The Girl Who Invented Romance

  Wendy never glanced our way. She was completely absorbed in Parker, and when they kissed, their intimacy quotient was as high as it gets. Jeep sighed again. He didn’t glance my way either. Whatever Wendy had, I did not.

  But what did I expect? Me with my intimacy quotient of forty-seven? Me in need of professional help because I couldn’t relate to boys? Did I really think Jeep would spot me and suddenly forget all about Wendy and want only me?

  I reached our car just as Park and Wendy did.

  Wendy glared at me. Did the little sister have to show up right now? Couldn’t she just drop dead somewhere?

  “I could drive,” I offered brightly. “Then you could have the backseat.”

  “No,” said Parker firmly. “The backseat is your territory, kid. Always has been, always will be.”

  Kid? He was ten months older.

  He opened the front door for Wendy. I got in back by myself.

  This is my life, I thought. Alone in the backseat. When I sighed heavily, nobody heard. Parker and Wendy were having their pre-driving-out-of-the-parking-lot kiss.

  On the great board game of Romance, I was still on square one.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Interlocked hearts are hard.

  They have dead ends. You can’t get your players from one heart to the next. If you add connector strips, you get this jumble of left and right turns and you can’t tell where to go next, and now they don’t even look like hearts, but really bad interstate systems.

  My original attempt of six interlocked hearts turned into gridlock. It was a traffic jam instead of a game.

  My second design had six hearts facing in a circle, points to the center, attached by slender ribbons. You swung around each heart and over the ribbon to the next heart. My hearts looked like apples drawn by a kindergartner with visual problems.

  My third design was one enormous heart with four layers. You circled the heart first on the red path, then the rose path, then the pink and finally bridal white. It was fun to color. I divided each path into one-inch squares, which I would label for action or dates or something.

  I counted up the squares. Sixty per path for a total of two hundred forty squares. I had to think up two hundred forty romantic events?

  Even my mother and father, with all those years of romance behind them, hadn’t managed that. Most of their romance was repeat anyway—the usual flowers, dinner out and Hallmark cards. But that was three. Only two hundred thirty-seven to go.

  I did my sketching in the back of my history notebook.

  Faith had to watch basketball practice because now that Angie had had lunch with her, she figured she was a member of the team. The coach is pretty loose about kids sitting on the bleachers. You just have to stay quiet. There are usually at least a dozen kids lounging around, half watching and half in a stupor from school.

  We sat on the top bleacher so we could rest our backs against the wall. The poor boys, fourteen of them, were being subjected to various forms of torture. Right now they were running like madmen toward the opposite gym wall, hurling themselves feetfirst against it and using the leap to turn around and race back.

  It’s one thing to do that in a swimming pool. The water will catch you if you fall. You’re not going to break your neck, twist your ankle or crack your ribs. It was good I had my Romance game to design. I could stop watching the boys playing suicide with their bones and concentrate on hearts.

  Kenny—he of mega-loser fame—is a scorekeeper. He wanders in and out of all athletic activities, on the fringes of these as of everything else, and today after wandering over to the coaches, he wandered up to us. “Hello, Kenny,” said Faith in an unwelcoming voice.

  Kenny, who perhaps brushes his teeth on a monthly basis and last replaced his shirt in seventh grade, smiled and said, “Hi, Faith. Hi, Kell. What’s new?”

  I detest this question. You immediately start to wonder what is new in your life and of course nothing is new in your life; it’s the same old routine. Or if there is something new, you don’t want to tell Kenny about it. Why couldn’t he just say “How ya doin’?” like a normal person, so you could say “Fine” and be done with it?

  Of course, Faith did have something new and wonderful in her life. Angie. She took a deep happy breath because she was dying to talk all about it. But once her lungs were full, she remembered that nothing had happened yet and something might go wrong and did she really want to boast about it before the event? Then she looked hard at Kenny and realized she had been about to discuss an actual personal emotion with him, so she let the air out of her lungs again and pretended to be excited about the team exercises.

  Kenny is used to being left out and he knew he was being left out of whatever Faith had meant to say, so he looked my way for a response. I was flipping pages in my spiral notebook to hide my heart sketches. Kenny’s hand flew out and slid between the pages to flip back to whatever I’d been hiding.

  “Hearts,” said Kenny slowly.

  I would have ripped my notebook away but the pages would have been torn.

  “Hearts,” he repeated thoughtfully. “You’ve never come to basketball practice, Kelly. Today you come. Today you sit drawing little hearts and trying to hide them. Today you changed seats to be next to Will. Then you and Will talked.” Kenny smiled. “So that’s it, huh? You’re crazy in love with Will, aren’t you?”

  “I am not. I am just drawing shapes. I happen to like hearts.”

  “ ’Cause you’re in love,” agreed Kenny.

  “I am not in love. These hearts have nothing to do with Will. I’m just—I’m—well—playing a game.”

  Kenny laughed. “That’s what love is, they say. A game. But more fun with two players. Hey, does Will know?”

  “No!” I screamed. “You’re wrong!”

  The coach looked up at me and glared.

  The entire basketball team looked up at me and glared.

  I shrank down into my seat, making little apology faces, and Kenny stood below me laughing. “Guess I’ll tell Will, then.” He bounded down the bleachers, trotted across the gym floor, narrowly missing death by trampling, and sat on the bench next to the water bottles. Sooner or later, Will would go get a squirt of water.

  “I’m going to die,” I informed Faith.

  Faith flipped my spiral notebook open herself and frowned at my hearts. “Is Kenny right? Are you in love with Will?”

  “No!”

  I wonder why we always deny love. I remember in middle school, if you were accused of the crime of loving, you screamed denials constantly and stopped ever even looking at the boy you were accused of liking. The boys could destroy each other by yodeling, “An-drew lo-oves Jen-nie,” and both Andrew and Jennie would flinch and blush.

  Love is this great thing that most songs and books and poems and lives are all about. So the minute we actually think there might be love around, we start laughing and pretending and hiding from it.

  I was hiding my hearts under the cover of my notebook.

  If I really do fall in love one day, I thought, will I hide it? What happens if you hide love so well, the person you love thinks you don’t care? How come you can’t just walk up to somebody and say, You know what? I love you.

  Faith said, “Kenny just told Will. Look over there.”

  I made the mistake of looking over there. Will had a large bottle of water and had been squirting it into his mouth from a distance. Startled by Kenny’s message, Will squirted without swallowing. Water spewed over his face, ran down onto his chest and spilled on the floor.

  Kenny tossed a towel over the spill.

  Will, staring at us, wiped his face with his arm.

  Actually, he must have been staring at me, but we were too far away to see his eyes and I felt safer thinking it was both of us drawing Will’s attention.

  Will waved.

  “Wave back,” whispered Faith. “Don’t be such a lump, Kelly. Take action!”

  I waved back.

  Will j
ogged onto the court to rejoin the action.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said.

  “Why? He waved at you!”

  “Faith, I don’t even like Will.”

  “Then why are you drawing the hearts?”

  “Faith!”

  “Just testing,” she said, leaning all over me like a cat wanting its chin scratched. “I think waving back is a good sign. There are possibilities here. It would be fun to have me date Angie while you date Will. We’d have two-fifths of the starting basketball team sewn up.”

  I moaned and took the late bus home before practice ended. Before I had to think about dealing with Will.

  “Oh, George, you shouldn’t have!” cried my mother, taking her tiny wrapped gift with delight. This time my father had brought a white lace bookmark, six inches long, an inch wide: thread spun into a row of hearts.

  Nobody ever spun a row of hearts for me.

  Members of the opposite sex! I thought. Report to my house. Gift in hand. Kiss on lips.

  “That’s lovely, Mother,” I said enthusiastically. I gave Daddy a hug. “You’re such a sweetie,” I told him. “I should be so lucky.”

  He shared hugs with Mother and me. “Your time will come, Kelly. I don’t mind if it’s slow arriving. I kind of like my baby girl.”

  I minded.

  “Let’s go out for dinner,” said Daddy, exclusively to Mom.

  “Oh, George. I’ve already started dinner. I’ve been marinating the chicken since this morning and the rice is a special—”

  “It’ll be good tomorrow. Come on. Where shall we go? The Japanese restaurant on Fifth? The Sicilian place over by the campus? What are you in the mood for?” This triggered Daddy’s musical memory and he began loudly singing “I’m in the Mood for Love.” My father has a terrible voice and worse rhythm.

  I was glad Parker wasn’t home yet. He always ruins it by telling Dad, “If you can’t reach the notes, don’t sing the song.”

  Details, details.

  Sometimes we go out as a family but more often my parents go out alone. Megan says this is abnormal, because once you have children, you are obligated to take them with you wherever you go. Especially if you’re going to a nice restaurant. Megan says my parents are selfish. I say they’re romantic and Megan is jealous.

  Parker came bounding in, saw Mom looking for her heavy coat and said, “You’re going out? In Dad’s car? Then I can keep Mom’s car and drive Wendy?”

  “May I,” corrected Mom.

  “Where with Wendy?” said Dad.

  “May I,” said Parker to Mom. “Don’t know,” he said to Dad.

  My father looked steadily at my brother. Parker looked steadily back. They didn’t take their eyes off each other, a contest I didn’t understand and Mom didn’t see because she was humming around getting ready for her date. Whatever the contest was, Parker won. My father dropped his eyes, grinned at nothing and said, “You have enough money, son?”

  “Could use more.”

  Dad gave him some bills, folded over so I couldn’t tell how much, and Park was gone. Dad held Mom’s coat for her. “You going to be all right alone, Kelly?”

  They hated worrying about me when they were out, so I said, as I always did, “Sure.”

  Daddy touched the earrings he’d given my mother at some anniversary, tiny silver violets, and the silver necklace that was last year’s Christmas gift. “You’re beautiful, Vi,” he said softly.

  My mother lit up, the way she does for compliments, and for one moment she really was beautiful.

  They left hand in hand.

  In the TV room I slid a rented movie into the VCR and went back to the kitchen to pop popcorn. Then I settled in front of the computer screen to compose my sociology quizzes. I can’t actually do more than one thing at a time, but I do love to think of myself as a multitasker.

  My current plan was to have a hundred words everybody would check off for romantic value. But when I finished (lace, calorie counting, candlelight, wallpaper), it was obvious that everybody would check off the same words I did and nobody would learn a thing, which didn’t meet the requirements of Ms. Simms.

  Next I tried categories.

  Colors might be interesting. Maybe there was a person who would think avocado was a romantic hue. But who would check off cough drops under FOODS? And who would put hitchhiking ahead of holding hands under HOBBIES?

  I munched popcorn. I got butter on my paper.

  Was Faith on the phone with Angie?

  Were they arranging their first real date?

  Would everything work out for them?

  Or would Faith report back that she was right about F names and that people who wore them were doomed to a fat, frumpy, failed life?

  “That’s it!” I cried. “A name game!”

  I’d list names. Which is more romantic? Ethel or Rosemary? Laura or LuEllen? Starr or Stephanie?

  By the time the movie was over, I had written two tests.

  Kelly Williams—Sociology w/ Ms. Simms

  ASSIGNMENT: quiz TOPIC: romance

  In this quiz, we will find out what words or phrases make boys think of romance and what words or phrases make girls think of romance. You may check no more than ten words on this list.

  Kelly Williams—Sociology w/ Ms. Simms

  QUIZ ASSIGNMENT #2

  In this quiz, we’ll find out if certain names automatically make a person feel romantically disposed or turn a person off. Give each name a romantic rating by checking a column to the right.

  I went to bed laughing. For once I had had a day packed with romance. Of course, it wasn’t real. Other people were doing it while I was writing it, but it turned out that romance is fun even on paper.

  Good night, world, I thought. I hope you’re ready for me. Because I’m about to leave square one.

  CHAPTER

  4

  I cannot now believe that I turned in those quizzes.

  You would think sixteen years of life would have taught me to avoid public humiliation.

  But no.

  I ran toward humiliation as if it were male and in love with me.

  In sociology, Faith’s eyes were fastened on Angie.

  Angie’s eyes were fastened on his desk, where he kept putting things he could stare at. First his pen, then his book, then a paper clip, then four quarters he stacked and restacked, as if playing a single person’s shell game. His cheeks were flushed, and against his olive skin, the ruddy color was unexpected and beautiful.

  I convinced myself, against a lot of previous evidence, that Angie was in love and, furthermore, in love with Faith, but too shy to glance at her under the stress of powerful emotion.

  “All right, class,” piped Ms. Simms. “Pass in your quizzes.”

  Each of us handed the homework down the row to the person in front, who would stack the papers and hand them to the left, until the front left desk had acquired all the papers and handed them neatly to Ms. Simms.

  Fatal.

  Honey sits two seats in front of me. When she covered her quiz with mine, she glanced down at what I had written. Staring into my pages, she yelled, “Listen! Listen, you guys!” She was laughing so hard, she had to whack the top of her desk with her palm. “You will never in a million years guess what Kelly did her quiz on!” She turned in her seat to laugh at me, taking the opportunity to cast her emerald green eyes over Jeep and Will and Angie. Last year her eyes were plain old hazel but she got tinted contacts and now her eyes are truly remarkable. To look at Honey is to be dazzled.

  “What?” said Jeep, leaning way over his desk to catch a glimpse of my topic.

  The entire rest of the class imitated him, leaning way over their desks too. Faith frowned at me, with no idea what was coming. We’d talked so much about Angie that I had forgotten to share my quizzes with her.

  Naturally Honey adored having so many fine people lean her way. “Romance,” she said in a low sexy voice. “Kelly wrote not one but two tests for us to take to see i
f we’re romantic.” She pointed a long thin mocking finger at me. Every eye in class followed the tip of her finger and focused on me.

  “I don’t think you took this assignment seriously, Kelly,” said Ms. Simms. “I will be distressed if you simply imitated some foolish nonsense out of Cosmopolitan.”

  “Kelly is serious,” said Honey. “She takes romance very seriously.” Honey paused for drama. She’s as good as Wendy. “Kelly is always studying those of us who possess romance.”

  I could not even duck my head and let my hair waterfall over my face. I had to sit there laughing and pretending to join in the fun. I would be lucky if I kept from crying.

  “That’s cool,” said Jeep. “Let’s take the romance quizzes first.”

  There was nowhere safe to look. Ahead of me was Honey’s pointing finger. To my left was Will. To my right, Wendy. I picked out a space and fixed my eyes on the blankness as if behind the thin air stood God or my guardian angel. Rescue me, I said. Don’t let this be happening.

  “Actually this will be rather interesting,” said Ms. Simms, glancing through my quizzes. “We’ll find out whether boys and girls agree that certain words signal romance.”

  “We have most of the period left, Ms. Simms,” said Jeep in a pleasant cooperative voice. “Why don’t I just run down to the office, run off twenty copies of each, and we’ll take the quizzes right now?”

  “Good idea,” said another boy. “I’m in a real rush to know if I’m romantic or not.”

  “You’re not,” the boys assured him. “You’re a loser.”

  “You could take lessons from me if you want,” Angie offered generously.

  “You? Angie, the girls never go out with you twice. It’d have to be a quick lesson.”

  “You mean I never go out with a girl twice,” Angie corrected. “I’ve got high standards.”

  I risked a glance at Faith. But she was not upset. She was wreathed in smiles. She knew she met those high standards.