“The world’s first Jewish nun,” I mused, staring into space. “I could be famous!”
Audre snorted, and I gave her a light shove.
“Anyway, what are you complaining about?” I added. “At least you’ve been kissed, dork.”
She groaned. “Derek Dawson does not count.” Freshman year, Audre sort of dated this skinny soccer player with curly hair and braces, but she dumped him when he didn’t know what brioche was. (And people think I’m picky). Derek has filled out, lost the braces, and in my opinion gotten pretty good-looking—and I’m positive he still likes Audre. I’m always telling her to give him another chance. Or at least another kiss.
Fact: Being sixteen and kissless is beyond depressing. I obsessed over it constantly. On the one hand, kissing seemed so easy: a boy’s lips against yours. But then, it seemed scary and impossible. How did you figure out the angle at which to tilt your head, or where your nose went? And how did you even get to that point, when you were close enough to a boy to see the shape of his mouth, and feel his warm breath, and be sure that he was going to lean in and … do it?
“What did you think of Neil and James, those Hart Crane guys?” Audre was asking as we got up off the bench and headed for home. “Lame, huh?”
My mind jumped from kisses to the boys in question. What would it be like to kiss James? I wondered, then shook my head. Where had that thought come from? My cheeks got very hot for a second, then went back to normal.
“Lame,” I agreed. “Totally lame.”
Four
Speaking of lame, picture this:
Saturday night, the first weekend in March. I, Norah Bloom, am sitting in a packed, very happening Park Slope bar called Art House. It’s the only bar in the neighborhood that doesn’t card, so tons of high school kids are there, cramming into the striped booths, flirting in front of the kitschy movie posters, and sitting on the polka-dot bar stools. The music—old-school hip-hop, which I love—is thumping, and tons of people, including some of my closest friends, are getting down on the circular dance floor. But I am tucked away in a corner booth … reading.
Yes, reading.
Let me backtrack. Audre’s awesome big brother, Langston—awesome because he buys us beer and has long dreads, a sparkling smile, and tons of hotness to spare—was on spring break from Yale and throwing a “Come As You Aren’t” birthday party at Art House.
Langston’s costume birthday bashes at Art House—which he’s been doing every year since high school—are practically legendary, so even Scott travels to Brooklyn for them. Last year’s theme was “Bonnie & Clyde,” and when Scott showed up in his gangster outfit, he got three guys’ numbers. (Audre and I came as flappers, but all we got were skeezy stares from freshman boys at the bar.)
This year, Scott had dressed as a football jock, complete with shoulder pads and a helmet. And Audre had come dressed as a good girl—pigtails, white button-down shirt, plaid skirt, knee socks, the works. This costume was sort of silly because, as Scott and I had pointed out, Audre is a good girl. But, like most people, I guess Aud prefers to imagine she’s naughtier than she actually is.
As for me, I’d come—with Stacey’s help—as a Plum. My sister had cajoled me into a cashmere white halter dress and pointy-toed sling-backs. My hair fell loose around my shoulders, my eyes were smudged with liner, and my lips were glossy. The outfit had seemed funny at home, but the instant I’d entered the bar on Scott’s arm, I’d felt naked and completely uncomfortable. Wearing a backless dress while pressing up against a million sweaty, dancing bodies is not a good plan. And no matter how firmly Scott insisted that I looked “hot,” I suddenly wanted nothing more than to hide away forever.
I’m not a big party person.
Thank God I’d come prepared: In my beaded bag was a copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I was loving. So, as soon as Audre and Scott took their virgin martinis to the dance floor, I made my escape. It’s not as bad as actually leaving Art House, I told myself as I settled down with the book. Still, I knew if Audre found me she’d strangle me for being so antisocial. But when I leaned over the flickering tea lights and started reading, I forgot about Audre and everyone else. I was turning to the last page when—
“Can I steal your light?”
“Huh?” Blinking, I lifted my head and saw a boy sitting in the booth across from me, half-reaching for the candle.
“Norah?” he asked, looking even more surprised than I felt.
He knew me? Still out of it, I took in the boy’s rumpled shirt, blue eyes, and tousled dark hair. Hello! It was James, from the book group.
But what was he doing here?
Then I noticed he was holding a pen, and on the table in front of him was a napkin he’d clearly been writing on. Again. I squinted, trying to make out the words.
“Are you … writing poetry?” I asked, my voice disdainful. “At a bar?” What a weirdo, I almost added.
James stared at me blankly, and then his face broke into a slow smile. “Are you … reading?” he shot back. “At a bar?”
Oh, God. My cheeks flamed. He had a point.
We were both weirdos.
I started giggling. “Sorry. Pot, kettle, black, right?”
He nodded. “Isn’t that a Wilco song?”
I grinned. “They’re one of my favorite bands.” Our eyes met for an instant, and I felt a weird, almost electric zing of energy.
I didn’t think James felt anything, though, because he glanced away and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. I, um, I didn’t recognize you at first.”
Right. My skimpy halter dress. I felt a rush of embarrassment and tried as hard as I could not to wrap my arms around my seminude self.
“Oh,” I blurted. “Yeah. This isn’t, like, me.”
Great, Norah. Way to make sense there.
But when I saw James’s mouth turn up in a crooked grin, I realized he got what I meant. Sort of. Relaxing a bit, I explained about Langston’s “Come As You Aren’t” bash, and James confessed that he’d also escaped—from a crappy game of pool at the other end of the bar.
After he’d pointed out said pool game—which Neil from the book group and a group of other boys were playing—James then gestured to the book in my hand. “I just finished,” he said. “What do you think?”
“It kicks ass, doesn’t it?” I asked excitedly, and James nodded, his face lighting up.
And then we jumped into the best conversation I’d ever had in my life.
We talked about different novels and poems—stuff we’d loved, or hated. We both agreed that Virginia Euwer Wolff was phenomenal, but James preferred True Believer, while I liked Make Lemonade. We quoted e.e. cummings to each other, and laughed when we messed up on the same lines (“the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses …”). And it felt—I know it’s dorky, so I apologize in advance—like our own private book group. This is me, I thought, forgetting my outfit and makeup, and feeling happily flushed. I hadn’t imagined I could ever talk about books like this with a boy. Most guys I knew at Millay didn’t read much, except maybe for graphic novels. James was different.
“I’ll read basically anything,” he said with a shrug, smiling shyly.
But probably not trashy romances. Suddenly I pictured him bent over an Irene O’Dell paperback, his dark hair in his eyes, and I bit back a laugh. Then I wondered if his room looked like mine—heaps of books everywhere—but thinking about James’s bedroom made me blush, in a very junior high way. To get my mind off the James-plus-bed equation, I asked him if he liked the poet Philippa Askance.
“She’s amazing,” James replied. “And not just ’cause she’s cute.” Now he blushed, ducking his head.
My heart was suddenly knocking hard against my ribs, as if it were trying to get my attention. Was it because I wanted James to say … I was cute?
“Cutie! Where were you all this time?”
I glanced up in a daze to see Scott standing at my elbow, holdin
g his football helmet. The dance floor behind him was almost empty, and Audre and Langston were putting on their coats. How long had James and I been talking? I hadn’t even remembered to get nervous, like I usually do around boys. And the strange thing was, I didn’t want us to stop talking. I bit my lip, trying to think of a polite way to ask Scott to disappear.
But then James was getting to his feet, napkin poem in hand. My stomach sank. That was it? Maybe he hadn’t thought our conversation was all that incredible. I sized him up. Now that James was standing, I saw how tall he was, and how his shoulders, under his dark blue T-shirt, were broad. I felt a tingling along my limbs.
The first time I’d seen him, I hadn’t thought James was hot.
Clearly, I’d been insane.
He glanced at me and Scott and gave us a short nod, in that typical boy way—it’s like they can’t speak the words “hi” or “bye” so they just nod. I hate it.
But before James turned to go, he said, “See you at the next meeting, Norah?”
The sound of my name in his voice—which was surprisingly deep—made my heart skip a couple of beats. I’d never paid so much attention to my heart before.
I managed to nod, he loped off, and Scott plunked down into his empty seat.
“Love connection?” he teased, grinning.
I shrugged, feeling shaky. “Nah. We just chatted,” I covered, not really wanting to explain my spinning feelings. I didn’t know what had happened between me and James. But I did know that I couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book group.
Five
“I hated it,” Francesca announced the minute our meeting began. She threw her copy of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time on the Book Nook’s table and shuddered, like the book was contagious. “The worst thing I’ve ever read.” Then she reached into her tiny metallic clutch to pull out a tube of lip gloss.
Fiddling with the round buttons on my vintage blouse, I peeked into my clothbound journal. Last night, I’d brainstormed a bunch of discussion questions like “Who was your favorite character?” and “What do you think the ending meant?” Now the questions seemed loser-ish.
“Did anybody like it?” I asked, looking at the faces around me.
Audre was taking her homemade chocolate bark out of a Baggie so she could avoid my eyes. She’d already told me the night before that she thought the book was bizarre.
Scott smiled sheepishly behind his bag of Veggie booty and whispered, “I didn’t have time to finish it.”
Neil was ignoring everyone and reading The Fellowship of the Ring, which said it all.
And James wasn’t there.
Where is he? I wondered. I was dying to ask Neil but I didn’t want to seem desperate. I glanced outside the windows at the raging late March rainstorm. Maybe James had been struck by lightning? Or, more likely, he’d just dropped out. Sure, he’d said See you at the next meeting, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d probably decided I was a complete nerd after we’d talked at Art House. By now he’d joined a new, mind-blowing book group, led by a busty girl with shimmery blond hair who was as good at English as she was at kissing—
“Sorry I’m late.”
My stomach jumped as I turned around. James was standing at the table, hands in the pockets of his baggy khakis. I’d never been happier to see anyone in my life. He was soaking wet; his dark hair was plastered to his head and his lashes—long for a boy’s—were damp with droplets of water. When he sat down, he pulled his sweatshirt off over his head. He had on a plain white T-shirt underneath. When he caught me staring, he raised his eyebrows, and I looked away. He didn’t at all acknowledge the fact that we’d met at Art House a couple of weeks before.
And suddenly I recognized the symptoms I’d had over the past two weeks: trembling knees, fluttery breath, flushed cheeks. I’d thought I was coming down with a cold. But no.
I had a crush on James.
A bad one.
When I get crushes they famously go nowhere—sometimes because I do something stupid to mess them up, but usually because the boy just isn’t into me. My last crush was on Seamus Higgins, who edited Blank Canvas. He had a dark goatee and smelled like clove cigarettes and once in a while he’d smile at me. My hopes crashed and burned one afternoon when I walked in on him and Lydia Rivera, the copy editor, making out in the Blank Canvas office. Seamus had glanced up and snapped, “Could you leave, Nina?” I left and went home and wrote dumb things like “Love = Pain” in my cloth-bound journal and listened to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and decided that I’d never fall for a stupid boy again. But crushes, like colds, usually sneak up on you when you least expect them.
“Ms. Bloom,” Scott said in a British accent, popping a handful of Veggie Booty into his mouth. “Aren’t you going to scold Sir James for being tardy?” Scott only whips out his fake accents when he wants to tease me; ever since Art House, his big joke was that James and I were secret lovers. I shot Scott a glare, but he was saved by his cell phone ringing. When he glanced at the number on the screen, he excused himself from the table.
Whew.
“I had to walk my little sister to her dance class,” James explained, unfolding a copy of the Onion in his lap.
Terrifie. On top of everything else, he had to be the perfect big brother. Couldn’t he have said he’d been at rugby practice and totally turned me off?
“You’re right on time,” Francesca breathed, smiling at James. Was she flirting with him? Maybe she’d noticed his secret hotness too. But wasn’t she more into Griffin? “I was just about to give my ideas for the next meeting,” she added coyly.
Who asked you? I thought. We hadn’t even discussed the first book yet. I felt it in the pit of my stomach: Things were going downhill, and fast.
Tossing her hair, Francesca unfolded a pink piece of paper and carefully read out loud: “The A-List, The Au Pairs, Summer Boys, South Beach, Sloppy Firsts, The Devil Wears Prada—”
“Whoa,” I cut in, taken aback by her chick-lit bonanza. I thought I saw James glance at me and smile, but then he went back to reading the paper.
Francesca narrowed her eyes. “Are you making fun of me, Norah?”
“No, but you just listed like a million books!” I replied, rolling my eyes. Paranoid much?
Audre, who was already in a pissy mood after seeing Griffin quickly kiss Francesca on the lips when she’d arrived that day, crossed her arms over her chest, her red plastic bracelets clinking together. “You mean you actually care what we read?” she asked Francesca.
Oh, boy. Here we went again.
Francesca’s gray eyes blazed. “Excuse me?”
“How about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Neil piped up, still clinging to his sci-fi dreams.
“I’ve read that already,” Francesca said distractedly, clearly eager to get back to Audre. Then her cheeks turned pink and she glanced quickly at Neil. “Or not,” she added snidely. “Why would I bother with some ridiculous book about androids?”
I studied Francesca, wondering why she’d snapped at Neil so abruptly.
But Audre didn’t seem to notice; she was on a roll. “We all know why you really joined this group,” she told Francesca.
Francesca’s normally tan skin looked paler than usual as she turned back to Audre. “What … are you … talking about?” she whispered.
“You joined for college, right?” I jumped in, hoping to stop Audre before she went off on a Griffin rant. “I mean, to put on your record? That’s why I—”
“No,” Francesca replied curtly. “I already got in early to Dartmouth.”
Dartmouth? How? Had she slept with the admissions officer?
Then, for a crazy second, I wondered if Francesca had been sentenced to this book group by some vindictive guidance counselor. Maybe she’d gotten into trouble at school and this was her punishment—a kind of community-outreach to geeks.
“Please. The real reason is Griffin,” Audre spat. “All you care about is getting your claws into—” br />
“I heard my name.”
Griffin, forever the master of bad timing, appeared, carrying a bunch of steaming coffee mugs. He set them down and stole a piece of chocolate bark from Audre. “How are my favorite book lovers?” he asked with a wide smile.
All of a sudden I felt like crying. Griffin had been so sweet helping me start the group, and now the whole thing was going down the toilet. Nobody liked the first book. Scott was too busy. Francesca and Audre were going to strangle each other. Neil only lived for sci-fi. And James … James was weird and unpredictable, and my crush on him was only going to lead to disaster when he inevitably rejected me.