By the Book

by Amanda Sellet

  “That would be rude. Unless they were into it.” He wagged his eyebrows like a mustache-twirling villain in a black cape. “Seriously, though. It starts with that same kind of connection.”

  A light bulb went off in my head. “Like in Howards End!”

  “I don’t do porn, Mary.”

  I sent him a quelling look. “It’s a book. There’s this really famous line—‘Only connect.’” I waited for him to make some expression of amazement.

  “That’s it?”

  I gave a sheepish nod. The truth was that I’d always found it a bit opaque myself. Was it supposed to be a person-to-person thing, or something vast and philosophical? I glanced hopefully at Alex. “What do you think it means?”

  “In your book or . . .  ?” He circled a palm between us, presumably indicating the world at large.

  “With real people. Like you were saying. When it’s more than platonic.”

  He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It can be a lot of things. You might like the way a person laughs, or how they think, their smell—anything that makes you want to cross a room to talk to them.”

  “And then?”

  He shifted on the bench, bringing his hip and thigh into contact with mine. “You get to know them.”

  Moving away would have been awkward, so I held perfectly still. “And?”

  “And then you feel something, or you don’t.”

  My voice dropped to a whisper. “Like what?”

  He didn’t answer right away, as though there might be some other layer to my question he needed to decipher first.

  “Like your day is better when you see them,” he said, looking steadily at me. “And you think about them when they’re not around. Or make excuses to get close, because you wonder if their skin is as soft as it looks. That kind of thing.”

  I swallowed. “Oh.”

  “Why do you ask, Mary?” He stretched his arm along the back of the bench. “Are you having feelings?”

  “It’s for my friends,” I said hastily.

  “You have feelings for your friends?”

  “No! Not kissy feelings, anyway.” I blew out a breath before starting over. “I mean they’re counting on me to help them find dates for Winter Formal. Except Arden, of course. She’s all set.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “You already have someone in mind?”

  “Me?” I gave a nervous choke of laughter. “I barely know anyone.”

  Alex gestured at himself. “What am I, chopped liver?”

  My gaze fixed on the leaves at our feet, but not quickly enough to hide my blush. “I’m still new to all this. I don’t have your vast experience with affairs of the heart—” Crap. “I mean expertise. Which is why I asked you for help.” His expression remained dubious. “Like how an FBI agent might consult someone from the other side of the law to help with a tricky investigation.”

  “So I’m a serial killer, and you’re using my inside knowledge to catch a different murderer?”

  My shoulders slumped. It had sounded so persuasive when Terry talked about her crime shows. “I just remembered how you knew that Will guy was a dud.”

  He snorted under his breath.

  “Yes, well, it may have taken some of us a little longer to figure it out.”

  “That was the accent, probably. Happens to the best of us.” With the arm draped along the back of the bench—the one I’d been pretending not to notice, while secretly enjoying its warmth—he patted me on the back. “What you need is the opposite of him. Someone fun. Easygoing. Capable of smiling without spraining his jaw.” He tugged the end of my ponytail.

  “Of course,” I breathed, stunned by the undeniable brilliance of his suggestion. “If Will was a Cecil Vyse, then obviously the antidote is to find a George Emerson!”

  Alex frowned. “You lost me.”

  “It’s from a book,” I explained. “Cecil is the snobby upper-crust fiancé, and George is the one she ditches him for, because he’s authentic and passionate—the kind of person who goes skinny-dipping in the woods with some other guys and kisses Lucy in a field of violets.”

  “So he swings both ways?”

  It was my turn to frown. “I think the swimming scene is about being at home in nature and not bound by propriety and suffocating social strictures, but it’s possible I missed some subtext.” There was no time to worry about that now. Leaping to my feet, I offered Alex my hand. “Thank you.”

  His warm palm pressed against mine. When he didn’t let go, I tugged lightly, pulling him to his feet. My gaze traveled from our clasped hands to his face. “I should go in and do some . . . things,” I said faintly, swallowing against the sudden dryness in my throat.

  The pounding of my heart measured out the time as I waited for him to reply. The look in his eyes was impossible to read. Inside the house, the phone rang.

  “You probably need to get that.”

  It felt like there was a different question layered under that one, but I had no idea what he was asking or how to answer, so I nodded dumbly.

  Alex released my hand. I watched him disappear through the gate. Only then did I walk slowly toward my back door, and a phone that had long since stopped ringing.

  Dear Diary,

  It’s crazy how much personal grooming has changed over the centuries. Back when respectable young women couldn’t show so much as a glimpse of ankle, or leave the house without gloves, or do anything to their faces beyond the pinching of cheeks, there was no reason to shave or exfoliate or moisturize or trim your cuticles—never mind the concept of “contouring,” which I still find too daunting to try, no matter how many videos Arden shows me.

  Obviously I’m glad corsets have gone the way of the hoop skirt, but sometimes I think it would be easier to keep more of yourself under wraps, at least from a skin care perspective.

  M.P.M.

  Chapter 18

  Arden waited until my bare feet had been submerged in a bubbling basin of magenta-tinted water to drop her bombshell. “Mission accomplished.”

  Lydia lowered her magazine. “The mission of getting us to pay someone to paint our toenails? Even though it’s not sandal weather?”

  Halloween had passed, and the weather was chilly enough to make my feet flex with relief in the warm water. A little color and sparkle would not go amiss now that the world had taken on the brown and gray palette of late autumn. Even if that hint of brightness would mostly be hidden by socks.

  “I found him,” Arden said, ignoring Lydia’s jab. “Our George.” She paused to confer with her nail technician about which shade of turquoise she’d settled on. “The opposite of Will, who was really a what’s-his-name,” she explained, lifting one foot from the water and propping it on a towel.

  When I called to explain the idea, Arden had leaped immediately into planning mode, pausing only long enough to congratulate me on this stroke of genius. It seemed simpler not to muddy the waters by introducing Alex Ritter’s name.

  Lydia still looked confused.

  “Since Mary said we needed more of a Nature Boy type,” Arden reminded her.

  A picture formed in my head of one of those feral wolf children with the really long fingernails and matted hair.

  “Where did you find him?” Terry’s voice vibrated with the pummeling of the massage chair.

  “It was right after school. I happened to be walking past his car. Nature Boy’s, that is. Which of course was a Prius—”

  “Where was I?” Lydia interrupted.

  “Talking to your mom.” Arden held her hand to her face like a phone. “So he’s at his Prius, and I notice a big bag in back.”

  Terry leaned forward in her chair. “Were you worried?”

  “Not really? It was just a bag.”

  “You never know,” Terry pointed out, in her most reasonable tone. “It could have been full of ropes and duct tape.” The young man towel-drying her foot paused to stare.

/>   Arden shook her head. “I know it wasn’t anything weird because when we were talking he mentioned he was going to play disc golf in the park.”

  “You talked to this rando?” Lydia cut in.

  “He’s not a rando. My brother’s friend Tony used to play soccer with Jeff—a.k.a. Nature Boy—before he hurt his knee.”

  This explanation did not satisfy Lydia. “Didn’t he think it was weird having you suddenly chat him up for no reason?”

  “I did have a reason,” Arden informed her. “I was inviting him to our party.”

  “What party?” I asked, afraid I’d missed something.

  “The one I was going to plan if he said yes. But he was like, ‘Parties are not my scene.’” Arden relayed this in a rumbling bass before switching back to her normal voice. “I told him they weren’t necessarily our thing either. We just go to be sociable.” She smiled at her own cleverness. “Not bad, eh?”

  Lydia gave her a look. “That he’s not coming to your pretend party?”

  Arden waved this off. “There are plenty of other places we can hang out with him. For example, you know how Jeff is really into the environment?”

  The three of us glanced at each other before shaking our heads.

  “Remember, like the guy who swims naked outdoors? He’s all earthy and natural?”

  “Tell me you didn’t invite him to go streaking through the forest,” Lydia said, giving voice to my private fear.

  Arden sighed. “Give me some credit. While we were talking, I noticed that his car is covered with bumper stickers about saving the animals and clean water and ‘oh no, the trees’—that kind of thing. That’s where I got the idea, which by the way has nothing to do with public nudity.”

  The nail technicians weren’t even pretending not to hang on every word.

  Lydia fiddled with her remote control, turning up the setting on her chair. “What does it have to do with?”

  “Our club.”

  “We’re not in a club,” Lydia pointed out.

  “Yes, but Jeff doesn’t know that. Trust me, I made it sound convincing, but also casual. Oh hey, if you’re not doing anything Thursday, maybe you can stop by our amazing save-the-world club.” She fluttered her lashes aggressively.

  It took Terry several tries to regain control of her jaw, which had fallen slack. “Is that the actual name?”

  “I kept that part vague,” Arden assured us. “We can fill in the details later. He looked like he was trying to figure out how to say no, so I was like, ‘It’s just a few blocks away, at Mary Porter-Malcolm’s house.’ And it totally worked, because he got quiet for a second—probably thinking about baby seals—and then he was like, ‘What time?’ I said four o’clock,” she added, before we could ask. “Also, joining a club is totally on my list for Mary’s season.” She blew on her fingernails before pretending to buff them on her sweater. “That’s what you call multitasking.”

  “Sounds like you thought of everything,” Lydia muttered.

  Arden chose to ignore what sounded suspiciously like sarcasm. “All you have to do is make the flyer,” she told Lydia.

  “Our imaginary club needs an actual flyer?”

  “Just throw something together—pictures of animals, that kind of thing. Keep it vague. It doesn’t have to be your best work.”

  The look on Lydia’s face said she was about to object.

  “Or we could go to the coffeehouse where he plays guitar on Thursday nights,” Arden mused. “Apparently he’s working on a song cycle called ‘The March to Extinction.’”

  “Over my dead body,” Lydia snapped.

  Arden’s smile was just visible above the rim of her paper cup of tea. “Mary’s house it is.”

  Dear Diary,

  It’s not unusual to incorporate some degree of subterfuge in the courtship process, whether you’re talking about Cyrano writing love letters under someone else’s name or everyone in Shakespeare pretending to be their brother/cousin/uncle, etc. Basically, it’s a time-honored romantic tradition.

  Like Anton says, what’s more fun than a little cross-dressing?

  M.P.M.

  Chapter 19

  On Thursday afternoon I rushed home to start preparing while the other three printed copies of Lydia’s flyer for our alleged club, Concerned Citizens. Official slogan: For a Good Time, Do Good.

  I had time to push in chairs, straighten stacks of magazines and papers, and turn on the lights in the dining room before the doorbell rang. With a burst of laughter and rustling grocery bags my friends hurried inside.

  We put out bowls of sesame sticks, cashews, and wasabi peas, which Arden decided to combine into snack mix. There was seltzer for those who wanted it, and a plate of organic date rolls. Against my better judgment, Jasper and Bo had been prevailed upon to swell our numbers to something more club-like. Bo insisted on mood music, which he defined as “either Ella or Billie; I’m not picky.” Jasper found a compilation of Billie Holiday’s greatest hits.

  The snacks, the smooth jazz—it reminded me of something.

  “Feels like a faculty dinner party,” Jasper said, reading my mind. “Minus the cheap wine.”

  “And the old people making passive-aggressive comments about each other’s research,” Bo pointed out.

  Lydia held up a hand for silence. “Did you hear that?”

  We dashed to the front windows, peeking from behind the curtains as a male figure—presumably Jeff—bent to lock his mountain bike. Even from behind I could tell he was shaped differently from most of the guys at our school, his torso broadening into sculpted shoulders that strained against the confines of his T-shirt. I’d never pictured myself with someone buff, but I would do my best to keep an open mind. Assuming he even noticed me, rather than being instantly smitten with one of my friends.

  “At least he doesn’t look like he needs iron supplements,” Lydia muttered.

  No, Nature Boy wasn’t a Cecil Vyse. And while it was too soon to pronounce him Millville High’s answer to George Emerson, he at least appeared capable of climbing a tree, should the occasion arise. Then he straightened.

  “It’s him,” I said, as the back of his head came into view.

  Arden gave me a funny look. “Did you invite anyone else?”

  I shook my head, opting to play dumb rather than explain I hadn’t meant, Oh look, it’s Jeff! but Oh look, Jeff is Man Bun, a.k.a. the guy who’s been following Cam around!

  “If we could get that cowrie shell necklace off him we might have something,” Lydia observed as he took a long drink from the water bottle attached to his bike.

  Arden elbowed her. “Maybe Mary likes his necklace.”

  “Yeah,” Lydia scoffed. “She can get one just like it when he takes her to Burning Man.”

  We scurried away from the window as Jeff mounted the porch steps. When the knock sounded, Jasper slid toward the front door in his socks. My slight-framed brother looked Lilliputian next to our brawny visitor, who was gazing around the living room as though committing the details to memory. They’re bookshelves, I wanted to say. Full of books. Well, that and a pile of dirty field hockey gear, which Cam had brought home to wash on her off day from practice. Possibly I should have straightened that up.

  “Why don’t you sit here, Jeff?” Having led the way into the dining room, Arden indicated the chair she had in mind. “Help yourself to some snack mix. And Mary, you can sit right next to him.”

  “What about me?” Jasper asked. “Where should I sit?”

  In a different room. Sadly, my throat had gone too dry to translate this thought into speech. I tried to think of something else to say, but the only conversational gambit I could come up with was, What’s the deal with you and my sister?

  A door slammed overhead. Jeff’s head snapped up. After a moment of frozen stillness, he rose from his chair and moved toward the stairs as if pulled by a hooked line.

  The rapid staccato of footsteps identified the person descending as Cam. She hurtled three-quarters
of the way down before noticing Jeff. The moment seemed to swell, a bead of water expanding until it was too heavy to do anything but drop.

  “Cam,” he said. I shivered, never having heard my sister’s name spoken quite that way.

  Tearing her gaze from his, she cast a quick glance around the dining room, registering our presence.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him, hands fisted at her sides.

  “I wanted to see you.” He made no mention of Concerned Citizens. Apparently it had been as much a ruse for him as it was for us. Which was . . . only fair.

  Cam inhaled sharply. “No,” she said, sounding almost childlike in her defiance as she slipped past him.

  “Cam—” He reached for her, then seemed to think better of it. His arm fell to his side. “Please.”

  She stopped with her back to him, shoulders hunched. I’d never seen Cam shrink from anything in my life, including the perpetually enraged Doberman on the next block. Jasper and I exchanged baffled looks, eyebrows at maximum extension.

  Jeff walked slowly around Cam until he was facing her again, placing his weight as cautiously as though he were approaching a wild animal. Lowering his head, he tried in vain to catch her eye. “Can we talk about this?”

  Instead of taking him out with a reinforced elbow, Cam hesitated. The rest of us held our collective breath.

  “That’s all I’m asking,” Jeff said quietly. He must have sensed the glimmer of opportunity. I could practically hear the pounding of his heart, in time with the heaving of his muscular chest. Though he wasn’t on his knees, his attitude was definitely one of supplication.

  My sister relented so far as to look at him. Her complexion darkened. On anyone else, I would have called it a blush. She opened her mouth.

  Instead of speaking, she lunged for the door. A second later she was barreling down the front steps.

  “Cam!” Jeff shouted, giving chase. The screen door slammed behind him.

  We hurried to the window in time to watch them round the corner and disappear, running full out. I thought of what Alex said about crossing a room to talk to someone. To me it had sounded like a conscious decision-making process, but this felt a lot more visceral than that. Maybe attraction wasn’t just something that happened in your mind. It could be entirely literal; a physical compulsion.