The Girl Who Invented Romance

  I felt around in my purse for the dice.

  “And the quiz you devise may be on any subject whatsoever,” said Ms. Simms, “but it must have questions each of us in this classroom can answer. We will then compile responses and get a clear profile of our own class.”

  “Anything whatsoever?” repeated Will. “Like … how many of us prefer imported to domestic chocolate? Which of us are abused by our parents?”

  Everybody but Faith laughed. She was too busy being thrilled about sitting with Angie at lunch. I was pretty thrilled for her. It was truly romantic: naming a romance name and winning the best boy, the one you’ve always yearned for. I couldn’t quite believe it. Neither could Wendy, who was leaning forward to catch whatever Angie was saying next to Faith.

  “Excellent suggestions, Will!” cried Ms. Simms. She was so excited, she lowered her elbow. “A series of questions designed to glean statistics on child abuse right in our room. Now, that will be meaningful.”

  “Some of us might decline to answer,” Jeep pointed out.

  Will laughed. “Then the rest of us will know that under your sweatshirt, you’re covered with bruises.”

  Jeep grinned at Will, and Will grinned at Jeep. Probably the only time all week Will would do that. Normal emotions came second to conceit in Will. “I am covered with bruises,” said Jeep. “It’s my fellow basketball players. They beat up on me. I’ve been meaning to report it to the proper authorities but Will pays them off.”

  Will finished grinning, which for him was a short-term exercise. Now he was just bony and snobbish. If he ever grinned at me the way he had at Jeep, I’d know that I possessed a million dollars Will needed in five minutes.

  I rolled one of the dice gently across the surface of my desk.

  It rolled off onto the floor, making a tiny clatter, and kept on rolling away from me. I couldn’t believe it. One limp toss and the dumb thing was gone forever under Will’s desk.

  Will heard the faint rattle, frowned slightly and bent over to retrieve the die.

  He looked around to see where it had come from. When Ms. Simms wasn’t looking, I signaled him. Will narrowed his eyes at me. I nodded, Yes, that’s really mine; yes, I want it back.

  Will got up, strolled back to me and handed it over.

  “Will?” said Ms. Simms.

  “Just giving Kelly back her die,” said Will.

  “Oh,” said Ms. Simms.

  “I want to do chocolate,” said Faith quickly. “My quiz will establish how many of us cannot get through a day without chocolate. My theory is that it will be ninety-five percent of us.”

  “I want every quiz to have twenty questions,” said Ms. Simms. “Faith, limiting yourself to chocolate could pose problems. Perhaps you could expand your questionnaire to include, say, food allergies.”

  Angie clutched his chest and patted his heart with excitement. “That does sound intriguing, Ms. Simms. I can hardly wait to find out who gets hives.”

  Faith lowered her lashes at him. “I do. Every time I think about you, Angie, I get a rash.”

  The class howled with laughter.

  Wendy was writing it all down. Before long, we would hear this dialogue over the public-address system. Not everybody in class would recognize themselves, because Wendy is pretty clever at disguising lines. But her soap opera would not really be original. That’s the sort of thing I comfort myself with when I think that Wendy is about four hundred times more creative than I am, and probably I should give up right now.

  This time I rolled my die very very very gently, and I quickly lowered my arms to make little walls to catch the die if it tried anything sneaky.

  It was a five.

  I glanced at vertical row five.

  Kenny, Will, Angie, Margaret and Susan.

  If I rolled a six next, I’d have to start over. There was no sixth seat.

  If I rolled a four or five, I’d have to start over. I was not going to play my indoor game of romance with a girl. Even though I quite like Margaret, and Susan has a nice car.

  The other three were a good representation of the class. Kenny: totally disgusting. Will: totally conceited. Angie: a perfect person with whom my best friend was going to have lunch. Just like life.

  I rolled again.

  For a moment, I didn’t want to look at the dots that were showing. I giggled softly to myself instead. It’s a habit I’m aware of, and I try to stop myself because I know how odd I must look: Kelly, entertained by nothing at all. Laughing into thin air like somebody due for a long stay on a psych ward.

  I looked around to see if anybody had spotted me laughing. Everybody but Will was still laughing over Angie and Faith and the rash.

  Will, however, was staring at me as if he rarely came across a human being so peculiar. I smiled. He looked away.

  Now I lowered my eyes and saw the die, and there staring back at me were two little black dots.

  Two.

  Will was two.

  Impossible not to laugh again. Impossible not to look at Will, who was so unlikely ever to have a romance with me. So I smiled once more, realizing even as the smile touched my lips that that was square one of my own game design. Smile at him.

  Will smiled back. A real smile. As if he was a real person and not just a tall thin piece of cardboard labeled CONCEIT.

  I ducked my head. My hair fell forward, slippery and straight, hiding me from everyone including Will.

  You’re turning chicken, I told myself. Hiding is not one of the squares. The rules are notice him, talk to him, sit next to him.

  But in the grand old tradition of school, I was saved by the bell. Basketball players charged out as if they were on the court.

  Wendy said, in a high, attention-getting voice, “I think that’s at least two episodes, don’t you?”

  In study hall, I thought about Ms. Simms’s assignment. Food allergy quizzes. Child abuse quizzes. Boring.

  Let them have their rashes and bruises. I would undertake love. I would do a romance quiz. After all, I hadn’t thought of anything except romance since I folded up my Monopoly game and began drawing interlocking hearts on the poster board I had finally located behind my computer desk.

  So far, I had a Start Heart, three Dating Hearts and a Happily Ever After Heart.

  At first I tried to define Happily Ever After, but I gave up. Who knows what Happily Ever After means to somebody else? A father for your children? A cocaptain for your yacht? A partner for earning your first million? A companion with whom to wander in flowery meadows?

  I would have to leave Happily Ever After blank.

  Okay. A romance quiz. Get on it, Kelly, I ordered myself. How about pairs? Circle which is more romantic: roses or dandelions. Satin or denim. Horse-drawn carriages or escalators.

  But that was as dull as food allergies. Anybody would check off satin before denim. I needed a quiz that would force people to think. I began listing words and phrases.

  Stars. Snuggling. Earrings. Perfume. Midnight blue. City skyline. Dark eyes.

  Those seemed fairly romantic. Words for the cover of a thick historical novel or the backdrop of a slick magazine advertisement.

  Now some words that were not romantic.

  Smoking. Tacos. Compost.

  And words that weren’t much of anything.

  Clock. Envelope. Kneecap.

  Maybe the quiz taker would give each word a numerical rating, one to ten. Which words were most likely to make a person think of romance? And the person taking the quiz would have to check off boy or girl because maybe some words meant more to boys than to girls, although personally I had seen little sign that boys had any words on their romance list.

  My last class of the day is American history. It was January, so we had passed the Civil War and were steaming on toward the Last Frontier. I had not read the chapter. Once my mother told me that if I put one-tenth the effort into school that I put into complaining about not knowing any boys, I’d at least be able to go to a good college where there are
lots of good boys to put an effort into. She’s right, of course. The thing is, I can’t seem to get into studying. It lacks a certain something.

  Boys, I guess.

  I know I could study with some terrific boy sharing the desk.

  Oh well.

  Faith sat down next to me. She was so deep in her crush on Angie, she could hardly focus. Toothpaste was never marketed by a wider, whiter smile than Faith gave me as she dropped her history text onto the desk. “Kelly,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Faith.” I have sat with her through many an agonizing crush. I estimate that Faith runs about four serious crushes a year. Each one hurts her. It’s so unfair that love, of all things, can be so painful.

  “Do you think he’ll ask me out, Kelly? Lunch was just great. We laughed steadily. I mean, he’d have to want to do that again, wouldn’t he?”

  Fluffy brown hair circled her eager face. She has a face that makes the rest of us happy. A smile you have to reflect with one of your own. A sweet person, a good person. Had Angie seen this?

  Faith shook her head twice, denying the possibility, and then nodded twice, believing that it might really happen.

  “Got a twitch, Faith?” said Will, striding to his seat without waiting for an answer. We didn’t answer him either. From experience we knew he wouldn’t be looking our way again, because he didn’t intend to talk to us anyhow. He just meant to demonstrate his superiority with a wisecrack and then ignore us.

  What if Angie does ask Faith out? I thought. I will be the very last girl without a boyfriend. Like gym when they’re picking teams. I’ll be the one still sitting on the floor while everybody pities me and nobody wants me.

  “The sun is in my eyes,” I croaked. “I’m changing seats.”

  There was in fact a faint glint over by the windows. But I was moving to get control of myself before jealousy lodged in my heart. I refuse to feel jealousy toward my best friend. I slid into an empty seat.

  Will looked up, startled.

  Without planning, I had arrived at square four. Sit next to him.

  I looked quickly away. Mrs. Weston wasn’t saying anything interesting, so I opened my latest magazine underneath my textbook and flipped it open to the quiz. (I don’t bother with a magazine unless it has quizzes. I love to fill things out.)

  Test your intimacy quotient, it said.

  Oh good. I always wondered what my intimacy quotient was.

  1. You want to spend an afternoon with Geoff. Will you suggest

  a. Frisbee tossing?

  b. Looking at his baby pictures?

  c. Making fudge?

  d. Shopping at the mall?

  2. He isn’t paying enough attention to you. Do you decide

  a. He’s too worried about his SATs?

  b. He likes another girl more?

  c. He’s gay?

  d. He’s getting the flu?

  3. You just aren’t close enough to the boy you love. Is it because

  a. He isn’t your ideal?

  b. You’re afraid of intimacy?

  c. You can’t relax with boys?

  d. He doesn’t like you enough to bother?

  I’d never give any answer suggested for question number one. But every answer for question number two and question number three was possible.

  I concentrated. I decided Geoff and I would make fudge.

  Mrs. Weston continued talking. I calculated my intimacy quotient when I had struggled through all twenty questions. My score was forty-seven. I flipped to the back of the magazine and looked up the meaning of the result.

  Under 50, it said. You have real problems relating to boys. Perhaps you should consider counseling.

  Counseling! I didn’t need a mental health expert. I needed a boy to love me.

  But even though I knew the quiz was stupid and the questions were stupid and the score was stupid and even though I was in public, I started crying.

  Inside myself I froze, turning the tears solid, getting very still. I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry. I stopped, but not before a few tears trickled down my cheeks.

  A large hand with freakishly long fingers landed on my magazine. Surely Mrs. Weston didn’t have hands that big. Surely—

  But it was Will, curling the magazine into a cylinder and removing it to his desk. Without unwrapping the magazine, he read the quiz, turning the roll like an axle to read the columns.

  “What’s your score?” he breathed.

  I considered lying. I considered not answering. But Will was not worth it. “Forty-seven,” I admitted.

  Will grinned ear to ear. He didn’t bother to face me. I only saw the grin in profile.

  That’s right, you bum, I thought. Laugh at me. I bet you got a thirty-three. The only thing you’ve ever been intimate with is a basketball.

  A low intimacy quotient. What a thing to have in common.

  The need to cry vanished. I felt thick and dull. The smile faded from Will’s face. He returned the magazine. He didn’t tell me his score and I didn’t ask. I swiveled in my chair to see what Faith was making of my exchanges with Will.

  Faith had not noticed. She had written Faith Bennett Angelotti six times in different scripts.

  Feminist commentators may think that we girls are beyond this kind of thing, but they’re wrong. We’re still here shading our writing with our hands so nobody can see that we’re trying out a boy’s last name in case we get married.

  Bells rang. Our final announcements come complete with chords. Mrs. Weston finished her history lecture while the principal cleared his throat and school came to an end.

  Our principal reads off a paper his secretary has printed out for him. Unfortunately his voice stops at the end of each line whether the sentence stops there or not. Drives me crazy.

  “Drives me crazy,” said Will.

  Probably the highest intimacy quotient I’ll have all week, I thought.

  “Someday I’m going to put my fist through the sound system,” said Will. But he wasn’t talking to me or really to anybody. He was just thinking out loud. You didn’t get a thirty-three, I thought. You got a zero.

  “Put your fist through Dr. Scheider instead,” advised somebody. “He deserves it more.”

  “Key Club will meet after school in order to discuss,” said Dr. Scheider. He cleared his throat. An entire school twitched. “The fund-raiser for next year the Ecology Club has a field.”

  Pause, filled by Will breaking a pencil in half.

  “Trip to the state capitol to meet our. Representative and the cost is twenty-seven dollars. Fifty cents the following students report to guidance office immediately after the final.”

  Several people were sticking four fingers at their mouths to indicate that on the gag scale, this was worse than usual. A four-finger gag is pretty serious.

  “Bell the school sweatshirts in the new designs are in the school store.”

  Everybody shuddered but not even Will breathed a syllable of correction. We were all awaiting Wendy’s broadcast. We are addicted to Wendy’s soap. It usually runs two minutes. This week we were worrying about whether Greg would change his socks and whether Allegra was going to shave the right hemisphere of her skull and put safety pins through her eyebrows and quit school for the British rock star she was seeing. There was also the problem Brandon and Octavia were having. Brandon seemed to be falling in love with Lulu. Would Octavia kill Lulu or Brandon?

  Wendy has a very intense voice, as if somebody is holding a gun to her head while she reads.

  “Brandon slouches against the tall brick column in the library. His eyes drift past Allegra, for whom he has nothing but scorn, and land longingly on Octavia. No matter how drawn Brandon is to Lulu, Octavia has his heart. But Octavia is being cruel to him. ‘Brandon,’ says Octavia, lips curled, ‘I want a real man with a real name. Dirk, perhaps. Or Lance. Someone on a mission, saving those he loves from certain doom. And you, Brandon, worry only about whether to have a cappuccino or a latte. Do I care about you? Do I care wh
ether you have a Gucci jockstrap? No. Does your body or your mind—’ ”

  And Wendy was off the air.

  It had happened once before when Brandon and Octavia shacked up together. Dr. Scheider got rather fierce about that. I guess Dr. Scheider did not care to have Wendy mention jockstraps, even designer models, over the school sound system. Perhaps there were school board members in the building, something that did happen once or twice a year.

  Everybody in my history class got a kick out of the silence, waiting to see if Wendy would come back on with a revised underwear statement. But she didn’t. The next announcement was from a guidance counselor about a deadline for applying to something or other. It is a rule of mine never to listen to guidance counselors.

  School was over.

  Everyone raced out of class but I was fastest. Parker is allowed to drive Mom’s car one day a week and this was the day. Parker tried hard to leave without me so he could be alone with Wendy. I sympathized with them but I’d rather be a pain than take the school bus. My romantic ideals apply more to me than to others.

  The crosswalks were jammed with parents in cars coming for their kids. As I stood in the crowd waiting for a chance to rush to the parking lot, Wendy and my brother emerged hand in hand from the office complex, laughing. Whatever objection Dr. Scheider had to that episode, Wendy had won. Parker leaned down a little toward Wendy and she stretched up, and their heads rested against each other.

  The person standing next to me sighed. It was Jeep, his eyes fastened on my brother and Wendy. His handsome mouth turned down sadly and his head tilted wearily. He still wanted to supply the shoulder on which Wendy rested.