor hair is beyond help in the muggy weather, though. All I can manage is a stubby pony tail. It will have to do.
* * *
My parents and I don’t talk on the way to Missy’s house. When we get there, Missy is sitting on the front porch waiting for us. She and I planned this out to make sure my parents (well, mostly my mother) don’t have to get out of the car, knock on the door, and interrogate her parents before letting us go to the concert. She comes bounding down the stairs waving.
The minute I see her I begin to think I’ve made a mistake agreeing to do this. She wasn’t kidding when she said she has curly red hair. A wild mess of crazy curls erupts from her head and tumbles half way down her back. I can’t even imagine how you’d contain such a mop in a ponytail or any other way. She said she’s 5’8” but she looks taller, maybe because she is ridiculously thin. Even Maura would look like she needed to lose a few pounds next to Missy. She has on snug khaki Capri pants and a fitted turquoise t-shirt that thankfully does not reveal any cleavage or her belly button. Around one wrist she has a thick collection of silver bangle bracelets. I can see why her parents won’t let her put a photo on Facebook; she is gorgeous in a wild, exotic way. I don’t know what perverts look for online, but I’m guessing it’s girls like Missy.
My first reaction is, “I can’t be friends with a girl who looks like that.” I mean, going on the stereotype that pretty girls are shallow and self-centered, I just can’t imagine befriending someone so striking. Pretty people stick together and put down all the average and less-than-average looking people, right?
With a knot in my stomach, I lean over across the backseat and open the door for her as she approaches the car. She climbs in with an enthusiastic “Hey!” and turns to me with a smile. She has a mouth full of serious braces, and it relieves me greatly to see that. She is a beauty in progress, not a fully formed one. I relax a little, and then it occurs to me that maybe if we are friends, I can sort of be pretty by association.
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” my mother says, turning around from the passenger seat, waking me from my racing thoughts.
“Sorry, mom,” I mumble. I give Missy what I hope is an encouraging smile. “Mom, dad, this is my friend Missy. Missy, these are my parents, Greg and Beth Richards.”
“Hi! It’s so great to meet you! Lizzie’s told me a lot about you!” Missy gushes.
“All bad, I’m sure,” my dad jokes.
“Greg!” my mother says.
Thank God it isn’t far to the park.
“I love your necklace,” Missy says.
I bring my hand to it. “Thanks,” I say. I’m not sure how to comment on her ensemble. I mean, I am fairly thrown off by her appearance, but as far as my parents know Missy and I are already fast friends, so I can’t say anything that suggests I haven’t seen her before. “Your hair looks fantastic,” I say finally. I spent years wishing for curly hair, eating the crust of my bread even though I hated it because my mother told me it would make my hair curly. Eventually I realized the crust of my bread would do nothing for my hair, but by that time I liked eating it anyway, and while I still wish for curls, my one experience getting a perm convinced me that I probably should just stick with the straight hair God gave me.
“This weather!” Missy says laughing. “I can’t control it when it’s muggy like this.”
“So Missy, Lizzie says your dad is a military man?” my dad asks. Here we go. We are only a few blocks from the park, but we’ve sat through two lights at a busy intersection. Rush hour. I silently curse the traffic.
As it turns out, Missy is the fastest talker on the planet, and she loves to talk. All it takes is one question from my dad, and she is off. In the ten minutes we sit in traffic, she manages to explain how her father retired from the army three years ago, and his last post had been teaching at West Point. They’ve actually moved three times in the three years since he got out because he was working as a professor and he’s been trying to get a tenure-track position somewhere, which he finally got at the university in town, which is how they wound up here. She also tells us that her mother is an artist who gives lessons and has been selling paintings online. It’s a whirlwind tour of family history.
“What did you say your father teaches?” my mother asks. I can’t believe Missy left out a single detail—she said so much—or that my mother noticed she’d left out any details—she had been talking so fast.
“Psychology,” she says, “I know everyone thinks that’s odd because you don’t really associate that sort of stuff with the army and all, but yeah, he has a PhD and stuff and he’s a West Point man himself, I don’t know if I mentioned that, so he’s not your typical soldier.”
“I see,” my mother says, sounding unimpressed. She doesn’t have a lot of use for psychology. She thinks it’s all a bunch of garbage that makes people self-obsessed. I think that’s because she knows any shrink would say she’s an insane control freak.
At last we reach the entrance to the park. My dad pulls out of traffic and lets us out, handing me twenty bucks with a wink and telling us to have fun.
“And no mischief!” my mother calls out the window as Missy and I walk through the brick archway that marks the main park gate.
* * *
“They seem really nice,” Missy says, nodd
ing toward my parents’ car.
“Yeah, they’re ok. A little uptight.” I wonder how she could have noticed they’re nice, considering she was doing all the talking.
“I’m so excited,” she says, clapping her hands in front of her as we walk.
I feel like a midget beside her and self-consciously tug at the hem of my shorts which seem to be creeping up as I walk. “Yeah, it’s going to be fun,” I say, trying to sound like I believe it.
Missy unexpectedly hooks her arm through mine and starts skipping, dragging me along with her.
“So what kind of music do you like, anyway?” she asks when her burst of exuberance calms down and she lets go of my arm.
I brush sweat from my forehead and upper lip. “I’m not particular, I guess. A little bit of this, a little bit of that.” In truth I mostly listen to whatever Jeff listens to. At the beginning of the summer he sent me a Mumford & Sons CD, so I’ve been listening to that.
“Did you check out any of the bands?” she asks.
It never even occurred to me to do so.
“You really are sheltered at home, aren’t you?” she asks. She, of course, checked them all out on YouTube and Facebook and determined that the one called Volume of a Cube is the best because they have a singer who sounds like Pink.
“Do you ever listen to Ani DiFranco?” she asks.
I shake my head. “You really should!” she says. “Her lyrics are, like, amazing!”
I don’t ask what makes her think I will like Ani DiFranco, but my cynical side is tempted. I mean, she doesn’t know me at all. As smart as she sounds on Facebook, she seems like a real flake in person.
There’s already a crowd forming at the pavilion where the stage is. The Girl Scouts have a table set up with a bake sale, and the Boy Scouts have hot dog and popcorn stands going. A few kids dressed mostly in black lurk in the back corner of the pavilion, looking like they are trying to seem nonchalant, occasionally laughing in a conspiratorial way. A number of others, mostly girls, are gathering up near the stage. Some of them have on homemade T-shirts supporting their friends’ bands. Missy and I stand near the middle of the concrete floor, looking around, wondering what to do.
“Want to sit at one of the picnic tables over there?” I ask, pointing to a row of tables near the back on the opposite side of the pavilion from the too-cool kids.
“What’re we going to do all the way back there? I think we should go up by the stage where we can dance and have fun,” she says, doing some funny little dance move with her shoulders. “And meet more people, like maybe some boys,” she adds.
I debate whether or not I should point out that there aren’t many boys up there, but before I can object, Missy once again hooks her arm in mine and drags me toward the stage.
While the first band plays, Missy and I stand in the middle of the pack of girls who have gathered near the stage. Missy claps and cheers and sort of bops and bounces to the music. Every now and then she nudges me and says something like, “Come on! Move those hips!” The music, I have to admit, is pretty good, much better than I expected from amateur bands. Standing there, smack in the middle of a growing crowd, with all eyes on the stage (and therefore no one noticing me), I am even able to start to relax a little. Then, all of a sudden, just after the first band announces their last song, Missy grabs my arm and yanks me out of the crowd to the edge of the pavilion.
“How do I look?” she asks, brushing some stray curls from her forehead.
“What?” I say.
She pulls me further out of the pavilion so that we are behind one of the pillars. “Okay, I didn’t mention this before because I was afraid you’d think I was a total loser, but,” she pauses dramatically, “I’ve been talking to this guy, Wes, online, and I’m supposed to meet him here.”
“Oh,” I say. I’m not sure how to feel about this. Am I tagging along on some kind of blind date?
“I know, it’s stupid, right? Like, online dating? But he seems nice,” she says.
I was under the impression that Missy, like me, had not had any luck connecting with anyone else online. I thought we were here to stick together and scope out the scene. And what if this guy turns out to be some forty-year-old sex freak?
“He’s here. I saw him a minute ago. With some other guys,” she says.
“But he doesn’t know what you look like, right? I mean, you don’t have a picture on your profile,” I say, realizing as soon as I say it that she probably sent him a picture. My stomach is churning.
“I sent him one from my cell phone,” she confirms.
“So you’ve, like, talked to him?”
“Yeah, a few times.”
“Wow.”
“I should have told you sooner,” she says, her voice rising like a question.
“Probably.”
“Don’t be mad,” she says. “I’m so glad you were able to come with me tonight, Lizzie. I would be so nervous if I didn’t have a friend to back me up.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And anyway, wasn’t the whole point of coming here to meet people?” Missy forces a grin.
She wants me to cheer up and go with her to meet Wes. I guess I thought the point was to meet each other, and already I’m being pressed into service as her defensive guard. I want to shout, “Meet people? I haven’t even really met you yet!” but instead I just nod.
“So I look all right?” she asks again.
“Yeah, you look great,” I answer.
“Ok, let’s risk it,” she says, walking back into the pavilion.
* * *
Wes and his friends are a grade behind us, which makes me feel a little better about the whole situation. We might be the new girls, but they are still lower on the totem pole. Also, Missy is a good two inches taller than Wes, which cracks me up, but she doesn’t seem to mind (or notice). On the whole he seems kind of nerdy. Wes and company are not the guys who get all the ladies; they’re probably just psyched to have two senior girls hanging out with them.
Missy is as friendly and enthusiastic with Wes and his friends as she is with me. She keeps up a steady stream of questions, half the time answering them herself. What she has in book smarts she seems to lack in social sense, but her outgoing nature is working in our favor, so I decide to just go with it.
Our little group—Missy, me, Wes and his three pals—move back to one of the tables far from the speakers so we can talk. Mathletes though they are, they are knowledgeable sources of school gossip. It doesn’t take long before I am totally engrossed in the dirt they’re dishing. Apparently Maura’s friend Katherine, the pageant queen, was hospitalized for bulimia in ninth grade. No one seems very sympathetic about that, and behind her back she is still called “Retch.” The boys insist she deserves no sympathy because she considers everyone to be ten steps beneath her, something I have experienced firsthand. I am disappointed they don’t have much dirt on Maura, but they give us little tidbits about almost everyone else who walks by our table.
“That kid,” Wes says, nodding his head toward a tall, thin, brown haired kid who is buying a cookie at the bake sale table, “He’s the one to beat.”
“To beat?” I ask.
“Yeah, he’s got the highest average in the senior class. He’s won the high average award the past three years, so unless someone can knock him down this year, he’ll be valedictorian.”
“Him?” I ask. The kid in question looks like some kind of wide-eyed farm boy, not like a valedictorian. He is tan and athletic-looking, but there is nothing cocky in his walk or his expression. If I had to guess just based on appearances, I would say he is probably of average intelligence at best but great with big animals like cows and horses. It is hard to picture him acing a calculus exam.
“Yep. His name is Hunter Groves. Valedictorian and star of the soccer team.”
“No kidding,” I say.
“He’s a nice kid,” Wes adds. “Usually the number one guy is a serious geek, but Hunter’s ok.”
I e
ither hate Hunter Groves or love him. Maybe I am even madly in love with him. It may be shallow, but the guy of my dreams is both hot and smart, and he’s genuine enough to fall for me despite my mere average appearance. I know it’s a double standard to want a guy with looks and brains and maybe even athletic talent, and simultaneously to want people not to judge me by my looks and lack of athletic talent, but there it is. I guess I’m not a good person. And anyway, whatever dream guy I have in my mind, real boys intimidate me completely, and I steer clear of them. The good-looking jocks use their arrogance to compensate for their dull minds, and the really smart guys usually have the people skills of lab rats. There I go again, proving myself to be superficial and judgmental, but I’m just calling it like I see it. The point is, if Hunter Groves is the smart, athletic, nice guy Wes says he is, maybe dreams do come true.
“Lizzie!” Missy says, plopping down beside me on the picnic table bench. “Brian lives just down the street from you!”
I can’t remember who Brian is, which is terrible because there are only four of them to keep track of, but I guess I haven’t paid much attention. I swivel to look at the guys on the bench behind me. A kid with wavy, dirty blond hair and glasses gives a little wave.
“Cool, right?” Missy says. “You should go talk to him.”
It occurs to me that I have been monopolizing Wes. As this is a sort of date for Missy and Wes, she might want me to buzz off. I can’t believe she’s still interested in him in more than a purely curious way. Think about it: Missy is drop-dead gorgeous, and Wes is short, with silly hair (chin length, but all slicked back behind his ears and sort of flipped up at the ends), and a habit of irritatingly wiping the back of his hand underneath his running nose.
“I think I’ll go grab a soda,” I say, standing up. I have no intention of going to chat with Brian, but I have to get a closer look at Hunter.
He is standing with a couple of other guys facing the stage. From the Boy Scouts’ snack table, I can clearly see his profile. I desperately want to hear him talk—I want some confirmation that what Wes said is true. I imagine he has the tell-tale Massachusetts accent—that would make sense with his appearance. I am curious about his friends, too. I mean, smart kids don’t hang around with really stupid ones, so they must be smart, too, right? There’s nothing like coming face to face with someone who challenges half a dozen stereotypes that you hold dear. I wish I were the sort of girl who could walk over to three strange guys and say hello, but I’m not. I consider moving closer to get a better look, and then I see something that deters me: Maura.
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