Brand X
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Marcus turned to me. “You are bringing Vaughan. This will be the party of the year. We're renting a loft and recreating the old Horn and Hardart Automat.”
“She's sixteen,” Joel put in. “Does she even know what an Automat is?”
“I've seen pictures,” I said.
“So what is it?” Joel challenged.
“It was a restaurant during the Depression where people put coins in slots and got exactly what they wanted out of little glass cubicles?”
“You got it,” said Joel, beaming. “Just testing. We're going with a thirties theme. It's going to knock you out!”
“Joel's our enthusiastic designer,” Marcus said.
“A nice change from premiums,” Joel said to me.
Paulette cut in with “And there's going to be great thirties music too—and one or two B-52's songs from the eighties and nineties thrown in too—”
“Just a bit,” Marcus said firmly. “I think 'Rock Lobster' and 'Love Shack' are enough….”
Paulette's bottom lip curled.
“What?” Marcus said.
“No 'Roam'?”
“How's that song go?” I asked innocently enough.
“Roam if you want to, roam around the world …,” Joel sang.
“Okay, 'Roam' too,” Marcus conceded.
“Thank you,” Paulette said.
“This all sounds amazing, but can I quickly just say—I'm not going to have a date to bring. I'm over Vaughan,” I interjected.
“What?” said Marcus.
“What?” said Paulette.
“What?” said Joel.
“What?” said Brad.
“I'm closing the Boyfriend Account.”
I refused to tell them more.
My life was my own again.
“Well, you can bring whomever you like,” Marcus said finally, when it was clear he wasn't getting any details out of me.
“I appreciate that.”
In the warmth of my school lobby, I braced myself for the nightmare ahead.
“Hi,” I said coldly to Vaughan when I passed by his desk. He was eating a strawberry fruit roll. In the light of day, he now looked to me every inch a boy, which I guess technically he was.
When I sat down and clearly was ignoring him, he pulled my elbow and whispered harshly, “I don't know what your problem is. I didn't want to dance to a song, so you leave?”
“Is that all that you think my problem was?”
Jeremy, who later said he could hear every bit of the ugly conversation, walked up and stood over Vaughan angrily. “Will you be a man and keep your mouth shut until the two of you have some privacy?”
“Like you're a man. He who is still living out sports fantasies like a four-year-old.”
Somebody snickered, but already a blush of hatred colored Jeremy's eyes. “You know what?”
“What?” Vaughan goaded.
I'd never seen Jeremy's nostrils flare before. “You're a fool. When all your senior buddies graduate next year, you won't have anyone who wants to hang out with you.”
“I highly doubt that.”
Just that second Etchingham walked in.
“Everyone turn to Chapter Four in our textbooks …,” he said sternly.
If I could push thoughts of Vaughan and even Zane out of my brain for the rest of the semester, I could maybe make it through.
“I need to talk to you,” Zane said after class. I was at my locker getting my coat. The last two classes of the day were cancelled for something to do with school plumbing repair, so we didn't have French.
“I'm sorry I barged in on you and Sara like that,” I blurted out.
He paused and moved his jacket zipper up and down. “Please—let me get out what I want to say. Sara is my cousin. It wasn't a real date.”
I looked at him. “Are you joking with me?”
“Are we not the two shiest people in the school? Do we not look a little bit alike? She didn't have a date either, so we figured we'd just go and hang out. Believe me, we are not a couple, but she'd have died if I'd left her stranded.”
They looked more than a little bit alike. Their hair, their nose—the only things markedly different were their gender and height.
“So what are you saying?”
“I don't know. I guess, just that—” He turned purple again.
“This sounds crazy, but would you like to come to a wedding with me?”
“Why would we do that? You despise me for looking at your notebook, and I despise you for being—”
“For being what?”
“Not yourself.”
“Well, then,” I laughed uncomfortably. “So you don't want to go to the wedding?”
“I didn't say that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I'm just trying to fish—I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what it is that you want from me. Am I another project for you? Can't get the name brand so you want the generic boyfriend?”
I didn't say anything at first. “Listen, could you walk to the park with me? Please?”
We sat on a park bench in awful silence. Who was supposed to talk first?
A mumbling man nearby drew deeply on his cigarette like he'd never heard of lung cancer, and then he spit on the sidewalk.
“Nice,” Zane said sarcastically, and I laughed. That broke the ice.
“You're really confusing me here,” I tried.
“I'm a teenage boy with raging emotions. This is what you get.”
“That's a bit dramatic.”
“Don't talk to me about dramatic. You wrote the book on that—oh, sorry for that choice of words.”
“But listen, that's who I really am.”
“When it's not contrived, that's who I really like.”
We had a meaningful look.
“So, where were we?” I said.
“You hate me and I hate you, and you asked me to a wedding.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So, why?”
“Because I think I made a mistake about you.”
“Stop now if this is going to be very condescending.”
“You know, your obnoxiousness right now is not helping me talk.”
He smiled. “Okay, I'm sorry.”
“Look, I'm a teenage girl with raging emotions, cut me some slack.”
He laughed at that.
“I'm trying to say I think I really like you now, and that—”
“Whose wedding is it?” he asked. At this moment he suddenly wasn't blushing. As a matter of fact, his smile was stunning.
“My internship coordinators are getting married. They demanded I bring a date. They're very wacky, and the wedding should be a blast. They'll have a big jazz band re-creating an old Automat and—”
“May I expand on what I like about you?” he cut in.
“What?”
“Nothing that you had on the page.”
“Can you lay off that for a second?”
He picked up my hand. “You forgot to market your spirit. To tell you the truth, it was doing its own campaigning all along, at least with me.” He paused for a second, and added, “And maybe the low-cut shirt in precalculus helped a little too.”
You've read all those fluffy novels where the gorgeous guy finally says to the lovestruck girl: “I like you just for who you are.” That's just so fake. Because I don't care how smart and funny you are, if you're not taking care of your looks, you're not exactly going to be a guy magnet. And if you can think of a few good ways to draw some attention to yourself, so much the better.
My highly paid ad agency mentors only thought Vaughan was worth advertising for because he was the guy I'd expressed interest in.
But you know what? They didn't see Zane coming. And neither did I. You never know what will actually work on people. That's one of the weird things of marketing, that it is such an inexact science. Customer A is getting your message, but you pick up customer B too, and in the end that may be the one you want.
I already knew Zane
had noticed me, and then even more so when I wore that push-up bra. Everybody noticed.
But finding someone who is great for you involves several different kinds of thinking. Creativity is wonderful, but so is good common sense.
If I had to boil it all down into one unified strategy: A relationship is not like buying soap. It's just not. It's worth thinking about what you're doing and who you like, but in the end—you must already know—it's best to be the improved you that you are.
To: All Concerned
From: The Creative Team
Re: Million-dollar Ad Campaign
is loosely based on Laurie Gwen Shapiro's
experience as a teenage intern in an ad-agency
madhouse, where, during downtime, the “creatives”
focused their sought-after branding skills
on her lackluster love life.
Shapiro is the author of three highly praised
novels for adults and codirected the documentary
Keep the River on Your Right, for which she received
an Independent Spirit Award at a televised award
ceremony from one of her favorite actors.
Unfortunately, in a state of shock, she forgot to
thank anybody, even her mother.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro lives in New York City,
her hometown, with her Australian
musician husband, Paul, and their
very musical daughter, Violet.
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictititiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2006 by Laurie Gwen Shapiro
All rights reserved.
Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,
visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shapiro, Laurie Gwen.
Brand X: the boyfriend account / Laurie Gwen Shapiro.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When she lands an internship at an advertising agency, high school
junior Jordie gets some dubious help from her new colleagues who suggest
that she try advertising techniques to attract a handsome boy at school.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49424-5
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Advertising—Fiction.
3. High schools—Fiction. 4 Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S295673Br 2006
[Fic]-lc22 2006004596
v3.0