The Loser's Guide to Life and Love (10 page)

“So,” she says, “you're the famous Sergio.”

“Sim,”
I say. I almost bow but decide that would be over the top.

“What did Ellie tell me your last name is?”

I feel a quick stab of non-Sergio-esque nerves as Scout shoots me a look.

“Mendes,” I tell her.

“Sergio Mendes, huh,” Aunt Mary says, looking me up and down like a piece of merchandise she isn't interested in.

“Isn't that a scream?” Scout pipes up. She plants a friendly slug in my arm. “I tease him about his name all the time.”

Mary keeps looking me over, and I start to feel
seriously offended. What does she think I am? A big phony or something?

“Ellie's been telling me about the two of you,” she says finally. “Thanks for being so friendly. I think she's been pretty lonely since moving in with her old-maid aunt.”

“That is so not true!” Ellie tells us. “Mary's the best. Anyway, we were just driving around talking tonight when we passed this place, so I made Mary stop and wait. I wanted her to meet you both.”

“We'll have you guys over soon,” Mary says. “'Night, Scout. 'Night,
Sergio
.”

It's like she says my name with italics.

Mary starts up the engine and the truck roars off. Scout and I stand together, watching Mary drive over curbs like she's driving a monster truck.

“She's really nice,” Scout says thoughtfully.

I give a non-Sergio-sounding squeak. “Are you talking about Mary?”

Frankly, Mary seems about as nice as your average Roller Derby queen.

“I'm talking about Ellie, duh.” Scout slowly turns and looks straight at me. For the first time ever, I see her eyes.

Not that I haven't seen them before. It's just that this time I really
see
them. They're huge and deep brown, except for a strange sunburst of gold right around the irises.

Oh. My. Gosh. Quark is right!

“Listen up, Ed. I am not playing this game where Ellie's concerned anymore. Okay?”

She turns abruptly and stalks off to her car alone without saying good-bye.

So I stand in the parking lot, watching her go, noticing that for the second time this evening, I almost can't breathe.

She's really nice
.

My unexpected words play through my head like a new set of lyrics to the song on the radio.

I'm just driving through the midnight-quiet streets of my neighborhood, wishing like crazy my brother were here instead of in Brazil to help me sort things out. Ben has always understood matters of the heart even though I'm the girl and he's the guy.

Oh, I miss him so much right now I could die, especially on a night like this, when the moon is almost full. I want to hear his soothing Big Ben voice wrap itself around familiar words. “Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon.”

But Ben is not here. I have to figure this one out for myself.

Here's what I'm thinking so far. I have this gut feeling that if Ellie knew how much I like Ed, she'd step aside for me in a second and yell, “You go!” from the sidelines. Even if she wanted Ed for herself. Which I'm pretty sure she does. Even though she doesn't know his name is actually Ed.

You can see for yourself how confusing this all gets.

Still, I really believe that Ellie is that kind of girl. On the other hand, Ed—my sweet, silly Ed, whom I have known and understood and read like a book for so long—is a total mystery to me right now.

What is going on inside the boy's head?

So I was breathless last night thanks to Ellie first and then Scout, and I'm REALLY breathless this morning because stupid Helena the Stalking Cat is purring on the pillow next to my head.

I stagger out of bed and check myself in the mirror. Everything is swollen—my eyes, my nose, my lips, my tongue.

Possibly even my hair.

Swear words fly out of my mouth. As always when she's been caught in bed with me, this is Helena's cue to exit stage left. She jumps onto my chest of drawers, knocks over a mug of pens, and leaps like a nimble little minx out of the window.

But not until she turns her head and shoots me her usual annoying look of undying love.

I swear some more and notice how the blood is pounding behind my swollen eyes. I'm guessing my eyelashes are swollen too.

“You look like crap,” I tell my mirror. Then I shuffle across my room and collapse backward onto my bed.

I also
feel
like crap, if you want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—and not just because my head morphed into a lead balloon overnight either. It's strange I should be feeling this way, when you stop to think about it, considering all the unbelievably excellent things that happened to me last night.

Here's the Spark Notes version, in case you've forgotten.

EXCELLENT THING NUMBER ONE: I actually made Ali laugh.
With
me. Not
at
me. Not that I've ever seen Ali laugh at me to my face, but I'm sure he's laughed behind my back.

EXCELLENT THING NUMBER TWO: I was heavily kissed by a girl who looks like she “oughta be in pictures.” In a park. On a blanket. In public.

EXCELLENT THING NUMBER THREE: I heavily returned above kisses. All of them.

I almost smile at the ceiling as I remember making out with Ellie. Almost. But not quite.

Not quite? What is wrong with me? AM I ON
CRAZY PILLS OR WHAT?

The phone rings, but I choose to ignore it because I am already busy lying on my bed, feeling like crap.

“Ed!” Mom's voice floats upstairs. “Telephone, sleepyhead!”

I hoist myself off the bed and stumble into the hallway, where I run into the Lovely and Talented Maggie, who wrinkles up her cute little eight-year-old nose at me.

“Boxers,” she says, looking at me in my favorite type of evening wear. “Sick.”

I pull a face at her as I pick up the phone on the wall.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Ed.”

Yes! It's Scout! The fact that she's calling me first thing this morning makes me strangely happy, especially since I had the feeling she was mad at me last night.

“Are you working today?” she asks.

“Nope. I've got the entire day off.”

“I'm covering for T. Monroe this afternoon, but I'm free tonight. Can we get together some place quiet? I really need to talk to you.”

I feel a little prick of panic. “Are you okay, Scout?”

A pause. “I'm fine. We just need to talk about something.”

“Sure. Sounds good.”

“I'll swing by your house on my way home from work,” she says.

Oh now, THAT was totally brilliant.

I've just told Ed I need to see him tonight because I really have to talk to him about something.

Great. Exactly what am I going to say to him? “Ed, I have a crush on you even though you've been such a loser lately!”

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing guys don't really love it when you call them losers. Not even old guys like my grandfather (the one with the scarlet “A” on his chest) like it. Not even when they deserve it. Especially when they deserve it.

What was I thinking? What!

I pick up the new romance (
The Dishonorable Duke
) I
checked out from the Foothill Branch Library the other day, but within minutes I send it sailing across my bedroom.

(If I keep chucking books, libraries all over America will start revoking my privileges….)

Scout honks for me around six thirty. She's in her brother Ben's very fine powder blue '69 Mustang convertible. The top is down and the radio is roaring.

I leap into the car without opening the door. I may be just another short white guy, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with my vertical leap, thank you very much.

“Hi, Ed,” Scout says, looking even better than usual in her Reel Life uniform tonight. The red polyester bow tie brings out the color in her cheeks. Funny how I never noticed that before.

“Hey, Scout.”

She pulls away from the curb and we're off.

“Where are we going?” I ask, grateful that Scout
swerves at the very last second to miss Helena, who followed me to the car hoping to hitch a ride with me.

One thing about Scout. She's a pretty horrible driver. And tonight she's even more horrible than usual.

“I have no idea,” she grumbles.

I'll admit that I'm confused right now. Why is Scout grumbling and almost running over cats?

“May I make a suggestion?” I ask, using the same careful tone of voice my dad uses with my mother when she's annoyed with him.

“Whatever.”

Scout blasts through a yield sign without checking for approaching traffic (which includes a bus, among other things), and I scream like a little freaking girl!

“SCOUT!”

She slams on her brakes, and I am again grateful—this time for my seat belt, because otherwise I would be doing a face-plant in the windshield right now. Thankfully there isn't a car behind us.

“What is your problem, Ed?” She glares at me.

“You're my problem!” I say, shaken by my near-death experience and also by the sight of Scout's eyes. “Did you even see that bus back there?”

Scout takes a deep breath as she shifts into first gear again. “Sorry, Ed.” She laughs a little. “Where should we go?”

“How about Liberty Park?” I say.

 

We're passing through the intersection of Seventh East and Fourth South when I realize that there's been a one-way conversation going in the car and that I've been the only person contributing to it. Scout just stares straight ahead through the windshield, her grip tight on the steering wheel.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She nods, although I have the unpleasant feeling that she is pretty close to tears. I shift nervously in my seat. What would I do if Scout started to cry on me? Especially if I had no idea why she was crying?

Girls can get like this sometimes. Not that I have a lot of direct personal experience with girls unless they are moms or eight-year-old sisters.

Scout swallows hard, then turns up the radio even louder, thereby lobbing the equivalent of a nuclear bomb into our delightful one-way conversation. Minutes later we arrive at the park. Scout pulls into the south entrance and finds a parking space immediately. It's the exact same space Ellie and I were in last night. It's like I can still smell Ellie's perfume. How weird is
that
?

“Doo-doo-doo-doo!” I perform my personal rendition of the
Twilight Zone
theme song.

Scout looks at me like I am being completely random. I can see her point, so I stop humming.

She turns off the engine and tucks the keys into the
pocket of her tuxedo pants. “Before we get out of the car, I have something I need to say to you.”

“I knew it!” I say. “I'm in trouble!”

Scout steals a glance at me, and then she looks down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. I have the feeling she's getting ready to deliver a prepared speech.

“I'd like to thank the Academy—” I say just to help her get the ball rolling.

She looks puzzled. “What?”

“Nothing.” I smile at her. “It's okay, Scout. Just say what you have to say.”

“Ellie came into work again this afternoon,” she says slowly. “While she was there, Ali told me to shelve about a billion DVDs. Anyway, she stuck around and helped me put them all back. If it weren't for Ellie, I'd still be at work right now. I'd probably be at work for the rest of my life.”

I let out a long, low whistle of appreciation for Ellie. Nothing stinks like shelving. At least Scout and I get paid for it.

“She's so great, Ed.” Scout's words come out in a rush. “She's gorgeous. Nice. Smart, even. I thought she wasn't very bright at first, but that's not true. She's just—innocent. No wonder you like her.”

The air around us is suddenly charged with emotion I don't understand.

I remember a stupid story Dad tells about an experience he and Mom had while they were dating. Out of the blue
one day Mom asks him who he thinks is prettier—Mom or her best friend, Betty Stuckey. Dad thinks about this, then tells her that Betty has a better face but that Mom (va-va-vavoom!) has a WAY better body.

Mom didn't speak to him for a month.

The point is that I'm sensing I've accidentally wandered into the same kind of minefield good old Dad did all those years ago.

“Ellie's really great.” I pick my words carefully. “But so are you, Scout. I mean it.”

“Stop jerking Ellie around, Ed. She doesn't deserve it,” Scout says, her voice full of passion. “Cut the Sergio crap, okay? Just be yourself.”

But I don't like myself,
I want to tell her.

I do not speak, however, because I am unexpectedly distracted by the sight of Scout's beautiful pleading eyes.

 

I really don't know how to describe what happened next. Even now, several hours later, as I sit here in my bedroom holding an ice pack on my throbbing ear as the moon shines through my window, I feel…confused. Still. Even more than I did before.

What
happened
tonight? What the hell happened?

So okay. Here's what I did. I promised to stop jerking Ellie around.

Scout shot me a look of gratitude, let out a deep breath, and sank comfortably into her bucket seat. In
fact, she suddenly looked as cozy as a cat on a windowsill. A good cat. Not a crazy stalking cat like Helena.

“Well,” I said, “don't you look all relaxed.”

Scout laughed. “I
feel
relaxed—now that I've had my say.”

“You should have your say more often,” I said. “You look great when you've just had your say.”

It was one of those moments when my brain and my mouth were having one of those little arguments Brains and Mouths sometimes have.

Clearly Mouth was winning.

Scout looked at me, surprised.

“You look REALLY great, in fact. The greatest,” I said.

Scout blushed. She got ready to give me a friendly Scout slug in the arm but suddenly stopped herself. She dropped her arm and folded her hands in her lap.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She turned her head so I could see her face. For one terrifying minute I thought she might start crying.

Crying? What was going on?

Normally I would quote that line from
A League of Their Own
(one of Scout's favorite movies) : “Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!”

But tonight? Well, tonight was not like other nights somehow.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go for a ride on the Ferris wheel.”

Scout turned to me. Her eyes were shining, possibly with tears. But there was a huge smile on her face.

On the way over to the Ferris wheel, I bought her a pink and silver balloon. Her hand felt cool and soft when I handed her the string.

When we were on the Ferris wheel, Scout accidentally let go of the balloon. We watched it float higher and higher until it crossed the soft, white face of the rising moon.

“Ed!” Scout gasped, pointing at the sky. “Look.”

“Moon light, moon bright, the first moon I see tonight,” I said softly.

Scout looked straight at me, her lips parted by soft quick breath.

My heart went bump in the night.

 

Later, when Scout and I pulled up in front of my house, I didn't want to go inside. I wanted to stay where I was forever and ever. Like a barnacle that attaches itself to the leather seats of vintage cars.

“Want to come inside?” I finally asked. “I'm sure Maggie will be happy to show you her ever-expanding Barbie doll collection.”

Scout laughed but shook her head no. I liked the way her curls bounced off her shoulders.

“I have to get up really early tomorrow morning.” She sighed.

Still, I didn't make a move to get out of the car. Instead, I just enjoyed how great it felt to be Ed—not Sergio—sitting in a very fine powder blue '69 Mustang convertible with his good friend, Scout.

“Scout, Scout, Scout,” I said this like I was saying it for the very first time. “Is that your real name?”

She hesitated.

“No.”

“Well, what is it then?”

Another pause. “Aurora Aurelia Arrington. After two pioneer grandmothers. They're buried in the Salt Lake cemetery. Not together, though. I mean they each have separate graves and everything.” This amazing information came in a rush.

“Wow,” I said.

“I know what you're thinking!” Scout blurted out
miserably. “You're thinking that my name sounds like the name of a heroine in a romance novel and that I'm nothing at all like a heroine in a romance novel.”

I blinked in surprise. Where did that come from?

“Actually, I was going to say that your name is a real mouthful,” I said.

Scout's mouth popped open. Then she whooped out a huge, husky laugh.

“A very nice mouthful,” I added suddenly.

To tell you the truth, mouths were pretty much on my mind just then, and I found myself wondering what it would feel like to kiss Scout.

The evening air between us grew very still. Everything stopped, even the sound of crickets. I leaned toward her. She leaned toward me. I wondered briefly if our noses would bump but decided I didn't care.

To hell with noses, I always say!

So we kissed. It was a real kiss, too. Not a screen one.

When we were through, I leaned back happily in my bucket seat and looked up. I swear the moon winked at me before slipping behind a cloud.

Thank you, moon
, I said in my head,
for granting me my wish—a wish so secret and so deep that I didn't know what it was.

Until now.

“Oh Ed,” Scout breathed.

And then she burst into tears. For real.

 

She burst into tears and she tossed me out of Ben's car. Then she floored it all the way down the street, but not before she yelled, “I hate you, Ed! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

She wasn't the only one who felt that way.

The next thing I knew, Quark was leaping over the low hedge between our houses like a giraffe on steroids and coming straight for me. He'd probably been standing out on his stupid front porch the whole time, watching everything.

I squawked in a very non-Sergio-esque way. “QUARK!”

He answered me with his fist. I'm pretty sure he meant to punch me in the nose, but his blow glanced off the side of my face instead.

“Aw, shit, Quark!” I yelped. “You slugged me in the freaking ear.”

“TRAITOR!” He spat out the word loud enough for me to hear it in spite of the fact I was rapidly going deaf in one ear. He paused to let it sink in. Then he spewed it at me again. “TRAITOR!”

The word rang to the ends of the street and back again.

I'd kissed Scout. The first girl of Quark's first dreams of first love. The reality of what I'd just done hit me like a hockey puck to the chest.

“Quark,” I fumbled. “I don't know what to say.”

“I TRUSTED YOU!” He roared.

I looked at him under the streetlight. Shaking. Wild-eyed and wild-haired. Nine years old again. Waiting for his mom to come home.

“Oh, Quark. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

I started to pray to God with real intent that Quark would hit me in the other ear. God knew how much I deserved it.

Instead, my best friend did something that hurt even more: He flattened me with one last look full of pain before stalking back into his house.