by Mary Strand
But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Um, mostly. I mean, like, not in the summer.” At least, not on the absolute hottest days of summer. I felt like an idiot, stumbling over my words, even as I peered at Josh through my geeky glasses, watching for his reaction and wondering if he was just playing me. If so, he was good at it. His eyes, or what I could see of them, looked so sincere.
I bit my lip. Staring into his eyes almost made me wish—almost—I wore contacts. Liz and Jane both got them in middle school, but I’d never considered it. Glasses made me feel protected, somehow, just like my stupid overalls did. In a butt-ugly way, of course.
Josh shrugged. “Yeah, I pretty much wear jeans even in the summer, and I know they’re baggy, but it’s the look. You know?”
“For skateboarders.”
“Yeah. Skaters, and other guys, too.”
Now he was looking at me intently, maybe wondering if I was dissing him for being a skateboarder, or a skater, or whatever I was supposed to call a guy who spends too much of his time on a piece of wood with four tiny wheels. Which maybe I was. Did he always wonder if everyone else was dissing him or playing him or totally laughing at him?
I’d never thought of that.
“I play piano.”
Ugh! That came out of my mouth?
“Yeah?” Josh frowned, like maybe he was trying to make a connection between my overalls and piano, and coming up blank. “That’s what you like?”
“Hate it, actually.”
“But . . .”
What could I say? Admit that, even though I was almost eighteen, my mom made me? Admit I was following in the seldom-followed footsteps of that Mary Bennet? The one from The Book?
I shrugged. “But sometimes life sucks.”
“Yeah.” Josh stared again at my overalls, making me squirm, then glanced out the door. He was probably terrified that someone he knew would see him in here, talking to me, and his skateboarder rep was over.
Guys did not talk to Mary Bennet.
I glanced out the door, too. “I hate to keep you from doing whatever you were doing.”
He frowned. “I was just hanging. And I was gonna check out a roller coaster or two. You know, for Physics?”
Boy, did I know. “Me, too.” Argh! Did I actually say that? Like I wanted to hang with him or, worse, was begging him to hang with me? Like I was pathetic? “I mean, I was going to go look at the roller coasters, maybe do a rough sketch so I can figure out how to do the design.”
Josh laughed. His brown hair was long and shaggy, hanging way down in his eyes, but I got a peek at them: vivid blue. Not at all like my brown eyes, which probably looked as mousy as the rest of me.
“I was actually using the Physics project as an excuse to ride them a few times. Wouldn’t that be more fun?”
“Uh . . .” Not if you puke every time you ride a roller coaster, no.
“Do you wanna?”
“I get kinda . . .”
“Scared?”
“Not exactly. But roller coasters and I don’t get along too well.”
Josh snorted. “Girls always say that.”
I blinked, wondering just how many girls had said that to him. Not that it mattered. I mean, the guy was doing charity work just talking to me. And he was being honest, I thought, so maybe this was how friends talked. Even if the friends in question happened to be a guy and a girl.
Not that we were friends or anything.
I stared down at the shiny tile floor, which seemed safer than looking into Josh’s eyes and trying to figure him out. “I don’t know about other girls, except maybe my sisters.” Liz loved roller coasters, Jane didn’t go near them, and Cat and Lydia only pretended to be scared on them so they could grab a piece of whatever guy they’d dragged along for the ride. “But I’ve never done too well with roller coasters. I haven’t even been on one since I was ten.”
“You were just a kid. Things have changed.”
Not for me, they hadn’t. “Really, Josh, I—”
“Wanna ride with me?”
And pretend to be scared so I can cling to him? No way! Then I thought of Liz, who would never pretend something just to cling to a guy. But she was Liz: the heroic Bennet sister, both in The Book and in real life. She’d even told Mom to stuff the piano lessons.
I looked at Josh, at amazing blue eyes I could barely see though his bangs, and wished I could be like Liz. Well, except for her current obsession with guys. I also wished I wouldn’t puke the moment the roller coaster hit the first turn.
At the thought, my stomach did a little flip.
“It’s really not a good idea.”
“Why? You’d rather ride with someone else?”
I groaned. Nothing I said ever came out right. “I mean, that’s why I was going to sketch the roller coaster. Because I didn’t want to ride on it. With anyone.”
“It’s not that bad. And, hey, you can always sketch it afterward. Like, after you feel how it moves. It’ll help with the Physics project, I swear.”
It probably would, I admit, but I wasn’t really prepared to risk death and public barfing just to ace an assignment. An assignment for which I didn’t even have a partner.
Unlike Josh.
“Why didn’t you bring your Physics partner here to ride the roller coaster with you?”
“Because . . .” Josh looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then intently back at me. “I mean, why didn’t you? Or are you stuck doing all the work?”
Even if I had a partner, I probably would be. But I refused to admit more to Josh than absolutely necessary.
I resorted to lame childhood ploys. “I asked you first.”
“Well, the truth is . . .” Josh didn’t look like he wanted to admit anything, either, and he trailed off when a cute girl walked into Ragstock. Maybe his Physics partner.
“That’s okay. I get it.” I turned and started to head back to the overalls, which were still ugly but reliable, and reliable was good.
Next thing I knew, Josh tapped me on the shoulder. “You just walked away.”
I spun around. “Because your partner . . .” Oh. The cute girl was nowhere in sight. “Sorry. I thought you knew that girl who just came in, and maybe she was your partner, and you were going to meet her here.”
Josh gave me a strange look. “The only girl I saw looked like she was about twelve. With makeup.”
And bigger boobs than mine, for what it’s worth.
“So she’s not your partner.”
“Not for at least five years.” Josh laughed, then looked a little embarrassed. “What I was trying to say was, uh, I don’t actually have a Physics partner.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true. You told that guy in Physics class—”
“Kyle.”
“Kyle.” I flushed, knowing I sounded like a loser for not knowing anyone’s name. Kyle was a football player, from the looks of him, but I didn’t go to football games or pep rallies. “He asked if you had a partner, and you said you’d talk to him after class.”
“I was just putting him off, because I don’t want to flunk the assignment.” Josh shrugged, looking a little sheepish. But was he being honest? I couldn’t tell for sure. “Kyle has football practice right after school, and I hoped he’d forget about it. He always wants a brain to do all the work so he can just focus on getting a full ride at a Big Ten school next fall.”
Josh was a brain? “He plays football?”
Josh grinned. “I didn’t think anyone paid less attention to our football team than I did, but I was wrong. Kyle is being recruited heavily by at least five schools. They have scouts at every game.”
“And you’re friends?”
“Only because he likes to hang out with guys who get good grades. So, you know, he has half a chance at skating through senior year without flunking.”
Josh got good grades? A skateboarder? Come to think of it, he must be doing pretty well just to be taking AP Calculus. I’d always thought . .
.
“So do you wanna be my partner? Or do you have one?”
I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. “I, um, no.”
“No, you don’t want to be my partner?” Josh glanced down at the floor, probably at the ugly hiking boots I wore with my overalls, even though I’d probably last hiked the same year I’d last ridden a roller coaster.
I am such a freaking idiot. “I mean, no, I don’t have a partner. Yet.”
“But you’re holding out for a better offer?”
There wasn’t one. “No! I just didn’t think you wanted to be my partner.”
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Josh shrugged. “I tried to ask you the other day, but you acted like you weren’t interested. Like maybe you thought I’d suck.”
I blinked. I kept sounding like a total jerk, but I didn’t know how to talk to a guy or, for that matter, anyone else. How would I know? No one ever talks to me. Even Mom and Dad struggle, although Dad is more subtle about it. Mom looks distressed every time she sees me.
Of course, Mom looks distressed a lot.
“I didn’t mean that at all. I was just, like . . .” I didn’t know how to word it without admitting that I didn’t think anyone in the world would ever want to talk to me, let alone be my Physics partner, and I could see the offer to be Josh’s Physics partner swirling right down the toilet.
“That’s okay. I get it.”
He took a step backward, like he planned to bolt. I reached forward and touched him on the arm.
Which felt weird. Really, completely, weird.
“That’s not what I meant. Of course I’d like to be your partner. Your Physics partner. If you still want me.”
He glanced down at my hand, still touching his arm, and I yanked it away.
“Let’s do it. Now, you wanna try out the roller coaster? Just to see how it works?”
“That’s still not a good idea.”
“Let’s try it anyway.” He searched my face, but God knows what he was looking for. Someone cuter? “If you’re game.”
I blew out a breath, bit my lip, and nodded. I finally had a partner, but I was headed to my doom.
Chapter 4
“Pride,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “is a very common failing I believe.”
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume I, Chapter Five
So I agreed to go on the roller coaster with Josh. But had I agreed to go on a wild one? And had I agreed to do it right away? Aren’t you supposed to wait at least an hour after eating, or does that just apply to swimming?
As we headed toward Nickelodeon Universe, I managed to talk Josh into letting me do a few sketches of the roller coasters before we actually bought tickets and climbed into one. I mean, in case I do wind up puking and suddenly have to escape Josh and everyone else in the Mall of America with barf splattered down the front of my clothes, I should try to nail a few decent sketches first.
I stalled on the sketches, and Josh finally went to buy some tickets. I offered him cash, but he said no, he’d pick up the tickets because he was basically forcing me to go.
And when you look at it that way, he was.
But I didn’t know what to do about him springing for the tickets. Should I buy him a soda? But that wouldn’t make it even, so should I buy him a burger and fries, too, even though I already had a PB&J sandwich at home and didn’t want to add to the mix of things I might barf? But if I bought him a burger and fries, did that make it seem like a date?
Oh, wait. I glanced down at myself. No one went on a date wearing overalls.
I finished my third sketch just as Josh found me again. With a couple of sodas in his hand.
I frowned. “Weren’t you going to get tickets?”
“I did.” He looked sheepish, which was only fair, since he’d totally blown it and was acting like we were on a date—obviously ignoring both my overalls and my status as Mary Bennet. “But I was thirsty, and I figured you might be, too.” He thrust the plastic cup at me. “You like Diet Coke, right?”
“Um, yeah.” I scrunched my nose, wondering how he could possibly know that. Unless he was confusing me with some other girl. I mean, not that I should care. Josh was just my Physics partner. And I was lucky to have one.
Josh sat down next to me on the bench and glanced down at the sketch I’d almost finished. “Not bad. But is that a drawing of the kiddie roller coaster or a real one?”
I felt myself flushing, which was stupid, except that he’d busted me. “Mr. Gilbertson didn’t say how big the roller coaster had to be.” I pointed at the one called the Barnyard Hayride. The kids on it looked like they were maybe in kindergarten. “It’d be easier to do.”
“You’re joking.” Josh rolled his eyes. “You just don’t want to go on a real roller coaster.”
“As if!” Boy, was he perceptive. Heh heh. That was exactly my plan. “I mean, this one is fine, though. The Barnyard Hayride makes a few turns.”
“Right. It’s twenty feet long.” Josh shook his head. “I am not doing a design based on the Barnyard Hayride, and I’m definitely not riding on it. We wouldn’t even fit.”
It’d been worth trying. “I guess the Log Chute wouldn’t be so bad.” Except for the huge drop over the waterfall at the very end of it; my own stomach dropped every time I saw one of the hollowed-out logs plummet downward.
Josh crossed his arms, which were more muscular and wiry than I’d noticed before. When I’d been trying not to look at him. “Not totally lame, but still not a real roller coaster. You really don’t ride them? At all?”
I pushed my glasses up higher on my nose, which I seemed to do nonstop around Josh. “Like I said. It really didn’t go well the last time I did.”
He laughed. “You also said you were ten. A lot of girls don’t like roller coasters when they’re ten.”
I held up an inexplicably shaky hand. “Don’t tell me. This comes from your vast experience with girls.”
I closed my little notepad and stood up, not quite sure what to do with my soda. I probably couldn’t bring it on the Log Chute and wouldn’t want to anyway.
Josh shrugged as he rose to his feet a moment after me. “I have a couple of older sisters, but I’m not sure I’d call that vast experience.” He paused a moment, then grinned. “Although it’s about as much as I’d want with sisters.”
I slugged him lightly on the arm, partly because Josh had been tapping me on the arm almost since I’d known him. It was only fair.
“Anyway.” He rubbed his arm where I slugged him, as if I’d actually landed a blow he could feel. Not. “I think you’ll like roller coasters a lot better now.”
I just gave him a tight smile as we started walking slowly in the direction of the Log Chute. I stared upward as a log flew down the final drop and water splashed the riders. The little kid sitting in it looked thrilled, but the mom sitting behind him had her cheeks puffed out like she was trying not to barf. Oh, boy. The PB&J sandwich curdled in my stomach when I first agreed to go on a roller coaster. At this point, I figured I might heave even without going on the ride.
We passed a couple of girls I vaguely recognized from school. They were dressed in tight low-slung jeans and cropped spaghetti-strap tops, with the straps of their bras showing. One black, one red, and totally different from the color of their tops, as if they wanted you to notice their bras. At least I assume that’s the theory.
Fashion: yet another thing I didn’t understand.
One of the girls stared at me, then at Josh, then pointedly nudged the girl with her and they both broke into a giggle fit. Josh didn’t seem to notice, though. Either that or he figured he could afford to hang out with Mary Bennet if it scored him the best grade on the Physics project.
Which was kind of a depressing thought.
Despite my fervent prayers to have a lightning bolt strike me dead in the middle of the park—like, right this instant—we finally made it to the front of the line for the Log Chut
e, where Josh whipped out the tickets and swiped them twice through the reader, which made me wonder how much more those girls would giggle if they saw Josh paying for me to ride with him. Feeling sorry for Josh, I sighed.
At least we didn’t have to sit next to each other. Each “car” of the Log Chute was a hollowed-out log for one rider in front and one in back and a chunk of fake wood between them. I quickly debated whether it would be better to barf sitting in front, where Josh would see it, or in back, where it might hit the back of his head. Ew. Each choice was as bad as the next. Before I could decide, Josh climbed into the back seat, leaving the front seat to me.
Was that so he could try to look at my butt as I sat down? Or because he didn’t want chunks of whatever I’d eaten for lunch clinging to the back of his hair?
Well, overalls didn’t show any part of my body, thank you very much, and I could look straight ahead when my face turned green and I hurled. If I tilted my head down a little, I’d wind up with it in my lap.
The ride started moving, slowly, before I could come to my senses and leap out of the log. But . . . it was fine. We chugged through the water, past the lame-o statues of Paul Bunyan inside some sort of wide-open cave, until we reached the crest of the ride. Just one long, hideous drop to go. Thinking of Cat and Lydia, I bit off a tiny screech as the log shot downward and my stomach dropped somewhere below my knees.
But I held it in. Lunch, the screech, even the gulps of Diet Coke I’d slurped down before I handed the plastic cup to Josh when we got in line for the ride.
I was the new queen of roller coasters!
Okay, not exactly, but I’d survived. As I climbed out of the log, totally ungraceful and a little damp from the blast of water at the end, I let out a shaky breath. I was still Mary Bennet, but I was almost like a normal girl—if you didn’t count the overalls and bad hair and thick glasses.
Josh put his arm around me.
I mean, only for a moment. It was like he gave me a quick hug but didn’t know what to do with it, or with me. When my spine went ramrod straight, he whipped his arm back to his own side.
