How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend

by Allyson Valentine

  Krista shrugs. “Look, we both know lots of people think that, and we also know they’re mistaken. Well, mostly. And if anyone can prove Adam wrong, it’s you.”

  If only. I tell her about some of my not-so-successful attempts to do just that. “But even if I could convince him that I’m as brilliant as, I don’t know, Judit Polgár—”

  “Who?”

  “She’s an amazing chess player. Even if I could prove I was that smart, he’s got Tallulah.”

  Krista’s eyebrows go up as she looks past me into the coffee line. “She’s obviously into him, but if you ask me, he looks a little uncomfortable.”

  I slowly turn and take a peek. Adam is at the front of the line ordering his drink. Tallulah, in knee-high boots and a short sweater dress, slides her hand into his back pocket. He gently reaches behind him and removes it. She strokes his cheek and he pulls away.

  “I know she clings to him like pond scum,” Krista says. God, I love her! “But have you ever actually seen him reciprocating?”

  I consider. “Maybe he just isn’t into PDA?”

  Krista shakes her head. “Please. I wouldn’t be so sure. It’s too bad you can’t just ask someone.”

  “I know. But even then, how do I convince him that I’m not a stalker and not a complete idiot? And how will I do any of that if I can’t even muster up the guts to talk to him?”

  Krista offers nothing but a look of sincere hopelessness.

  “Crap! And I still need to face Chelsey. And the other cheerleaders. And Jake.” I groan.

  Krista grimaces. “It sucks to be you.” She glances at her phone. “Look—the bell’s about to ring. Are you going to live?”

  I drain my latte. “No.”

  She offers a hopeful smile. “I’ll bring Skittles to your funeral.”

  “Orange ones?”

  “Orange ones.”

  The first bell rings, and as we leave the commons, Krista changes the subject. “Want to hear something Dex told me on the way to school?”

  “Sure.”

  “He ran into Chelsey and Becca at the gym yesterday. They bitched about you. About the game. Becca moaned that it was such a bummer that Chelsey didn’t even get to cheer in her fancy homecoming uniform. Then, Chelsey went on a rant about how the homecoming uniforms, while totally adorable, were not worth it.”

  “Worth it?” I ask. “They were donated by some rich alum.”

  Krista glances left, then right, and lowers her voice. “You know the Ultimate Fan?”

  “The one who always wears a prehistoric cheer uniform to the game and cheers like crazy?”

  Krista nods. “She’s the rich alum. She’s also Vanessa’s mother.”

  “What?”

  “She donated the uniforms in exchange for Vanessa making the cheer squad.”

  “But Vanessa hates cheer. Why would she even agree to that?”

  “I know, right? But apparently her mother only allowed her to take AP classes if she did cheer. Crazy, huh?”

  I shake my head. It’s crazy, all right. If Vanessa wasn’t a year older than me I’d wonder whether we’d perhaps been switched at birth.

  “Don’t you have biology?” Krista asks as we pass the hallway leading to the science classrooms.

  “I have my meeting with Mrs. Esposito.”

  “Ouch. Good luck with that. Seriously. Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you sure you’re sure?”

  The truth is I am not sure of anything. For all I know I may be getting kicked off cheer this morning. Or if Mr. Pawlosky gets his way, suspended, or expelled.

  Krista pulls me into a hug. “Things are never as bad as they seem. It’ll all work out, okay?”

  I flash back to Ben Franklin shaking his pom-poms for me. Could there possibly be a move that I have not yet thought of? “You know what?” I manage a weak smile and paraphrase Ben Franklin. “I’m going to continue the contest to the last.”

  Krista rubs my head, mussing my hair. “Whatever. It sure is good to have you back.”

  Mrs. Esposito’s office door is closed, with a heated but muffled argument going on inside. Chelsey sits alone in the waiting area cradling a box of tissues.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She huffs, crosses her legs and turns away from me.

  “We need to talk.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” snorts Chelsey.

  “Well, I have something to say to you, and it’s this. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” I go on, not sure whether she’s even listening, and I tell her the whole sordid truth. The classes I dumbed down because I thought it would make her like me better. The trade with Mitch. The classes I smartened up because I thought it would make Adam like me better, and how I arranged the date with her and Swordhands so I could get closer to Adam in class.

  Chelsey turns so that she’s facing me. Her mouth is pinched and her short, angry breaths make her nostrils flutter. “So everything you did was about making someone like you better?”

  When she puts it that way, I feel so small. So desperate.

  “And you thought,” she sputters, “you thought that I would like you better if you were dumber. More like me. Because I’m so dumb. Is that it?”

  Oh my god. I just said that, didn’t I? “Wow, Chelsey, I . . .” I am at a loss for words.

  Chelsey looks so sad. So broken. She draws a shuddering breath. “You know, I may not be the smartest person in the world, Nora. I get that, but I have feelings. And you used me because I was dumb enough to do what you asked me to do. You used me in your stupid game. You played me like a—like a prawn.”

  Chelsey is right. Okay, I didn’t play her like a water-dwelling crustacean, but I know what she means—I played her like a pawn. The pawns, the foot soldiers, the pieces we sacrifice in order to achieve our objective.

  “God, Chelsey, I feel awful.” Tears break through. Chelsey pulls a couple of tissues from the box and hands them to me.

  She’s crying, too. “You’re right, Nora. I am stupid. I’m the one who thought it would be okay to just cover up your brother’s name on the first page, and then I left it on all the others. Do you know that I have a tutor who helps me with math three times a week, and that he’s only in the eighth grade? And that I took chemistry twice, and I only passed the second time because they let me do a final project where I made up a cheer for every element? I hate being so dumb.” She pounds the seat of her chair with her fist again and again. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”

  I grab her hand. “Chelsey, no! No, no, no. There are all different flavors of smart. Just like ice cream. I’m smart when it comes to things like math and science. But I’m not so smart when it comes to people. You’re right. I used you, and I didn’t even get it until now, until you pointed it out to me because you’re smart. When it comes to working with people? You’re brilliant. You make everyone smile. And when it comes to cheerleading? God, Chelsey, you’re a genius! You write amazing cheers. You keep everyone in line. You’re not stupid, Chelsey. In fact, I think you’re one of the smartest people I know.”

  Chelsey blows her nose and smiles. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I’m sure I look like a train wreck. Chelsey, however, looks reborn. “When I hand in that Tempest paper,” she says, “I’m going to make sure I take your brother’s name off all of the pages.”

  I drop my head into my hands.

  The volume behind Mrs. Esposito’s closed door has fallen a few notches and we probably don’t have much time before we’re called in to receive our sentence.

  “Trust me on this, okay? You can’t hand in my brother’s Tempest paper,” I whisper.

  “But that was part of the deal!”

  “I know, but we don’t want to take any chances of getting you into even more trouble. I could help you write a great paper that would be all yours, not my brother’s. I’ll just coach you. Trust me. We can do it. You can do it.”

  Chelsey chews on her thumbna
il and considers. “I guess that would fix the Tempest paper problem.” All at once she wilts. “It’s too bad we can’t fix the Louisville problem.”

  “But if I help you on the paper, you’ll get the grades you need to be able to even apply to Louisville, right?”

  Chelsey fiddles with her ponytail. “I guess so.”

  The door to Mrs. Esposito’s room flies open and Mr. Pawlosky marches past us. His glasses are askew and his spiky gray hair sticks up like little smokestacks that have just vented steam. He stops, glares at us and leaves.

  Mrs. Esposito calls us in to deliver our sentence. We stand, because the two visitor chairs are taken, one by Ms. Ostweiler, who cradles her coffee cup looking deeply disappointed, the other by one of the senior English teachers. Mrs. Esposito says that in addition to missing the homecoming game Chelsey and I each get a zero factored into our first-semester English grades. On top of that we’re to clean the bleachers after every home game until the end of the season.

  Mrs. Esposito looks hard at Chelsey. “Mr. Pawlosky expects a miracle on the Tempest paper.”

  Chelsey’s eyes flick toward me, then back to Mrs. Esposito. “I am a miracle-making machine.”

  Back in the waiting area, Chelsey hugs me. “Yes! We’re still on cheer!” She texts Becca the good news. “And by the way,” she says, “I accept your apology.”

  “Thanks. I just wish there was something I could do to make up for you missing your chance to show the Louisville coach your stuff.”

  “You’re pretty smart,” says Chelsey. “If anyone can think of a way to fix things, it’s you.”

  The success with Chelsey combined with the fact that I’m still enrolled in high school gives me a surge of confidence and I swing by the attendance office. Thankfully, Ms. Turner does not require that I date her in exchange for Mitch’s schedule. I knock on the door of his geometry class and ask the teacher if I may have a moment with Mitch in the hall. He puffs his chest and struts out of class like I’m his nymphomaniac girlfriend who’s pulling him out for a quickie in the hallway.

  “I knew you’d be back.” He hooks his thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans.

  “I just want to clear things up. I made a mistake asking for Adam’s schedule. I’m sorry I dragged you into it. I won’t bother you again.”

  I turn to walk away.

  “That’s it?” he shouts. “That’s all you have to say?”

  I face him. “Um, yeah. Pretty much.”

  He steps toward me. “I thought we had something special.”

  I step back. “Sorry, Mitch. We don’t.”

  I head toward biology and he calls out after me, “You’ll regret this, Nora! That picture of us at the dance is getting cut from the centerfold of the yearbook!”

  I turn the corner and do my best Herkie jump ever.

  With just ten minutes left in first period, I skip biology and bide my time in the commons, happy to avoid any possible encounter with Adam before I’ve figured out what to say to him.

  Later, at lunch, Krista insists I get it over with and take my chicken wrap and smoothie to the regular spot. The greeting I receive as I set down my food is stony, but Chelsey comes to my rescue. She extols my virtues, making sure everyone knows that in her swirly purple-penned book, I’m okay. By the end of lunch Jake, with Fluffy on his lap, calls me a dork and delivers a friendly blow to my shoulder. Jazmine apologizes for flattening me at the dance. Gillian brushes my hair to a high gloss.

  It takes everything I have to force myself into history class, where I swear I can feel Adam’s eyes on the back of my head. As my rotten stinking luck would have it, today is the first day we’re to meet with our partners to start planning our debate questions and responses. Perhaps Highlights notices that I am nearly hyperventilating, because she passes me a note:

  I saw what happened at the dance. Want

  to work with me and Jolene instead?

  I turn to her, momentarily dumbstruck. “Seriously?”

  She shrugs. “Women are supposed to help each other out, right?”

  I breathe an audible sigh of relief. After Ms. Harrington agrees to the change, I spend the rest of the period avoiding eye contact with Adam. But he catches me on the way out of class.

  “Nora, wait! I thought you were working with me and Zeke.”

  I look at his chin. If I go any higher I will lose myself in his eyes. “I switched groups. I’ve got to go.” I hurry toward my next class knowing I am only making things worse, but not knowing what else to do.

  In the locker room, for the first time in weeks, people talk to me, and it feels good! I do a quick change into shorts and a T-shirt. Chelsey announces that we’re practicing in the upper gym today and I offer to wait for Krista, who hasn’t shown up yet, to let her know where we’ll be. I stop Vanessa on her way out.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say.

  “Sure.”

  “Is it true about the homecoming uniforms?”

  Vanessa deflates. “I thought you were the one person who wouldn’t give me a hard time about it.”

  “And I won’t. Really! I just wanted to say that I know how it feels to want to do something that your mom thinks is ridiculous.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not that my mom thinks AP classes are ridiculous. It’s that cheerleading was her whole life in high school. In college, too. She was convinced that if I would just try it I would love it, but I would never have made the squad without her—assistance. So here I am, and I hate it. I hate giving up Saturdays when I could be at the library. I hate standing in front of a crowd. And the worst part? The US Intellectual History Conference will be at the Seattle Convention Center the same weekend as our last game. I have to miss it because I’ll be jumping up and down, cheering on some testosterone-engorged lunkheads fighting one another over a pointy ball.”

  Wow. I wish I were taping this for Mom. “Blow off the last game! Tell your mom you’re capable of making your own choices, Vanessa. That’s what she did when she was in high school, right? She chose to be a cheerleader? And you can choose not to be one.”

  Vanessa purses her lips and shakes her head. “Chelsey would kill me. She gets all freaked out if someone misses a game, because we’re off balance in our stunts. I may be totally lame, but at least with me out there we look balanced. Crappy, maybe, but balanced.”

  “I wish I could help you.”

  She smiles. “Thanks, but I think I’m stuck. Listen, I’d better head to the gym. Chelsey will think I’m down here doing my ‘AB’ homework.”

  Vanessa and Krista nearly collide as Krista races into the locker room. “Sorry! I had to help Dex carry a bunch of basketball gear to his car. It’s pouring out there!”

  I grab a towel out of my locker and hand it to her. “We’re practicing in the upstairs gym. I’ll wait for you.”

  She pulls her hair into a sloppy ponytail. She peels off a pair of wet jeans and a saturated shirt, and slips into gray yoga pants and a dry tank top. She looks at me like she’s checking for wounds. “How did the rest of the day go? You seemed good at lunch.”

  “Thanks to you and Chelsey.”

  She drops onto the wooden bench and pulls on a pair of dry socks. I tell her about my conversation with Mitch. About Highlights coming to my rescue in history. About totally avoiding Adam.

  She laces up her sneakers. “You should talk to him. Tell him how you feel. Look what happened when you came clean with me and Chelsey. Hang on, I need to pee.”

  Krista and I talk through the stall door. “When I talk to you and Chelsey, there’s a clear line of communication between my brain and my mouth. Sometimes when I talk to Adam, when I’m nervous, there is this bizarre internal rerouting where my thoughts leave my brain and reach my mouth via my feet. I’m just not ready to talk to him yet.”

  Krista flushes and comes out to wash her hands. She looks at me in the mirror. “You’ll need to talk to him eventually.”

  She sticks her hands in the high-speed blower t
hing. Little droplets fly out and hit me in the face. “Right?” She shouts to be heard over the steady whir.

  “I don’t know,” I shout back. “Actions speak louder than words. I need to figure out a way to show him that I’m worthy.”

  Krista laughs. “Worthy?”

  “Yeah. Worthy of his respect. And his affection.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Worthy of his affection. How romantic. Come on, let’s go.”

  We pass by the student activities board on the way to the upper gym. The ski club is showing a movie to raise more money for their Whistler trip. The anime club is hosting a fall fashion show. There’s also a flyer posted by the chess club announcing a tournament. I stop to look at it.

  “Come on.” Krista tugs my arm. “We’re already late.”

  “Hang on.”

  At the bottom of the flyer there’s a sign-up list with sixteen slots—all of them are filled in. I glance at the list. Maneesh. Nathaniel. Corinna. Eric from Chess Kings is on there. Adam is there, too.

  Krista steps in to take a look. “A chess tournament?”

  “I actually used to play a lot with my dad. I was good. I never thought I’d want to touch it again—but who knows. Maybe one day.”

  I pull her over to the glass trophy case and point to a plaque at the back: RIVERBEND HIGH SCHOOL STATE CHESS CHAMPIONS. “See the third name from the left?”

  Krista puts her hand over her eyebrow to cut the glare from the glass and reads it out loud. “Jonathan Fulbright. Wait. Your dad?”

  I nod. “He used to call me his little Judit Polgár.”

  “The brilliant chess player.”

  “Yup. Polgár’s dad set out to prove that geniuses are made, not born. So he did this experiment with his three daughters. He and his wife homeschooled them, but the thing they focused on more than anything was chess. All three daughters went on to become amazing chess players, but the youngest one, Judit, was the best. She broke Bobby Fischer’s record and became the youngest grandmaster of all time when she was just fifteen years old. My dad harbored this crazy dream of me being the next Judit Polgár. And then he left.”