99% Faking It

by Chris Cannon

  …

  Tuesday morning I went to school early and waited for Lisa in the parking lot. I wanted to talk to her with as few witnesses as possible. And I wanted to see her before she had a chance to talk to Trey.

  Too bad I didn’t have a clue what to say. When she pulled in and parked, I met her as she climbed out of her car.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Morning.” She looked at me like she was waiting for me to say something more.

  “So this isn’t awkward at all,” I joked.

  She smiled, which made me feel a little more confident. “About yesterday,” I said.

  “We’re not doing this,” she interrupted.

  Umm…okay. “We’re not doing what?”

  “Doing this.” She pointed back and forth between us. “We’re not going to talk about what happened. We’re going to pretend it never happened and move forward.”

  I reached up to rub the back of my neck. “Living in denial? Seriously? That’s the plan?”

  “Yes.” She hitched her backpack higher on her shoulder. “We’re going to go back to our regularly scheduled program.”

  “Remind me what that was again?”

  “We pretend to date for the next two weeks and then let the chips fall where they may.”

  Not how I wanted to play this, but I could make it work for now. “Okay.” I shrugged like it didn’t really bother me. “If that’s what you want.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me the once-over. “I thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

  “I would, I mean I want to, but I don’t think that would help my case. So…I’ll spend the rest of our time together showing you why I’m the guy you should be dating.”

  “That sounds like fun.” She walked past me and headed toward the sidewalk. I caught up with her and fell into step beside her.

  “Do you work tonight?” I asked.

  “No. You?”

  “No. We should do something.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Whatever you want. We could go to the bookstore.”

  She snorted. “Wow. You must be serious about this.”

  “I’m even prepared to watch the rest of the Harry Potter movies.”

  She stopped walking and turned to me, throwing her arms out wide. “Why? Why now?”

  I’d ticked her off. That much was clear. “Honestly. At first your nerdiness seemed kind of strange, but now I think it’s cute.”

  “That’s what every girl wants to hear.” She shook her head and walked faster toward the door.

  Well…that hadn’t gone as planned, either. What should my next move be? I guess I’d figure this out as I went along and hope for the best. Lisa wasn’t at her locker when I made it inside, but Nina and West were. There was a one hundred percent chance Nina knew every detail of what happened last night. Maybe she could give me some advice.

  I approached Nina. “Remember when you told me to pick a lane?”

  She nodded.

  “Well I’ve picked one, but apparently I’m not doing a great job. Any suggestions?”

  “Well,” Nina said. “Your timing sucks, but I still think you can redeem yourself.”

  “How?”

  “Show Lisa that you really know her and understand her,” she said.

  How was I supposed to do that? “So I should give her a bouquet of Harry Potter socks?”

  Nina laughed. “That might be a good start.”

  The bell rang and I walked to class. Where had Lisa ended up? I guess I’d have to wait until lunch to try and make more headway.

  At lunch, Lisa sat down and looked at me. “Remember our deal.”

  “The deal where we pretend for the next two weeks or the deal where I show you that I’m the better choice?”

  “The first one,” she said. “I never agreed to the second one.”

  “It doesn’t really require you to agree.”

  She shook her head and muttered something I couldn’t hear. I leaned in closer. “What was that?”

  “I said, your timing sucks.”

  She wanted to argue about my timing? “Okay, Miss Overachiever.” I opened one of my notebooks and drew an X. “Here is where we met at Bixby’s when Nina was stalking West.”

  “I wasn’t stalking him,” Nina argued. “We happened to be in the same place at the same time.”

  “Right. Anyway.” I drew a line along the length of the page which ended at another X. “If you divide this into a timeline, we’ve only known each other a little while.” I penciled in the day we’d met and then circled the rest of the line. “It’s been a little over two months, so it’s not like I ignored you for years and then suddenly noticed you.”

  She pointed at the piss-poor graph I’d drawn. “That first night we met at Bixby’s I gave you a ride home. We laughed and talked and had a good time. Why didn’t you think I was datable back then?”

  “I was focused on someone else at the time so I wasn’t seeing any girl as datable…any girl I met in that timeframe would have been friend-zoned. It wasn’t just you.”

  “Oh,” Nina sighed. “You were doing good up until that point.”

  “How is saying that wrong?” I asked.

  “Because,” Lisa said. “You lumped me in with every other girl on the planet. You didn’t see anything special about me.”

  “That’s some weird girl logic.” I pointed at West. “Help me out here.”

  He glanced at Nina. She raised her eyebrows at him. “I plead the fifth,” he said.

  “Nice.” I couldn’t believe he was wussing out on me. I tapped the timeline. “This proves I didn’t ignore you. I needed to get to know you. Maybe you saw the possibility of a relationship when we first met and I didn’t because I was preoccupied. That doesn’t make me a jerk.”

  “No,” Lisa said. “It doesn’t. But it also doesn’t make me feel like I was your first choice.”

  I opened my mouth and then closed it. What could I say? She wasn’t my first choice. My first choice had been Jane. I couldn’t change that. I pointed at West. “It took a while for him and Nina to get together. That doesn’t mean he didn’t think she was special.”

  “He’s not wrong,” West said.

  Nina nodded in agreement.

  “See, they agree with me.”

  “Let’s not argue about this,” Lisa said. “The whole point is that we work our way through two more weeks so we can figure out what we want.”

  “Wrong. I figured out what, or who, I want. Now it’s your turn to do the same.”

  “Fair enough,” Lisa said.

  “Don’t forget we’re stuffing book baskets for the library after school,” Nina said. “Matt, you and West are welcome to join us.”

  “No thanks,” West said.

  I looked at Lisa. “I could help if you want.”

  She shook her head. “No thanks. I think I need some girl time.”

  I glanced at Nina and then back at Lisa. “Why does it feel like you’re going to be plotting against me?”

  “Not plotting,” Lisa said. “Just dissecting every single thing you’ve ever said and trying to decipher your true motives.”

  “Great. Have fun with that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lisa

  “Are you just tormenting Matt, or do you not know what you want?” Nina asked as we sat at my kitchen table that evening, putting together the book baskets for the library fundraiser.

  “That’s a good question. I’m not sure I have an answer at this time.” I tied a blue ribbon around the handle of a basket. It came out crooked, so I untied it and started over. It came out much better the second time.

  Nina ripped open another bag of Easter grass. “Okay, let’s change the question. If you’d never met Trey, would you agree to go on a date with Matt?”

  I laced another ribbon through the braided handle of the basket to dress it up a bit. “Yes, but I have met Trey so that question is invalid.”

>   “I’m trying to be the voice of reason here, but you aren’t making it easy.” She stuffed the basket with grass and then nestled two gently used books inside it along with a bag of jelly beans, some Peeps still in their wrapper, and a couple of bookmarks I’d crocheted. “Here’s another way to look at it. Matt is a sure thing. You know he’s into you.”

  “I know.” I tied a purple ribbon on a new basket and added matching purple grass. “Part of my brain is telling me to kiss Matt and forget about Trey, but another part is pointing out that Trey flirted with me the first time we met while Matt banished me to the friend zone without giving me a chance. That kind of ticks me off.”

  “Guys are weird,” Nina said. “It’s not like West realized he was into me right away.” She laughed. “The first time we talked he told me I was one of the strangest people he’d ever met.”

  “And you continued talking to him?”

  “Yep.” She added some notebooks, pens, candy, and a book to the purple basket and then set it in a clear Rubbermaid storage container along with the others we’d finished. While the baskets wouldn’t win any prizes for presentation, they should bring in a few dollars for the library.

  “So the moral of the story is I shouldn’t judge him too harshly for not seeing me as datable until he knew me better?” Because that still didn’t sit well with me.

  “I don’t think there is a moral to this story except that teenage boys are a little slow when it comes to relationships.” Her cell buzzed. She checked it and grinned. “Speaking of relationships, I’m meeting West for dinner. Do you want to come with us?”

  “No thanks. It’s Taco Tuesday so Mom and I are making Mexican tonight.”

  “Cool. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Nina carried the clear plastic bin of Easter book baskets out to her car. I cleaned up the stray bits of fake grass that seemed to have some magnetic level of static electricity. Every time I thought I’d found the last piece another one appeared, stuck to the table leg or my shoe.

  I checked the clock on the microwave. My mom would be home in about half an hour. I put the meat on the stove and then grabbed the lettuce and tomatoes. There was something therapeutic about chopping lettuce into ribbons. Slicing the tomatoes wasn’t nearly as much fun. I added the taco seasoning to the meat, and my mouth watered at the spicy smell.

  My mom came in just as I was taking the meat off the stove.

  “Happy Taco Tuesday,” I said.

  She inhaled. “That smells wonderful.”

  We filled our plates and then took our food outside onto the patio. I bit into my taco and the shell split down the middle, breaking into several pieces. “And now it’s Nacho Tuesday.”

  My mom nodded with her mouth full. After swallowing, she said, “That doesn’t have the same ring to it.” She added a little more salsa to her taco. “So what’s new with Matt?”

  “Why do you ask?” What kind of mom radar did she have going on?

  “Just curious to see how it’s going.”

  “It’s going.” I didn’t want to rehash my social life. Guys weren’t the only thing I was concerned with. “Nina and I made some book baskets for the library fundraiser.”

  “Is that why there’s a purple plastic string stuck to the bottom of your glass?”

  I checked and sure enough, there was a piece of Easter grass on the bottom of my iced tea. “This stuff is like the glitter of the Easter world. It sticks to everything and you never know where you’ll find it.”

  She grinned. “You should have gone with the edible candy grass.”

  “We talked about it, but that would’ve stuck to the books.”

  “And the plastic grass won’t?”

  “Yes, but the plastic stuff won’t ruin the books.”

  “True.”

  “Plus the candy grass tastes weird.”

  “I don’t know. I liked the green apple kind.”

  “I don’t ever remember any green apple-flavored grass in my Easter baskets.”

  “It never made it that far.” My mom grinned.

  …

  Wednesday morning, I smacked my cell when the alarm went off. Why did I feel so groggy? I rubbed my eyes. I’d had such a bizarre dream. Something about a roller coaster. I was riding a roller coaster. It was one of those giant beasts with loops and hills and a tunnel. Half the time Matt was in the car with me. The other half of the time Trey was. When we did a giant loop, the lap bar came undone and I fell out. Matt grabbed my arm at the last second and kept me from falling hundreds of feet. I was so relieved, but then he let go and hollered, “You should have known better than to trust me,” as I fell to what probably would have been my death, except I woke up at that point.

  Thank you, brain, for a stressful night’s sleep. After breakfast I felt a little more with it, but I couldn’t get the dream out of my head. What was my subconscious trying to tell me?

  At my locker, I found Matt waiting for me. He was holding what looked like a brick. Why was he holding a brick?

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Good morning. I wanted to ask your opinion on something.” He held out the brick.

  Now I could see he’d painted one side of it to look like the spine of an old leather-bound book. “That’s pretty cool.”

  “Thanks. Do you think I should try to put titles on them?”

  “Depends. What are you going to use them for?”

  “I thought they’d be fun to use in someone’s landscaping.”

  “If we had a library, you could use them there,” I said.

  “Or a bookstore,” he said. “Maybe I’ll make up a few different kinds and post them on our website. If people see them and like them, they can place a special order.” He leaned in and said, “I could make you a Harry Potter set.”

  It was a nerdily romantic gesture. “I’d like that.”

  “Good.” He put the brick in his locker and then he turned around and grabbed my hand, pulling me closer until we were toe to toe.

  Butterflies flitted around in my chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Playing my part.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across mine.

  The contact was brief, but my lips tingled and I felt myself smiling at him like a lovesick idiot. “Smooth move,” I said.

  “I thought so.” The bell rang and he walked me to homeroom, holding my hand the whole way. And damn it if it didn’t feel right.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Matt

  It felt like I’d finally managed to do something right. Lisa liked the Harry Potter book-bricks idea. She wasn’t mad at me for kissing her in school. That had been a risk. She could have pushed me away, but she didn’t. The timing had been perfect, since Trey had been walking toward us. That’s not the only reason I kissed her but it was a bonus. It might have been a little sneaky. Too bad. I planned to play up our fake relationship in public. Having Trey see us being happy together might convince him to pay attention to another girl so Lisa could stop thinking about him. And it’s not like I’d only be doing it to put on a show for Trey. I’d act how I’d normally act in public, if Lisa really was my girlfriend. Then, eventually she would be.

  The day flew by. When I walked Lisa to her car after school, I was feeling pretty good about the whole situation.

  “Do you work tonight?” I asked her as she leaned back against her car.

  “No. You?”

  “I have some work to do before dinner,” I said, “but I’m free after. We could walk the trail at the park.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I leaned in and she moved away from me. “I thought you said if you liked a girl you wouldn’t want to kiss her in a crappy parking lot.” She smiled as she said it, so I was pretty sure she was teasing me.

  “That was for a first kiss.” I leaned in and said, “We already had our first kiss, so now parking lots are fair game.”

  “Oh, I guess I missed that lesson in the how-to-date-like-a-normal-girl class.”

  “That’s the wrong class,” I
said. “You’d be assigned to the cute nerd-girl class. No normal girls allowed.”

  “Is it wrong that I take that as a compliment?” she asked.

  I snaked my arm around her waist and pulled her close. Instead of answering, I kissed her. She didn’t seem to mind. The noise of the parking lot drifted away.

  At dinner, Haley said, “So things seem to be going good between you and Lisa.”

  My parents and Charlie all stopped talking and focused on me.

  “Thanks for making me the center of attention,” I said.

  “I know how you love that.” She grinned.

  Charlie laughed.

  “Jerk,” I muttered.

  “Ignore them and tell me about your new girlfriend,” my mom said. “I think everyone has met her except for me.”

  Sometimes my mom had her feelings hurt over weird things, so I said, “She was gone by the time you came home the other night. I’ll make sure to introduce you the next time she comes over.”

  “What’s she like?” my mom asked.

  “She’s cute, and smart, and she loves Harry Potter.”

  “What do her parents do?” my dad asked.

  “Her mom is a relationship counselor.” I didn’t feel right telling anyone about the sperm donor.

  “And her dad?” my mom prompted.

  “Not in the picture.”

  “That’s sad,” my mom said.

  “I don’t think it bothers her.” Time to deflect. “The herb planters are looking good.”

  “Thank you. I think they’ll be perfect for people who want to grow fresh herbs in their kitchen windows.”

  The rest of dinner went fairly smooth. After we were done, I headed out the front door and down the path between the greenhouses. When I was far enough away that I knew Haley wouldn’t be eavesdropping, I called Lisa on my cell. The call went to voicemail. I hung up and texted her since no one I knew ever checked their voicemail.

  Something bumped my leg. I looked down to see a small blond shaggy dog with sad eyes. Had Haley brought another foster dog home from the shelter?

  I squatted down. “Hey buddy, where’d you come from?” I reached out to pet his head and he tried to crawl into my lap. “It’s okay.” I picked him up and held him. He leaned into me and whined. “Don’t worry. You came to the right place.”