M or F?

  After Margaret filtered off to seat some customers and Tina went to serve the now-melting Big Deal I had made, Frannie dug back into the bag. She pulled out a big floppy cardigan sweater, like something a professor would wear.

  “What about this?” she said.

  “Well,” I said. “It’s not slutty. . . .”

  She stuffed it back in the bag. “Do you know what you’re going to wear?”

  “Oh God, I don’t know,” I said. I picked up the next order ticket—a Saturday Sundae and a Raspberry Moo Shake.

  “Liar.”

  “Probably jeans and that long-sleeved blue tee,” I said quietly. I was embarrassed for anyone but Frannie to hear that I had already thought about it.

  All of a sudden, Calvin was among us. He works the fountain with me and has the ability to appear out of nowhere. I could smell the cigarette break on him.

  When you first meet Cal, you get one of three impressions:1. Surfer

  2. Stoner

  3. Surfer-stoner

  He’s either the smartest dumb person I’ve ever known or the dumbest smart person. We called him Cal, not because of Calvin, but because it’s short for California. I don’t even know if he’s ever been there. He just kind of is California, with the long blond hair, the mellow attitude, and the West Coast logic.

  “You’ve got a math problem there, Fran,” Cal said, then picked up an order ticket and went back to work.

  “And this relates to math how?” I asked him. Cal almost always has a point; you just usually have to look for it.

  “Well,” he said, slowly, as always, “it’s like this. Date equals two people, right? And date plus Marcus equals . . .” He stopped to think about it. “Not a date.”

  Before Frannie or I could respond, Tina was back in it again. “Cal’s right,” she said. “I mean, you like this guy, right? You should just go by yourself.” She put a Root Beer Volcano on her tray and flew away, crossing paths with Margaret.

  “Tina, those people at table three are in a hurry,” she said, and then, “What’d I miss?”

  Cal raised his hand unnecessarily to speak. “I’m just saying Frannie’s thing isn’t a date if Marcus is there. No offense, man.”

  “None taken,” I said. It’s impossible to be offended by anything anyone says at Scoops, ’cause it’s like working inside a cartoon.

  Frannie shifted on her stool. “I don’t know if I want it to be a date yet anyway. It’s too early for that. Besides, what does that word even mean anymore? Dates are like this old-fashioned concept. Dates are—”

  “Fruit?” I suggested.

  “Yeah,” Frannie said with a grateful smile my way. “Dates are fruit.”

  The only one who seemed to agree was Calvin, who nodded, although I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance that he was responding to some unrelated thought deep inside his head.

  “Well, honey, you can call it what you want,” Margaret said, sliding over to the cash register, “but a girl and a boy going out for lunch? That’s a date.”

  “Or a boy and a boy,” I said.

  “But not a boy and a girl and a boy,” Calvin said.

  “Well, actually—” I started, but Margaret cut me off.

  “Let’s keep it PG, people.” Which was an interesting thing to say, given what I knew about the reasons for Margaret’s divorce.

  Frannie watched the whole thing like a tennis match, back and forth.

  “Anyway,” I told her, “I think you’re right. It doesn’t have to be a date-date yet. You can go slow.”

  She started gathering up her stuff; we’d finish the fashion show later at her house. “You’re just saying that ’cause you want to be there,” she said.

  “Correct.”

  “Well, good, because you’re coming.”

  I took her ten-dollar bill for the hot chocolate and gave her a five, five ones, and a big chocolate chip cookie in change. She put the five in the tip jar.

  “Tomorrow after fourth period,” she said, and turned to go.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Calvin called after her.

  “I’m not,” she called back without looking, but I saw her dump the cookie in the garbage on her way out.

  At this point in the movie version, we cut to the next day with a slow fade. Maybe go into an overhead shot of suburban streets. The music comes up loud and the camera finds Frannie’s car driving along. It swoops down so you can see us inside, bopping our heads to the sound track, which it turns out is coming from the car stereo. We’re both obviously a little hyper. Cut to inside the car. Frannie looks in the rearview mirror and floofs her hair, then makes a face.

  “You look fine!” I shout over the music.

  She’s still looking in the mirror. “What?”

  I turn off the stereo. “You look perfect,” I say.

  And she did—just a little makeup, not too much. She had gone ahead with the striped shirt and corduroy skirt, too. They were just right, as in, casual enough so she wouldn’t look like she’d dressed up for him, but nice enough so he’d notice. I had changed my mind about the blue tee and gone with a vintage short-sleeved madras plaid that Frannie had given me for my birthday, insisting I needed to have something besides a steady diet of T-shirts in my wardrobe.

  “This is so stupid,” I said. “Why am I nervous?”

  She gave me a puppy dog look. “’Cause you love me,” she said. “And because we’re brain twins.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Ever since Jeffrey had given Frannie (and me) those daffodils and asked her (us) out to lunch, it was like the stakes had gotten higher. And even though they weren’t my daffodils or my stakes, for that matter, I couldn’t stop my knees from bouncing up and down in the car. If she was the star of this show, then I was the nervous director standing behind the camera and biting his nails.

  We pulled up to the curb outside of Disgusting Macrobiotic Café or whatever that place was called; I can’t remember.

  “All natural.” I sighed. “I should have guessed.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come if I told you,” Frannie said.

  “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for anything. But we’re stopping at IHOP for some real food on the way back to school.”

  She was barely listening. “Is this weird?” she said. “This whole thing is weird, isn’t it?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s lunch.”

  “Lunch with a guy who thinks he’s been having private online conversations with me.” Jeffrey was turning out to be a regular customer in the school chat room, so he was almost too easy to find. Our second chat with him had gone even better than the first, unless you counted how nervous it was making Frannie now.

  “They are private conversations,” I assured her. “Brain twins don’t count.”

  “Technically, maybe, but still, ethically . . . I don’t know.”

  “Listen,” I said, “remember Great Adventure last summer? The guy in line for the log flume?” A little smile crossed Frannie’s face. She had done some Oscarworthy flirting that day. She’d even used a British accent. “Just remember that feeling,” I told her. “Like you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “But that’s the thing,” she said. “I do have something to lose. I think I really like him.”

  I sighed. “Lucky.”

  That seemed to prop her up a little bit. She thought about it for another second, then sat up straighter. “You’re right,” she said. “I am lucky. This is a good thing. I’m being stupid. What am I so worried about?”

  I figured I knew the answer to that one, but the whole point was to put her mind somewhere else. “All right, then,” I said. “You ready to go in?” She nodded. “So, one more time: If you want me to talk more, look at me and touch your chin. If you want me to talk less, look at me and touch your lips.” It was a new system I had come up with that morning.

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a come-on?” she asked. “Like if you touch your mouth, the guy’s supposed to know you’re interested?” br />
  “Maybe,” I said. “But if you want me to talk less, that means you are interested, so it doesn’t matter.”

  She put a hand on my leg. “Thank you for being here.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” I said.

  “In a heartbeat,” she said.

  “Not that it’ll ever happen.”

  “And we’re focusing . . .”

  “Sorry,” I told her, and I reached for the door handle. “Let’s go.”

  The inside of the restaurant was nicer than I expected. There were plants everywhere, clustered in the corners and hanging around the dining room, which was all glass and greenhousey. A little waterfall fountain gurgled near the front. It was all kind of beautiful, actually.

  “Hey! Over here!” Jeffrey leaned out from behind a potted tree, where he was sitting in a booth. It wasn’t until we got over there that we saw he had brought someone. “Do you guys know Glenn?”

  Glenn Scarpelli was one of Jeffrey’s more popular friends. He had that Italian thing going on, with the dark hair and cocky smile. At school, he was one of those hybrids—in his case, sports and theater. I was pretty sure he played baseball and soccer, and I knew he had been the lead in Grease when Frannie did costumes.

  I was a little mad at Jeffrey for pulling this, which was hypocritical of me, except that I wasn’t a surprise guest and Glenn was. Then, when we sat down again, it ended up me across from Jeffrey and Frannie across from Glenn. I couldn’t think of any excuse why we should all stand up and start over, so I let it pass. Hopefully, Glenn would know enough to hang back and let the two of them be the center of things.

  “So Jeff’s told me about Frannie,” he launched right in, smiling and waggling his eyebrows at her. “And you’re Beauregard. The Southern guy, right?”

  None of the responses in my head were helpful at this time:1. Don’t call me Beauregard if you don’t know me.

  2. When you say “Southern guy,” why do you make it sound like it’s a bad thing?

  3. Please tell me you’re not going to talk the entire time.

  Frannie headed off my sarcasm and jumped in. “Marcus moved here from Georgia last year.”

  “Well, thanks for letting us come along,” Glenn said to her. “Me and Marcus, I mean. I kind of thought this was supposed to be a date.”

  I felt Frannie’s nails through my jeans where she was gripping my knee.

  Jeffrey picked up his menu. “Get whatever you guys want. Lunch is on me.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Frannie said.

  “I know,” he said, simple as that. “The burritos are really good and the tempeh burgers. That’s what I’m going to get.”

  I looked for burrito on my menu and recognized the words tortilla and cheese, along with a bunch of ingredients I had never heard of.

  “I’ll get the tempeh burger too,” Frannie said. She and Jeffrey exchanged shy little smiles, then both went back to their menus, even though they had both supposedly decided what to order already.

  “Frannie told me you really like this place,” I said to Jeffrey, which wasn’t actually true, but I wanted them to look at each other again. The problem was, Frannie turned to Glenn at that exact moment and asked, “Did you grow up in Roaring Brook?”

  No, Frannie! my mind yelled. Bad girl! Wrong boy!

  “We moved here when I was two,” Glenn said. “I was born in Alaska, actually. . . .” I could already tell it was going to be an epic answer. He seemed like the type to use twenty words where just one will do.

  “Where in Georgia are you from, Marcus?” Jeffrey asked me, and all of a sudden it was two separate conversations.

  “Athens,” I said. “Actually, Frannie was the first person I met here.” Maybe I could at least get the topic back to her.

  Frannie burst out laughing—at something Glenn had just said, I realized.

  “That’s hilarious,” she said, twirling the straw in her water.

  “Well, you lucked out, then,” Jeffrey answered me, blushing just a tiny bit, with another shy-cutie look her way. And Frannie totally missed it.

  If nothing else, Jeffrey was winning some best friend approval points from me. The hardest part of it was trying to forget what I already knew about him from the online chatting. As far as he knew, this was our first conversation ever. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

  By the time we left, nothing really bad had happened, but nothing really good had happened, either. I spent more time talking to Jeffrey than Frannie ever did, and we all spent most of our time listening to Glenn. I drank a Coke and left hungry.

  “You know, if you go out with Jeffrey, you’re going to have to eat vegetarian all the time,” I told Frannie in the car.

  “Hey, as long as he’s nice and has cool friends, I’ll be fine,” Frannie said.

  “Which cool friends would those be?”

  “Oh, come on.” She wiggled her fingers at the stereo so I’d know to turn it down for her. “I thought Glenn was great. And you have to admit he’s funny. I love how uninhibited he is. Did you hear that thing he said about getting caught in the bathroom?”

  “I guessed I missed that part,” I said.

  “And he’s even good looking, almost as cute as Jeffrey.”

  “More my Jeffrey than yours so far,” I said. “You’ve got to step up.”

  “Blahbie, blahbie, blah,” Frannie said. “Seriously. It’s fine. I’m kind of glad it was like that. Just little steps at a time. That way, I can ease into things with him, you know?”

  I saw right through her. “You were still afraid to talk to him, weren’t you?”

  Frannie slapped the steering wheel. “What’s up with that, anyway? Why is it so hard to talk to the people we like the most?”

  “Uh, hello?” I said. “You don’t seem to have any trouble talking to me.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “You’ll get there,” I said. “The thing to think about now is what happens next.”

  “I already know what happens next,” she said. “Can you come over tonight?”

  “Back to the chat room?”

  “He’s usually there around eight-thirty.”

  I clapped. “Stalking boys is fun.”

  That gave me about five hours after school to write an overdue English paper, mow the lawn, and have yet another uncomfortable conversation with my grandmother. At dinner, she passed a bowl of succotash and just as casual as that, she said, “What words are the kids using for sex these days?”

  Dad and I yelped at the same time.

  “Momma!”

  “Patricia!”

  We never can get used to her little stealth bombs.

  “I’m just wondering,” she said, all wide-eyed and innocent, with a hand to her chest. “Honestly, you boys are so tightly wound. You’re going to get ulcers, both of you.” Dad filled his mouth with food and I got up to get something—anything—from the refrigerator.

  Patricia cut into her pork chop and kept going. “We used to call it shagging. I never even heard the F-word until I was in college.” Then, making some connection in her mind that I didn’t even want to think about, she asked me, “How’s Frannie, hon?”

  With Patricia, it’s never just a question. There’s always some decoding to be done. I guess that’s where I get it. Frannie says I speak in code all the time.

  “Fine,” I said, which was my own code for, Let’s not go there, either.

  “I was thinking maybe you two might want to come out with me and Arthur this weekend. Like a good old-fashioned double date.”

  I had no idea who she was talking about, and apparently, neither did Dad. “Arthur?” I heard him ask.

  “My new friend,” she said. “I met him at the farmers’ market.”

  Friend? Now there was some code. Suddenly, I realized why Patricia had sex on her mind, and then, just as suddenly, I had this whole new batch of unwanted images and thoughts.

  “So what do you think, hon? Saturday night, maybe?” Pa
tricia asked my back.

  I leaned farther into the refrigerator. “Uhhh . . .” Milk, orange juice, pickles, mustard, canola oil, cream cheese, my grandmother having sex, please God, make it stop—

  “Hon?”

  “Uhhh,” I tried again. “I don’t know what Frannie’s doing this weekend.” It was a lame response, but it was all my mouth could come up with on its own since my brain was quickly shutting down.

  “I thought you two always did Saturday night videos or something,” she persisted.

  Then I heard Dad cut in. “Momma, why don’t you let Marcus see what’s up, and he’ll get back to you. How’s that sound?”

  Thank you, Dad. When I finally came back to the table, Patricia winked at me. “Oh, you’re blushing. It’s okay. I know you kids have better things to do than hang out with a couple of old farts.” She wagged a forkful of pork chop and zucchini at me. “But you might have fun. Arthur and I know how to have a good time.”

  Yeah, I thought. I’ll bet you do.

  I’m not a prude. Not at all. Patricia was free to have all the wild, kinky senior citizen sex she wanted. I just didn’t want to hear about it, know about it, or think about it. And on a side note, I wondered as I left the table, why was I always getting invited on other people’s dates? I wanted one of my own, thank you very much.

  When I told Frannie about it later at her house, she just thought it was cute. “Aww,” she said, closing the door to her room. “Patricia wants to double date with us.”

  This was like a weird twist on the brain twin thing. Every time something annoyed me about my family, Frannie thought it was quaint or sweet or whatever, and vice versa with her family. I can never understand why she complains about them. The Falconers could have their own show on Nick at Nite. It would be called The Perfects, and it would be boring, because nothing bad would ever happen.

  “Patricia wants a double date with someone who doesn’t exist,” I said to Frannie. “Namely, her straight grandson.”

  “Well, you know—” Frannie started in.

  “Don’t say it.” She didn’t have to. I already knew. If Patricia thought I was straight, it was only because I let her think it.

  “Sweetie, I’m not saying it’ll be easy to tell her. I’m not even saying that it should have happened by now, necessarily.”