Babe in Boyland (16 page)

“Uh-huh . . . ?” Something about the way she says this warns me she’s less than receptive.

“He just wants to sleep with you!” I blurt in a rush.

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t fall for him, okay? He doesn’t care about you as a person.”

A light dawns slowly in her caramel eyes. “Wait a second.
You
put him up to that, didn’t you?”

“Not exactly . . .”

“You did too! You deliberately fed him misinformation. Why would you do that?”

“Chloe, I know it seems weird, but—”

“
Weird
?” she echoes, pissed now. “It doesn’t seem
weird
. It seems psychotic!”

“I was trying to help!”

Darcy places one hand on Chloe’s shoulder and the other on mine. “Everybody calm down.”

“He thinks you’re a slut!” Okay, not my most tactful moment, but Chloe’s rising anger makes me nervous. “That came out wrong. Sorry. I had to do
something
.”

She shakes her head at me in disbelief. “You’re jealous.”

“Whatever.”

“Why else would you be such a bitch? Just because a cute guy likes me and not you doesn’t mean you can get in the way!”

Darcy looks from Chloe to me with increasing helplessness. “You guys, please don’t fight.”

“Yeah, Chloe, that’s it.” My tone is now edged with bitter sarcasm. “I’m
jealous
. Sure wish I could have guys like Josh lining up to
use
me.”

“Shut up!”

“I have inside information,” I say, frustrated. “Trust me, he’s sketchy.”

“Trust you?” she scoffs. “Yeah right, after the stunt you pulled? Ha!”

A door at the back of the theater swings open, and I shrink farther into the shadows instinctively. Mr. Pratt peers across the darkness in our direction.

“Girls? Why are you
skulking
? You better not be smoking—it’s hell on your voice, not to mention your complexion. Intermission’s over. And I don’t want you out here in your costumes anyway. Chop-chop!” He disappears and the heavy door slams behind him.

“Come on, Darcy.” Chloe gives me a dirty look before flouncing off.

“I’ll work on her,” Darcy mutters, squeezing my hand. “Got to go. Good luck tonight!”

“Thanks.”

I trudge back to the dorms, ineffectually attempting to keep the bright pink Victoria’s Secret bag hidden under my blazer. I get several weird looks from the guys I pass, but try to ignore them. I feel totally confused and defeated. Guess that’s the last time I’ll try protecting Chloe from an opportunistic scumbag. Fat lot of good it does me. God, what a fabulous evening this is turning out to be: gender identity counseling from Mr. Pratt, the repulsive stage kiss by Summer and Emilio, hated on by my best friend. And now, as my reward for enduring all this, I get to go on a date with my soul mate’s sister.

Did I say soul mate? I meant roommate.

Obviously. If Emilio were my soul mate, he would never kiss Summer like he did tonight.

Would he?

Chapter Seventeen

I
barricade myself in the dorm room, knowing Emilio will be at rehearsal all evening, but locking the door just in case anyone else happens by. It takes me almost an hour to get the stubble thing right, and even then I’m not one hundred percent sure it looks authentic. The whole time, my mind keeps playing snippets of the day in quick flashes like a bunch of random film clips spliced together: Chloe’s eyes narrowed to slits, Josh farting, Summer standing on tippy toes for her kiss, Mr. Pratt blinking at me in sympathy. All of us have our wires crossed and crisscrossed so many times it’s impossible to untangle the mess. It really does seem like the entire human race might as well be conversing with hand gestures and grunts, for all the success we’re having. I thought the main chasm was between men and women—guys and girls, whatever. Now that Chloe’s so pissed at me just for trying to protect her, I’m starting to wonder. Maybe all human beings are destined to misunderstand each other, regardless of our chromosomes.

It’s so hard to be truly honest with people, and even when you are there’s no guarantee they’ll appreciate it. I think about my Dr. Aphrodite column. For more than a year I wrote what girls wanted to hear—what
I’d
want to hear in their shoes. It was so easy, I didn’t even know I was doing it. People would much rather be fed candied lies than bitter truths. Who knows? Maybe that’s the natural order of things. Chloe sure as hell would be happier right now if I’d just let her go on thinking Josh really cared about her. Who am I to go against nature, insist the mating dance change? Maybe illusion and artifice—lies, even—are a necessary part of romance.

As I’m brushing on another layer of stubble, my eyes fall on a photo Emilio keeps taped to the corner of the mirror. He looks about thirteen; he’s at the beach, his arm draped casually over the shoulder of a chubby-cheeked kid about his age. They both wear sunglasses and matching Batman T-shirts. This must be Gustavo, his best friend from home. I think of our night at the swimming hole, when he told me about Gustavo and how hard it’s been for him to make friends here at Underwood. Once again, that mixture of uneasiness and longing swells up inside me. I know there’s something real between us—a fragile bond we can barely afford to acknowledge. Yet that bond is built on a foundation of half-truths and lies.

That’s the thing I can’t quite figure out. I’m obviously not being honest with him; he doesn’t even know my real name! Yet somehow, in spite of that, I feel more myself around him than I’ve ever felt around any guy.

How does that even make sense? I’m totally lying to him, and that enables me to tell the truth? It’s a conundrum wrapped in an enigma.

I’m still fretting over these questions like a dog chasing its tail when I finish my facial hair application and check myself one last time in the mirror. I’ve traded my Underwood uniform for street clothes: a black T-shirt, button-down shirt over that, and the boy jeans I got at Macy’s with Darcy and Chloe. I pose for myself a few times. Once I’ve assured myself no boobage shows, I try to decide if I qualify as hot. Even with the facial hair I’m still a long way from rugged, but some girls might consider me attractive in a slightly effeminate, nerdy sort of way. I add a blue baseball cap at the last minute, hoping it might render me a little more butch.

I drive off campus into town and park in a dark corner of the lot behind Java the Hut, thinking what a disaster it would be if someone (my mom, for instance) recognized my car and decided to pop inside for a chat. I picked this place in particular because nobody I know ever goes here; it’s a little grungy and the baked goods are inevitably stale. It’s a few minutes after nine as I come in through the back door, quickly scanning for familiar faces.

To my relief, there’s only a twenty-something barista behind the counter with a book, a middle-aged guy glued to his laptop, and a girl about my age sitting alone in the window, sipping a 7UP nervously.

As I approach, trying hard to walk like a guy, she stands, smoothing her hair.

“Hi, I’m Erica.” She wears an electric blue blouse, jeans, and rhinestone jewelry. She’s short—maybe a little over five feet tall—and curvy. Her long dark hair has been carefully arranged with pretty rhinestone clips. She has Emilio’s eyes, except hers are about three shades lighter, milk chocolate to his semisweet.

I offer her my hand. “Nat Rodgers. Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks for not hanging up on me the other night.”

“Oh, no problem.”

“Most guys would have run screaming.” She smiles a pretty smile and sits back down. “Glad I didn’t scare you away.”

I try to ignore the guilt I feel about fooling her like this. She radiates hope, expectations, a palpable optimism that makes her seem needy and delicate as a baby bird. Here she is, looking at me with eyes wide, mascara-darkened lashes blinking. I feel sick.

“I’m going to get some coffee.” I gesture vaguely at the counter. “You want anything?”

“No, I bought myself a soda.” She looks down at her lap. “I didn’t know if you’d show.”

Is it my imagination, or was that a subtle reprimand? God, did I screw up already? I’m like seven minutes late and I lost points?

“I can pay for it if you want,” I say, awkwardly pulling some dollars from my pocket.

Her disdainful look tells me my potential boyfriend score dropped again. Pretty soon I’ll be below zero. “That’s okay. Really.”

I hurry away from her, shooting a wistful glance at the exit. God, I so don’t want to be here. Obviously I don’t want her to
like
me like me—that would make things even more complicated than they already are. All the same, it’s a bit humiliating to be judged ineligible within five minutes of meeting her.

I order at the counter, pay the bored barista, and fill my coffee cup with decaf. In the meantime, I sneak a couple glances at Erica. She spots her reflection in the plate glass window and furtively tries to rearrange one of her clips. I feel a pang of empathy, knowing that self-conscious anxiety that permeates first dates. I want to tell her to relax, she looks fine, but I know it won’t help. Why do we girls obsess over our appearance so much? It’s like we really believe getting our hair and makeup just right will make all the difference. As if any guy worth our time would fail to see our beauty because a rhinestone clip is arranged at a wonky angle.

I come back to the table with my coffee, this time determined to make a better impression. She’s bound to give Emilio a full report, right? I don’t want her telling him I’m a complete loser.

“So,” I say, taking a seat across from her, leaning on one elbow in what I hope is a suave yet sensitive posture. “How are you feeling about the thing with Julio?”

Bingo! This appears to be my one selling point as a date: a willingness to listen. I figure it worked for me on the phone, I might as well try it again. Sure enough, like a racehorse hearing the shot, she’s off and running, telling me all about the warning signs she ignored, the series of small betrayals leading up to this huge one, the debilitating fury she feels whenever she thinks of him. All I have to do is nod and murmur.

I can see the resemblance between her and Emilio. Her face is fuller, her features softer, but there’s a quality to her smile—a certain radiant warmth—that reminds me of him completely. She sure is a lot more forthcoming than he is, though. Her willingness to dish is one hundred percent female. As she moves from Julio to her life story in general, I perk up, anxious to learn more about Emilio’s past. In half an hour I gather way more information about the Cruz family than I learned from Emilio all week. She tells me about the other brothers and sisters (all five of them), their father’s death six years ago, their mother’s obsession with Emilio becoming a doctor. It’s like Emilio showed me a bare-bones sketch, while Erica offers up a full-color portrait. And yet I can’t say Erica’s version is more intimate. Emilio doesn’t say much, yet there’s a depth and a power to the things he does share. Every time he’s revealed something to me over the past week, I’ve had the profound sense of having earned something precious.

Eventually, Erica pauses in her monologue and blushes prettily. “But I’ve been going on and on about myself. What about you?”

“What about me?”

My temporary reprieve from the scoring session is now over. Her brown eyes bore into me once again, searching my boyfriend potential with the intensity of lasers. “What do you like to do?”

“Uh . . .” My mind goes utterly blank under her scrutiny. “I don’t know.”

She purses her lips. Definitely not the right answer. “Do you play sports?”

I scoff. “Me? Yeah, right! No, I’m super-clumsy.”

“Do you party?”

“Not much,” I say. “Beer makes me stupid.”

“So what do you do?” She folds her arms across her chest, daring me to impress her.

“Well, let’s see . . .” I feel so paralyzed by her expectations. It’s terrifying. I decide to stick close to the truth. “I like to act—do theater—mostly drama, though occasionally musicals.” That doesn’t sound manly enough, does it? I backpedal. “But only the edgy musicals, not the sappy ones. Musicals with lots of death and destruction in them—hardhitting social themes.”

Her expression doesn’t change. I plow on.

“Oh, and I like to write. I think I want to be a journalist. Professionally, I mean. Though who knows? It doesn’t pay very well. And I might not be good enough.”

“What kind of stuff do you write?”

“Mostly about relationships,” I say automatically.

“Relationships?” The slant of her eyebrows tells me this is suspect.

I can understand her skepticism; I liked this guy freshman year until he told me about his passion for self-help books. Hearing him talk about his inner child was such a turn-off.

“Between governments,” I amend, “political parties—not like
love
or anything. Is that what you thought I meant? No, I leave that stuff to you girls.”

At this her eyebrows shoot straight up. “What ‘stuff’ exactly?”

“You know, hearts, flowers, romance. Us guys don’t get into that shit.”

All at once she looks crushed. Two seconds ago she was the stony-faced director at the audition where you act your ass off and don’t even earn a curt nod; now she’s the baby bird again, tears pooling at the base of her lashes, threatening to ruin her carefully applied mascara.

Instinctively, I lean forward. “What’s wrong?”

“You seemed different on the phone.”

“Different, how?”

Her bottom lip quivers. “Sensitive.”

It’s at this moment that I recognize afresh the insanity of my situation. Here I am, working extraordinarily hard to impress this girl, someone I never wanted to go out with in the first place. Yet every moment I sit with her I get drawn further into her web of expectations. She has this enormous power—the ability to pronounce me man or worm—yet the guidelines about how to win her favor are maddeningly unclear. She wants me tough as Vin Diesel yet cuddly as a kitten. How can I be both at the same time? How did I even get roped into trying?

These thoughts evaporate when I glance up and see who just walked in. Emilio. And two steps behind him, in her signature boots, blond hair shining like a shampoo commercial, smile bright as a Whitestrips ad, is Summer Sheers.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Instantly I drop to the floor.

“Nat?” I hear Erica say. “What the . . . ?”

Okay, this is bad. I’m crawling around amidst straw wrappers and scone crumbs. There’s no way I can get to the door without Summer recognizing me. I’m screwed.

“Um, seriously,” Erica says, peering under the table at me. “What are you doing down there?”

Step one: Stand up.
Thwack!
My head slams into the underside of the table. Jesus Christ! Since when do I specialize in slapstick? I force myself to ignore the throbbing pain and stagger to my feet.

“Contact lens,” I mutter. “Popped right out.”

“Did you find it?”

I don’t answer; I’m too busy clocking Emilio and Summer’s progress in my peripheral vision as they head toward us. One false move and Summer will know it’s me. I keep my back to them. Erica looks from her brother to me in startled confusion.

“I’ve got to go,” I mumble.

Erica frowns. “Go? Where?”

“Hey you two,” Emilio says from behind me, but I refuse to turn around.

“I’ll call you,” I mumble to Erica. No idea where that came from—just seems like the thing to say. Then I dart for the door, my head low, grateful for the baseball cap.

“Where you going?” Emilio asks. “Hey, Nat!”

I pause at the door, still not daring to turn around. “Sorry—an emergency,” I say in the deepest, least recognizable voice I can manage, before scurrying outside, heart pounding.