How (Not) to Find a Boyfriend

by Allyson Valentine

  Everyone. Even people with one awesome dimple.

  “Get in the game, Nora!” Chelsey chides.

  My body is in the game. It’s my brain that is someplace else, and it has taken my heart with it. I can’t believe I am going to the homecoming dance with Mitch.

  After practice, I find Krista sitting on the hood of my car. She watches me cross the parking lot and stands to face me when I reach her.

  “Okay. What’s going on, Nora?”

  I unlock my car and toss my bag into the backseat. “How are you getting home?”

  “Dex is picking me up in a couple of minutes. But you and I need to talk. There are too many weird things going on and I can’t figure out how they connect. First, there’s the whole schedule change thing.”

  “I told you—my mom made me switch into AP biology.”

  “Baloney, Nora. Do you remember the day we went to Molly Moon’s for ice cream?”

  I nod, recalling my double scoop of Theo’s Coconut Kiss.

  “We compared our schedules that day. You were taking algebra two, biology, US history. And, okay, sure, your mom made you switch it up a little bit and take AP biology. I get that. You want to do science stuff in college. But Dex’s friend Gunner says that you’re in his precalculus class. And when you switched out of history, I thought you needed to shift things around to get the AP biology thing to work, but Vanessa mentioned that you guys are in AP US history together. You hate history. So, what’s up? Your mother made you switch everything? Or is there something else you aren’t telling me.”

  My tongue feels dipped in lead. I cannot move my lips. I am furiously dog-paddling in a deep pool of lies and there is no one to throw me a life ring. When I came to Riverbend High, I vowed that I would never tell anyone that I am a born-again normal person. I almost slipped a couple of times. I almost told Krista, “If you had known me back in middle school, you would have hated me, because everyone did.” I am trying so hard to figure out how to be smart and popular at the same time, and clearly there is a step in the process that has managed to evade me completely.

  “My family has this hangup about academic excellence,” I finally say. “Mom was all freaked out about me not living up to my potential. She wanted me taking harder classes.”

  “And you needed to lie about it? To me? What—you’re afraid that if I know that your mother is pushing you too hard, I’m going to like you less?”

  Krista doesn’t wait for a response.

  “And what is up with Jake? You have totally messed with him. You knew that he liked you. You’ve been flirting your ass off at lunch, and during breaks at practice. You held his hand at lunch.”

  “I did not! He held mine!”

  “It takes two, Nora! You could have pulled your hand away. You could have told him that you’re not into him. He’s totally hot, but you’ll notice he doesn’t have a girlfriend, and you know why? With everything he’s got going for him, he’s actually kind of nervous around girls he likes. So he finally works up the nerve to ask you to the dance and it turns out you’re already going with Mitch.” She pokes her index finger halfway down her throat. “Mitch! Who is only the skeeviest jerk in the entire school. Do you know that he asked permission to take pictures for the yearbook in the second-floor girls’ bathroom? That is just gross. What possessed you to agree to go to a dance with him? There has got to be something you’re not telling me.”

  I sand my cheek with my fingertips. I could tell her about the swaps. But I can’t implicate Chelsey. It’s bad enough that I’m helping her cheat in English—it’s because of me that she’s effectively going to be cheating on her boyfriend, who’s friends with Dex.

  Highlights. Swordhands. I’ve got all these other people involved. And what about Adam? He absolutely cannot find out what I have done to get close to him. He would never want to have anything to do with me. Ever. And while I don’t think Krista would tell him outright, secrets are slippery little fish that have a way of jumping out of the water when you least expect them to.

  Krista folds her arms over her chest. “Dex and I think you’re making some really bad choices.”

  Something inside me clicks. I mirror her stance. “Oh, so you and Dex think I’ve made bad choices? You sound like my mother!”

  Krista is taken aback. She mouths a silent “What?”

  “Look,” I say, my voice louder than I intend it to be. “You’re entitled to your opinions, Krista. But any choices I’ve made are my own and I stand by them. As far as Jake goes, you told me yourself that he may be about the nicest package that boy guts were ever poured into, but he’s dumb as dirt. You can’t blame me for not wanting to go to the dance with him. And I only flirted with him because he started it. He can just take his shy butt to the nearest branch of the Jake Londgren fan club and find a different date for the dance.”

  Dex’s little blue VW Bug chugs into the empty spot beside my car. “Hey,” he calls from his open window. “What’s up?”

  “I was just leaving!” I climb into my car and slam shut the door. Krista runs around to the passenger side of Dex’s car and clambers in beside him. Even with my window rolled up, I can hear Krista crying. And even with NPR cranked up to top volume, I can hear myself doing the same.

  Thirteen

  MY LIFE HAS BECOME AS BORING as the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle. School. Practice. Homework. Repeat. I arrive at school each day just as the first bell rings to avoid running into Krista in the latte line. At practice and games she looks through me like I am not there. I don’t see her, Jake or the Monarchs at lunch because I eat alone, sneaking food into the library. Or I find an empty classroom. Last Tuesday, desperate for solitude, I found the steps leading to the rooftop chessboard, but the door at the top of the stairs was locked, so I ate my tuna sandwich alone in a dank stairwell.

  None of the Monarchs ask me out for pizza at lunchtime, or invite me to movies on the weekend, or encourage me to come to postgame parties. At practice, Chelsey is nice the way you are nice to people with a debilitating handicap. As long as I shine in the cheer lineup, she wouldn’t care if I were going to the homecoming dance with a weasel.

  Oh, wait, I am.

  Gillian, Jazmine and Becca aren’t as forgiving. Becca pops up out of nowhere, “Click!” and pretends to take my picture. Jazmine asks me if I’m the spokesperson for some charity that promotes cheerleader-dork relationships. Gillian has offered to dye my hair and shave my eyebrows so my date and I will match for the dance.

  Even the Cabbage Whites have gotten a little frosty. It’s like I have given cheerleading a bad name and no one is quite sure what to do about it. Vanessa, on the other hand, has only gotten friendlier. She talks to me like nothing has changed, and then, it’s usually about history or to make disparaging remarks about cheerleading.

  I consider my current larval state and can’t help wondering about all the crazy swaps.

  Was it worth it?

  Then, I go to history class, and Adam stops by my desk to talk and he flashes that adorable smile; and as we talk, he scours my face with his eyes and his collar is pointing the wrong way and I fix it for him and his ears go pink; and I say, “Yes, it was worth it!” Emphatically, yes.

  But there are other times in biology, like when we were supposed to collect gametes from male and female sea urchins. Someone asked Coach Avery whether female sea urchins are genetically predisposed to prefer males with big spines. Sherrie, aka Cat Woman, quipped, “Just like cheerleaders are genetically predisposed to like football players with big muscles.”

  I suppose it could have been worse. She could have made an announcement about me and Mitch, a gossip item that never seemed to reach the biology crowd. But still, I jerked at her words, squashing my sea urchin, sending guts all over Adam’s blue hoodie.

  When Megan laughed, and the Teapot gushed, “Hell, I’d be happier than a dead pig in the sunshine if I had the genetics to attract boys like Jake Londgren,” Adam froze. He coolly wiped the goopy guts fr
om his shirt and didn’t say a word the entire lab. It seems like the world conspires to remind him, constantly, that I am nothing but a ditzy cheerleader.

  Was it worth it?

  On a random Thursday I see Adam by the bike rack where Tallulah, in hot-pink Lycra shorts, is locking up her bicycle beside his because she has started riding her bike to school, but of course she needs him to manage the lock for her because her favorite role is that of the helpless twit. Doesn’t he notice? Then, I overhear her in the library asking, with a dramatic sigh, for help finding volumes of romantic poetry. Finally, I read the sappy-ass story she wrote for the school paper talking about her near-death experience in the lunchroom. She likens herself to Sleeping Beauty, Adam to her Prince Charming.

  How could any of this possibly be worth going to the homecoming dance with Mitch?

  Now the dreaded Saturday has arrived and once again that question nags me as I stand in the shower and lather, rinse and repeat. Was it worth it?

  Mom pounds on the door. “Leave some hot water for the rest of us!”

  Homecoming. The parade, the game, the dance. I heard that Jake got invited by a dozen girls and in the end, Dex chose one for him. Mitch e-mails me daily, wondering about the color of my dress. Sadly, the one I wore to my grandmother’s funeral is tight across the chest, so I’ll wear a salmon-pink creation Mom got from Cherise, whose baby belly may never again fit into a size four.

  I lather up my hair a fourth time and remember that Chelsey had her coffee date with Swordhands last night. I hope it all went according to the terms of the contract.

  Joshie bangs on the door this time. “Mom says you’re going to look like a prune with pom-poms.”

  It’s eight thirty in the morning when Mom, Bill and Joshie drop me off at the school parking lot, where the parade will both start and finish, doing a one-mile loop through downtown in between. They head off to find good seats for the parade. The parking lot is a zoo, with throngs of people scrambling into position. The drill girls, dressed in slinky gold lamé dresses and ankle-high boots, twirl giant purple flags festooned with leaping golden trout. Over in the front circle, the marching band, in simulated military tunics with fluffy-plumed hats, warms up. The trumpets play a marching tune, the clarinets blast the school fight song and a little Latino guy on sax wails a bluesy rendition of “Stairway to Heaven.” The place is lousy with convertibles, buffed and shiny, ready to transport the homecoming court through the downtown parade route.

  And the class floats, each attached to a green-and-yellow tractor, get touched up with last-minute balloons, crepe paper and Astroturf.

  I finally find the cheer squad. They, we, are stunning! The special homecoming uniforms look rich, like the anonymous person who donated them. There is a damp chill in the air and I am grateful for the matching purple jacket. I scan the sea of purple and gold sequins looking for Chelsey so I can find out how the date went.

  Becca, with her hair in a bun for the parade and her foot on the bumper of an SUV, stretches, with her nose pulled to her shin. Krista, who chats with Jazmine, catches sight of me and turns around. Vanessa leans against a lamppost sipping from a Starbucks cup. She gives me a little nod.

  “Where’s Chelsey?” I ask no one in particular. I call her name, and Chelsey appears from behind the senior float.

  “There you are!” she shouts through her megaphone and marches toward me like she’s on her way to put out a fire. “I’ve been looking for you!”

  Krista and Jazmine stop talking. Becca drops her foot off the back of the car. Vanessa straightens and tips the dregs of her coffee onto the pavement. The entire squad closes in.

  “He kissed me!” shouts Chelsey. “We’re talking full-on lip to lip, taste bud to taste bud.” She gags and spits. “He broke the rules!”

  Everyone stares, bewildered, looking first at Chelsey, then at me for an explanation. “Well, technically, no kissing wasn’t a rule,” I say. “The rule was no touching.”

  Chelsey fumes. “If he had blown me a kiss it would have been one thing. But no! That’s not what he did. There we were, talking about the weather this summer. Then we talked about the weather last summer. The next thing I know he’s pressing his lips onto my lips and his tongue is halfway down my throat. He touched me with his lips and his tongue! Kissing counts as touching!”

  Becca sides with Chelsey. “Yeah. Technically, I think kissing could be considered touching.” There is some back-and-forth about kissing versus touching, then Krista raises the obvious question: “Who kissed you?”

  Chelsey waves her hand at me. “Nora asked me to go out for coffee with this guy from the sword club.”

  “The fencing team,” I say.

  “And we agreed that there would be no touching. And to me, touching includes kissing. I mean, I have a boyfriend, for crying out loud! Not to mention the fact that this guy has really skinny lips and one of those skeevy bunny-hair mustaches.”

  Jazmine, who towers above me, cocks her head. “Why did you ask Chelsey to go out with a guy who has no lips?”

  “He has lips! They’re just thin.” I hesitate before going on. There is no telling what kind of trouble we could get into if anyone found out I gave Chelsey my brother’s papers. “There’s this guy from the fencing team in my biology class. I asked him for, um, extra help. It turns out he’s totally crushing on Chelsey, and the only way he would help me was if Chelsey would go out with him for a cup of coffee.”

  “But there were rules!” Chelsey says. “No talking about personal stuff. No looking at my girls”—she points to her chest—“and NO TOUCHING!”

  Krista slowly winds a loose strand of hair around her finger. “Hang on. Chelsey, you agreed to go out with this guy. This guy who has no lips—”

  “He has lips!” I say.

  Krista keeps going. “And you did it just to be nice? Really? There was nothing in it for you?”

  Chelsey’s mouth is stuck open.

  “I helped her . . .” I hesitate. “I helped her with a paper she had to write for English.”

  “The Hamlet paper for Mr. Pawlosky?” asks Gillian.

  “Yeah.” Chelsey strokes her megaphone absently.

  Gillian narrows her eyes. “But you’re a sophomore, Nora. The Hamlet paper is for senior English. How were you able to write it for her?”

  “I didn’t write it for her. I just helped her. And I know a lot about Hamlet.” Which is true. The last summer that I visited Dad in Cambridge, when I was twelve, he was dating a Danish woman named Gertrude, who was playing the role of Ophelia in a summer stock production. We read the play out loud a bunch of times and certain lines really stuck with me. “Foul deeds will rise, / Though all the earth o’erwhelm them to men’s eyes.”

  The sweat glands in my armpits kick into overdrive. Krista takes a step closer to me. “And this guy. This fencer. Exactly what did he help you with?”

  I raise, then lower my shoulders. “You know. Just some stuff in class.”

  Krista purses her lips. “Uh-huh. Just some stuff in class.”

  Chelsey jumps in. “But the point is, he stuck his disgusting coffee-flavored tongue down my throat. I don’t even like coffee.”

  The conversation comes to an abrupt stop when Stuart Shangrove announces over a loudspeaker fixed to the top of a gold Hummer that the parade is about to begin. We grab our pom-poms and line up. I can feel Krista’s eyes on me as the parade gets under way. If we were not marching in the formation that we’ve been practicing all week, I am confident that, except perhaps for Vanessa, I would be marching all by myself because no one wants to be near me.

  The drill team steps and twirls their way out of the parking lot, followed closely behind by the marching band, who blast out a jazzy version of “Mack the Knife.” We fall into place behind the band, running through our repertoire as we jump, cheer and shake our pom-poms through the town.

  Mitch and the rest of the yearbook crowd snap our pictures as we pass by. “See you tonight,” he shouts, and I pretend
not to hear him.

  “Nora!” Joshie waves like crazy from out in front of Small Fry’s Hardware (need live bait?) where he, Mom and Bill sit in lawn chairs. Copernicus strains at his leash.

  “Woohoo!” The Teapot waves from in front of the Steelhead Coffee Company—the fish theme in my town runs deep—where she stands with a bunch of the drama crowd. Their faces are painted purple with gold stars, and they’re wearing medieval dresses and robes. After the uproar caused by last year’s drama club float (a tractor pulling a trailer upon which they performed a mostly nude scene from the show Hair), they were banned from this year’s parade.

  Tallulah, attending the out-of-town wedding, is conspicuously absent.

  “Go, fight, win!” shouts the Teapot. “You look great, Nora!” It’s hard to smile, but I do.

  Behind us, from their perches on the backs of convertibles, the homecoming court tosses candy into the crowd. Chelsey officially took herself out of the running for queen because she couldn’t bear the thought of not marching with the cheer squad in the parade. The junior class float, a papier-mâché Spartan being eaten by a giant fish, becomes disconnected from its tractor and there’s a five-minute slowdown while they reattach themselves.

  We’re almost back at the school when my heart does a little hiccup. Adam and Eric are sitting side by side on their parked bicycles. Adam’s hands are tucked into his armpits against the morning chill. He’s wearing shorts and a Brown hoodie—the college, not the color. We chant a cheer as we pass by. Eric, whose shirt is striped purple and yellow in honor of the day, makes eye contact with me and smiles. He leans over and says something to Adam, who smiles shyly and waves. What did Eric tell him? Something about Chess Kings? Something about how adorable I look in my special homecoming uniform? Something about how lucky Adam would be to go out with a girl like me? Crap! Or is he sharing a little bit of tittle-tattle about a certain cheerleader and her eyebrow-deficient dance date?

  I have noticed that over the past few weeks the circle of girls that surround Adam has gotten smaller. Like me, I guess they’ve noticed that Adam is rarely seen without Tallulah. But unlike me, they’ve given up.