The Boy Problem

by Kami Kinard

  Mom shook her head. “That must be the nephew he talks about. He’s single and doesn’t have any children.”

  “He’s single!” Kara hooted. But she was laughing so hard it sounded like Hehehehessssingle.

  I reached over and snatched the fortune cookie from her hand while her reflexes were still dulled by laughter. I shoved a piece of it in my mouth before Kara could get it back. (If you don’t eat at least a little bit of the cookie, the fortune doesn’t count.) Then I read the fortune.

  It was the same dang fortune! “You can have Mr. Rinehart,” I said to Kara. “I’ll take whoever comes next.”

  But the next person to walk through the golden doorway was definitely off-limits for me.

  Chip Tyler! Unbelievable! Kara jumped up and went to give Chip a hug. “Guess it was my fortune after all,” she said to me over her shoulder.

  Well, there was one more cookie to try. Or so I thought. I went to reach for it, but Mom was popping it into her mouth. “What’d the fortune say?” I asked, hoping THAT one was meant for me.

  She winked at me and stuffed the slip of paper into her wallet. GRRRRRR!

  Mom shot down my suggestion to buy more cookies. That shows you how much she cares about my future!

  * * *

  My prediction: There are a lot of golden doorways out there, so there’s still a chance that the one for me will walk through one of them.

  It’s weird how you can be happy and excited about one part of your life, but frustrated and angry with another part.

  See, I’m stoked about Cupcakes 4 Catastrophes, but my search for the one isn’t going well at all.

  I opened up my bedroom window and looked up at the sky. I considered picking another star to wish on, but that hadn’t gotten me anywhere so far. Instead, I tried a more authoritative approach.

  “Hey!” I called to the universe, “I need a little more guidance here! You put the pizza cheese guy in my path and you gave me a golden doorway. Now lead me to the one! Send me a sign!”

  And the universe answered.

  Or maybe it was just a car alarm.

  Last night as I nestled all snug in my bed,

  visions of cupcakes danced in my head.

  Actually, it was more like visions of dancing cupcakes invaded my brain. Anyway, the point is that those dang cupcakes were trying to out-cute each other in an effort to get my attention. I guess this was a sign that Kara, Pri, and I should go ahead and choose the flavors C4C should offer. But how were we supposed to know which flavors to pick?

  This morning I stumbled downstairs feeling bleary-eyed. I asked Mom how she’d choose which cupcake flavors to offer.

  Luckily, she had some pretty good advice. “Think about your audience, Tabbi,” she said. “Who is going to buy these cupcakes?”

  The woman had a point! After all, 99.99999999999999999 percent of our customers would be middle school students. We needed to find out what flavors they’d like and start from there. Using the list Pri found on the Internet, I had just enough time before the Uncool Carpool arrived to make a survey and print out twenty-five copies.

  Kara, Pri, and I spent most of lunch tallying the FAV FLAV surveys we’d passed out at the beginning of the period. It was easy to see what the top flavors were: vanilla, chocolate, chocolate with vanilla icing, peanut butter (I can’t BELIEVE peanut butter made the top six!), strawberry, and red velvet. Sure, chocolate had a few more votes than the others, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to only offer chocolate cupcakes. Some people don’t like chocolate, and some who do still wouldn’t want it every day. We’d be losing out on potential sales if we only offered one flavor. But how could we tell which combination of these six flavors would actually sell best?

  “Let’s bring in two flavors a day for three days,” Kara suggested. “We’ll record which one sells best each day. Then we’ll have a good idea which flavors are the most popular with our classmates. Those will have the greatest probability of selling best, therefore making the most money for Cupcakes 4 Catastrophes.”

  As soon as she said the word probability, Pri and I looked at each other. She was definitely thinking what I was thinking. This was confirmed .00000000000001 second later, when we actually said the exact same thing.

  “Our probability project!!!!!!”

  Predicting which cupcake flavor would be the most popular (chocolate!) was not complicated enough for an algebra project. But predicting which combination of flavors would best meet the demands of our classmates (and make us the most money in sales) was a lot more complex. I think it might work!

  After lunch, we dropped by Mr. Gheary’s room and added our note card to the bulletin board. Whew! I’m so glad we came up with something!

  I’m getting very excited about Dianna’s party tomorrow night. Everyone will be there — from the most popular kids to in-between-y kids like me and Kara. And not just because Dianna’s parents make her include everyone.

  If I’m lucky, the cute soccer boy will be there. Then I can just walk right up to him and ask his age. (Or get Kara to do it for me!) But even if he isn’t, this will be the perfect opportunity to do more research for my probability project — the unofficial boyfriend-finding one — since a whole bunch of kids my age will all be together in one place.

  I mean, the Faceplace survey Kara set up was good and all, but it hadn’t gotten me any closer to finding a boyfriend. Probably because all of the questions we included, now that I think about it, had to do with getting the attention of a particular guy. So you kinda have to know which guy’s attention you want for any of those suggestions (like communicating through texts, touching his arm, or messaging him through Faceplace) to work.

  Obviously, I have NO IDEA who the one might be. So I needed more information that might lead me to actually find him. It seemed like getting answers to a few more questions would really help. Questions like:

  Is he likely to attend my school, or go somewhere else?

  Where should I hang out to give myself the greatest probability of meeting him? The gym? The cafeteria? Where?

  Is he more likely to be my age, older, or younger?

  If I could find out the answers to these questions, I might actually be able to use the data from the Faceplace surveys to increase my probability of finding a boyfriend.

  Now I just have to figure out how I can get this information from Dianna’s party guests without being obvious. I mean, if I start quizzing people about their love lives and writing down their answers, I’ll be avoided like a pile of fresh dog poop!

  Got it!!!! Got it! Got it! Got it! A brilliant, sneaky way to gather information while making your friends think they’re playing a game. I called Kara right away to tell her my idea.

  Our conversation pretty much went like this:

  Me: You say party. I say bingo.

  Kara: Party!

  Me: Bingo!

  Kara: Party!

  Me: Bingo!

  Kara: Party!

  Me: Bingo! Party Bingo!

  Kara: Okay, Tabs … what’s this about?

  Me: Remember at Camp Luna Moth when we played Party Bingo to get to know each other better?

  Kara: Yeahhhhhhhhh …

  Me: Well, those Party Bingo cards are just grids with different information like “I have blue eyes” in each square, remember?

  Kara: Yeahhhhhhhh …

  Me: And people walk around putting their initials in the squares that apply to them, right?

  Kara: Yeahhhhhhhh …

  Me: I’m thinking I can totally create a Party Bingo card with statements that allow me to gather information about people’s crushes. Then I can use the info I get to increase the probability of actually finding a boyfriend.

  Kara: You lost me.

  Me: Never mind. You’ll see tomorrow night. I’ve gotta call Dianna.

  Kara: Sounds good. And Tabs?

  Me: Yeah?

  Kara: Party?

  Me: BINGO!

  When I called Dianna and offered to be in
charge of a party game, she was like, “Well, I don’t know….”

  So I offered to bring three fabulous prizes.

  I have NO IDEA what kind of prizes I’ll come up with, but I have lots of ideas about what kind of things to put on the Party Bingo Game boards.

  In order for this to work, I’ll need to stand at the door with a clipboard. As guests arrive, I’ll have them initial all squares that apply to them. I’ll tell them I’m creating a key for the game. This way, I’ll get info from everyone there.

  Do they have to know you don’t actually need a key for Party Bingo? I DON’T THINK SO.

  Then I’ll hand each kid a bingo card when it’s time to start the game. I’ve already made sixty copies. Ready to go!

  About an hour before the party I had my own personal freak-out festival (the bad kind). I mean, so many things could go wrong with my plan that it suddenly felt like I was organizing a great big DISASTER!

  The first thing I panicked about was pens. What if no one brought them? It’d completely ruin the game! I ran to Mom’s desk and opened her office-supply drawer. She has tons of pens and pencils that she got for something like one cent a bag during the Staples back-to-school sale. I dug down to the bottom of the drawer and pulled out a pack.

  I put the pens with the Party Bingo cards and looked over the instructions one more time. Two words that should have leapt out at me a couple of hours ago (when I had time to do something about it) suddenly jumped out at me now.

  FABULOUS PRIZES

  Oh great. Oh great, great, great, great, great. (When I say great here, I do not mean great in the good way, but in the bad, terrible, awful, what have I done kind of way.)

  Kara and her dad would be here to pick me up in ten minutes and I had COMPLETELY forgotten about the prizes. I had no choice: I was going to have to bring something I already owned. This meant nothing would be fabulous, because I don’t own anything fab except the UGGs my grandmom gave me last year for my birthday, and no one wants to win a pair of scuff-toed boots.

  So I basically ransacked my own bedroom. I found out I’m pretty good at ransacking. Too bad it’s not exactly a skill that leads to a reputable career.

  How to ransack a room:

  Dump every drawer onto the floor.

  Open closet, pull out everything that isn’t nailed in.

  Use broom to push stuff out from under bed.

  Pour contents from decorative baskets onto bed.

  Using flailing hands and feet, shift through it all, looking for loot.

  Unfortunately, my ransacking didn’t get me too much. I mean, if I’d been a pirate, I’d have given up pirating right then and there. It was pitiful plunder.

  I guess I’m thinking of pirates because one of the things I found was an unused stick-on fake mustache from my friend Phillip Bernard’s birthday party a couple of years ago. That was back when we used to have girl-boy parties. Then we stopped those for a few years. But now the girl-boy parties are back. THANK GOODNESS!

  In the end, the only things I found that could pass for prizes were three golden dollars from the tooth fairy and a tiny clip-on radio Uncle Mike sent me for my eleventh birthday. The radio didn’t really work, but it was still in the box and it looked brand-new. Like a prize. A fabulous prize. With any luck, the winner wouldn’t figure out it was broken until after the party.

  After closing the door to my ransacked room, I went downstairs to Mom’s desk and plundered through her office-supply drawer again, desperately looking for more loot. I found a pack of colored markers. I give them a D-minus as a party prize, but they were still a prize.

  About then, Kara’s dad pulled up. I ran to the kitchen to hug Mom good-bye.

  She looked at my super-cute lavender sleeveless shirt and said, “It’s chilly out. You need a sweater.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Mr. McAllister’s already here. I don’t want to make him wait.”

  “Go tell him you’ll be ready in a minute,” said Mom. “I’ll run up and get you a hoodie.”

  No way could I let that happen! Mom could NOT see my ransacked room. “I’m fine, Mom, fine. Hot even! Sweating already, see?” I swiped a hand across my forehead, wiping away fake sweat as I backed toward the door.

  Mom advanced on me and the stairs. “It’ll only take a second….” she started, but I was out the door, charging for the car before she hit the bottom step.

  I got in, slammed the door behind me, and cried, “Step on it!”

  Mr. McAllister and Kara looked at me like I was crazy. (Yeah, I get that a lot.) But things were going to get a whole lot crazier if we didn’t make like a tree and LEAVE before my neat-freak mom’s eyeballs made contact with my room.

  “Um … ready to go,” I added as calmly as possible. As Mr. McAllister pulled out of our driveway, I saw my room light flip on. Even if I had no imagination whatsoever, I’d still be able to picture what my mom’s face looked like at that second.

  If Mom weren’t so … so … Mom, she’d have known not to worry — that I’d clean it all back up. Just not before the party.

  (I’m sure she wasn’t happy when she dialed my cell to yell at me and heard it ring right there in my room … but I’d decided not to bring it along. Wouldn’t want to lose it or anything.)

  Anyway, Mom was on the phone with Uncle Mike when I got home. I’d barely gotten the toes of my boots through the doorway when she shoved this into my hands:

  So I came up here and started throwing clothes into my drawers and closet. Then I thought I’d better drag out this journal and record as much as I can before Mom gets up here. Who knows when I’m ever going to have free time again.

  Anyway, as long as they’re still talking, let me get to what happened at the party. As soon as we got there, I stationed myself at the door with clipboard, pens, and my Party Bingo cards. I made sure everyone who entered initialed the squares for my “key.” (Only one or two kids grumbled about it; most just scribbled down their initials as quickly as they could, since I was basically the gatekeeper to the party, and they wanted to hurry up and get inside.)

  Then we played the game, which really did make people mingle. It looked like everyone was having fun. No one suspected my ulterior motive! It all went perfectly … until people actually started winning.

  The Vine won the mini radio, which I gave her after pretending to check her bingo card against the “key.” I was glad she won it because she was too busy hanging all over Malcolm (grrrr) to figure out it didn’t work. Then Kara won the markers, which was a HUGE relief because she actually likes markers. Plus, she helped me out by making a big deal of how great they were. I held my breath and waited to give out the last prize.

  By that time, I was wishing we were all back in kindergarten. Back then, three golden dollars would have been an AWESOME prize. But eventually you get old enough to realize that people who want you to believe golden dollars are “special” are keeping some pretty crucial math from you.

  And once you can figure that out, they don’t seem so cool anymore.

  I just hoped whoever won them was a guy. A boy would probably pocket ’em without saying something sarcastic like Gee, thanks, three whole dollars.

  But of course, the worst possible person won.

  “Ta-da! Done!” shouted Maybelline.

  I reached into my bag to pull out the money, but it wasn’t there. Not in the front pocket, not in the back pocket, not in the main compartment. Not anywhere! Cra-Z!

  I frantically searched my pants pockets but only found that stupid stick-on mustache.

  “Well,” said Maybelline, holding out her hand, “I played your lame game, now give me my fabulous prize!”

  Really, there was only one thing I could do.

  I handed over the mustache.

  “Ewww!” Maybelline dropped the ’stache. Everyone in the room kinda took a step back.

  I admit, the hairy, black, wrinkled-up mustache didn’t look so great, but what’d they think it was? A tarantula?

  Maybe
they just want to distance themselves because of the wrath of Maybelline. It has a fear factor equal to that of the world’s biggest spider.

  “That’s the worst prize I’ve ever seen!” said The Sponge. (Her real name is Tiffany Davidson, but Kara and I call her The Sponge because she soaks up everything she can about Maybelline.)

  It looked like my social life would soon be as lifeless as the fake mustache.

  Then Alex B saved the day. “Hey, Phillip,” he called. “Didn’t you have mustaches like this at your third-grade birthday party?”

  I was thinking Um … exactly like those. I swear I crossed my fingers, my toes, and my eyes, hoping no one else would realize the mustache on the floor was actually a pirate party favor. Despite my super-cute sleeveless top and lack of hoodie, I started sweating for real. It looked like there was only one word for my current situation: BUSTED!

  “I remember those.” Alex laughed. He picked up the mustache and stuck it on. It wiggled on his lip as he chewed his gum. Then he turned to Maybelline and asked, “Ever kissed a dude with a mustache?”

  Let’s just say she has … now.

  Suddenly the room filled with cheers, making Maybelline the center of attention again, which would normally annoy me. But I was okay with it since it took the attention off of me and my sorry prize. Then Dianna’s parents responded to the cheering by running in and breaking everything up. Everyone was so distracted after that, the whole thing blew over. Whew!

  Know what’s unbelievable? Alex B wore that dang mustache for the rest of the night, making it the coolest prize instead of the lamest. It must be awesome to have that kind of social superpower: the ability to turn something lame into something cool just by wearing it. I know girls who would kill for that particular power.

  Seriously, I couldn’t tell you how many mouths this exact sentence came out of:

  “Hey, Tabbi, got any more of those mustaches?”

  Alex B is so cute and nice. Sighhhhh. And he SAVED me from complete disaster. Why does he have to have such bad taste in girls?