The Girl Who Invented Romance

  But now that I am sixteen, I would rather not live in Fox Meadow. I am tired of knowing all about everybody. I am tired of them knowing all about me. Mrs. Smith, for example, saying, “Since you’re always free on Saturday nights, Kelly, can I sign you up to babysit for the next two months?” I am especially tired of Megan landing on me whenever she needs company, without even knocking on the front door, never mind my bedroom door.

  “He dumped me,” she repeated tragically. “I hate that word dump. Can’t you just see this obscene pile of refuse, thrown down by massive trucks, seagulls circling overhead like small white vultures, and me—lying on top. Dumped.”

  Megan always has dates.

  In fourth grade, when the rest of us hadn’t even gotten our braces on, never mind off, Megan was holding hands with Ricky out on the playground. I remember how we’d say, “Eeeeuh, Megan, yuck! Why do you want to touch a boy?”

  So it was hard to be sympathetic about Jimmy. Next weekend, she’d just go out with somebody else. Megan had an inexhaustible supply of boys. I could never figure out where she met them, let alone how she attracted them.

  “Dumped for a girl he met when he went bowling,” said Megan. “It makes me quite ill. Bowling. It has no status. He could at least dump me for a girl he met skiing. Hand me your tissue box.”

  I knew then that Faith and I would never mention my silly little romance game, not with Megan and her ten hundred previous dates sitting on the bed with us. I looked down into the open Monopoly game box. There were extra dice there. I might just take one to school and play my silly game by myself.

  “You know what I want?” said Megan, sniffing.

  Presumably Jimmy.

  “I want an affair like your mother’s, Kelly.”

  I was outraged. “My mother is not having an affair.”

  “The affair she’s having with your father, dummy. Every time I come here, he’s just bought your mother chocolate or a bouquet of violets or a special card. And how long have they been married? Forever. Longer than any of us have even been alive.”

  “I should hope so,” I said grumpily.

  I disliked talking about my parents’ romance. It is beautiful and I do love seeing them. They’re forty and still setting the standard by which everybody in Fox Meadow goes—notes to each other tucked under the windshield wipers, the special silver charm, the perfect surprise. But it’s hard to live in a house that is wall-to-wall romance and not be able to participate one single red rose’s worth. My older brother, Parker, literally closes his eyes whenever they get romantic. I used to think it embarrassed him, but now I think he’s disgusted by it. Maybe he thinks they’re too old and too married.

  But then, Parker himself was such a mystery to me right then that who knows?

  Because my brother, Parker, was dating Wendy Newcombe. Wendy is the Queen of Romance. Exquisitely pretty, very funny, terribly smart. She writes a daily school soap opera, which we listen to after the principal’s announcements. She dates only princes, like Jeep.

  Now, Parker is nice. In fact, very nice. When he graduated from middle school, he was voted Nicest Boy and I don’t think anybody would change that vote four years later. But what kind of adjective is nice? You can’t call Parker dramatic or romantic or handsome. He’s my brother and I love him—everybody loves him—but Wendy dumped Jeep for my brother Parker and that’s amazing.

  Jeep has about eight hundred wonderful qualities, from sexy to sweet, from athletic to gorgeous. Park has one wonderful quality. You wonder what Wendy had been thinking of to make that trade. Whatever it was, she was thinking of it constantly.

  You should have seen Wendy follow Parker around.

  She ran the long way through the corridors between classes just to catch a glimpse of my brother going into chem lab. Once in sociology she actually forgot to take a test, and when Ms. Simms said, “Wendy? You’re not taking the test?” Wendy said, “Oh my goodness! Oh dear!” and blushed and added, “I guess I was thinking about Parker.”

  Parker isn’t in our sociology class, but Jeep is. Jeep cringed. He has good features for cringing, although I prefer to imagine his features in terms of kissing and serenading. I can think of no time I would put Parker’s features ahead of Jeep’s. Even though he’s my brother and I’m very loyal. Well, sort of loyal.

  Sometimes I think romance is a mystical game. You’ve been dealt cards you don’t know what to do with. You play by rules nobody else seems to be following because they were given a different set of instructions. Or maybe you don’t play at all. You can’t seem to toss the right combination to start the game.

  “Oh well,” said Megan, mopping up the last of her tears and throwing Jimmy out with the tissue. “Let’s play Monopoly. I’ll be banker. Next to boys I like money best.” She said, “Oh well,” with the reverse inflection. Instead of her voice sinking with despair, it lifted cheerily. Her “Oh well” was looking forward to a new day.

  “I’ll be the iron,” said Faith, choosing her game piece.

  “I’ll be the Scottie dog,” said Megan, choosing hers.

  The phone rang.

  I keep my phone under the bed because there’s so much essential junk on my bedside table. I leaned over backward so that my vertebrae made splintering noises, and I reached down under. My hair, which is absolutely straight and very thin, like my body, fell around me like a silvery gold waterfall and splashed on my carpet. About the only thing I really like about myself is my hair. Yellow silk ribbons.

  I groped for the phone and clicked it on. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Kelly? It’s Wendy. Wendy Newcombe?”

  The princess of Cummington High is in two classes with me and has been dating my brother for three months and she thinks I won’t recognize her name? “Hi, Wendy,” I said. “He isn’t home. He’s at play practice.”

  Parker was stage manager of the school production of The Music Man. Wendy didn’t like this. She wanted Park to take her to the basketball games. Parker didn’t like that because he would certainly be compared to Jeep, out there racking up baskets and generally being a top-notch jock.

  “Oh,” said Wendy sadly. “I thought he’d be home by now.”

  Wendy’s voice is very expressive. I had to bite my lips to keep from offering to run over and stay with her until Park got back. “Shall I give him a message?” I said. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” said Wendy, all forlorn, like a little girl who’s lost her mother in the crowd. “I just wanted to talk. No subject. Just … hear his voice.”

  Wendy Newcombe, Queen of Romance, so in love with my brother Parker she just had to hear his voice.

  What if I never got a phone call from a boy who just had to hear my voice? What if the only tears I ever shed were not from love, but from lack of it?

  “What’s the matter, Kell?” said Faith. “You stuck under there?” She and Megan yanked me up and I shrieked to cover the sounds of my backbone twisting and to change my face from the despair I felt.

  We arranged ourselves cross-legged around the Monopoly board, which we spread in the middle of the bed. We put props under the board so it would lie evenly and the pieces and cards wouldn’t slide down onto our toes. I decided to be the top hat and I picked it up, looking down at the familiar squares. Railroads, utilities …

  “Don’t you wish there were boys on these squares?” I said. “You wouldn’t buy properties, you’d get boys. You wouldn’t win dollars, you’d win dates.”

  “I don’t think there is a board game like that,” said Megan.

  “But if there were, I would buy it,” said Faith. She put the three players at GO.

  “I have poster board,” I said. “We could copy out the squares but put boys’ names where the streets are. Like here.” I pointed to the powder blue squares facing me. “We could substitute Angie and Jeep and Will for Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental.”

  Megan and Faith didn’t even bother to listen. Megan took the first turn. Megan always takes the first turn and I am a
lways annoyed and I have never said anything.

  I didn’t say anything this time, either, except, “I’m sure I have poster board somewhere, but my room is too messy for me to find it. I’ll cut computer paper into squares instead.”

  I taped boy squares over the streets and penciled little cartoons of the basketball starters on them. I wrote their names in what was supposed to be romantic script but was actually just messy handwriting.

  “You’re going to ruin the board,” complained Megan. “When you peel that junk off, you’ll tear the whole surface.”

  “The boys have to have values,” I said. “Like property. But not dollars. Let’s give every boy a numerical rating. One to ten.” I stuck Mario and Scott onto Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens.

  “Jeep’s a ten,” said Megan.

  “No,” said Faith. “Angie’s the ten. There cannot be more than one ten in the game, and it goes to Angie.”

  “Jeep is more handsome,” said Megan.

  “Angie is more wonderful.” Faith wrote 10 under his sketch.

  Megan glared at us both. “You can’t have a board game with a boy named Angie anyhow. Not everybody in America lives in a town that’s half Italian. They don’t even know that boys can have names like Angelo. Like when I visited Miami, I met a boy named Jesus. He was cute too. But you can’t run around putting Jesus on your list of romantic boys.”

  I sighed. “Let’s not worry about everybody in America. Let’s make the game just for us.”

  “Think big,” said Megan. “Market it nationally.”

  Market it?

  “Let’s not use names from the basketball team after all,” said Faith. “Let’s pick out romantic names.” Faith smiled happily, remembering romance plots and heroes who swung their women up on horses and took them to exotic locales and rescued them from danger. “Dirk,” said Faith. “Lance. Brandon. Nicholas.” She batted her eyelashes. Faith has wonderful eyes. Very large, sunk so there’s lots of room for various shades of eye shadow. Long naturally dark lashes that sweep her cheeks just like a romance book cover heroine’s.

  “Real people,” said Megan scornfully, “are not named Dirk. Let’s go all-American. Christopher. Michael. David.”

  I know a dozen Michaels, and I never tire of the name. I think it’s beautiful. I added another square to the Monopoly board and called it Michael. I gave him 9. Might as well have high stakes.

  “Stephen,” continued Megan, making her own squares now. “Josh. Mark. Alexander. Stanley.”

  “Stanley?” Faith demanded.

  “I used to have a cat named Stanley,” explained Megan. “We got him from the shelter and that was the name he came with. They were named alphabetically, like hurricanes.”

  Faith tore Stanley off the board. “Stanley is not a romantic name. I refuse to have him. With my luck I’d win Stanley and you’d win Lance.”

  Megan threw her Scottie dog at Faith.

  Faith flung her iron at Megan.

  “What are you two doing?” I said. “Fighting over Stanley? Stanley doesn’t exist.”

  “Sorry,” said Megan, handing the pieces back to Faith to set back down on GO. “I was just excited. I react that way to boys.” She started counting out money.

  “We’re not going to buy the boys,” said Faith.

  “No, but we’ll need cash for our dates,” said Megan. “My dates are going to be expensive. I’m expecting jet planes and five-star restaurants. And no bouquets of roses. I want diamonds.”

  I stared at my Monopoly board until my eyes went out of focus. The solid square of utilities and avenues shifted position and condensed, getting softer and rounder. My game board would not have right angles and sharp turns. It would be hearts. Perhaps a series of interlocking hearts.

  GO TO JAIL turned to lace and love.

  INCOME TAX became holding hands and candlelight.

  PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD was flowers and chocolates.

  I saw lettering: curlicues of antique script with hearts and flowers intertwined. Initials carved on trees. Notes on handmade paper and sweet secret messages on tiny cell phone screens.

  I saw romantic moments. Exchanges of the little prizes from the bottoms of cereal boxes and exchanges of gold bracelets engraved with names. Drives in the backseats of stretch limousines and drives in the front seats of fabulous sports cars. Balloon bouquets arriving at front doors and laughing couples airborne in hot-air balloon baskets. Sweet soft waltzes with one head on one shoulder, and hard, pounding crowds screaming at bands singing that one special song.

  “I’ll invent Romance: The Game of Love,” I said. It would be pink. Several shades of pink, rosy like the dawn of love. Perhaps the board itself would be scented.

  “I don’t know,” said Megan. “I think this is stupid. I’d rather play Monopoly, where at least you know what you’re after. With boys, who knows? And we can’t invent a board game of romance, because how would you win? How would you know when you ever got to the end of the game? What exactly is it that you’d win?”

  My board was now a mishmash of computer paper, bad drawings and overlapping strips of tape. Only in my mind was it laced with romance.

  “I’m going home,” said Megan. “I may call Jimmy up and yell at him till I feel better.”

  Faith slid off the bed. “I’m tired myself. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kelly.” She stretched, yawned and stretched again. She started to put away the Monopoly pieces for me but I put my fingertips on the board and held it down against the denim spread. I was still thinking.

  They had become bored as fast as they’d gotten interested, but that was because I didn’t have a game yet, just an idea. They couldn’t go far on ideas; they had to have the real thing. But maybe I could give it to them.

  Romance: The Game of Love.

  Megan had asked the right thing. What would you win?

  What does anybody want to win?

  Happily Ever After.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Ms. Simms stood in front of her sociology students in her usual peculiar posture, left hand cupped beneath her right elbow, so her right arm was propped toward the ceiling. In this hand, she held her lecture notes, precisely angled to block her face from the class. She is the only teacher I have ever had who writes out what she plans to say.

  “I just wish her notes could block out her voice as well,” Angie muttered.

  Poor Ms. Simms has a voice pitched too high. She sounds like a six-year-old, but she’s about my parents’ age, and hefty. Even after all these months of lectures—she has a great deal of information she is desperate to impart—I’m startled when that squeaking voice emerges from that massive chest.

  “She’s not so bad,” whispered Faith.

  Angie rolled his dark eyes. “She’s too intense for me. I like laid-back people.”

  Our row, from door to windows, has Wendy, empty seat, me, Faith and Angie. Faith sat with her knees turned to the window so she could watch Angie all period long. She was pretty obvious about it. Angie had never noticed.

  Ms. Simms lowered her cupped elbow fractionally and peered around the class. “Angelo?” she screeched. “Is that you talking?”

  Angie is one of those people with the perfect name, like a policeman named Copp or a surgeon named Cutter. He is the angel of his first and last names. “I’m sorry, Ms. Simms.” The smile had its usual effect. Ms. Simms raised her elbow and vanished again behind her notes. Faith sighed longingly over the smile not directed at her.

  “I am opposed to people who call me Angelo,” murmured Angie, more or less in Faith’s direction. “I wish I had a real name.”

  Faith was close enough to touch his tight dark curls. I knew how much she wanted to. “How about Dirk?” she suggested. “Or Lance?”

  Angie lit up. “Dirk,” he breathed. “It’s me. Can’t you see me on my mission, screwing the silencer on my weapon as I prepare to vanquish the enemy?”

  “Perfectly,” said Faith. “Next to you is a beautiful blonde filled wit
h adoration.”

  Angie put on a tough but carefree expression and began scanning a distant horizon for possible national enemies. Faith choked back a giggle. Angie continued performing for her. She had certainly overdosed on romance books if she was telling Angie to have a beautiful blonde next to him. Faith has dark hair.

  I had dice in my purse. I hadn’t told Faith, who had apparently forgotten about our original little romance game. But I had not forgotten. Sociology was the right setting. Sweet, oblivious Angie. Terrific Jeep. Conceited Will. Losers Chuckie, Kenny and Avery. Various ordinary types to fill the other squares.

  The game would be my own indoor activity. Playable only during sociology.

  A secret.

  Unless, of course, I rolled Jeep and won the plays on the squares, and Jeep asked me out, and Wendy got jealous, and I was the Queen of Romance. Then I wouldn’t keep it a secret. I would laugh and toss my gold-ribbon hair and know I had truly reached Happily Ever After.

  Ms. Simms was talking about quizzes, but not the usual sort with a grade. It was just another of her weird weekend assignments. Each of us was to design a quiz for the rest of the class to take. “Statistically correct,” she said. “Data to be interpreted in a reasonable fashion. Controls that can be measured.”

  Nobody was listening to her. That’s what sociology is at Cummington High. A forty-five-minute stretch of not listening. That’s why it was a perfect place for my romance game.

  “I like this, Faith,” said Angie. “I’ll even let you sit with me at lunch if you’ll tell me more about Dirk and his beautiful blonde.”

  Across the empty desk next to me, Wendy was perking up. Wendy rarely participates in sociology because she despises Ms. Simms. But she’s always on the lookout for material for her soap opera. That is what she always told Parker. “Material,” she’d say intensely. “Let’s go find material.” Then they would vanish for three hours in Mother’s car. At night. My father muttered, “I bet I know what kind of material they’re finding, all right.” “Don’t tell me about it,” said my mother, who is of the old school of parenting: What you don’t know cannot hurt you. My mother is a great believer in wrapping yourself in cotton wool. Not that she ever has to wrap herself. My father is a great believer in protecting her. He provides the cotton wool, she shrinks inside it and they’re both happy.