How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend

by Allyson Valentine

  As we pass Adam, I serve him up a crisp salute, hoping he gets the General George Washington reference. He laughs and salutes in return. I peek back over my shoulder when we’ve passed. Eric is watching the girls’ soccer team, who follow us in the parade. But Adam is not watching the soccer girls. He is still looking. At me.

  We return to the school parking lot as people begin to arrive for the big game in hopes of finding seats in the bleachers. The cheerleaders stop by the locker room to freshen up before following Chelsey onto the sidelines. When we reach the field, Chelsey starts us off with a chant, and before long the entire stadium drones along in long, drawn-out syllables:

  GO, CUTTHROATS!

  BEAT THE SPARTANS!

  Chant, breathe, repeat.

  There is not a free seat in the stands. Halfway up the parent section Joshie sees me and shakes his shredded-paper pom-poms. A few rows up from him, the Ultimate Fan, in her cheer jersey and a tiara, waves her arms wildly over her head. The courtyard beside the field is filled with fans in purple and gold and the line at the popcorn trailer is a mile long.

  In front of the bleachers a section of chairs has been set up for special guests. The principal. The vice principal. The barista from the lunchroom who was elected grand marshal for the parade. But the person who really stands out is a stocky lady with beehive hair and a Louisville sweater.

  “The Louisville coach!” squeals Chelsey.

  The football team jogs onto the field amid a roar from the crowd. The band blasts out the fight song. We jump onto our pedestals and shake our pom-poms like they’re filled with bugs. The football captains go to the middle of the field for a coin toss, and as we climb down from our pedestals, I notice some commotion in the special-guest section. A guy with a fistful of papers shakes them and shouts at Mrs. Esposito, the vice principal. Mrs. Esposito looks my way.

  I lean over to Gillian. “Who’s the guy yelling at Mrs. Esposito?”

  “Mr. Pawlosky, the English teacher.”

  I look over at Chelsey, who blanches. Mrs. Esposito motions for us to join her. The sandbags in my stomach and my feet make it hard to walk.

  “I need you girls to join myself and Mr. Pawlosky back in my office,” says Mrs. Esposito.

  “But the game!” shrieks Chelsey. “The game is about to start.”

  “Not for you!” Mr. Pawlosky looks like he would pop if pricked with a pin.

  The walk from the field to the school is torture, with thousands of eyes on our backs and questions racing around in my head. What are my mother and Bill thinking? Is Adam at the game? How did Mr. Pawlosky figure out that Chelsey looked at my brother’s paper? Isn’t the penalty for plagiarism expulsion? Beside me, Chelsey weeps into her hands.

  The walk down the hall to Mrs. Esposito’s office is like a scene from a death row movie, with no sound except for the footsteps of the prisoners and the guards making their way to the execution chamber. The silence is broken by excited screams from the crowd. The game has started.

  What have I done!

  Mrs. Esposito motions for us to sit as she flattens the Hamlet report on her desk. The name Phil Fulbright has been painted over with Wite-Out, and Chelsey Oppenheimer is written over it in swirly purple ink. The i in Oppenheimer is dotted with a wide purple heart.

  Oh god, Chelsey. Really?

  “I have never seen such flagrant cheating in my life,” roars Mr. Pawlosky.

  Looking at the paper, I still don’t see how I have been implicated. Chelsey at least had the brains to cross out Phil’s name. Then Mrs. Esposito turns the page. My eyes drift to the bottom of the paper: “P. Fulbright—page 2.” His name appears on every page. Ten pages of inescapable incrimination.

  Mr. Pawlosky rants about suspension and expulsion. Mrs. Esposito replies with grim-faced nods. I should never have tried out for cheer. Who was I kidding? I am Nora Fulbright, sister of Phil, both of us fruit of a family tree called the giant nerdwood. If I’d stuck with gymnastics, I could be up in the stands right now, sitting beside Adam, who probably thinks gymnasts are pretty cool. We’d lean in close and he’d make some wisecrack about the cheerleaders. I would giggle and agree. Instead, I sit here with tears streaming down my cheeks, barely able to breathe. Beside me, Chelsey is racked with sobs. I need a tissue really badly.

  “Girls?” says Mrs. Esposito. “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  “It was all my fault,” I say through tears. “I gave her the paper.”

  “But she’s the one who handed it in and tried to pass it off as her own work,” says Mrs. Esposito. I notice for the first time that there is a streak of purple in her otherwise asphalt-black hair. I sit on the edge of the seat and can barely feel it beneath me.

  “Look,” she says. “I don’t know yet what disciplinary steps we’re going to take, but there will certainly be some action taken right now.”

  I picture Chelsey and I cheering in handcuffs, dragging a ball and chain behind us as we somehow manage to muscle through and cheer on our boys:

  Block that kick!

  You gotta—

  Block that kick!

  Perhaps we’ll be banned from the homecoming dance! Even the most waterlogged cloud can have a silver lining.

  “It’s completely inappropriate that they should be allowed to represent our school out on the field,” interjects Mr. Pawlosky. “They should be kicked off cheer effective immediately.”

  “What?” Chelsey and I say at the same time.

  “No! No, please!” Chelsey drops to her knees, groveling with her hands at her chest, prayerlike. “Cheer is my life. It’s what I do best. I want to cheer at Louisville. I want to go to the college-level nationals. Please!”

  Chelsey’s begging reduces my heart to a pile of thumping crumbs.

  “A committee will decide on Monday what the long-term ramifications are,” says Mrs. Esposito. “But I agree that they can’t go back out on the field today.”

  Chelsey moans. There is so much more at stake for her than there is for me. I have ruined her dream. I put my arm around her and she jerks away.

  “Please,” I plead with them. “This is the most important game of her life. The Louisville coach is out there. Chelsey is so good—they need to see her in action.”

  Mr. Pawlosky stands stock-still, his hands clasped behind his back. “A little foresight would have gone a long way here, Ms. Fulbright.”

  Foresight. Circumspection. Caution. Oh, Mr. Franklin, why didn’t I listen to you?

  “I’m very sorry, girls. I truly am, but Mr. Pawlosky is right.” Mrs. Esposito pulls a little packet of tissues from her purse and hands it to me. “Why don’t you both stay here for a few minutes and collect yourselves. Then, you can go home or stay and watch the game. Your choice.”

  Chelsey speaks through rattled sobs. “Can I at least go back out there to tell Becca what’s happened and give her the set list so she can lead the cheers?”

  Mr. Pawlosky opens his mouth to speak but Mrs. Esposito beats him to it. “Yes. Then right off the field.”

  I stand up and adjust the elastic from my Spanx, which cuts into the bottom edge of my butt. Chelsey struggles to get up. I offer her a hand and she swats it away. “What about the dance?” she asks when she’s finally gotten to her feet. “We can still go to the dance, can’t we?”

  “Look,” says Mrs. Esposito. “I know this is a first-time offense for both of you, and that the pressure of keeping your marks up while playing on a varsity team can get to kids sometimes. Missing the game is punishment enough for today. Go to the dance, and on Monday we’ll figure out what to do.”

  Where is the justice in that?

  “This is all your fault!” Chelsey berates me as we walk back to the field. Despite the tissues, her face is slick with tears and snot. Somehow, she still looks good.

  “I should never have given you the paper, I own that. But you’re the one who handed it in with my brother’s name all over it. You were supposed to use his paper to get ideas, not try to
pass if off like it was your own work.”

  “Now you tell me,” Chelsey practically screams. “I am so mad. SO mad!!” She stomps back to the stadium with me several steps behind her. We enter the gates and walk toward the stands and I can’t even look into the bleachers. The cheer squad rushes to surround us. Becca reaches over and wipes the purple mascara streaks off Chelsey’s cheeks. Jasmine grabs a water bottle for her. Gillian smooths her hair. “What happened?” they ask.

  Chelsey points at me. “She got us kicked off the squad for the rest of the game!”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” I argue, but no one pays me any attention.

  “Maybe for the whole rest of the year!” Chelsey explodes.

  The rest of the girls demand an explanation. Chelsey gives them the Chelsified version. I supply important details. Screw the details—they’re livid.

  “So that’s how you ‘help’ people with their paper? You get them kicked off of cheer for the most important game of their life?” snaps Becca.

  I have nothing to say. I want to go home, but I’m stuck here without a car and I don’t have the guts to walk up into the bleachers to ask Mom or Bill for a ride. They’ll ask what’s wrong and I’ll cry. Instead, Chelsey and I sit on folding chairs at opposite ends of the cheer pedestals and watch the game. A shame-fueled fire rages inside me, and the eyes of the wondering crowd keep me from ever turning around to face them. Out on the field, without Chelsey running the show, we lack our usual edge. Some of the cheers go on too long. Some of them end at the wrong time. The halftime show looks off balance and completely loses its punch without my tumbling piece.

  Vanessa’s inside scoop about the homecoming game turns out to have been correct—the Cutthroats are slaughtered. Chelsey’s friends surround and console her. And my friends?

  Oh, right. I don’t have any.

  Fourteen

  BACK AT HOME, MOM IS FURIOUS. It turns out that a pretty accurate version of the truth made its way into the bleachers by halftime. I am sick, thinking about what Adam’s reaction must have been: Wow, she’s dumber than I thought. To Mom, I try to sell it as the act of a Good Samaritan. One woman helping another. Wouldn’t Elizabeth Cady Stanton have done the same for Susan B. Anthony? Mom doesn’t buy it.

  “Do you know how seriously plagiarism is taken in the academic world?” she asks for the tenth time.

  I sink into a fresh round of tears. “I really didn’t mean for her to steal his work. I meant for her to use it to get ideas.”

  I expect Joshie to hug me or bring me a sloppy glass of chocolate milk. Instead, he runs to his room. Mom, Bill and I all start at the sound of his bedroom door slamming shut.

  “Let me go to him,” I say. If nothing else it gives me an excuse to get away from Mom and Bill. But there’s no escaping. Walking up the stairs, I still hear Mom back in the kitchen describing to Bill the depth of her disappointment. She’s suffering a triple whammy of humiliation, embarrassment and mortification. I am suffering those same things and more.

  I find Joshie on his bed, using Copernicus as a pillow. He stares up at the butterfly mobile that hangs over his bed. “You lied to me. You said they only wanted to borrow the papers to see how Phil had written them,” he says flatly.

  “I didn’t lie on purpose. That was what I thought she would do with it.” I sit in his little desk chair, fiddling with a freakishly lifelike rubber snake. I explain that Chelsey, who is an amazing cheerleader and the most popular female of her species, was off perfecting her straddle jump the day that God doled out brains.

  Joshie considers. “And what were you doing that day?”

  Ouch. “I was right at the front of the line with a five-gallon bucket. But I guess I must have tripped and spilled some out somewhere along the way.”

  Joshie wrinkles his nose. “That’s gross.” He sits up and we’re both aware of a crinkling noise coming from his pocket. He reaches in and pulls out a couple of Jolly Rancher candies. “Want one?”

  Apparently he is on the road to forgiving me. I take the green one. “Who gave you these?” I pop the candy into my mouth.

  “Adam. He was with my chess coach. They got the candy when everyone was throwing it at the parade. Adam said to say hi to you. Hi.”

  The candy drops from my mouth and Copernicus is on it after just one bounce. “Did you see Adam before or after the game?”

  Joshie’s forehead wrinkles as he mulls over my question. “Before.”

  If I had any fingernails left, I would chew them. Word of the Hamlet paper debacle spread to the parent section of the bleachers, but did it make its way to the student section, too? Then again, the fact that my biology class still seems to be in the dark about me and Mitch—Cat Woman would certainly have said something by now—supports the hope that not all news reaches all ears.

  Still, I groan and drop my head into my hands. What would Adam think of me if he knew?

  “Are you okay?” Joshie’s blue-raspberry breath is sticky and sweet.

  “I could be better,” I tell him.

  “Can I remind you about something that will make you happy?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  He lights up. “You get to go to a dance tonight!”

  Later, slipping the dress on over my head, it hits me just how ridiculous this is. I agreed to a date. How did that get turned into a date for the homecoming dance? And after this disaster of a day, how can I possibly go to the dance with Mitch, or anyone else? All the cheer squad will be there, still angry, except for Chelsey, who will not be merely angry, but completely furious. I pop open my e-mail and craft a quick note to Mitch:

  I am very sick. Could be contagious. I’d better stay home.

  Mitch’s reply is instantaneous:

  I wonder what Adam would think about you begging me for his schedule?

  I write back:

  See you at 7:00.

  I lumber down the stairs and find Joshie by the front door with a book of math brainteasers in his lap and the bug tank by his feet. He’s all set to be the official greeter. He glances up and his eyes pop. “Wow! You look pretty.”

  “Thanks.” I’d thought about letting myself look like crap. Why dress up for Mitch? But like it or not, people will be staring at me. All night long they will watch and whisper:

  Look! Someone told me Jake Londgren was hot for that cheerleader. So why is she here with Mitchell Wiencis?

  Look! There’s the cheerleader who got Chelsey kicked off cheer for the most important game of her life.

  Look! There’s Nora Whatsername. Wasn’t she popular once?

  So instead of looking like crap, I spent most of the last hour primping like I’ve never primped before. Thanks to the magic of heated rollers, my hair tumbles in soft waves onto my shoulders instead of hanging straight. I looked up makeup tips on the Internet and figured out how to do alluring—it turns out it’s all in the eyes. And while Cherise’s dress looked like a big pink oven mitt on the hanger, it fits me like a glove. Mom even lent me some of her jewelry—the good stuff.

  Mom and Bill come out of the kitchen. “Va-va-voom!” says Bill, shaking his hand like he’s just touched something hot.

  “So who is this boy that you’re going to the dance with?” asks Mom again.

  “Mitchell Wiencis,” I say—again.

  Bill probes for a little bit more. “And he is?”

  “Just a guy.”

  “Football player,” says Mom, bitingly.

  I laugh. “Hardly.”

  Mitch arrives wearing a powder-blue tuxedo with wide lapels, a frilly white shirt, and a yellow polka dot cummerbund and bow tie. His shoes are pointy, shiny and black. His hair, slathered with product, is slicked back vampirelike, accentuating his dearth of eyebrows. He holds out what looks at first glance like a small, transparent casket.

  “Yowzah! You look hot!” He hands me the box that contains a corsage big enough to be a funeral wreath for a cat. Salmon-colored roses surrounded by baby’s breath and shrubbery. Mom inserts hers
elf with an outstretched hand.

  “Well, you must be Mitchell.” She forces a smile. I can practically hear the gears churning as she struggles to figure out—what is Nora doing with this guy?

  “Mitch,” he corrects her.

  He takes her hand and kisses it.

  Bill just waves.

  I remove the corsage from its box. I didn’t even know they made pin-on corsages. It would take a staple gun, a glue stick and a pile of rivets to get it to stay on my dress. And, since my dress is strapless, where would it go?

  “We can make this work.” Mom takes the corsage from my hands. “We’ll be right back.”

  Bill heads off to find some pins and we leave Mitch by the front door with Joshie, who is eager to introduce Mitch to his insect friends.

  “Quite a looker,” says Bill.

  Mom pokes him in the ribs. “Stop that.” She examines the corsage and Bill hands her a pile of pins. “So. Why are you going to the dance with this guy?” she asks.

  I give her an answer that is technically not a lie. “He was the first person who asked me.”

  “Hmmm. Hold this.” She pushes the corsage into the waistband of my dress and I hold it in place. “Saying yes to the first boy who asked you. That was—”

  “Noble?” offers Bill.

  Mom shoves a pin into the corsage. “I think I was looking for something along the lines of shortsighted, but noble is nicer.” In the end she manages to anchor the corsage to the waistband of my dress, off to the side so it won’t get squashed when we slow dance.

  I assure her there will be no slow dancing.

  Mom doesn’t offer to take pictures as we head out the door, and I am relieved. The last thing I want is permanent evidence that this night ever took place.

  Mitch has borrowed his mother’s minivan and wants to go for dinner at The Barking Toad. But I overheard Krista telling Becca that she and Dex are going there with Jake and his date. I tell him that I really do not want to go to dinner, and he insists that it will not qualify as a date unless dinner is involved. In the end we settle on burgers and fries at Dick’s Drive-In. As we head from Dick’s to the high school, Mitchell puts his hand on my thigh and I slap it. I should have demanded a contract.