Claudia and the Perfect Boy

  Yuck!

  Wasn’t there more to me than that? It sounded so uninteresting. I mean I don’t just love art. I LOVE art! I can’t look at a sunset without thinking about the best way to get that same effect with watercolors. I can’t even pick up a wad of Play-Doh when I’m baby-sitting without wanting to sculpt the face of the kid I’m sitting for. Art is who I am.

  But how could I write that in a letter to a guy I don’t know without sounding like a complete maniac? I didn’t want him to mark my letter, “obvious nut case,” and throw it in the trash.

  Even though I didn’t have the guts to write about my intense love of art in my letter, I was dreaming of finding a guy I could tell it to. Or, even better, someone who would know that and so many other things about me without my saying a word.

  I crumpled my letter and threw it under my bed. I tore another piece of paper from my spiral notebook and started again.

  Claudia here. Let me tell you about myself. I’m good-looking, pashionate about art, like laffter, friends, and I want too meet sumone who will like me as I am and not try to change me. From your ad I got the idea we mite have a lot in comon. There is nuthing to lose by finding out. Sincerly, Claudia Kishi.

  It wasn’t a whole lot better, but it would have to do.

  The next day I went to school early and wrote my letter on the computer. (Wow! Had I ever spelled a lot of words wrong. The Spellcheck was going wild.) I printed two copies of the letter and put each one in a stamped, addressed envelope. Then I ran outside and dropped them into the mailbox by the front door.

  Done. Now all I could do was wait.

  On my way to class, Emily Bernstein caught up with me in the hall. “Claudia, we’ve actually run out of copies of the paper,” she said. I wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad, but Emily seemed overjoyed, so I supposed it was good. “This has never happened before!” she went on.

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, why have you run out of copies? Did you make too few?”

  “It’s because of your column!” she cried. “We printed the same amount as always, but this week everyone is dying to read the paper. All the kids are talking about it. This issue practically disappeared within a half hour.”

  “It did?” I said. “And you think that’s because of the personals column?”

  “I’m sure of it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard kids talking. What have you been doing this morning?”

  I was too embarrassed to tell her the truth — that I’d been using the Express computer to respond to ads in my own column. “Nothing,” I said. “I just hadn’t heard anything about it.”

  “You will,” Emily assured me. “Good work. At lunchtime I’m going to put an extra box out in the hall to hold all the ads I expect to come flooding in. We definitely have to give you more space in the paper.”

  “This is pretty exciting,” I said. Exciting and a little unnerving. There’s something overwhelming about being responsible for a mountain of mail.

  It wasn’t long before I discovered for myself that what Emily had said was true. Everywhere I went that day, kids had the Express spread out in front of them. And those who didn’t seemed very intent on writing in their notebooks. I had the strange suspicion that they were all composing ads to put in Claudia’s Personals.

  Not only was my column a huge hit (or “a phenomenon,” as Emily called it that afternoon at lunch) but overnight I had become a celebrity. As I walked down the hall I noticed kids pointing me out to their friends. “That’s her,” I heard a bunch of sixth-grade girls whisper as I went by. It was fun. Yet, as I looked at all the faces looking at me, I mostly just wondered which of them was Great Guy and which was Good Listener. I hoped I’d hear from them soon.

  As it turned out, I did hear from them pretty quickly, although at the time I felt as if I’d waited an eternity. On Thursday evening, right after supper, my phone rang. “Hello, Claudia,” a boy’s voice said when I answered. “Guess who this is?”

  His voice was familiar, but I couldn’t put a face to it. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It’s me, G.G.”

  G.G? G.G.? I searched my brain for someone with those initials. “Great Guy?” I asked.

  “Give the lady a prize! You got it. I got your letter this afternoon and I think you’re absolutely right. We do have a lot in common.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You bet I do.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Just one great guy. How about meeting me tomorrow after school? We can go to a movie. Or maybe play some video games.”

  “I’m not big on video games,” I confessed.

  “If you want to have a lot in common with me, you have to love video games,” the boy said.

  I didn’t like his cocky attitude already. That’s when it hit me (like a sledgehammer). I did know this voice. Only, I really hoped the owner of the voice wasn’t who I thought it was. “I don’t want to offend you or anything if you’re not him but — is this Alan Gray?” I asked.

  “You guessed it!” He laughed.

  Alan Gray! Ew! Ick! I’d actually written to the most obnoxious, immature boy in the entire eighth grade! How mortifying!

  “Tell me, Claudia, what impressed you most about my ad?” he asked.

  “The post office box,” I lied. “How did you get a post office box?”

  “It’s my dad’s. He runs a mail order business from our house and he doesn’t want all the customer mail coming there.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you.”

  “Hey, wait a minute. What about our date?”

  “Are you serious, Alan?”

  “Sure. You answered my ad didn’t you?”

  Alan may be a major dweeb, but there was no reason to be rude to him. So I said, “Alan, I can’t go out with you because I already know a girl who is crazy about you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes,” I said. “She’d really feel betrayed if I went out with you since she’s confided how she feels to me. If I’d known the ad was from you I’d never have written since this other girl really can’t wait to go out with you. You understand how it is.”

  “Who is this other girl?”

  “I can’t tell you, but I’m sure you’ll be getting a letter from her very shortly,” I said. (Which was true. Someone was bound to answer his ad.)

  “All right. I understand,” said Alan. “So long.”

  “So long.”

  Whew! Thank goodness I’d found a way to wriggle out of that one. Not only would a date with Alan Gray have been a nightmare, but I’d have wanted to die if anyone had seen us together.

  I didn’t hear from Good Listener until Friday night. “Hi, Claudia, this is Brian Hall. You might know me as Good Listener.”

  “Hi,” I said. I had a sort-of idea who Brian Hall was. At least I knew what he looked like. He’d come to SMS at the end of seventh grade and he wasn’t in any of my classes this year, but I knew he was very cute — tall with sandy blond hair and an athletic build.

  “I got your letter this afternoon and I was pretty excited to hear from you.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Sure, since your column came out everyone knows who you are. But I’ve known who you are for a while. I’ve always wanted to ask you out, but since we don’t know one another, I didn’t know how to do it.”

  “Wow,” I said, flattered.

  “Anyway, when I got your letter I could hardly believe it. It was good luck, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied. Good luck? No way. It was destiny. This was meant to be. It was so obvious.

  “I was thinking we could meet at the Rosebud Café for lunch tomorrow,” he said. The Rosebud Café is one of the coolest places in Stoneybrook. I adore it. It didn’t surprise me that he’d picked it since I could tell he was Mr. Perfect. And Mr. Perfect was sure to pick the perfect place.

  “Sounds great,” I said. “What time?”

  “One o’cl
ock?”

  “No problem. I’ll meet you there.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said.

  Neither could I.

  “Mom, you can’t,” I protested as my mother pulled up in front of the Rosebud Café the next day.

  “I can and I will,” Mom insisted. “I am sitting right here until you introduce me to this boy. That was the deal we made last night, Claudia. Or did you forget?”

  “No, I didn’t forget,” I grumbled. You would think I was going to my prom instead of spending a Saturday afternoon at the Rosebud Café. “But it’s not like this is even a date.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “Meeting someone for lunch.”

  “Meeting a boy for lunch,” she corrected me. “That’s a date.”

  I sighed in exasperation and slumped down in my seat. This was going to be really embarrassing. What good was it that I’d spent hours putting together an outfit if my mother was going to make me look like an infant before the lunch even started. (I’d settled on a long white shirt under a green tapestry vest, green corduroy pants, and low boots.)

  Just then I noticed Brian walking toward the front door of the Rosebud Café. “That’s him!” I told Mom as I practically leapt out of the car.

  Immediately I was hit by a blast of cold wind, although I hardly noticed it. I was so nervous! “Brian, hi,” I said.

  He smiled, and judging from his expression, he was a little nervous, too. “I know this is totally a drag, but would you mind saying hello to my mother? She’s kind of insisting on it.”

  “Sure,” he replied with a forced-looking smile. (Who could blame him for not relishing the idea?) He walked around to the driver’s side of the car as Mom rolled down the window. “Hello, Mrs. Kishi,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Brian Hall.”

  Mom shook his hand and I could tell from her smile that she approved of Brian. Why not? He was the picture of clean-cut good looks. His hair was short and neat, but not too short. His clothes looked pressed. He even smelled lightly of cologne. “Pleased to meet you,” Mom said. “You kids have a nice lunch. I’ll be back for Claudia at two-thirty.” With that, she rolled up the window and drove off to do some work at the library. (She’s the head librarian at the Stoneybrook Public Library.)

  “Thanks,” I said to Brian.

  “No problem. Let’s go have some lunch.” On the way in, he held the door for me and he helped me out of my jacket when we got inside. I was pretty impressed.

  In fact, Brian’s old-fashioned manners seemed to fit perfectly with the Rosebud Café’s old-fashioned decor. With a little imagination you could pretend you were back in the 1940s. The café even has a real soda fountain.

  The hostess brought us to a table. Brian pulled out my seat for me and then sat down himself. Looking at the menu and then ordering gave us something to do at first. (I ordered fries, a hamburger, and a milkshake. He ordered an egg salad sandwich on whole wheat bread and a glass of milk. Yuck!) But finally the moment came when we had to make conversation.

  It was not easy.

  For a half minute or so (the longest half minute of my life) we just looked at each other. Then I remembered he was a Good Listener, so I figured it was up to me to talk. “Where did you live before you moved to Stoneybrook?” I asked.

  “In New York, on Long Island.”

  “Why did you move?”

  “Dad changed jobs.”

  “What does your dad do?”

  “He’s an accountant.”

  “Oh. Does he like accounting?”

  “I think so.”

  More silence. He smiled. I smiled. As I smiled, I tried desperately to think of something else to ask him. “Your ad says you like to sketch. So do I. What do you sketch?”

  “Model cars mostly. I like to assemble them, too. Then I sketch them.”

  “What do you do with your sketches?”

  “I keep them in a notebook so I can remember which cars I have in my collection.”

  “Is it hard to put together the models?”

  “No, they come in kits. The directions tell you exactly what to do. They tell you what colors to paint them and where to put the decals. It’s all there for you.”

  Where’s the fun in that? That’s what I was thinking, but, of course, I didn’t know him well enough to say that. Here I thought I’d found this artistic guy, and he was sketching model cars which he put together with instructions! Not exactly what I had in mind. “Do you think you’d ever like to sketch anything else?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “Oh, you would?” I said, brightening.

  “Yeah. I’m thinking of getting into model jets. Then I would sketch those and start a separate book for them. I just bought a fighter jet kit but I haven’t opened the box yet.”

  “I see,” I said. But what I couldn’t see was sitting around with some guy handing him little tiny plastic pieces and telling him, “This is piece one hundred and five, the back wing flap.” It was not my idea of a fun or creative time.

  Luckily, our orders arrived then. While I chewed, he neatly cut the crusts off his whole wheat bread. At least it gave us something to do. I hoped that since my mouth was full, he might attempt some conversation. He didn’t.

  “So, you like stand-up comedy,” I said in between bites.

  Brian nodded. “Yeah. I really like people who can make me laugh.”

  So did I. But neither of us was doing much laughing. I tried to think of something funny to tell him, but somehow I just wasn’t feeling funny. I suppose it had been dumb of me to assume that because he liked comedy, he, himself, was funny.

  Okay, so he wasn’t really artistic and he wasn’t funny. And although he was a good listener, he didn’t appear particularly interested in me. I was the one asking all the questions. So far he hadn’t asked me a single thing about myself. And since he didn’t ask, I didn’t feel particularly comfortable talking about myself. You only tell someone about yourself if they seem interested. (He hadn’t even commented on my dangly Native American beaded earrings which he must have noticed. So much for finding a guy who was interested in fashion.) Even though the other boys I’d liked in the past hadn’t been Mr. Perfects, they had been a whole lot easier to talk to than Brian.

  And want to hear something strange? Brian was starting to look much less handsome to me. I noticed that his eyes were too close together. His nose which I’d originally thought was perfect, now looked too sharp. Even his straight mouth was beginning to look pinched. I also decided his muscles were too close to the bulgy sort I hated.

  I sneaked a quick peek under the table at my purple plastic watch. It was only one-thirty! What were we going to talk about for another entire hour?

  “I like to swim,” I said, remembering he’d said he enjoyed swimming in his ad.

  “Yeah, swimming is fun.” He wiped some egg salad from his chin. “Do you race?”

  “No, I never have.”

  “I was on the swim team back in Long Island. I was their best butterflier.”

  “Butterflier?”

  “Yeah, you know, the butterfly stroke. You raise both arms at the same time, unlike the Australian crawl where you alternate arms. It takes a lot of upper body strength and I’ve always been good in that area. I like to lift weights, too. I think it’s important to keep in shape.” That explained the too bulgy muscles.

  The waiter cleared our plates and asked if we wanted dessert. I was stuffed, but I ordered some ice cream out of desperation. At least with food in front of us we’d have something to do.

  Conversation dragged all through dessert. Brian wasn’t a bad guy. He was nice and he did have interests, but he wasn’t my Mr. Perfect. Not even close.

  At about two-fifteen, I couldn’t take it any longer. “I’d better get outside and wait for Mom,” I said. “She really hates to be kept waiting.”

  I suppose Brian wasn’t having the time of his life, either, because he didn’t argue or try to drag the date out to the la
st minute. He just asked the waiter for the check and insisted on paying it, although I offered to pay half.

  As we were standing up, the sound of loud laughter caused me to look over at a table near the door. There was Liza Shore, otherwise known as Big-Boned Beauty, sitting with a short guy with thick glasses. They were holding hands across the table and seemed to be having a lot of fun.

  “Claudia!” Liza called, catching sight of me. I suppose this was another instance of my overnight fame, since Liza and I had never officially met.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Claudia, you should be proud of yourself,” Liza said. “Nathan and I met through your column. He answered my ad and we’ve been having a great time together, haven’t we, Nathan?”

  “We sure have,” Nathan agreed. “I knew I didn’t meet Liza’s height requirement but I’m fascinated by ancient Egypt and it’s rare to find a girl who is, so I took a chance.”

  “Next week our parents have arranged to drive us to New York so we can see the Egyptian exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum,” Liza said. “We’ve been at the library all morning looking up facts about the Egyptians so we’ll be prepared. Did you know that many of the pharoahs were believed to be quite short?”

  “Although some think Cleopatra herself was a big-boned beauty,” added Nathan.

  “Thanks, Claudia, for getting us together,” Liza said.

  “You’re welcome,” I replied. Even though they made a sort of goofy couple, it was great to see two people who hit it off so well — unlike Brian and me.

  Brian brought me my jacket and we went outside. “They found each other through my column,” I told him.

  “That’s nice,” he replied.

  We stood in front of the Rosebud Café and waited for my mother to arrive. Yeah, I thought to myself. It was nice. Lucky them.

  Julie Stern stood up from her slanted artist’s desk and walked to me with a worried look on her face. Julie is the layout artist for the Express, which means she’s responsible for taking all the material the printer sends back to her and making sure it fits into the paper in an attractive way. “It’s still too long, Claudia,” she said. “I can’t fit all these ads into the space I have.”