A Novel Idea (4 page)

What if
no one
showed up?

Fortunately, at least Audre and Scott were there when I arrived, sitting at a big round table in the sun-bright café. Audre, fussing over a plate of her walnut-and-cranberry scones, was wearing a glittery headband and a sixties-style black-and-white checked dress with white boots. Scott, chatting on his cell, had on his usual uniform of a button-down short-sleeved shirt, slouchy slacks, and multiple wristbands. I was so grateful to see them that I almost burst into tears.

“I have bad news,” Scott said before I could even sit down. He shut his phone and pushed a hand through his light brown curls. “Olivia Ramirez has mono, so she’s gonna be out of school for, like, two months. Oh, and obviously she can’t join the book group.”

“And,” Audre added carefully, watching me as if I might pass out any second, “Ha-Jin and Stephanie can’t make it either. They’re too stressed out by yearbook deadlines.” She went back to arranging her scones, looking apologetic on behalf of all our friends.

“Then I was right!” I cried, plopping down in an empty seat.

“What, you mean Lindsay Lohan
is
Satan?” Scott asked, reaching across me for a scone. Audre slapped his hand away.

“No.” I sighed. “I just had a sense of, like,
doom
this morning. If Tuesday and the other girls can’t come, who does that leave us with?”

Just then, the front door swung open, letting in a blast of icy wind, followed by a tall girl decked out in a pink peacoat, Seven jeans, and spike-heeled black boots. She paused with her hand on her slim hip, as if she were posing, then whipped off her wraparound shades and shook out her chin-length raven hair. One of the store cats—Agatha Christie, I think—crept up to the girl and purred, and she jerked away, shuddering in disgust.

“Plum alert,” Audre whispered, nudging me.

I nodded. There was no way a girl like
that
would be here for our book group. But when Griffin came out from behind the register and wrapped his arms around the Plum type, I gasped and Audre immediately grabbed my hand.

“What’s wrong?” Scott asked, glancing up; he’d been text-messaging under the table.

“Everything,” I answered softly, watching in disbelief as Griffin kissed the girl on each cheek.

“You made it!” I heard him exclaim. “They’re in the back.”

Slowly, Audre turned her head to gaze at me, horrified.

“
That’s
the friend?” she whispered.

“What about the—the sexy guy?” I stammered.

“What sexy guy?” Scott demanded, poking my arm. “You mean him?” He pointed at Griffin just as he was approaching our table, one hand on the glam girl’s elbow.

“Don’t
point
” Audre hissed, her cheeks going crimson. “That’s the boy I have a crush on, remember?”

Scott had heard me and Audre gossip aplenty about Griffin in school, but he hadn’t yet seen the Book Nook hottie in the flesh. “Oops,” Scott said, ducking his head as Griffin arrived at our table.

“Guys, this is my friend, Francesca Cantone,” Griffin said, all grins as he motioned to the princess at his side. “She’s supersmart, and a big reader, so watch out.”

“Oh, Griffy. I am so
not
a big reader!” Francesca giggled, and swatted Griffin’s ripped upper arm. Something about her reaction seemed forced, as if she were acting out the role of Ditzy Girl on a WB sitcom. I hated her already. Up close, she was even more perfect—tan skin, carefully plucked eyebrows, pouty lips. And, I couldn’t help but notice as she sat down and took off her peacoat, actual cleavage enhanced by a tight black V-neck sweater. She barely glanced at the rest of us and instantly started examining herself in her Stila compact.

Now the question was, when Griffin said “friend,” did he actually mean “friend with benefits”?

Audre, who must have been wondering the same thing, tightened her kung fu grip on my hand and glared at Francesca with a murderous glint in her eyes.

Griffin, as always, was happily oblivious. “You must be the famous Scott,” he was saying, leaning across the table to shake Scott’s hand. “Dude, nice flyers.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Scott replied, his green eyes sparkling.

I kicked him under the table. Even when he’s taking a break from love, Scott sometimes hits on straight guys, just to see them blush.

But the ever-chill Griffin only laughed. “Why don’t y’all settle in and I’ll make some coffee?” he asked.

“Skim latte for me, sweetie,” Francesca called loudly as Griffin ambled off.

“You’re on a diet, huh?” Audre spoke up, glaring at Francesca. Audre thinks diets are ridiculous. I guess most future pastry chefs do.

For a minute, Francesca looked surprised, but then she seemed to collect herself, rotated a diamond stud in her left ear, and slowly sized Audre up. “What’s it to
you
?” she snapped.

“Oh, crap,” Scott and I muttered at the same time. Getting bitchy on Audre is never a good idea.

“Well, I’m the vice president of this book group,” Audre retorted, inventing the position for herself on the spot. “And I’m also a friend of Griffins. How do
you
even know him? Are you also at NYU?”

Scott and I turned our heads from one girl to the next, as if we were watching a Ping-Pong match.

“No. I’m a senior in high school,” Francesca answered shortly.

Oh
. I glanced at Audre, knowing she was absorbing this news with interest. Francesca’s being in the group still seemed random, but her being in high school at least made more sense. Now that I thought about it, Griffin probably wouldn’t have recommended a high school book group to his
college
friends—let alone a hot boy. Audre and I had just been stuck in the land of wishful thinking.

“So where did you meet Griffin?” Audre pressed on, not even attempting to be subtle.

“We met at an exhibit at the Guggenheim this past fall,” Francesca replied snidely. “But you’re from Brooklyn, so you wouldn’t even know what that is, right?
I
live in Manhattan—”

“You do?” Scott jumped in, clearly trying to play peacemaker. “Where do you go to school?”

Francesca’s face turned stony, and a flicker of something I couldn’t quite read flashed in her gray eyes. “Uptown,” she replied icily. End of discussion.

“For your information, I know exactly what the Guggenheim is,” Audre snapped, still staring Francesca down. “What, you think you’re
better
than people from Brooklyn?”

Yikes. Scott and I exchanged a worried glance. But before a full-on catfight could explode, an unfamiliar male voice spoke directly behind me:

“Uh, is this the sci-fi group?”

Almost afraid to look, I turned around to find two boys I’d never seen before. They both seemed to be about sixteen. The one who’d spoken shrugged at me; he was Indian-American, with wavy brown hair, wire-frame glasses, and a hooded sweatshirt that said
Hart Crane Weather Club
. Hart Crane is this high school in Park Slope, where Audre and I almost went before our parents decided on Millay.
And the boys there,
I decided in that moment,
are not any better than what Millay has to offer
. The other boy was a few inches taller, and thin; he had messy dark hair and wore jeans and a plaid button-down shirt, the sleeves crookedly rolled up. He was staring at the floor.

“Sci-fi group?” I repeated. What the hell? I glanced around the cafe to see if any people wearing Star Trek costumes had gathered, but besides us, there was only a young mom with her baby, and a couple doing a crossword puzzle.

“Noon? The twenty-fourth? At the Book Nook?” Weather Club boy asked, reaching into his bookbag. “I got this flyer—”

Francesca cut him off with a loud jangle of her Tiffany charm bracelet. “Whatever. You can join us if you
want
.” She rolled her eyes, as if she were doing the world a huge favor by being nice to a dork.

Weather Club boy shrugged, then gamely plunked down at the table. “I’m Neil Singh,” he announced, and then gestured to his silent friend, who was taking the seat beside him. “And that’s my buddy James Roth.”

I gazed in wonder at the new arrivals. How had
this
little ragtag group come together?

Audre and Francesca were busy baring their teeth, and Griffin had returned to serve the coffee, so Scott hurriedly did the introductions, making sure to call me “our fearless leader”—which made me want to kick him again.

“Haven’t we met before?” Neil asked Francesca, and I cringed. Had Weather Club boy really just used the most predictable line in pick-up history? Francesca didn’t respond; she just twisted the fauxemerald ring on her finger. I glanced at James to see if he, too, was drooling over Francesca, but he was bent over, his hair in his eyes, scribbling something on a napkin.

Um, freak?

“Okay!” I said, trying to get it together. If this bizarre mix of kids
was
the book group, then I had to make us work somehow. Otherwise, I might as well go crawling back into Ms. Bliss’s perfumed office with a giant FAILURE sign attached to my forehead. My hands were trembling a little, so I covered them with my cloth-bound journal, hoping no one would notice. “What books would people like to read?” I asked, chewing my bottom lip.

After a minute of heart-pounding silence, Neil cleared this throat.

“
I, Robot
” he said flatly. When nobody responded, he added, “I guess I’d settle for
Eragon
, but it’s kinda over by now, huh?”

“Well,” I replied shakily, thinking I’d rather go through Chinese water torture than read
Eragon
for fun.

James looked up from his napkin, directly at me. “This
isn’t
a sci-fi book club, is it?” he asked, and there seemed to be relief in his voice. He had blue eyes, I noticed. Light blue. I shook my head in response, and he promptly returned to his mysterious scribbles.

“
Kitchen Confidential
?” Audre suggested, in between shooting death looks at Francesca.

“Uh …” Francesca herself had her chin in her hands and seemed to be deep in concentration, as if wrestling with a deep philosophical problem. Finally, she straightened up, and looking hopeful, said, “
Gossip Girl
?”

“
Boy Meets Boy
?” Scott offered, fiddling with his wristbands.

All the suggestions were good, but the problem was, I’d read all those books. I wanted something new. I opened my cloth-bound book and glanced at my first choice. There was no harm in suggesting it, right?

I coughed into my fist. “What about—”

“
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
?” James spoke, stealing the words off my tongue.

I glanced up at him, startled, and he laughed. His smile was crooked, I thought, in an almost-charming way. With his slim build and dark hair, he looked kind of like the lead singer of Maroon 5. Only not hot.

“Sorry,” he said. “Was that what you—?”

“Um, yeah, I guess,” I shut my notebook, weirded out by the coincidence.

“I think two people agreeing is the best we’re gonna get,” Audre declared “
Curious Whatever-Whatever
it is.” She lifted up her plate of pastries. “Now, who wants scones?”

Everybody did, even Francesca. It seemed we were
all
mildly freaked by the randomness of the group. And sugar is always helpful in times of crisis.

“Okay, how much did that suck?” I asked Audre fifteen minutes later as we huddled on a bench in Prospect Park for postmeeting gossip.

After exchanging e-mail addresses and phone numbers, the group had scattered; Scott returned to Manhattan for an art class, Neil and James disappeared to God knows where, and Francesca—to Audre’s chagrin—stayed to chat with Griffin, who’d urged us all to return to the Book Nook for our next session, in March.

If there ever
was
a next session. I was surprised we’d made it through the first.

“Do you think she’s prettier than me?” was Audre’s response. She was chewing her fingernails, looking—for possibly the first time in her life—insecure.

“Francesca? Give me a break.” I rolled my eyes. “Besides, there’s something …
off
about her, don’t you think?” I thought back to how she hadn’t told us where she went to school. “Like she’s
hiding
something.”

Audre shook her head. “Nors, you’re paranoid. You always think people are hiding things.”

“That’s because, most of the time, they are.”

Audre wrapped her hand-knit yellow scarf around her neck. “All she’s hiding is the fact she and Griffin are hooking up.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Nors, should we throw in the towel and join a convent?”

“The world’s first Jewish nun,” I mused, staring into space. “I could be famous!”

Audre snorted, and I gave her a light shove.

“Anyway, what are you complaining about?” I added. “At least you’ve been kissed, dork.”

She groaned. “Derek Dawson does not count.” Freshman year, Audre sort of dated this skinny soccer player with curly hair and braces, but she dumped him when he didn’t know what brioche was. (And people think
I’m
picky). Derek has filled out, lost the braces, and in my opinion gotten pretty good-looking—and I’m positive he still likes Audre. I’m always telling her to give him another chance. Or at least another kiss.