Crush

by Gary Paulsen

  The Scientific Mind Appreciates Historical Data and the Contemporary Scene

  learly, happy marriages are worthless in terms of edification for the young.

  I needed to study someone with lots of experience: Auntie Buzz and her 3.5 marriages.

  Auntie Buzz is my mother’s younger sister and she lives in the studio apartment over our garage. She owns an interior decorating company and she mainlines caffeine, hence the nickname. She has had three marriages and three divorces, plus one spring break fling that may or may not have been legal south of the border. Auntie Buzz is savvy in the ways of the heart. Just who I needed to consult.

  Markie and I headed over to Buzz’s place after we finished de-noodling the refrigerator and the dining room floor. Markie’s a quick study—he insisted on pouring cereal into bowls for my parents for their dinner to make up for the fire and the smoke and the mess—and he showed them how to crumble the unburned parts of the cookies and mix them with vanilla ice cream for a dessert that was allergy-free.

  As we left the house, I looked back over my shoulder and saw Mom and Dad standing together at the kitchen counter, eating cereal and catching each other up on their day. Perfectly content. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess, but when Tina and I are adults and married, things will be different. I’m the kind of person who’ll make happily ever after rock.

  If I can just nail that all-important first date.

  “Enter at your peril,” Buzz called when Markie knocked on her apartment door.

  Markie ran in. “Can I play on your computer?”

  “Sure. Here, you can finish decorating the room I was working on. Maybe you can help me find a way to make a guest room fresh and exciting.” Buzz got Markie settled in front of the computer on her kitchen table and showed him how to click and drag furniture into the empty space.

  “I’m going to put chairs all over so you can jump and jump and never touch the floor!” he said, pounding on the keys.

  “Sounds fresh and exciting to me.” I turned to Buzz, who was pouring coffee into a mug big enough to hold a Pomeranian. For Auntie Buzz, caffeine is a primary food group. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed as she sat next to me at the kitchen table.

  “You smell like you’ve been sitting in a barbecue pit,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Cooking mishap.”

  “Ah. Been there, done that, have the incident report from the fire department. What brings you over? I know it’s not cooking lessons.”

  “I need you to tell me how to win a woman’s heart.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m collecting data on male-female relationships.”

  “Because …”

  “I’m lacking in know-how.”

  “That never stopped anyone before. The Earth’s population is something like seven billion right now, and I doubt any one of those people possessed suitable info before repopulating their home planet.”

  “I want to do things the right way.”

  “That’d be a first.”

  “I just want to go on a date! Not … repopulate.”

  “Smart. Especially at your age.”

  “Can I ask you some questions about your experience in the romance department?”

  “I’m probably the last person you should be asking questions like that, but sure, go ahead.”

  “How’d you know he was the One?”

  “Which one?”

  “All of them. In order.”

  “First time, I was young and stupid. Then, not so young and still stupid. Finally, I was not so young and very stupid.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “The beginnings were always fun.”

  “Were you nervous? Did they fall down? Did you like them right away or did it come to you gradually? What did they say—exactly—to get you to go out on a date with them? How much do looks count? How important is a good sense of humor? How do you find out what you have in common without feeling like you’re interrogating them, kind of like I’m doing to you right now? Do you believe in love at first sight? How young is too young to believe you’ve found your soul mate? What’s the difference between true love and crushing despair?”

  “That’s a whole lotta wondering. Doesn’t your head hurt?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Did you speak to your parents about all this?”

  I snorted and rolled my eyes. “They’re anti-romance. No help at all.”

  “Don’t tell them I said this, but that’s what I’d have guessed. Between your mother and her books, and your father and his spreadsheets, not to mention you three kids, I can’t imagine … But”—she looked thoughtful—“they also haven’t spent a minute in divorce court, either. So maybe they’re on to something.”

  “Um …”

  “But we’re here to talk about you: I assume there’s a special girl who’s caught your eye?”

  I nodded.

  “Have you let her know how you feel?”

  “Are you joking?”

  “You’re scared?”

  “I’m petrified. Which is so not like me.”

  “Girls are scary,” Markie said. He had stopped decorating Auntie Buzz’s guest room on the computer. I peeked over his shoulder and saw that he’d filled the space, as promised, with dozens of chairs. And a whirlpool. Good thinking, very restful, your feet stay off the ground at all times and the soothing bubbles whirl away all your stress. “Maisie LeBeau, at preschool? She’s mean. She butts in line. If you say anything, like ‘Maisie, don’t butt,’ she pinches your arm. See!” He showed us a black-and-blue mark on his tiny bicep. “Girls are scary.”

  “Amen.” Markie and I exchanged a meaningful look full of male knowledge passed down through generations from father to son and dutchdeefuddy to preschooler. Then he sneezed and sprayed me with wet germs. Moment over.

  “Pretend I’m her.” Buzz put down her coffee cup as I wiped Markie goo off my face.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s have a conversation, and I’ll play her while you practice asking her out. It’s good experience, helps work out the kinks in your technique. C’mon, what’ve you got to lose?”

  Even though I knew it was my Auntie Buzz and not really Tina, I still got nervous. My mind started to do that Morse code dot-blip-dash thing with words, and breathing felt like a really complicated procedure, and all my sweat glands decided to show off what they could do, and my tongue felt like it had just been carpeted.

  “Uh …”

  “Okay, I’ll start. I assume you go to school together?” I think I nodded, but it might have been more of an involuntary twitch. “Good. Lots of opportunity to run into her. What’s her name?”

  “T—T—Tuh—Teee-uh-na.” Great. My voice cracked. And it wasn’t even really Tina.

  “All right,” Auntie Buzz said. “I’m Tina and you’re going to ask me out and … scene.” She slammed her hands together like a clapper board in the movies, closed her eyes, inhaled deep and slow, held her breath for a second as she rolled her shoulders, and then exhaled as her eyes flew open and she broke into a huge grin. “Hi! Kev! Hey! What’s up?”

  Auntie Buzz is wasted in interior decorating. She had transformed herself into an eighth-grade girl in front of my very eyes. Not the one I wanted to go out with, but still, it was impressive.

  “Tina’s not so … perky. Can you take it down a notch?”

  “Sure. She’s laid-back. I get it.” Buzz stared down at the floor for a few seconds, took another breath, looked up, batted her eyes and—truth—purred at me. “Kevinnnnnnn. How are youuuuuu?”

  “Uh, wow, she’s also not quite so … sultry. She’s only fourteen, you know.”

  “Fourteen, right.” Auntie Buzz looked down at the floor, breathed slowly for quite a long time and finally threw up her hands. “Hmmm. I can do cheery or flirty. I can’t find the middle ground.”

  “Well, um, thanks for, uh, trying.”

  “No prob.”

  “What’s y
our best advice?”

  “Get a prenup.”

  “Your best advice for a fourteen-year-old asking a girl out on a first date.”

  “Right, got ahead of myself. Wow, it’s been a long time since your Auntie Buzz was on a first date. Hmmm … let me see. Oh, I know: Don’t give her a spider.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it. Why would that leap to mind?”

  “Denny DeClewit. He asked me out once in high school and then handed me a shoe box with a big, hairy spider in it when he came to the door to pick me up.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I screamed and dropped the box. The spider escaped. We spent an hour on the front porch trying to find it, and he was so mad that as soon as he recaptured the spider, he left. We never did wind up going out.”

  “That sounds like a terrible date.”

  “It wasn’t my worst.”

  “What was?”

  “When Charlie Jaros and I got arrested.”

  “Do I even want to know why?”

  “Expired tags on his license plate.”

  “You can get arrested for that?”

  “No, but you can for smart-mouthing a cop, which Charlie did. The police officer took us to the station to make the point that when a cop says ‘Let me see your title and registration,’ he doesn’t want to see your membership card for the Intergalactic League of SuperHeroes. Humor is best reserved for after you’ve gotten the ticket.”

  “A good lesson.”

  “Uh-huh. I went on a picnic with Todd Carrier one time and we both got poison oak. He wound up in the emergency room after he suffered a really bad reaction and had trouble breathing. Your grandparents got fed up sending me on dates and picking me up at the police station and the hospital.”

  “I bet.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “For what?”

  “For setting the bar so low with my love life that you can’t possibly help but improve on my standards.”

  “I was kind of hoping for more than that.”

  “What were you hoping for?”

  “Amazing, transcendent love that stands the test of time and inspires people to write love songs, epic poems, movies and plays.”

  “You’re in eighth grade—pace yourself. Start with not crossing state lines in possession of stolen livestock.” I raised my eyebrows. “Wally Charles,” she said, nodding. “Senior year in high school. Don’t ask.”

  “Can I put a slide from the bedroom to the kitchen?” Markie yelled. “I can’t get the clicker-thing to do that.”

  “Here, control shift F6 overrides the command on this program. While you’re at it, put a fire pit in the guest bath. I get chilly toweling off after a shower.”

  “Can I have a garage-door opener on the closet?”

  “I’m only sorry I didn’t come up with that myself. What do you think about busting out that exterior wall, adding glass pocket doors and then rolling the bed to the outside patio on rails?”

  “Uh … What do you think, Dutchdeefuddy?”

  “Kiss Auntie Buzz goodbye, Markie, and let’s get you home. Thanks for the, um, advice, Buzz.”

  “Any time, Kev, and bring Markie over more often. He knocked me right out of my creative block.” She was parked at her computer, clicking and dragging.

  “Then the visit wasn’t a total waste.”

  I don’t think she heard me.

  The Scientific Mind Embraces Experimental Difficulties

  untie Buzz is nuts. That’s a given. And I was nuts to talk to her.

  I wasn’t going to learn anything practical from her about matters of the heart.

  I needed to analyze someone closer to my own age. My sister, Sarah, has been dating Doug for … huh, how about that? I don’t really know. I don’t pay much attention to my sister, and Doug has more in common with a wheelbarrow full of wet cement than a fully functioning human being.

  Having entertained, educated, protected and enlightened Markie for a few hours, I took him back to his house and walked home to find Sarah sitting at her desk, doing homework. As usual, she didn’t look happy when I popped my head in the door. I can’t say I blamed her; I usually drop by to give her a hard time. Sarah and I could use some improvement in our communication skills. No time like the present.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  A better start than usual. Even if she couldn’t be bothered to look up from her notes.

  “How’re things going with you and Doug?”

  “So you do know his name. I’d been wondering if you thought his parents named him WonderTurd, WeenieKing and DweebBot.” She licked her finger and turned a page, silently telling me how bored she was with our conversation.

  “Great guy. He gets my sense of humor and knows that nicknames between guys are signs of, uh, respect. So, how’s my buddy Doug? How’s your relationship?”

  This did make Sarah look up from her homework.

  “My. Re. La. Tion. Ship.”

  “Yeah. With Doug. You know, you and Doug. You two getting along, getting serious, feeling committed?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Inquiring minds want to know.”

  “So why would you be asking?”

  “Ha ha, good one. You’re a funny girl.” I have no idea how my crabby, nasty, smart-aleck sister landed herself a boyfriend, with her bad attitude and cranky moods. I tried to look at her as a guy looking at a girl, but that made me throw up a little in my mouth. I got back to the conversation. “Seriously, you two seem reasonably happy together. How’d you know he was the one? How’d he know you were the one?”

  “What’s with the third degree here? It can’t be because you care if I’m happy or not.”

  I’d been afraid of this; I was going to have to tell her the truth.

  “I’m thinking about asking a girl out.”

  “You?” She narrowed her eyes, studying me. Her nose twitched like I smelled bad. “Really? Well, they say there’s a lid for every pot, so I guess you’ve got a chance of meeting someone equally deranged and socially challenged. I wouldn’t count on it, though.”

  I clenched my teeth. This was about the time in our conversations where I’d usually flip her the bird or she’d slam the door in my face. But this evening I was determined to accumulate data.

  “I appreciate your feedback.” I’d read once that this was a good way to defuse an insult. “But more than your feelings about my ability to get a girlfriend, I’m curious to know how you make things work with Doug.”

  “He’s cute. We have mutual friends. He does what I tell him. I let him talk about, um, whatever it is he’s interested in. Don’t tell him, but sometimes I only pretend to listen.”

  “That doesn’t sound very exciting.”

  “I didn’t want exciting. I was looking for hot.”

  “Oh.”

  Sarah did something she’d never done before: she took pity on me. “Look, Kev, don’t overthink things. Just be yourself.”

  “That can’t possibly be the best plan.”

  “Probably not in your case, but you still might give it a try.” She paused. “But you should practice first.”

  “Practice what?”

  “Speaking.”

  “I’m an excellent conversationalist.”

  “No, you’re chatty—there’s a difference. Go ahead and tell me something nice about me. Girls like compliments.”

  I already knew that part, but what the heck, I could use all the rehearsal time I could get. What is it with women and acting? First Buzz, now Sarah. I hoped that Tina, once we started dating, wasn’t going to make me run lines with her like this. That could get old real fast.

  “You look nice today.” I tried to smile as I lied.

  “Enhhh!” My sister sounded like a game show buzzer cutting off a contestant with the wrong answer. “No girl wants to be told she looks ‘nice.’ It’s a boring noncompliment that signifies nothing. Be specific. ‘Your hair looks phenomenal. Very shiny.’ And don�
�t say ‘today’ or she’ll wonder if you thought she looked like crap yesterday.”

  “Oh. Thanks. Your hair looks phenomenal. Very shiny. What do I do next?”

  “Ask her a question about her day. ‘How’d you do on that social studies quiz?’ ”

  “Sounds kind of boring. Shouldn’t I, um … memorize a poem or write her a love letter or give her flowers or … serenade her outside her bedroom window?”

  “Yeah, sure, if you want her to think you’re weird and creepy and might have a collection of dead animal parts in your basement.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Trying too hard. Relax. Girls like to know you’ve been thinking about them, not obsessing.”

  “Are you sure about all this?”

  “I’m a girl, aren’t I?”

  Before I could even open my mouth, she cut me off and said, “I’m going to call Christine and Rebecca and Carrie and Amie and get them over here to put together a dating boot camp for you. You clearly need more help than one person can provide.”

  Again, she stopped me from speaking. “Go do something productive for half an hour; I’ll call you when the girls get here and we’re ready for you.”

  The smart scientist knows when the odds are against him, so I went to the kitchen and nuked some pizza puffs. It was eight p.m. and, other than the banana in the closet with Markie, I hadn’t had any supper. I was on my third plate of puffs when the doorbell rang and Sarah took the stairs in what sounded like a single bound to get to the entryway before I did. She threw open the door and Christine, Rebecca, Carrie and Amie were standing there—her best friends since they were hatched together in the witchbaby nursery. They’re exactly like Sarah, only with four times as much bossy, spoiled, put-Kevin-down attitude. I had a strong feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

  Sarah herded them toward her room; they peeked at me in the kitchen as they went by. Rebecca rolled her eyes in my direction and Christine, who hasn’t acknowledged me since I was seven and barfed on her during a picnic, looked over the top of her glasses at me menacingly. Carrie and Amie, who were whispering and cackling, only glanced at me before disappearing into Sarah’s room.

  The great scientist Galileo seared his retinas because he stared directly at the sun as he refined the telescope. If he could sacrifice his vision for the sake of astronomy, I could risk a little of my time, and my self-esteem, to listen to my sister’s evil coven. And they might have some helpful insights. Stranger things have happened.