Dream Girl

by Lauren Mechling

  “You going to sign up for anything?” Zach asked me when I sat down.

  I told him I hadn’t really thought about it.

  “I can’t do much because of football, but you should,” he said. “There are some amazing clubs. Young Philosophers, Model UN, the Happiness League.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, suddenly curious.

  “They commit random acts of kindness to make Hudson a more cheerful place,” Ian told me.

  “Sounds like a worthwhile cause,” I said. “Though considering how grim it is around here, I’m not sure they’re doing a very good job.”

  “Baby steps,” Ian said.

  “So what do they do? Bring us new shoes and ice cream sundaes?”

  Ian laughed. “What part of ‘New York City public school’ do you not understand? You’re in the land of budget cuts. Or have you not been drinking from the same rusty water fountains as the rest of us?”

  Eleanor made a disgusted face.

  “The Happiness League has to make do,” Ian said. “See?” He pointed to a pale pastel drawing of a rainbow hanging at a crooked angle on the wall. “They brought you that.”

  “Oh,” I said, cocking my head to consider the artwork. I kept looking, waiting for the happiness to kick in.

  Eventually, I gave up and got back to work on my lunch—leftover beet salad and lemon chicken that probably would’ve tasted good at a normal hour.

  “Hey,” I said a few minutes later. I was ready to ask the question I’d planned on my bike ride to school that morning. “Do any of you guys want to hang out this afternoon? There’s a cool Italian ice place I heard about right by school.”

  Zach coughed and the other two froze.

  “Or not!” I said.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Ian said. “It’s just not gonna happen. Zach always has football practice, I draw in the afternoons, and, well.” He paused to nod at Eleanor. “She doesn’t really do after-school hobnobbing.”

  Our quiet companion shook her head resolutely.

  “But things can change,” Ian assured me. “Give it time.”

  I threw him a disappointed look. Even though the sole occasion on which I’d tried to have a one-on-one conversation with Eleanor had been the most awkward social experiment of my life, I felt bummed. If persuading my new friends to join me for an Italian ice was something that would require more patience, we obviously didn’t have much of a future. By the time they were ready to come to my place for dinner, our teeth would be too loose to enjoy Mom’s pommes frites.

  As if able to read my thoughts, Ian cocked his head and looked at me sweetly. “It’s nothing personal. It’s just how things are done here.”

  In music appreciation, my last class of the day, all I could do was stare at the bell and wait for its beautiful mosquito-buzz sound. At last, I ran down the back stairwell, the fastest route to the outside world and my bike, and I zipped through our school’s first floor. Well, I zipped through the first few inches of it.

  The lobby was as crowded as Ben & Jerry’s on free cone day. Student groups had set up tables everywhere, though it was an older kid in a backwards baseball hat who was attracting the most attention. Inching closer, I overheard him promise a ring of potential customers that his “Payoff Guide” was well worth the five dollars. “We’ve compiled data on time required, potential awards, and the colleges each student group feeds,” he announced. “For instance, I bet you don’t know only one-eleventh of participants in student government go on to the Ivy League. As it happens, the Student Improv League has a much greater success rate.”

  I heard a round of gasps, and then a girl thrust a five-dollar bill at him. That girl, I realized, was the brown-haired Lauren. She must have sensed me lurking behind her. She turned around to glare at me and as I was loping away, I could have sworn I heard a deranged cat hiss.

  The Happiness League had set up shop on the far end of the lobby, near the double doors to the gym. The yellow smiley face buttons that had been scattered over the table only served to underscore how unhappy the pair of club officials looked. The girl was frowning and pulling at a hole in her shirtsleeve. Her companion, a pasty-looking guy with orange hair that grew out of his head like foam, was watching a prospective club member flip through a binder.

  I installed myself a few feet away from the table, close enough to see everything without having to join the conversation. I must have stood there for an entire minute before the most important fact hit me: the person flipping through the binder was the girl I’d been on the lookout for. Her face was practically curtained off by her long dark waves but I recognized the airplane ring—though it had moved to her other hand. She was dressed in a short-sleeved white sweater and a pair of jeans with a hole in the knee. By far the highlight of her outfit was her tan riding boots with dark brown wingtips. If only we were friends. And the same shoe size.

  Going closer, I saw that she was taller and prettier than I’d remembered. With her rosy skin and delicate features, she reminded me of a child you’d see in one of those old Dutch paintings, sitting next to a water jug or a bowl of miniature pears.

  “You should come to our meeting,” the guy said to her, giving her a piece of paper.

  “And you, too.” He thrust the same flyer in my direction.

  “Me?” I hadn’t realized I was close enough to be noticed. I guess feeling invisible only works when you don’t want it to.

  The girl kept studying the flyer, and I realized I should look at mine. The last thing I wanted was to be charged with creepiness.

  Happiness League. Room 705. Wednesdays. 3:30. Be there. Or despair.

  “I don’t get it,” the girl said to the guy behind the table. Her tone was matter-of-fact, and her voice was louder than I’d expected. “This is an official Hudson extracurricular?”

  “Worth two extra credits,” he responded. “That’s as many as Paintball Physics and Welsh Clog Dancing.”

  “If only the Happiness League burned as many calories,” I murmured.

  The girl laughed, and the guy gave us the sad-eyed smile of a mime. “That’s beside the point,” he said. “What other club can give you the opportunity to bring joy to the world of Hudson? You two should sign up.” He thrust out a clipboard. “Not to pressure you.”

  Ring Girl took a tiny step back. “Um, maybe later. I’m still shopping around.”

  “Me too,” I added, “but it’s high on my list.”

  The guy’s face drooped and the clipboard fell to his side. “Don’t turn happiness away.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” The girl turned around and moved on without a second glance, leaving me to withstand the guy’s philosophizing on my own.

  “Why just be satisfied when you could be in seventh heaven?” He sniffled at me. “Why embrace contentment when you could…”

  His words flattened out. How could I pay attention when the unbelievable was happening? The girl did a one-eighty and looked straight at me.

  “What’s the deal? You coming or what?”

  “Me?” I asked unsurely.

  “I thought we were activity shopping together.”

  “Sorry,” I told the guy behind the table, trying to hold back a smile as I jerked ahead to catch up with her.

  “What do I owe you?” I said when I’d reached her side. “I’m so bad at getting out of boring conversations.”

  “I hear you.” She wended to the right to avoid bumping into a hand that was jutting out of the Chaos Theory Society’s human pyramid, a maneuver that made her temporarily lose her balance. “That Prozac candidate kept me there for, like, fifteen minutes,” she said, still wobbling.

  I started to laugh.

  “I know, I don’t exactly have the grace of a ballerina.”

  “No,” I said. “I was thinking of that guy. How weird is it that the Happiness League is run by somebody so…suicidal?”

  “Who isn’t at this school?” she asked dryly.

  “So you’re not completely sold o
n the Hudson experience?” I prodded. Until now, I’d felt alone in my misery here.

  “You could say I have issues with it.” She raised an eyebrow ever so slightly.

  “You don’t like having teachers who don’t know your name?” I asked.

  She smiled, probably at the realization that she’d found likeminded company. I had to put myself in a mental straitjacket to keep from hugging her. “Oh, it’s the best,” she said. “And I’m also a huge fan of the computers that read our essays. Why get graded on your ideas or writing style when a machine can measure your word count?”

  “I can’t believe it.” I looked up at the ceiling, my heart skipping giddily. “Here I was thinking I was going crazy.”

  “I never said anything about not being crazy. I’m just not crazy about this place.”

  She turned around and led me up another row.

  “The Zombie Club!” she cried, quickening her steps to approach a table. But as soon as she realized that ZOMBIE was a half-assed acronym for an environmental club—Zany Or Monotonous, we Believe In the Environment—she rolled her eyes and kept walking. She slowed down again to look at Whatsits, a club that built mechanical toys out of discarded computer parts. A mechanical unicorn was galloping in place, and next to it was a one-eyed fur ball on roller skates. I was about to lean in to get a better look when the fur ball’s stomach popped open to reveal a figurine that looked exactly like Dr. Arnold, hideous comb-over and all.

  “League of the gifted and the brave,” the mechanical Dr. Arnold said, and then the door shut.

  Ring Girl grabbed my arm and jumped back. “Did you just see that? Is that the freakiest thing ever?”

  Ever? Not if you include my dreams.

  But I just stared at the beast and nodded.

  “I kind of like it,” she said.

  “It’s unique,” I agreed.

  “Excuse me,” my new friend said to the Whatsits ambassador behind the table. “Is that for sale?”

  “We don’t put up any of our work—” he started to respond, but just then a kid elbowed his way in front of us.

  “Quick survey,” he squeaked. “In your opinion, who has more success placing students at MIT, Whatsits or the Robotics League?”

  “That’s tough to say,” the kid manning the table replied with a straight face. “The short answer is, percentage-wise, we send more people to MIT than the Robotics League does. The long answer is, there’s no causality. We have very rigorous standards, and in order to participate in our organization, you need to already be a highly functioning engineer.”

  “Wanna go to the land of low-functioning regular people?” I whispered to the girl.

  She wagged her head in the affirmative. “A gifted and brave suggestion.”

  When we got outside it was breezy. She reached into her brown leather satchel for a red and white striped scarf and I put on my jean jacket.

  “By the way, I’m Claire,” I said, closing a top button.

  “Becca.” She stopped to think about something. “Hey, congratulations. I think you’re the first person who’s actually introduced themselves since I’ve started here.”

  My mind reeled back to Kiki’s suggestion that I take the plunge and tell people I ate lobster thermidor in the nude. “Introductions aren’t really in style around here, are they?” I asked.

  “Not this season,” she said.

  She started walking toward Delancey Street, to get a subway, I assumed, and I followed, glancing back at the bike rack. One night away from my Schwinn wouldn’t kill me.

  “To be perfectly fair,” she went on, “there are a few girls here who I already knew, but they’re seniors and they probably don’t want to be hanging around with some sophomore transfer. What’s your story?”

  “I’m actually a sophomore transfer, too.”

  “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar,” she said. “So why’d you come here?”

  “I took the test as an experiment and got in by mistake.”

  She eyed me curiously. “What do you mean you got in by mistake?”

  “It means I should’ve known better than to put down the right answers. My parents decided they didn’t want to keep paying for private school.”

  “Ouch. That sucks. My parents forced me, too.”

  “Where from?”

  “I used to go to Houghton, this boarding school in Massachusetts.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” I told her. “My grandmother Kiki has mentioned it. It’s full of high-society types, right?”

  “Not as much as its reputation would make you think, but sorta. Despite its stuffiness, I liked it, but at the end of last year, I got into a little bit of trouble…. My parents wanted me to be close to home so they could keep an eye on me.”

  I knew I shouldn’t pry, but how could I not? Talk about dropping a scintillating detail into conversation.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing major.” She looked at the ground and pushed back a stray hank of hair. “I just snuck out one night too many…. Lucky for me, my dad had a connection at this mental asylum,” she said, indicating the school building. “So here I am.”

  As we talked, her tone kept shifting—one second she’d seem fascinated by me, and the next she’d appear to be bored out of her mind. Coming from somebody else, it would probably have smacked of rudeness, but with her, I didn’t see it that way. She was different than most kids our age—I guessed complicated was what you’d call it.

  “Any chance you can talk your way back into your old school?” I asked.

  “Nah, I have to be here—my parents and I struck a deal.”

  “What’s in it for you?” I asked.

  “My boyfriend’s here. Plus I want to study opera. This way I get to take classes at Lincoln Center.”

  “Got it,” I said, trying to sound as if I did. The closest I’d come to attending an opera was the time I let Clem and Kiki drag me to the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. We saw a show of Plácido Domingo costumes that Clem had dubbed “Through Thick and Thin.” As for having boyfriends, well, they figured into my two greatest fears. The first was running out of things to talk about. The other was making it to my college graduation without ever putting my phobia to the test.

  “Hey.” Becca looked at her watch—a simple white face on a black ribbon. “I’m supposed to meet my brother and his girlfriend in a little bit, but if you’re hungry, there’s a place I’m obsessed with that’s on the way to my train.”

  I sensed she was more interested in getting a snack than she was in hanging out with me, but I went along. It wasn’t as if I had anywhere else to go.

  The Doughnut Plant was an old-fashioned bakery on Grand Street full of old-world touches like a gumball machine that only took pennies and a cash register that went ka-ching! I bought two of their specialty square jelly doughnuts—one for me, one to give to Henry. Becca bought a half dozen and started eating a doughnut before she’d paid. “I’m trying to build a layer of fatty tissue around my larynx,” she told me. “My voice coach says I sound like a mouse.”

  “Is that bad?” I said, following her back onto the street. “I was once told I sound like a moose.”

  “I didn’t know they made sounds.”

  “Seriously, my little brother saw this Nature video about moose mating calls. I guess they were raspy, because then he started calling me Moose Mouth.”

  “Aw, that’s still kind of sweet,” she said. “My brother was always way too busy being cool and aloof to make up nicknames for me. I spent a lot of my childhood playing with an imaginary brother named Tyrone.”

  I looked down at my chipped nails and smiled inwardly. She hated Hudson. She had an overactive imagination. What was she going to say next—that she had weirdo visions and the occasional strange black-and-white dream?

  She stopped to admire the window of a boutique that sold nothing but extravagantly priced custom sneakers. She looked up at me and seemed to be suddenly reminded of something. “Andy’s n
ot that bad. He’s three years older than me and he’s spent his life being a total jerk to me, but now he has this girlfriend and he got his learning disabilities diagnosed and he got into Columbia. He thinks he’s a changed man or whatever, and he suddenly wants to be best friends with his lowly little sister.”

  “Are you falling for it?”

  “Of course.” A smile broke out on her face. “He’s my cool older brother who wouldn’t talk to me for fifteen years.”

  We walked down Grand Street, past the dilapidated old tenement buildings and kosher food shops, past the trendy teahouses and a French café.

  At the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery, we waited for the light to change. A sanitation truck rumbled past, and the garbage men hanging off the back whistled at us. Not that there’s anything wrong with sanitation workers, but it would have been nice to get that kind of reaction out of guys my own age every now and again. The last person to check me out had been an old man who was sunbathing in Washington Square Park. When I sailed by without responding to his “Sexy little lady!” catcall, he changed his tack. “Screw you! You’re not even all that!”

  Becca turned around and I realized the light had changed. “You coming?”

  “So, wait,” I said, scrambling to reenter the conversation. “It’s just you and your brother?”

  “As far as I know.” Her eyes twinkled. “And what’s your story? Is it just you and moose boy?”