Claudia and the Perfect Boy

  “Uh-oh,” said Stacey who was sitting beside me at my desk, helping me sift through the ads.

  “But I thought we had extra space this issue,” I replied. This was the third installment of Claudia’s Personals and the staff had voted to give me an extra half a page. I sure needed it in order to deal with the ton of ads I was getting. The kids sounded so eager to make contact with each other that I hated forcing them to wait several issues to see their ads. But, that was just how it would have to be.

  Julie laid the large white board she’d been working on across my desk. Each board was divided in two by a blue line and represented two pages of the newspaper. Julie was taking the typeset material she’d received from the printer and cutting it into columns the way it would look in the actual paper. “I’ve used every inch of the extra space we gave you,” Julie insisted. “You’re going to have to cut at least four ads. I need to lose about twenty lines.”

  “Four ads!” I cried. “I just can’t. As it is, some of those letters have been sitting in my box since the very first issue.”

  “Sorry, Claudia,” Julie said. “Maybe you can shorten each ad. That way you won’t have to cut anyone completely out.”

  “We’ve already shortened them,” I told her. Stacey and I had worked for hours to get each letter down to its most compact form before typing them up and handing them in.

  “We’ll have to shorten them again,” Stacey said with a resigned sigh.

  “The paper is supposed to go to bed tonight,” Julie told us. “We don’t have time to reprint anything. Can you make the cuts right now?”

  “How?” I asked, confused.

  “Cross out the lines you don’t want, then I’ll cut them out with my X-Acto knife,” she said, holding up what looked like a sharp metal pencil with a slanted razor blade at the end. I’d used an X-Acto knife once when I was working on a collage in art class. The knife is extremely sharp and made for very precise, delicate cutting.

  “You know, maybe it would be easier if I did the cutting myself,” I suggested. “That way I could take a little from here and a little from there instead of driving you crazy with every change.”

  Julie looked anxiously at the wall clock. It was already four. “Okay,” she agreed. “I have so much other material to lay out, that that would help me a lot. Let me show you how.” Julie gave us a quick course on cutting and pasting lines together with the knife and a clear glue which came in a metal can with a brush attached to the top.

  Stacey and I set to work. We started by taking out single words at the ends of sentences that took up an entire line. (Emily had told me those were called widows in editorial talk.) Then, each ad kid lost one of their great characteristics. Raven-tressed, history buff with romantic streak, became history buff with romantic streak, as I carefully cut out the word Raven-tressed.

  “It’s okay with me if she loses her raven tresses, but now we need a capital H for history,” Stacey pointed out.

  “We can cut this big H from Hang-tough Harry’s name,” I said. “But should we call him just Hang-tough or just Harry?”

  “Cut out Hang-tough,” said Stacey. “It’s longer so we’ll save more space that way.” So, using the knife, I cut out the word Hang-tough and then gingerly cut out the capital H and brought it to where we needed the H for history buff.

  “This isn’t so hard,” I said, proud of how quickly I was picking up the knack of cutting and pasting.

  “It’s a good thing you’re an artist,” Stacey commented as she watched over my shoulder. “Not everyone would have a steady enough hand to make those letters look straight. I don’t think I would.”

  “No? To me, this is a snap,” I said confidently.

  Well, that’s what I thought at first. But an hour later my eyes were crossing from peering down at all those little letters, and my fingers were sticking together from the glue I was using to piece everything in place. “I’m losing my mind,” I complained to Stacey as I rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands.

  “Me, too,” Stacey agreed with a yawn. “Maybe we could just take out this ad Mary Anne put in for Logan. She’s our friend. She’d understand.”

  “We can’t. I promised her I’d run it.” Bleary-eyed, I peered down at Mary Anne’s ad. Your cuddly kitten will love you furever. Call The Tig at 555-8456. Mary Anne thought it would be fun to send Logan a secret love message through the column. She’d used the nickname Logan sometimes used for her, which was also the name of her cat, Tigger. “If I cut out the word cuddly I can move Call The Tig at 555-8456 up a line and get rid of a whole line,” I said, cutting as I spoke. I did the cutting and moved the words around. “I can do it with the ad above it, too,” I realized, and cut that apart, as well.

  I was just about to paste all my snipped words into place when I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I jumped, sending the column onto the floor.

  “Sorry,” said Emily, kneeling to help me pick up the small pieces of paper which had scattered. “Are you done with that? The printer is here to pick up the mechanicals.” (Mechanicals is more newspaper talk for the boards on which the printing is laid down.)

  “I think so,” I said, jamming the words back into position and quickly pasting them in place.

  Emily looked over my work. “You did that like a real pro, Claudia. It looks great.”

  “Claudia’s a natural with anything connected to art,” Stacey said.

  “Would you ever be interested in doing layout work for the paper?” Emily asked me.

  I smiled wearily. “Not as long as Claudia’s Personals keeps me busy. I don’t think I could handle anything else. But if you ever cancel the column, I could help with the layout.”

  “There’s no way this column is getting canceled,” said Emily, taking the mechanical from me. “It’s the hottest thing in the whole paper.”

  Emily went to the door to talk to the printer and I slumped down in my chair, feeling beat. “Well, we did it,” said Stacey, stretching. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Good idea. But I’m too tired to move.”

  Stacey pulled me out of my chair. “Come on.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go.” Outside the school, a blast of cold winter air woke me up. But when I reached my house, I was tired all over again. My mind was swimming with little words and letters. If I shut my eyes I could almost see the letters floating around in front of me. I had to give Julie Stern a lot of credit. Laying out that newspaper was hard work.

  The next morning when I arrived at school, Claudia’s Personals was once again all anyone was talking about. Everyone had a copy of the Express. “How do they print it up so fast?” I asked Emily when I saw her in the hall.

  “They have a staff that works all night,” Emily told me. “And they have this amazing, gigantic computerized photocopier that can print them up super fast once they have a master copy of each page. It does everything—print, put the pages together, even staple them. It’s not as professional as a real newspaper or magazine, but I think it looks pretty good. By the way, at the next student council meeting, I’m going to ask for more money so we can print more issues each week. We used to need only a certain number of copies of the paper. Now, because of your column, every single kid wants a copy.”

  “Are you glad about that, or is it a big pain in the neck for you?” I asked.

  “No! I’m really glad,” said Emily. “Each year the school board has been chopping out more and more after-school activities so they can save money. If the paper is really popular it won’t get cut. Your column is the best thing that could have happened to the SMS Express.”

  “I’m glad, too, then,” I said. Funny, I’d thought up this column to find Mr. Perfect. But, I was really starting to care about the paper, to feel like a part of it.

  By lunchtime I was in a great mood. I was glad that I’d contributed something to the paper, I was enjoying being famous among the students, and I was momentarily not thinking about my failure to find Mr. Perfect. As I wal
ked into the cafeteria, though, my good mood melted when I saw Mary Anne’s puffy, tear-stained face.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, slipping into a chair at the table where Mary Anne sat with Stacey and Kristy.

  “Logan won’t speak to Mary Anne all of a sudden,” Kristy said.

  “Why not?”

  Mary Anne burst into tears. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  On Friday, Stacey and I lay draped across my bed waiting for everyone else to arrive for the BSC meeting. We were feeling pretty down because of Mary Anne. “I hope she can survive this,” I said as I turned a page of the Express. Stacey and I were flipping through it as we talked, not paying much attention to anything in it. ”She’s so upset.”

  “I’d be upset, too,” said Stacey. “Logan won’t even tell her why he’s so mad. That would drive me crazy.”

  “Me, too,” I agreed. “And it’s not like Logan to act this way. What could possibly be wrong?”

  “Beats me.”

  Stacey and I stopped talking and started thumbing through the paper. I hasn’t even looked at my column since it came out (after all, I knew what was in it). I decided to see how my cut and paste work looked.

  That’s when I saw it.

  “Oh, no,” I said, feeling my cheeks go pale.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Look at Mary Anne’s ad,” I told her, feeling sick to my stomach.

  Stacey’s eyes opened wide as she looked down at her copy of the paper. “Oh, no. You pasted Call the Tig onto the ad above it.”

  The ad now said: Fed up girl with dud boyfriend looking to make a switch. I’m pretty, petite, and sweet. Call The Tig at 555-8456.

  The ad below it said: Your kitten will love you furever. Call Starting Fresh at 555-9302.

  “I want to die,” I said, covering my face with my hands.

  “It certainly explains why —” Stacey began. She cut herself off as Mary Anne entered the room. Mary Anne had dark circles under her eyes and looked as if she hadn’t slept since Wednesday.

  “What explains what?” she asked glumly as she plunked herself down on the end of the bed.

  Stacey and I exchanged anxious glances. But before I could answer her, Mary Anne continued, “As if things aren’t already weird enough, this afternoon I got a call from some boy wanting a date. He called me The Tig and everything. Logan is the only one who calls me that. Do you think he could be telling guys to call me? Like … like … he wants to get rid of me for good.” A tear trickled down Mary Anne’s cheek.

  “Mary Anne, I’m sure that’s not it,” Stacey said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  It was time for me to confess my mistake. “Check out your ad and the ad above it,” I said, handing her the paper. “It was a mistake. Honest, Mary Anne. I only saw it myself a minute ago.”

  Mary Anne’s brows knit in confusion as she read the ads. “How did this happen?” she asked.

  I explained to her about the deadline rush and my quick cut and paste job. When I had finished, Mary Anne smiled — and then started to cry. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this,” she said through her tears. “I’ve been so upset about Logan, I didn’t even look at the paper.”

  “Don’t cry, please,” I pleaded. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say. I’m just so, so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Mary Anne replied. “I’m so relieved. But poor Logan. He must be so hurt. Why didn’t he talk to me?”

  “I guess he thought you were fed up with him,” Stacey pointed out.

  “Poor Logan,” Mary Anne said again. “Now I’m going to have to write him a note and hope he reads it.”

  “Maybe he’ll talk to me,” I said. “I could explain everything to him.”

  “Would you?” Mary Anne asked.

  “I think I owe you that much,” I said, picking up the phone and dialing Logan’s number.

  When Logan heard my voice, he was immediately defensive. “If you’ve called about a baby-sitting job, fine. If you want to talk about Mary Anne, forget it.”

  “Wait! Don’t hang up! This whole thing is my fault.” I told him what had happened. “And if you don’t believe me, check with Emily Bernstein or Julie Stern. They were there and they know I was cutting and pasting in a hurry. Emily might even remember how I dropped the mechanical board since she helped me pick it up.”

  At that moment, Mary Anne took the phone from my hand. “The one you should be talking to is me,” she said. “I can’t believe you thought I put that ad in the paper! I’m sorry your feelings were hurt, but you hurt my feelings, too. Why didn’t you trust me enough to at least talk about it?”

  Sensing Mary Anne needed some privacy, Stacey and I went into the hall. As we stepped out, we met Kristy charging up the stairs. “You guys won’t believe what I found in your column,” she said excitedly.

  “We know,” I told her. “Mary Anne is in the room talking to Logan now. It was a paste-up accident.”

  “That was really dumb,” said Kristy, at her tactless best.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “Well, it was dumb. Though I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it. I suppose stuff like that can happen pretty easily.”

  I took Kristy’s copy of the Express and sat down on the hallway carpet. “I better read the rest of this thing. Who knows what other horrendous mistakes I might have made?”

  I didn’t see any other mistakes (thank goodness), but I did notice something that I hadn’t realized before. Some of the kids seemed like perfect matches. It was right there in the paper. For example, one girl wrote: I’d love to hear from someone who doesn’t run with the crowd. I need a quiet person for talks, reading together, and long walks. Call Still Waters Run Deep at 555-2738. Half a column down a boy wrote: I get overlooked because I’m quiet and shy. But if you love walks, talks, poetry, and shared dreams, call Romantic but Shy at 555-4829.

  I mean, was that a match made in heaven, or what? Yet I wondered if they would see it or pass one another by. That would be such a shame. Then I got an idea. I could run an ad advising Still Waters to contact Romantic but Shy, or vice versa. Why not?

  Mary Anne appeared in the doorway, still looking puffy but smiling.

  “All patched up?” I asked hopefully.

  Mary Anne nodded. “We still have some things to talk about but at least we’re talking.”

  “Great,” said Stacey.

  Getting to my feet, I checked my watch. It was five-twenty. “I have just enough time before the meeting to call Starting Fresh and explain what happened,” I said.

  I called her number, expecting her to be roaring mad at me. Instead, she was thrilled. “I’ve gotten so many phone calls you wouldn’t believe it,” she told me happily. “I guess everyone is looking for a kitten to love them forever. And get this! One of the calls was from my boyfriend! He almost croaked when he realized I was the kitten.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” I said, not quite knowing what to say.

  “No, it was great! That means he wasn’t happy with our relationship, either. He wanted to go out with another girl. It gave us a chance to talk about the reasons we aren’t happy.”

  “And you patched things up?” I guessed.

  “No, we broke up. But now I don’t have to feel like the bad guy. We can say it was mutual, which is better for everybody. Thanks, Claudia. You’re a genius.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say that, but I’m glad things worked out,” I said.

  “They sure did. Keep up the good work.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up the phone feeling much better. I wasn’t a life wrecker, after all.

  “Claudia, I thought the personals column was just a cool accident, but now I think you must be some kind of genius,” said Emily. We were standing in the Express office about two weeks after the Mary Anne-Logan-near-disaster. This was the second time in two weeks that I’d been called a genius. It seemed so weird. All my life Janine had been the genius. No one had ever called me that.

&n
bsp; The reason Emily was so full of praise was because the paper had just come out with my first installment of Claudia Advises. It was instantly popular.

  Here’s how Claudia Advises came into existence. In the last issue, I had placed my ad advising Romantic but Shy to contact Still Waters. While I was writing up that ad, I remembered some other possible matches I’d seen in past issues. It occurred to me that No Wimp and Shy Beauty might get along since they both loved nature. (No Wimp liked butterflies, at least.) I added them to my ad.

  I also had a hunch that Rambling Rose might do better than I had with Good Listener, since he obviously wanted someone to carry the conversational ball. (Since I’d never heard from him again, I assumed he’d felt as awkward as I had on our date.) Even though he wasn’t for me, Brian was a nice person. He deserved someone nice (and someone who wouldn’t mind his lack of conversational skills). From the sound of her ad, Rambling Rose seemed to prefer a boy who didn’t say much. I added them to my ad, too.

  After my ad came out, I was swamped with requests by kids to match them up. Almost every new ad came in with something like this written on the bottom: Claudia, if you notice anyone who looks good for me, please let me know.

  In that issue, a new kind of ad started coming in, too. They were thanks ads. Big-Boned Beauty says thanks a lot, Claudia. Me and little Pharaoh are in love.

  So, I started keeping a sharp eye out for possible love matches. I found quite a few of them. When Emily saw my love match ad for this issue she commented that it was awfully long, which was true. It took up nearly half a column. “We should make it a separate article,” I said as a joke.

  At that, Emily smiled brightly. “Great idea! We’ll call it Claudia Advises. All we have to do is add that title to what you’ve already written and draw a box around it.”

  “All right,” I agreed, typing Claudia Advises on the computer above my ad.

  It had seemed like a simple thing at the time, but if I had been thinking clearly I would have shouted: “No! No! Never!” I was taking on more work and a big responsibility. Maybe I had no business fixing people up. I mean, it was just my opinion. Yet, the thank-you ads kept rolling in, so I figured I must have some talent for matchmaking.