by Robin Palmer
He nodded. “Okay. See you,” he said.
“See you,” I mumbled as he walked into the hall.
I plopped back down onto the steps. Oh my God. My maybe-local-crush had just offered to help me with my campaign. Which meant I’d get to know him better.
I couldn’t decide if this was the best news ever ... or the worst. Sure, the whole bloversharing thing hadn’t ended up totally out of control, and I had been able to talk to him normally after a while, but that was for only, about, like two minutes. Having to do a video together meant MANY minutes together. Many minutes where I would have the chance to embarrass myself. While there was nothing in the crush log rules about your crush having to like you back, I don’t think that having him hate you would be considered helpful.
But even worse than that was, what if, in hanging out with him and getting to know him, I decided that I didn’t like him? Then I’d be back to square one with this whole crush thing and I’d have to find someone else.
Which sounded about as fun as talking to Sarah’s belly.
Unlike some people who love when there’s a video camera being aimed at them—like, say, Marissa and Alice, who completely hog the camera—I’m not a fan. What usually happens is my mouth gets all dry, and when I talk, it sounds like I have marbles rolling around in it. And if the person behind the camera happens to be not just a boy, but a boy who, as you hang out with him more, you realize you don’t hate because he’s not super-awful but instead is indeed a serious contender for your local crush, then the marbles are more like giant boulders which makes it so you can’t open your mouth at all.
“And cutting!” Blair yelled the next afternoon in Strawberry Fields, the part of Central Park that was named in honor of John Lennon because he used to live in an apartment building called the Dakota right near it. For the fourth time, after getting out, “Hi. My name is Lucy B. Parker, and here’s why I think you should vote for me for seventh-grade class president,” I had completely clammed up and forgotten how to talk.
“Sorry,” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead. Beatrice flopped back on the grass with a giant sigh.
“Look, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job or anything,” Blair said as a glop of fried Oreo fell on his Atari T-shirt. (After hitting three street fairs that morning, I had finally found some at the Western Manhattan Chamber of Commerce one, at Amsterdam and Eightieth.) “But when people vote for a president, they usually want someone who knows how to take charge. And talk.”
“She is take charge. And she can talk,” Beatrice snapped. “She just has a little bit of stage fright. Why do you have to be such a jerk all the time?” She turned to me. “I can’t believe you asked him to do this.” Beatrice thought that her brother was the second most annoying person on the planet. Right after Asher Kulik, a kid in our grade who smelled like mothballs and was constantly getting his tongue caught in binder clips.
“Huh? You made me ask him!” I reminded her.
“That’s because I was on cold medicine. You shouldn’t listen to me on cold medicine. My nose was all stuffed up.”
“How could your nose possibly be stuffed up?” Blair asked. “It’s so big you could fit a bus in there.”
Beatrice stood up. “My nose is not big!” she cried.
Now it was my turn to flop down on the grass and sigh. Beatrice was very sensitive when it came to her nose. It was kind of big.
Blair snorted. “Yeah, right. You better hope that your bat mitzvah present is a nose job.”
I wondered if this was how it was going to be between Ziggy and me. Probably not. With all of the crazy things my dad and Sarah were doing, he’d be so perfect he’d never say anything mean.
Beatrice turned to me. “Sorry, Lucy—I know I’m your campaign manager, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit here and listen to someone so bourgeois.” Although we had been BFFs for a while, I still wasn’t exactly sure what bourgeois meant. I knew it was French, and I knew it was some sort of insult in the annoying/stupid family, but whenever I pressed Beatrice to tell me what it meant, she never gave me a straight answer. She started stomping toward the exit to the park. “You’re on your own with this!” she announced over her shoulder.
“But this video was your idea!” I shouted after her, even though she’d already stomped away and couldn’t hear me. I rolled over. “Who am I kidding? I’m awful in front of the camera.”
Blair twisted his top lip and pulled it up so it touched his nose. I had learned this afternoon that he did that when he was thinking really hard. It was incredibly weird-looking, but from the number of times he did it, it was obvious that he was a very deep thinker. According to my dad, that was a very good quality for a person to have. In fact, I bet at that very moment he was looking online for a book called How to Train Your Baby to Be an Incredibly Deep Thinker.
Blair let go of his lip. “I have an idea,” he announced. “Not only that, but it’s one of my brilliant ones.”
Uh-oh. The first brilliant idea Blair had come up with that morning had to do with my jumping out of a plane and when the parachute unfurled, it would say, WANT A PRESIDENT WHO’S FEARLESS? LOOK NO FURTHER THAN LUCY B. PARKER! Luckily, Beatrice had immediately nixed that by saying we barely had enough campaign funds for glitter pens, let alone a plane. “What is it?” I asked warily.
“I think that instead of you trying to be all I’m-Lucy-B.-Parker-and-I’m-running-for-president, you should just, I don’t know ... be yourself,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. More of this being-myself stuff? Pete was always going on about that. Did these people not realize that myself was sort of goofy, with not much coordination, and the bad habits of bloversharing AND overlistening? Those weren’t qualities you wanted in a president. I wanted to be.... presidential-like. Like Cristina Pollock, minus the meanness.
“What do you mean ‘myself’?”
He shrugged. “Like how you are when you and my sister are hanging out in her room,” he said. “You know ... funny. Like you are when you imitate that Dr. Maude lady.”
If I was lucky, maybe there’d be an earthquake at that moment and the ground would crack open and swallow me up. “You saw that?” I squeaked. “Were you spying on us?”
“No,” he said defensively. Was it my imagination or was he turning red? “I just happened to be walking by Beatrice’s room at the exact moment you were pacing around the room with your hand on your hips yelling, ‘What part of “Get with the program” do you people not understand?’ in a New York accent, like she does on TV, and I had to lean down and tie my shoelace or risk tripping on it and breaking my neck and ending up paralyzed and in a wheelchair for life.”
I couldn’t believe Blair had seen me being so ... me. Or, in that particular moment, Dr. Maude. I didn’t even want to imagine what other embarrassing things he may have seen. It was better if I didn’t know. “What else did you see?” I demanded.
He shrugged. “Nothing, really.”
I exhaled the gallon of air that I had been holding in my lungs. Phew.
“I mean, other than when you were pretending to be a character in one of those Spanish soap opera things. You know, talking in a bad Spanish accent and yelling Ay, caramba as you kept flinging yourself down on the bed.”
He had seen me pretending to be Guadalupe from Amantes, the telenovela that Rose and I watched? Could there be anything more embarrassing than that?
“Oh, and that time you were pretending to be a contestant on American Idol even though your voice isn’t all that good.”
Apparently, yes—yes, there was something more embarrassing. I couldn’t believe that after seeing all that, Blair would even talk to me, let alone agree to help me make this video. “So let me get this straight—you want me to act like a total dork in front of the camera?” I asked. “That’ll win me a lot of votes.”
“No. Not that stuff. Especially not the singing part, please,” he said. “But we’ll just pretend that ... I don’t know ... I’m Beatrice. Even though,
if you ask me, that would be the worst curse in the world. And we’re sitting in her room instead of here in Central Park in front of a bunch of tourists,” he went on. “I’ll just ask you questions, and you’ll answer them.”
I gave him a doubtful look.
“Come on, it’ll be easy.”
I looked around. At least they were friendly looking tourists. My eyes narrowed. “What kind of questions?” If he asked me what my bra size was, I’d kill him.
“I don’t know! The kind of questions you’d ask someone who was running for class president! Just answer them, okay?”
I could tell he was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, okay.”
He picked up the camera, and my stomach started to get wonky. Remembering one of the tricks that Laurel once told me she used when she got really nervous when shooting, I squinted my eyes so he got blurry, which made it easier to pretend he was Beatrice. Even though he wasn’t wearing all black, it wasn’t as hard I as thought, especially because his nose was kind of on the big side as well. And because I didn’t get nervous when talking to Beatrice, not only did the boulders in my mouth dissolve once I started talking, but I wouldn’t shut up. And not in an uh-oh, I’m-so-bloversharing kind of way.
Not only did I talk about all the stuff I planned to do if I were elected (starting with Bring-Your-Pet-to-School Day and getting softer toilet paper in the bathrooms), but I also shared my views on everything from the stuff that really bothered me about the subway (when someone spread his legs out wide so he took up two or three seats) to tips on how to get yourself out of a bad mood. (“Wear a lot of color. Or eat a few cupcakes. If you can do both, even better.”)
As I did my impersonation of Alan running one of our official Parker-Moses Family Meetings (“Item number twelve: It has been brought to my attention by Rose that there was an ant spotting in the living room at approximately three forty-five p.m. on Tuesday. In light of this, all food must now be consumed in the kitchen.”), Blair cracked up so hard that he had to put the camera down. Which was a good thing because I realized that that would not be good to show my entire class, even if it was accurate.
Once he managed to stop laughing, he looked at me. “You know, Lucy, you’re not just funny. You’re really funny,” he said, sounding surprised.
I felt myself turn red. “I am?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Usually I can’t stand Beatrice’s friends, but you’re, I don’t know, different ...
“Different, how?” I asked nervously.
“I don’t know,” he said, annoyed. “Just different, okay? Like not so completely annoying you want to smother the person with a pillow.”
Was that a compliment? I couldn’t tell.
He stood up. “I have to get home and feed my turtle before the awards ceremony. I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” I said, starting to get up. “I’ll walk with you.”
But before I managed to get to my feet, he was already on his way. For a tubby guy, he could move really fast.
What’s going on here? I thought as I plopped back down into the middle of Strawberry Fields. I didn’t have a ton of experience with boys. Actually, other than Connor (and he wasn’t really a boy-boy on account of the whole he-was-a-celebrity-who-lived-in-California thing ), I had none.
With Connor, it was different. He wanted to hang out with me. Like walk-on-the- beach-with-me-in-Malibu hang out. And he gave me lots of compliments, like, how it was cool that I ate bread because no one else in L.A. did. But Blair didn’t do any of those things. He acted annoyed and couldn’t seem to get away from me fast enough. Okay, yes, one of the articles I had read online when I was researching crush symptoms had said that boys tended to act like that when they had crushes, but I didn’t think that was the case here. I mean, the chance that the boy I had a crush on was crushing back on me? That was about as likely to happen as Laurel’s sending me a text that moment saying how sorry she was that she had been such a jerk and was there any way I could possibly forgive her. Which, as I fished my phone out of my tote bag to check, had not happened.
I’d be lying if I said that hanging out with Blair that afternoon hadn’t made me realize that I could do a lot worse in the crush department. But I still wasn’t ready to admit it to Beatrice or put it in the log. Maybe I’d get up the guts to do that in ... a year or something, but between the election, and fighting with Laurel, and being ignored by my father, I had enough on my plate. In fact, it felt like I had almost too much on my plate.
Which, for a girl who never had to be told to finish her food because there were kids starving all over the globe, was saying a lot.
chapter 7
Dear Dr. Maude,
Okay, this is not an e-mail about the campaign. Or Laurel. The reason I’m writing you today has to do with BLM. (In case you forgot, that’s the abbreviation I use for Blair Lerner-Moskovitz when I don’t want anyone to know that that’s what I’m writing about. Like, say, now.)
It’s kind of a long story so I won’t go into it now, but because of this video, we ended up spending the weekend together, and Blair was acting REALLY weird around me. Like he’d say something that’s along the lines of what you’d say to a crush—for instance, “You’re really funny”—but then he’d get all defensive when I said something like “Really?”
Awhile ago I read that that kind of thing is typical behavior for boys when they have crushes, but in this case I find it hard to believe that the boy I might like might like me back. But the thing is, yesterday when I told Pete the whole story, he said that, yes, this is indeed the way that boys act when they like a girl on account of the fact that we live in a society where they’re given the message that it’s not okay for them to show their feelings. Except for him, because he’s Latin and therefore very emotional.
Is that true, Dr. Maude? Not the Latin part, but the boy part and the way they act when they like a girl? I figured that because it has to do with feelings, you’d know the answer.
yours truly,
Lucy B. Parker
P.S. BTW—I just want to put it out there that if you ever returned my e-mails, I wouldn’t have to ask Pete about this stuff. I mean, sure, he’s one of my BFFs, but still he’s a BOY so talking about boy stuff with him sometimes gets a little embarrassing.
As much as Beatrice couldn’t stand her brother, even she had to agree that the video was the thing that really pushed me up the ranks in the poll. I couldn’t believe how great it turned out. Well, except for the fact that there was a smudge of chocolate from a fried Oreo on my chin that no one bothered to tell me about.
Blair put it together the following weekend in between his guitar lesson, his PSAT class, and a signing at a bookstore by one of his favorite comic book illustrators. We ended up calling it Just a Normal, Regular Day in the Life of Normal, Regular Lucy B. Parker, and it was just that: me doing the normal, regular stuff I did all the time. Like hanging out in Central Park. Getting a cupcake at Billy’s Bakery. Buying a Dr Pepper at Mr. Kim’s deli. We even filmed me on the M72 crosstown bus. Then, as luck would have it, just as I was talking about how I’m a big believer in karma and how important it is to be nice to everyone—even people who aren’t nice to me—an old woman got on, and I got up to give her my seat, which is an excellent example of how to get good karma. I would’ve done it anyway, even if there weren’t a camera on me, but it was cool that the timing worked out that way.
Throughout the whole thing it was just me being me, which sounds like it would be pretty boring, but the way Blair edited it together, plus how he used Laurel’s hit song “Believe in Yourself,” made it really interesting. (When I asked her through Miss Piggy, she said it was okay to use the song.)
Plus, it was actually REALLY funny. I think part of the reason for that was because I’m wearing so much color (the rainbow-sequined Chuck Taylors that Laurel gave me looked really cool on camera), and I’m surrounded by people wearing mostly all black. But it also could be the fact that even though I fought him on it, Blai
r kept in some of the moments where I was having coordination issues. Usually I get really embarrassed when that happens in front of other people, but in this case it added up to what Mom called “comic relief.”
When we pulled it up on the class computer before homeroom Monday morning, I was beyond nervous. Especially because Cristina’s video—which we had just watched—had been done by an Academy Award–winning director who was friends with her parents. But after we were done playing it, everyone clapped really loud.
All day kids were coming up to me saying, “Wow, I had no idea you were so funny!” I still wasn’t sure why—I was just being me—but it’s not like I was going to disagree with them. Especially if it meant a vote. By Tuesday morning, it had gotten 112 hits on YouTube, which was pretty impressive. Maybe not as impressive as the 432,987 hits that Laurel got in one hour when her new video was posted, but still, for a normal, regular kid, that’s not bad.
Between the video and the chocolate chip cookies we handed out on Tuesday (unlike the first batch we made, which had triple the amount of salt because Alice has trouble following directions, they were super-yummy), I moved way up in Dinshaw’s poll. Now it was 57 percent versus 43 percent, which, while not exactly neck and neck, was a lot closer than head and foot. Even when Cristina announced on her website later that night that she had decided to offer free “How to Talk to Boys” lessons to anyone who promised to vote for her, my numbers stayed up.
That night, for the first time in weeks, instead of tossing and turning as I thought about how I was going to solve all the problems in my life, I conked out right away. Well, after walking past Laurel’s door a bunch of times to see if she just “happened” to open it. (She didn’t.)
Maybe things with my frister were still a mess, but at least things were finally looking up on the campaign front. Which is why, before I got into bed, I took out my advice notebook and wrote, “Remember that as bad at things might seem, they can always surprise you by turning around for the better.”