Every Girl's Guide to Boys

by Marla Miniano

  “Maybe you should think this through first,” Anna tells me. “Don’t decide yet, okay?”

  She may be my best friend who knows me to my core, and she may be one of the smartest, most sensible people I will ever meet, but I know she’s wrong. I don’t need to think this through, I need to choose once and for all. I need some major balls so I can stop postponing this decision and quit prolonging everyone’s agony. I need to at least try to be fair to them, and to myself. I know Anna’s wrong, but I cling to the last few remnants of hope that it is possible to keep both Nathan and Nico. And at this moment, I become living, breathing proof that in order to seriously screw everything up, it only takes one word: “Okay.”

  Rule number 4:

  When in doubt, procrastinate.

  So this is The Plan: I put off making a decision until the very last minute. And when is the very last minute? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’ll recognize it when it comes knocking. And even when it does come knocking, I will put off facing it until it threatens to demolish the door and eat me alive. Yes, that is The Plan. Clearly, I am being quite “responsible” and “mature” and “level-headed” about this.

  The thing about procrastination is that it cannot be carried out successfully without the aid of distractions. Have you ever tried staring at a blank computer screen for hours when you should be finishing a paper due the next day? Not fun, right? So instead, you log on to Facebook, stalk your crush on Multiply, post random messages on TeenTalk, brush up on Perez Hilton’s latest showbiz offerings, or answer stupid surveys on LJ (I don’t even know why they’re called surveys; who’s keeping track of them?). You do everything you can to forget about that deadline looming over your head—but of course you don’t completely forget. Because at three AM, panic starts creeping in and you have no choice but to confront that blank computer screen again. At three AM, you know the distractions are useless and that you cannot procrastinate any longer. You know that any more attempts at evading the task will be futile, because That Thing You’re Supposed to be Done With has landed right smack in the middle of your bedroom, purposely set up camp, and refused to go back to its home planet until it is transformed to That Thing You Are Already Done With.

  But it is not yet three AM. For now, the distractions will take center stage.

  Distraction number one, evidently, is the advice column.

  Dear Chrissy,

  Last year, I missed my chance with this girl. We both knew there was something there, but we never acknowledged it. I think she was waiting for me to make a move, while I was waiting for her to reassure me that it was okay to make a move. I think she got tired of waiting, and she started believing I was intentionally trying to hurt her. She got mad at me, there was a huge fight, and we stopped seeing each other.

  And now, I think she wants to get back at me by dating a new guy and parading him all over town. What sucks is that recently, she seems to be making a suspicious amount of effort to be friends with me again. I don’t know what she’s trying to do here, but I don’t want to be her friend. I can’t be her friend—not when she’s dating someone else. She won’t stop texting or calling me. I’ve been trying to move on, but she won’t let me. How do you deal with the pain that keeps following you around?

  Sincerely,

  Romeo

  Dear Romeo (okay, I can’t believe I just wrote that),

  This will sound harsh, but I speak the truth. Like you’ve mentioned, you already missed your chance. Sometimes, life sets certain deadlines for you to do or say something, and when the moment has already passed, there’s not much you can do about it. You don’t want to be friends with her because you think you can still be something more in the near future. But this is what I think: the reason she’s trying to rebuild the friendship is that she has finally moved on. Hasn’t it occurred to you that perhaps she just misses being your friend, and you are turning it into this whole telenovela scenario where she’s the villain trying to waltz back into the picture and you’re the poor guy who just wants to be left alone? You don’t deal with the pain that keeps following you around—you just let go of it. And maybe when you do, you can learn your lesson and take your leaps of faith sooner.

  Peace,

  Chrissy

  Distraction number two is supposed to be a tall glass of full cream milk and a thick slice of white chocolate cheesecake. But I go downstairs to find Daddy sitting at the dining table, tinkering with his laptop, and distraction number two becomes a very strange father-daughter conversation.

  “Hi, honey,” he says, smiling. Very few teen girls can say this—or maybe it’s just that very few teen girls actually care enough to notice—but every time my dad sees me, his whole face lights up. He may be having a bad day, he may be busy running a million little errands for the restaurant, he may be worrying about an article he’s writing or a troublesome chapter in his novel, but it never fails: every single time his only daughter walks into the room, his day turns right around. And it never matters if I’m being crabby or bratty (which, thankfully, I rarely am) or if I just want to rant his ear off over the silliest setbacks; the mere fact that I exist makes him undeniably happy. I think this is how you would define unconditional love.

  “Hi, Dad,” I say, plunking myself down beside him and pushing the slice of cake towards him. He makes a face at me, a face that translates to I want to but your mom will kill me if she finds out I’ve broken my strict, no-sugar diet. I smile sympathetically and shove a forkful into my mouth.

  “Why are you up?” he asks.

  “Why are you up?” I shoot back. This is how we usually speak to each other. Sometimes I’d be on the phone with him and people would think I was just talking to a friend, or someone my age. It’s not that I haven’t tried using the traditional po and opo on him and my mom, it’s just that every time I did, it felt funny and forced. The way we saw it, I was doing my part—following curfew (nine PM on weekdays and eleven-thirty PM on weekends, unless there’s a special occasion or a really good reason to stay out), respecting their rules about boys (I can only go on unsupervised dates with guys they know, and I was to tell them immediately if things were getting serious), and being drug-free, alcohol-free, and nicotine-free—enough to grant me access to something other people only experience from their parents when they’re already working or married: being treated as an equal.

  “This Jurassic laptop needs to be fixed,” he tells me. He sighs, sets it aside, and catches me off-guard by asking, “How was the date with Nico?”

  “Daaaaaaaaaaad,” I protest, drawing the word out the way I do when he’s embarrassing me.

  “What,” he says, shrugging. “It was a date, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “I guess it was. This is so awkward, Dad. I’d rather talk about this with Mom. No offense.”

  He pretends to be hurt. And then he grins and says, “So do you like him?”

  “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!”

  “Okay, okay,” he holds up his hands in mock surrender. He goes back to attacking his laptop and I go back to demolishing my cake. We sit in silence until he asks, “So why don’t you like him?”

  There is no correct answer to “Why don’t you like him?” Unless you say, “Because he’s a serial murderer,” or “Because he texts like this: elow poh. d2 n me. wer n u?” in which case these might be considered slightly acceptable replies but you’d still have to back them up with some sort of elaborate explanation. There is never a correct answer to this question, in the same way that there is no correct answer to “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” or, “Why can’t you be more like your cousin?” The only answer that will come to your mind is a loud, obnoxious “duh,” and you’re smart enough to know that’s not a very good answer to give your dad. Nor is it a very good sign that you have nothing more coherent than “duh,” for that matter.

  I glare at him and say, “I never said I didn’t like him.” He chuckles, makes me promise not to stay up too late (I grunt a grumpy �
�okay”), and retreats upstairs, muttering to himself. I am left alone with a second distraction cut short and a gazillion calories. You see what depression does to women? It makes them stuff their faces with chocolate. And then they forget temporarily about their depression, egged on by the endorphins and the sugar high. And then the calories start settling into their tummy and thighs, and they get depressed all over again. So they stuff their faces again. And then, of course, they get even fatter. And then they think “nobody’s ever going to love me.” So they eat some more, because they’re already blimps anyway. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. I shake my head at my empty plate, almost expecting it to point out, “Hey, you ate that cake out of your own free will, so don’t you dare look at me like that, Missy.” I sigh and trudge back to my room.

  I come in expecting to find distraction number three. Instead, three AM finally finds me—or rather, climbs in through the window, clutching a round tin container and wearing a key I had long forgotten about on a chain around his neck.

  “What the hell do you think this is, Nico, Dawson’s Creek?” I am trying to be angry. I’m not sure if I really am. “Why do you still have that key? Hand it over right now.”

  He hands me the tin container instead. The glorious smell of butterscotch toffee chip cookies fills the room. He smiles at me and says, “You’re welcome. I slaved over the oven for hours.” He is wearing a leather jacket that would probably look ridiculous on everybody else but looks cool and dangerous on him, and his long hair is falling into his eyes. He swipes the stray strands away and looks right at me. I set the cookies down on my dresser, waiting for him to explain why he is standing in my bedroom in the middle of the night, why he hasn’t asked to see me since our Tagaytay dinner, and why I haven’t heard a single word from him since that day I found out he was back for good. Waiting for him to tell me that he is the obvious choice and that he is the one I should be with.

  This is how he operates. I should know this; I should know how he manages to get away with everything every time. He spreads out his affections, dividing his attention among people, always giving them too little, sometimes barely enough, but never too much. He says what he means and he means what he says, but he never says all the things they expect him to say. He is an enigma, and he knows this keeps them on their toes, ready and willing to be The Girl Who Will Finally Understand. He knows how to leave them wanting more. He knows exactly how to make them fall helplessly, hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with him.

  And by “them,” I mean “me.” Of course I mean me.

  Time’s up; three AM has arrived. Nico moves closer and closer until he is directly in front of me. He tucks my hair behind my ear, and I try not to make eye contact. “Chrissy,” he says, “look at me.” He puts a hand under my chin and gently tilts my face up towards his. I have no choice—I look. Big mistake. I feel like fainting but I cannot bring myself to look away. I tell him, “You had no right to do that to Nathan.” Or to me, I add silently.

  “I’m sorry it made you feel bad,” he says. “But I’m not sorry I did that. It was what I had to do.”

  When I don’t say anything, he kisses me on the cheek, zeroing in on a spot barely an inch away from my lips—slowly and deliberately, enough for me to realize that maybe I don’t have to make this decision myself. Because maybe Nico can make it for me. Maybe Nico is already making it for me. He says goodnight and is gone.

  The kiss lingers long after he has left, and my first thought, as I feel my lips curling into a smile, is that I am probably mistaken about Nico and these possibilities. I have been wrong about these things many, many times before, and I have discovered that all the precious little “clues” I would patiently gather in my head eventually pool into a dismal puddle of disappointment at the end of the day. I do not want to assume anything because I do not want to be wrong again—not this time, not when it matters. But here it is, the warmth on my face embracing the sweetness in the air, evidence that this can be something special and real and wonderful. And this time, because it matters, I might just be right.

  I fall asleep with a smile on my face.

  Rule number 5:

  Follow instructions.

  The next morning, while driving me to school, Nico tells me, “I really like you, Chrissy.” He holds my hand before he says the next line: “But let’s take things slow, okay?”

  This confuses me a bit: Wait, weren’t you the one who pursued me by leaving all those secret admirer comments online? Weren’t you the one who asked me out to dinner? Weren’t you the one who climbed in through my window to kiss me goodnight? Weren’t you the one who made the decision for me and for us? Weren’t you the one who started all of this? If anything, I should be asking you to take things slow. I specifically remember you writing, “I know someone who wants to be with you now, not later;” what happened to that? But it is too early to be having an argument, and I am too caught up in the afterglow of last night’s grand gesture to be paying much attention to anything else. So I stash away the confusion, turn up the brightness of my smile, and tell him, “That sounds like a great idea.”

  I wonder whether taking things slow involved not telling anyone about us. I was planning to give Anna and Rickie a detailed account of the latest developments, to set the record straight and make them understand that I am not the unappreciative, indecisive girl who can’t seem to choose between two good options. I wanted my friends to be happy for me, but more than that, I wanted them to reassure me that by not actively making a decision, I was actually setting myself up for the better end of the bargain—the boy who was willing to exert more effort, willing to pull out more stops, willing to risk more just to be with me. I wanted to include my best friends in whatever I was feeling, simply because when you’re starting to fall in love, it’s nice to be able to share the giddy, hopeful joy with somebody else. But I sneak a glance at Nico and realize that I am not yet willing to put to the test how much he likes me, and if this means keeping it a secret, then it will stay a secret until the right time comes. It occurs to me that the right time will always be subjective, that it may arrive sooner for one of us while the other person is left behind. It occurs to me that I should manage my expectations now, while there are not yet too many of them, while they are not yet spinning out of control and manifesting themselves in everything I say and do. It occurs to me that Nico is not actually asking me to take things slow as much as he is warning me to take a step back.

  At the stoplight, I think I see Nathan’s family’s van several meters ahead, and I wonder why he’s behind schedule today—usually, he’d be in school thirty minutes before the bell rings because he’d always be the first person among the brood of five to be dropped off. I wonder if he’s still mad at me, and I understand why people tend to force friendship immediately after things don’t work out between them romantically—it’s to dilute the guilt and dissolve the weight of all the things that were left unsolved, to prove that they don’t completely hate each other, that they’re not completely cruel, that they’re not completely shutting each other out. It’s actually a diversionary tactic: Look, we can totally be more than civil! We can talk to each other and hang out with each other and move around in each other’s social circles and tell each other about our new dating prospects. We have no problems with each other; we are not bad people! I wonder whether it would be more decent to tell Nathan about Nico, or just let him figure it out for himself. And if I do tell him, I wonder whether I should highlight the fact that it was Nico’s decision, or downplay the fact that it wasn’t my own.

  We pull up in front of my school’s main gate, and I realize Nico had let go of my hand while I was deep in thought. I scold myself for not noticing, for not just enjoying the moment. He gives me a peck on the cheek, tells me to text him when I get home this afternoon, and unlocks the door. I smile at him and step out of the car; after taking a few steps, I turn back to wave goodbye, but he has already driven away.

  Anna and I are talking about our upcoming H
istory project over lunch when Rickie comes in and slams her tray down on the table, loud enough to be heard by about half of the high school department of St. Andrew’s Academy. She stands there with her hands on her hips, scowling down at us.

  “Oh, come ON, Anna.” I’ve never seen her this exasperated. “I told you to ask her. You’re not asking her! Why are you not asking her?”

  Anna calmly looks up at her. “Here’s an idea,” she says. “Actually, two ideas. Number one, you sit down. And number two, you ask her.”

  Rickie sits down, takes a few deep breaths, and starts fanning herself. Anna rolls her eyes. “Just get it over with, Ric,” she barks. They glare at each other for a while before Rickie finally spits it out: “Chris, are you aware that Nico will be coming here?”

  I squint at her. “Here? Now? What, for lunch? Is he allowed to do that?”

  Anna rolls her eyes again, and they glare at each other again for a while before Rickie clarifies, “No, I meant he’ll be coming here to do assistant coaching for the basketball team. Like next week, I heard? Miss Vivian from the vice principal’s office told me yesterday.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know, we never really talked about what he’d be doing. I mean, he told me he wanted to enroll in college next sem, and maybe look for a part-time job in the meantime, but I didn’t know... I mean, we didn’t talk about...” I trail off. There are so many things I don’t know. There are so many things we haven’t talked about, and I’d like to believe it’s only because we haven’t had a chance to yet.

  Rickie lets out a high-pitched laugh. “Well, at least you know now, right? And at least he’s gonna be with the basketball team and not like, the Literary Society or some other org Nathan’s a member of, ‘cause at least they don’t have to see each other all the time.” Anna makes that face she makes when she’s kicking someone under the table, and Rickie’s voice takes on that tone and speed it takes when she’s panicking. She laughs again, and it sounds even faker this time. “Okay, they’d have to see each other, of course, it’s not like you can blindfold them when they bump into each other in the hallway or something, but like, at least they don’t have to work with each other, you know? Oh, and aren’t you glad he’s not your new Student Council mentor? ‘Cause you’d have to attend meetings with both of them there and that can be like, really weird and just, you know, awkward.” The last word bounces across the three of us, perfectly describing our current scenario, and we just sit there in silence.