“You kids are going to love this place,” Patricia said. “And the food’s great. The ribs are to die for.”
“Sounds good to me,” I muttered to Frannie.
“Ribs?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Dying.”
She took my arm and leaned into me affectionately as we crossed the parking lot. “I just have one word for you,” she whispered. “Paintball.”
“I thought you were going to say payback.”
“That too.”
Inside, the cowboy music was thumping. I could feel it on my cheeks. The place was huge. There was a restaurant in the back, and here in the front, a giant dance floor, where hundreds of people were kicking and stepping and turning and whooping, all in perfect unison.
Frannie started bobbing her head. “Looks fun!” she shouted. I tried to shoot lasers out of my eyes at her, but she wasn’t paying attention anyway.
“Let’s get a table!” Arthur said. We followed him back to a quieter spot. Our booth had a giant set of steer horns on the wall overhead. As soon as we were settled, Patricia scrootched against me to get back out again.
“Come on, Frannie, let’s tinkle.” Frannie followed her obediently away, leaving me and Manfred alone at the table.
“What do you think?” he asked me, looking around.
“It’s, um . . . a very big place,” I said.
“Don’t worry. We’ll have you kickin’ up dust before you know it.”
The waitress showed up, saving me from the sarcastic comment I was about to make to a man who, after all, seemed like a very nice person, even if he had just driven me straight to cowboy hell. Arthur ordered two Cokes and two rum and Cokes. I was staring hard at my menu when Frannie and Patricia came back.
“Let’s go, boys. These songs aren’t going to dance themselves,” Patricia said.
“Sure, they will,” I said into my menu. I hated being the boring one, and that was just one more thing to be annoyed about.
“You guys go ahead,” Frannie said. “I’ll work on the party pooper here.”
Arthur took Patricia’s hand; Patricia let out a whoop like I’d never heard before, and they headed to the dance floor.
“Come ooo-on,” Frannie said. “As long as we’re here.”
“You can lead a horse to water,” I told her.
“But I can’t make him dance, I know,” she said, mock dejected. I’m sure she wasn’t surprised. The girl’s never seen me shake an ounce of booty. Finally, she gave up and went over to the dance floor by herself. I watched while she stood on the sidelines, bopping and making little kicks and studying everyone else’s movements. I still didn’t want to dance, but I felt just a little guilty and a little jealous. She looked like she was having fun, even standing alone.
Then this lanky cowboy came up and said something in her ear. Frannie looked unsure and checked back my way. I waved her on with both hands. Dance your feet off, girl. Just leave me out of it. She shrugged and followed him onto the floor, where they got swallowed up right away.
I didn’t see them again until a few songs later, when the crowd spit them back out. She and the cowboy were sweaty and grinning when they got to our table. Patricia and Arthur, meanwhile, were still going at it somewhere. And if they had slipped away to make out in the parking lot, well, I just didn’t want to know about it.
“Now, that is fun,” Frannie said collapsing back into the booth. The cowboy sat down tentatively, on the edge of the seat. He was tall, with dark hair and smoky dark eyes under a straw cowboy hat. He got my attention.
“How you doin’?” He shook my hand across the table. “You guys want something to drink?” I’d already finished my Coke, and Frannie’s, while they were dancing.
“I’ll have a Jones Cola if they have them,” Frannie said, “or a Coke. He’ll have the same. Thanks.”
“Jones Cola?” he asked.
“She gets them at Smoothie King in Roaring Brook,” I said. “It’s the only place that sells them, but she’s always on the lookout for something else.” I wondered if Frannie picked up on my code, as in, Aren’t we just overflowing with options tonight?
“I’ll have to check it out sometime,” he said to Frannie, which I think was a little code of his own. Then he sauntered off to get the drinks.
“Nice butt,” I said, watching him walk away. Frannie shushed me, as if anyone could hear us over the music.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell your other boyfriend.”
“It was just dancing,” Frannie said. “Besides—”
“Jeffrey isn’t your boyfriend yet.” I finished her sentence.
“No. I was going to say, besides, I asked you to dance first.”
“I’m not complaining,” I told her. “I’m just glad you have a playmate.”
She turned in the booth to face me. “Just so we’re clear here, if you tell Jenn or Belina I was dancing with the Sundance Kid, I will drag you back to this place every Saturday for the rest of your life. They’d never let me live him down.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “He’s hot.”
“Yeah, just the kind of ranch hand I want to show up at the prom with.”
“Besides, you already have a potential prom date,” I said.
“That too,” she said.
Sundance came back with three glasses clutched in his noticeably big hands. “Just plain Cokes, sorry,” he said, and then sat down with us for a while. It turned out he was a sophomore at the College of the Midwest; originally from Oklahoma; didn’t come to Line ’Em Up very often but loved country dancing; and no, he had never heard of the band Coogie Fuji, which was something I entirely made up just to see what he’d say. Frannie stepped on my foot under the table when I did it, but he passed the test and didn’t try to pretend to know anything.
Patricia and Arthur finally came back to the table, and the five of us kept talking. Sundance was a big hit with both of them, and I had to fight off a chronic case of irrational jealousy. It wasn’t like I wanted Patricia to think Frannie and I were a couple. Just the opposite. But still . . .
When a slow song started, Sundance turned to Frannie. “You wanna learn how to two-step?”
Frannie shrugged her shrug. “Sure.”
Patricia and Arthur were already on their feet. She leaned over before they walked away and said in my ear, “You’re going to lose your best girl.” For some reason, that made me mad too.
“She’s not my girl!” I shouted at all of their backs, but only because I knew they couldn’t hear me.
Eight
“Hey, Marcus,” I said as I hopped onto a pink-and-chrome counter stool at Scoops.
Marcus frowned up at the clock, which has an ice cream cone in place of each number—you know, because “it’s always ice cream time at Scoops.” Anyway. “Aren’t you early?” he asked. I was supposed to meet him here in another half an hour, at the end of his shift.
“Yeah—about that—” I didn’t quite have time to get out, “Please don’t kill me,” because in the next moment Jeffrey had walked up to the counter.
“Marcus!” Jeffrey flashed Marcus a huge smile as he slid onto the stool behind mine. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
For a moment, Marcus just stared at Jeffrey. His mouth dropped open. Then he snapped it shut again. His face flushed pink, and my heart sank for him. “Hey, Jeffrey,” Marcus said finally. “What a surprise.”
I gave my best friend a half wince, half smile that I hoped he understood was an apology. Marcus hates it when people from school see him in his polyester uniform. Actually, I think he looks adorable in his pink-and-white-striped soda fountain hat, but Marcus says that it makes him feel like he’s wearing a peppermint stick on his head, like he belongs on a Christmas parade float or something. So he keeps his Scoops job on the double DL.
Anyway, I know that Marcus is kind of sensitive about it, and I didn’t want him to think that I was just being thoughtless by bringing Jeffrey here. It had
been an honest-to-God accident. “I just happened to mention to Jeffrey that I was meeting you here—” I started.
“Hey, Marcus!” Rajeev Gupta and Makonnen Kalorama were waving from across the restaurant. They were sitting at a huge corner booth with Astrid and Glenn.
“Your hat ees so cute!” Leila Manais called. She’s French, so she can get away with saying stuff like that. I gave Marcus a weak smile as he sliced into a banana like he was tearing out its guts.
“Wow—everybody’s here!” Marcus said brightly. “What’s everybody doing here, Frannie?” His eyes flashed dangerously, like he wanted to smash a scoop of ice cream on my head.
“Sorry,” I mouthed silently as Jeffrey scanned the menu above Marcus’s head. But Marcus didn’t notice. His eyes had flicked back to Jeffrey, watching him intently as he skimmed the list of flavors. Marcus looked like he was trying to use laser vision to bore into Jeffrey’s skull and read his thoughts. That made me feel even worse, because I was almost sure that I knew what Marcus was thinking—Does Jeffrey think I’m lame because I’m stuck wearing this stupid outfit? Is Frannie embarrassed to be my friend? Does the International Club think I’m a jerk? Poor Marcus. I never should have let Jeffrey come here. . . .
“We decided to do something fun for our International Club meeting,” Jeffrey explained absently. “Hey—” His eyes landed on Marcus’s, and his grin widened. “Maybe we’ll have all of our meetings here from now on!”
Marcus turned from pale to green. His face was really working the whole kaleidoscope of horror colors.
“Oh, ho, ho, Jeffrey, you kidder,” I put in quickly. “You don’t want the International Club to gain a zillion pounds, do you?”
“Yeah, man, mix it up.” This comment was from Cal, who was putting a scoop of vanilla into a root beer float. “Maybe you guys could go bowling or get your tarot cards read.”
“Jeffrey, this is Calvin,” I said.
“Nice to meet you.” Jeffrey smiled.
“Jeffrey!” Astrid called from the booth. “Come here zo ve can order!”
Jeffrey nodded, then turned to me. “Coming?”
“In a sec,” I told him.
He gave us all a little wave and headed off to join the rest of the ICers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so, sorry,” I whispered to Marcus the minute Jeffrey was out of earshot.
Just then, Goth in a Box—Tina Tamarino—slapped an order on the counter in front of Cal. “Since when are you in the International Club?” she asked, snapping her gum, looking at me darkly from underneath black sparkly eye shadow. “I need a Colonel Custard butterscotch sundae.”
“Hey, is that the guy you’re dating?” Cal asked me.
“Isn’t he cute?” I said.
“Are you actually going out with him?” Tina asked.
“Can we have a moment here?” Marcus snapped, looking miserable. “Frannie, you know that working here is my secret identity.”
I felt a flush creep up the back of my neck. Jeez, I’d already apologized. What did he want from me? “I’m sorry.”
“What would happen to Superman if Lois Lane went around telling everyone that he was really Clark Kent?” Marcus demanded.
“He’d probably be a lot less confused, dude,” Cal suggested.
“Stay out of it, Cal,” Marcus growled in this very un-Marcus way.
Whoa. Part of me couldn’t help thinking that Marcus was really overreacting. I mean, it wasn’t like he needed to impress Jeffrey or anything. I was supposed to be the one who felt self-conscious. Still, another—bigger—part of me totally understood. In a way, Jeffrey was our project. We both wanted him to like us. “I know. I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I said in a low voice. “I didn’t suggest coming here, I swear. See, Jeffrey asked if I wanted to hang out after school. I told him I was meeting you here, and then . . .” Well, and then Jeffrey had invited the whole IC to hang out at Scoops.
Marcus narrowed his eyes even more. “So—you were just going to blow me off?”
“No—of course not!” God! Didn’t he know me at all? It was almost like Marcus was looking for a fight. “I’m not supposed to meet you until later, remember?” I ran my fingers through a hunk of hair . . . and got stuck.
Cal frowned. “Is that a new hairstyle?” he asked.
“No,” I said with a groan as I tried to extricate my hand from my hair. “New gel. I’m trying to go all natural—but that seems to translate into major frizz.” It was also making my head itch, but I didn’t want to get into it. The products had been Jeffrey’s suggestion. I should have known better than to take hair product advice from a guy.
Marcus looked annoyed. “Can we stick to the subject?” he demanded.
“What was the subject?” Cal asked.
“People, table three needs water; table six needs sundaes; and Tina, a very rude man is waiting for Colonel Custard to get him with a silver serving dish in the ice cream parlor, so let’s have a little less chatting and more working, okay?” Margaret twisted her pink-frosted lips into a smile. “Don’t look now, hon,” she said to me, “but a certain blue-eyed cutie is looking your way. Is that the guy?”
I smiled and waved at Jeffrey. “That’s him.”
“What’s Glenn doing here?” Marcus demanded as he flung a scoop of ice cream into a dish. “Don’t tell me he’s from Canada too.”
“No—he’s from Alaska, remember? Jeffrey just asked him if he wanted to come along at the last minute,” I explained. Actually, I think Glenn had kind of gotten railroaded into coming, just as I had.
“So you and Jeffrey are actually going out?” Tina repeated, like she was some journalist for Goth Beat who wanted to make sure she had her story straight.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I guess.”
“You guess?” Cal repeated. “What’s up?”
“Is he one of those tongue-all-over-the-face kissers?” Margaret wanted to know.
I winced. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Tina repeated, her dark eyes narrowed.
Marcus made this snorting sound, which I chose to ignore.
“If you haven’t kissed the guy,” Cal put in, “how can you be sure that you’re really going out?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Cal,” I said, a little sharply. To tell the truth, his comment stung. Of course, there were reasons that Jeffrey and I hadn’t kissed—first, I’d nearly exploded at the Polish food fest; then we’d hung out as a threesome with Marcus; then there was the whole STF thing. . . . But still, it did seem strange that he’d never made a move.
“They’ve hung out a bunch of times,” Marcus said loyally. “And they’ve been on a real two-person date.”
Tina pursed her lips. “It sounds like going out.”
I was grateful to Tina for saying that, even though she didn’t really sound convinced.
Cal wasn’t impressed. “When a guy is interested, he goes for the kiss.”
“Don’t listen to them, Frannie,” Marcus said as he drizzled butterscotch over a sundae. “This is just like the time that they all told you not to go for the guy who worked in the sausage store.”
“I’m telling you,” Tina said crinkling her nose, “that guy had a really weird smell.”
“That was good advice, man,” Cal insisted. “And Frannie, all I’m saying is, maybe you need to clear things up.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. I had to admit, Cal had a point.
“Well, don’t look now,” Margaret said to me, “but some blond girl is moving in awful tight to your man.”
I didn’t even have to look. I knew it was Astrid. “Okay, I gotta go,” I said quickly. “Marcus, I’m sorry—I’ll make it up to you later.” I scurried over to the International Club booth and squeezed in on the end, next to Jeffrey and across from Glenn, who grinned at me. He was sitting underneath a picture of a giant sundae that seemed to be attacking the Grand Canyon. Whoever did the interior decorating at Scoops definitely had an original sense of style.
&
nbsp; Jeffrey smiled at me as I sat down, and a queasy little butterfly fluttered through my stomach. Why haven’t you kissed me? I wondered, feeling kind of like I was back in eighth grade. What am I doing wrong? But I managed to smile back weakly, and Jeffrey turned his attention to the conversation.
“No, the problems with Eritrea are a lot more complicated than that,” Makonnen was saying.
I nodded and made a little hm sound, like I knew all about it. Of course, meanwhile, I was scanning my brain. . . . Eritrea, I thought. Skin disease or African nation? I wasn’t a hundred percent sure—but I knew it was one or the other. Oh, man, I thought. What have I been learning in school? Why don’t they teach us these things?
“What’s your opinion, Frannie?” Astrid asked me. This little smile played at the corners of her mouth, like she knew I wasn’t sure what Eritrea was. Hate her. It only made things worse that she’d recently gotten a super-cute pixie-style haircut, and I was sitting there with an all-natural sticky frizz ball on my head.
Okay, say something that covers both skin diseases and African nations, I thought. I shook my head sadly. “Makonnen is right—Eritrea is complicated. So many people are suffering—”
“That is so true, Fran,” Jeffrey said warmly, like I’d just said the most brilliant thing in the world.
My stomach fluttered again. I’m a genius, I thought. A genius who has no idea what she’s talking about.
“The situation between Eritrea and Ethiopia is very much like what’s happening between India and Pakistan,” Rajeev put in.
Okay, now we were getting somewhere! Eritrea was an African nation! I gave myself a little mental pat on the back as the other International Clubbers debated the matter back and forth. Sometimes hanging out with Jeffrey and his friends felt a little like being a contestant on Jeopardy. It was kind of thrilling to feel like I finally had a few points.