The Hot List

by Hillary Homzie

  On our left we passed kitchen goods, such as blenders and electric woks and cooking pans with a giant photo of one of the Iron Chefs over them saying how much better your food would taste if you used his kitchen stuff.

  Squid slowed down to stare at the display. “I’ve seen that dude on TV. He’s awesome.” Squid started to hum the theme song.

  “Squid,” I warned. “Someone could be listening.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Sorry.”

  As we strolled through the store together, I could hear the ladies behind the makeup counter whispering. One winked at me. What could they possibly think? That I was taking my brother shopping, and they’re admiring my big-sister responsibility?

  No, that wasn’t it. I heard one of them. She mouthed something that sounded like, “Aren’t they cute?”

  Blech! She thought that Squid and I were a couple. I looked around. Did everyone think that just because two people were the same age, and one happened to be a boy, and one happened to be a girl, that they had to be a couple? What was wrong with those people?

  I decided to move ahead of Squid.

  Unfortunately, he caught up to me.

  Squid was wearing a Daffy Duck shirt. “Are you still wearing your shirts from elementary school?” I asked.

  He gazed down at the duck with admiration. “What? It’s a classic cartoon. Everything I own is classic. I’ve got a Godzilla T-shirt collection and all of the movies on vintage VCR. I could probably sell them for at least $10 on eBay, but I want something to pass on to future generations. Future Squids.” He placed his hand over his heart. “And Squidettes.”

  “A whole race of you. That’s really creepy.”

  He put his hand up over his head. “Together, me and my ten thousand children will rule the world and Godzilla, too.”

  “Squid, you seriously need help.” I shook my head. “Let’s work on upgrading your shirts and jeans, okay? And then later we can look for some new shoes.”

  On some racks, after finding out his size, I pointed out some decent long-sleeved shirts without weird sayings, ancient monsters, or cartoon characters. “Try these,” I said.

  Squid stood next to me and pulled a shirt out. It said, SOMEONE STOLE MY IQ.

  “No,” I hissed.

  Squid put it up against him. “But it’s funny.”

  I shook my head. “No writing. Unless it’s part of a recognizable brand or logo.”

  He pulled down a cowboy hat with little purple feathers around the band. “Howdy, pardner.”

  This was going to be one loooong day.

  “How about I go over there?” I pointed to the pants that were hanging on racks against the wall. “I’ll look for jeans. Things will go a lot faster that way. Just remember. Keep it simple. A black T-shirt, or navy.” I pointed, once again, to the jeans area. “I’m going,” I said. “You look too.”

  “Okay, chief. But I want my money first. You promised.”

  “Why should I give it you? Can’t I just pay later?”

  “Because I’m impulsive and have no patience,” said Squid.

  “Oh, here.” I dug two ten-dollar bills and a five out of my wallet. “Remember. I’m jeans. You’re shirts.”

  He saluted me and sort of took a flying leap down the aisle, almost knocking into an emo teenager in all black.

  The jeans section wasn’t too big. Most of the jeans had weird stitching with threads poking out. But then, as I spotted a decent pair, I saw someone who looked very familiar. It was Hayden Carus—Blue—with his sea-blue eyes and great smile.

  The Hayden Carus, the one who I had spent about a hundred hours thinking about, and staring at his Facebook photo, planning our first date, and, okay, our future life together. That Hayden Carus, live and in person at Driscoll’s department store.

  His blue eyes crinkled up, and he smiled.

  And I thought, What do I say to him? I should be saying something to him. But it had to be the right something.

  I couldn’t say just anything.

  It had to be something memorable.

  But not too memorable. Not geeky memorable.

  I walked slowly past him, thinking in my head, what I could say? What’s up? Hey, crazy seeing you here. No, no, wrong. Looks like it’s shopping day. Wrong. Gong. No stars on that response.

  Hayden stood there, his hands jammed into his pockets, looking really bored and cool.

  What did he think of me? He was number one on the Hot List. I wasn’t even on the List. The List that I created.

  I was moving slowly past him. I needed to stop at exactly the right place. Not when we were side-by-side, but when I was past him a little, like he was an afterthought.

  “Hey,” I said bravely.

  He kept on staring at a rack of skinny jeans.

  He didn’t hear me.

  Maybe he didn’t want to hear me.

  “Hey,” I said again a little louder, almost like I was Squid and unafraid of what anyone thought.

  He still didn’t hear me.

  He had earbuds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod. Oh, I could work with that. Wonderful! I hustled down the aisle and wrapped around to the other side. I stopped, so that I was now facing him. I used body language and waved.

  He waved back.

  Yes!

  He took out his earbuds.

  My heart thudded so loudly I was afraid that he could hear it. Suddenly, the memory of Maddie’s voice popped into my head saying, He must really like you. You don’t take out your earbuds for just anyone. She had been always trying to encourage me as we interpreted all of the little things Blue would do.

  Like right now he was smiling. Maddie would interpret that as a good sign, and I did too.

  I smiled back and realized I wanted to talk to him. But what could I talk about with Hayden Carus? Hayden required perfection. The perfect conversation.

  “So are you out shopping?” I blurted.

  “Kind of,” he said. “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I’m just looking for …” For what, Sophie? What would you be looking for? Think.

  “Jeans?” asked Hayden, nodding at the pair I was holding.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Cool.” He nodded over at the register. “My mom is exchanging something.”

  “Cool,” I said, trying to be supportive but at the same time as laid back as Hayden. Then I realized he just said cool, and I had just parroted him. I desperately tried to think of something else to say, some subject that wasn’t completely lame, when he kind of half-winked/half-smiled, and my heart did jumping jacks.

  I knew it wasn’t my imagination. He was winking at me.

  “Hey!” he said.

  I realized he wasn’t heying me.

  He had been hey ing somebody behind me.

  “Look who’s here,” said Hayden.

  I whirled around.

  It was Squid, whose face was peering at me. Specifically, his head was wedged between boys size ten and twelve Spider-Man pajamas.

  My head pounded like there was a drummer banging on the top of my scalp. Please go away, Squid. Hayden Carus is here and has seen us together.

  The Hayden Carus.

  He might think I actually liked Squid Rodriguez. Leave, Squid, I telepathically tried to communicate to him.

  It wasn’t working, so I mouthed Go to Squid and flicked my chin.

  “Did you just tell me to go?” asked Squid in his unquiet voice.

  “No, I was just, like, go-ing. Myself. Now.”

  “Too bad,” said Hayden. “I’m going to be here forever.” He gestured at his mom, who had a stack of clothes on a counter to return.

  Did he just say, “too bad”? That meant he wanted to spend more time with me. Insert Hallelujah chorus.

  “Well, I don’t need to leave right away,” I said. “I can hang.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  I tried to think of further coolness to say to Hayden. Mentally I went through all of the things I knew about him. He had great hair that,
with a head toss, flipped off his forehead. He had dimples that appeared when he smiled. He played lacrosse.

  “How’s lacrosse going?” I asked, since I couldn’t exactly ask about his hair or dimples.

  “It’s good,” he said, looking down at his feet. “Except it’s not lacrosse season. But I still play some in the indoor gym.”

  Was he bored? Was I boring him? “Lacrosse is cool, with those sticks. We don’t have those in soccer.”

  “Yeah, you definitely need sticks.” He laughed and then leaned his head forward.

  “But they’re so small.” I pressed my thumb and pointer finger together. “Weensy.”

  “That’s the point. If the net was big, it wouldn’t be any fun.”

  “But you’d always catch the ball,” I said. “That counts for something.”

  Hayden glanced around, and I worried that he was losing interest. But then he flicked his eyes back at me.

  “My cousin was a midfielder,” I said. “I used to go to all of his games.” Okay, I went to one game once, when I was seven.

  “So you like lacrosse?”

  “I love-love-love it,” I said before I could stop myself. For some reason, I was acting like Squid—just saying any old thing that came to my mind.

  Hayden raised his eyebrows, like he was surprised by my sudden declaration of lacrosse love.

  “I love it too,” he said.

  Oh, we’ve both said the word “love.” I could feel my smile spreading across my face like peanut butter. Not like peanut butter, though, because that was deadly for me, since I was allergic. An undeadly, all-the-way-happy non-peanut-butter smile spread across my face.

  As Hayden continued talking to me, I noticed that he had a mole next to his right eye.

  I could have stared at that mole all day. Like, if this were my last day on earth, this was how I would spend it—mole watching.

  I had never seen Hayden talk so much.

  He was going on about how he wanted to be back in midfield, for some reason, and some kind of attack strategy, which he had learned last year at camp. And he wasn’t glancing around behind him at all like there might be something more interesting back there.

  I was nodding in all the right places, thinking, he’s talking a lot. Just to me. And he could talk to me whenever he wanted because I love just watching him breathe in and …

  “So you could if you wanted,” he was saying.

  “Could what?”

  “Come to a—”

  “Hey, Sophie, what do you think of this one?”

  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was Squid, holding up a giant fuzzy shirt. It was like a leopard print.

  “Squid, what are you doing?”

  “Whoops. I thought Hayden had left. Sorry, Soph.”

  Soph? He had never called me Soph before. Now he decided to name-shorten? Then Squid put his arm around me. Squid had never ever put his arm around me, and now he did it very casually, as if every day, every day of the week, he, Squid Rodriguez put his arm around me, Sophie. Excuse me, Soph.

  This was a catastrophe! Epic. If I were Nia, I would make an announcement about it during a seventh-grade leadership meeting:

  Announcement: Squid did not put his arm around me! Ever. I did not sanction this event.

  If I were Brianna, I’d be the perfect flirt, like how she was with Bear. And I’d kick Squid, and then grab Hayden’s arm and put it around me, and then I’d pinch him or something. And then I would tell everyone about it.

  If I were Sophie, though, I’d do nothing. I’d stand there frozen as a mannequin, while Squid put his arm around me.

  No! I shrunk back.

  Squid was slapping his leg. “Sophie’s such a good helper. She thinks everything I buy is tacky, corny, and heinous. So I thought I’d scare her with this one.”

  “You guys are shopping together?” asked Hayden.

  “No,” I said at the same time as Squid said, “Yes.”

  “I was, you know, looking at jeans, and Squid happened to be here, so he’s been asking my opinions,” I explained lamely to a baffled-looking Hayden.

  “Sophie has a lot of opinions,” said Squid. And then he folded his arms in front of him, like he was my parent or something, and tapped his foot. “And we didn’t just happen to knock into each other. You made me come to the mall, Sophie. You even paid me to come.” Could he really be this clueless? Didn’t he want to get on the List? Grrrr.

  “Ha-ha, like that would happen,” I said. “Like I’d pay someone to come to a store. That’s so weird, Squid.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s weird and that’s the truth.” He pulls out a ten-dollar bill. “See!”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “That proves nothing. It’s money.”

  Squid waggled his finger. “Uh-uh-uh. It’s not just any money.” He sniffed the ten-dollar bill like a dog smelling a bone. “Yup. It smells like Sophie. A little bit of honey and lots of lemon, too. Kind of like a cup of tea.”

  Then Hayden flicked his eyes from me to Squid. Squid to me, like something was dawning on him. Something I didn’t want to even think about.

  Raising his eyebrows, he said, “Well, I’ll let you two do your thing.” He drawled out the word “thing” so it sounded like “thang.”

  My thing. I didn’t have a thing. Or a thang with Squid Rodriguez. I could have a thing, but it would be with you, Hayden Carus.

  Then Hayden walked away.

  From me.

  And our life together.

  When I was sure that Hayden was out of earshot, when he appeared to be a dot over by the counter, I said, “Squid, your life is so over. What was the deal with the arm around my shoulder?”

  “Huh?” He pushed out his bottom lip and his little round cheeks fell. “You said if I want to appear Hot List–worthy, I should act less spazzy and that it would up my rep to be seen with, you know, someone decent.”

  “I didn’t mean me. And especially not around Hayden.”

  “Ewww, someone’s got a crush on Mr. Number One on the Hot List.”

  “No.”

  “You should have told me that you like Hayden.”

  “That’s not something I talk about.”

  “I do,” said Squid. “When I have a crush, I tell the world. Like right now. Did you know that I’ve had a crush on Maddie since third grade?”

  Whoa! I jerked my head back in surprise. “Are you serious?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Squid. “No problemo for me to speak my mind.”

  “Apparently. That was why you told Hayden I was paying you to go shopping.”

  He shrugged, all innocent. “What? I was just telling the truth.”

  “You don’t tell the truth, Squid.”

  “Is that one of your rules to get me onto the Hot List?”

  “It is when someone cool is around.”

  “Someone like Hayden Carus?” He raised his voice and clasped his hands together.

  That was when I poked Squid so hard that he sort of tripped backward. Actually, he fell on his butt, but I didn’t care.

  “You never ever tell the truth in front of cool people like Hayden Carus. Pick up my cues, Squid. And go very far away.”

  Squid threw up his hands. “All right! Okay, next time, I’ll make sure not to let my uncoolness rub off on you.”

  “There isn’t going to be a next time. He was going to ask to do something, like go to his game.”

  “Lacrosse season is in the spring.”

  “So? He was going to ask me to something else. Hayden Carus. Hayden, who could easily be on the cover of a magazine because he’s so cute. Hayden, who has taken eighth-grade girls to dances. Hayden, who was actually talking to me for a very loooooong time.”

  “So, go find him and tell him you’ll go to his game, or whatever.”

  “Right. That’d be so desperate. I. Am. Not. Desperate.” I pulled my hands through my hair. “You’re so going to pay for what you just did, Squid.”

  He handed me back the ten-dollar bill.
“Will this do?”

  I took the money, and then threw it back at him. “You are the biggest idiot. The lamest person I’ve ever met. I’m done.”

  Squid blinked and gazed at me vacantly.

  “Do. You. Understand? Go find shoes or whatever on your own.”

  “Okay,” said Squid. “Fine. You’re done. Then I’m done too.”

  “Squid, no,” I pleaded, realizing that I’ve messed up. Sometimes I’m such an idiot. “I didn’t mean it.”

  He threw up his arms. “Apologize, then.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Gotta be more clear than that.”

  Oooooooooh! I lunged for him, but he pulled back, before I could grab his neck. “Just forget it about it!” I yelled and sprinted as fast as I could to do the nearest Squid-free zone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When I got home, my first instinct was to call Maddie. Even after all this time, I found myself dialing her number. I could have probably dialed it in my sleep. How many Hayden stories had she heard? How many Hayden sightings had I told her about? She’d always say stuff that made me feel good and pumped me up. I needed that kind of boost again.

  That’s why I decided to call Heather and Nicole instead. Not only would I call them, but I’d also tell them about the bet with Nia. Why not? I mean, after everything that I had been through, what did I have to lose?

  And you know what? It was the right move because they were giving me all kinds of support. Exactly what I needed, even if they weren’t Maddie.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said to Nicole and Heather on a three-way conversation on the phone. I paced in the kitchen, eating stale pretzels because Dad never closes the bag the right way. “What are the chances that Hayden would be out shopping when I was shopping?”

  “Not a lot,” Heather admitted. “I’m sure you can explain, right?”