A Novel Idea (7 page)

“What about it?” I asked. We stopped walking and both stared across the street.

“It’s the only blue house on the whole street,” James replied, as if this were obvious. “When you really notice it is at night, because it glows, like a ghost.”

I looked at the house, and then turned to look at James, examining his profile.
He’s so smart,
I thought, my heart beating faster. The way he saw the world made me realize that he must have been a good poet—better than anyone on
Blank Canvas
, in any case. I wished I had the nerve to ask to read his poetry.

James was still looking at the house across the street, so he backed up and sat on one of the brownstone stoops. Without thinking, I sat beside him, hugging my knees, still studying the side of his face.

“It’s beautiful,” I finally whispered, meaning the house. Kind of.

James turned to me, his blue eyes serious. “And you,” he said.

My breath caught.
What?

“You’re like that house,” James went on. “You’ve always been in this neighborhood, but I’d never even seen you before the book group.”

“Oh. Right.”
Hello, moron! Of course he didn’t mean you’re beautiful
.

We fell silent again, and I noticed that we were sitting very close together on the stoop. The sun was right overhead, so I slipped off my jacket and draped it across my lap. As I was doing that, my arm brushed James’s, and I felt the warmth of his skin. He smelled clean and sweet, like vanilla. Suddenly, I was shaking. I wanted to touch James for real, on purpose, to run my fingers through his hair.

As if James knew what I was thinking, he turned his head and held my gaze. His eyes looked darker than usual, and he swallowed hard.

“Norah?” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Um,” he replied. And then he leaned in toward me.

You know when something absolutely insane and wonderful is happening and time sort of slows down? James was coming closer, and his lips were inches from mine, and very slowly I was realizing,
He … is … going … to … kiss … me
. This was
it
: that delicious prekiss moment I’d wondered about for so long! My heart hammering, I leaned in to meet him halfway and—

The door of the brownstone behind us creaked open loudly, and someone stepped out onto the stoop. A dog barked.

James pulled back immediately, and I spun around to see the evil person who had interrupted what was going to be my amazing, unforgettable first kiss.

It was Philippa Askance.

Her spiky, bleached-blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and, behind oversized shades and multiple piercings, her face was pale and regal. She wore a torn, camouflage miniskirt; a tight white tank revealed tattoos all over her peaches-and-cream arms. She was holding a snarling black poodle on a long leash, and I remembered that she’d thanked her dog, Kafka, on the acknowledgments page of
Bitter Ironies
.

James and I glanced at each other, open-mouthed. Without even really trying, we’d found our mystery writer.

“Uh, Philippa—are you Philippa Askance?” James blurted, jumping to his feet. I stood too, but my knees were shaking, so I almost slipped off the stoop.

“It’s—it’s really you,” I stammered, gazing at the author, half awestruck, half distracted by James. “We were actually wondering if … you … might…” I trailed off, totally intimidated.

Philippa glanced from me to James, and the trace of a smile made her mouth twitch. Then, without a word, she sped down the steps past us, Kafka yapping. I watched in shock as writer and dog sprinted down the block, toward Prospect Park, and disappeared around the corner. James and I stood alone on her stoop, probably looking like the biggest idiots alive.

Slowly, James turned to me. His face was as flushed as mine felt. “Did we, um, just imagine that?” he whispered.

I stared back at him.
Did I just imagine our almost-kiss?
I wanted to cry. I couldn’t tell which event was more surreal.

“I don’t think so,” I managed to reply, hanging on to the banister for support. “It was definitely her.”

“Well, uh, at least we know where she lives now.” James shrugged, still looking flustered.

“If worse comes to worst we can always camp out on her stoop,” I suggested, only semi-joking. “But she didn’t seem all that friendly.”

“Still, we should tell the group,” James pointed out. “I’ll e-mail everyone.”

What were we
doing? I wondered, my stomach clenching. Here we were, calmly discussing Philippa Askance, and completely ignoring the fact that
we’d been about to kiss
!

But what if James
hadn’t
planned on kissing me? What if he was just leaning over to brush a leaf out of my hair, just like when Griffin wiped the coffee foam off my lip on Valentine’s Day?

Suddenly, the sun went behind a cloud, and the temperature seemed to drop about twenty degrees. The wind blew and shook leaves down onto us. It felt almost like winter again. I shivered and reached down to pick up my jacket, slipping it over my shoulders as an unexpected lump formed in my throat. Our afternoon was over.

“Well, um, I should probably, you know, head home …,” James was saying, slowly backing away.

I started backing up too, in the opposite direction. “Right. Home.”

Once I was safely around the corner, I broke into a run. My head was spinning from everything: Mrs. Ferber, our nonkiss, Philippa’s mysterious smile, and James, James, James. Nothing made
any
sense, but I guess that was normal. I was falling in love, and there’s no room for reason or logic in love’s twisty tangles. I know that for a fact.

Or maybe that’s a line from one of my romance novels.

Seven

“You know, Norah,” my mom said when we were clearing the dinner table on Thursday night. “I ran into Mrs. Ferber today, and she told me the funniest thing.”

I’d been stuffing all the plates into the dishwasher at warp speed; I was eager to get upstairs and delve into my new Irene O’Dell paperback,
To Catch a Duke
, which I’d bought that afternoon at Barnes & Noble. However, at my mom’s words, I dropped a handful of forks and straightened up.

“What did she say?” I asked, holding my breath as I recalled the awkward moment on the street.

“That she saw you with a cute boy,” my mom replied, putting an empty wineglass into the refrigerator as if it belonged there.

“Me?” I asked. “Not Stacey?”

“She seemed to think it was you,” Mom replied, raising her eyebrows at me. “I mean, I
know
Stacey is usually the one with all the boyfriends …”

Thankfully, Stacey herself wasn’t in the kitchen to hear this; she was at the movies with Dylan, again. My dad was in the living room, but he wouldn’t have paid attention anyway.

I rolled my eyes and banged the salt cellar down on the counter. “Thanks, Mom. Why don’t you rub some of this salt into my gaping wound?”

Ever since my dreamlike (or nightmarish; take your pick) encounter with James, I’d been moody and rude; Audre had started calling me “Ms. PMS.” Even though I thought about James constantly—lying awake at night and reading love poetry during the day—we hadn’t had any direct contact since that afternoon. He
had
sent a mass e-mail to the group—annoyingly titled “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Day-Time”—which told the whole Philippa story, but naturally left off any mention of our almost-kiss. In other e-mails, Francesca, Neil, Scott, and Audre explained that they’d been in touch with Philippa’s agent and editor, who were more helpful than the actual Philippa had been. In fact, the agent promised she’d get Philippa to commit to a date in May, about a month from now.

Standing in the kitchen, Mom looked at me over her glasses and sighed. “What wound? Norah, I don’t understand you at all.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied, turning on my heel and storming out of the kitchen. Big surprise that my Mom didn’t get my metaphor; scientists are the most literal people on the planet, and it sucks when your parent happens to be one.

Make that parents.

My dad was in his recliner, grading papers, so of course his hair was standing straight up and he had pencil marks on his face. All I had to do was make my way past him without tripping over his ten-thousand-pound textbook on thermonuclear neurodynamic physics (or something) and I’d be safely upstairs, curling up with
To Catch a Duke
.

Not in the cards.

“My dear, would you do me a favor?” Dad asked as I was sneaking by.

When my dad asks for a “favor,” it usually involves agreeing to some scary experiment where he attaches plugs to your head. “I have a lot of homework,” I replied, looking longingly up the stairs. That was true, but I wasn’t planning to spend much time on it.

“I just need you to sprint up to the attic and pull my article on momentum out of last year’s file,” Dad said. “I’d do it myself, but the doctor told me to avoid the stairs as much as possible while I’m healing.”

Okay,
now
I felt guilty. Last week in his seminar, Dad had thrown his back out after performing a headstand as a way of explaining the force of gravity. I supposed
To Catch a Duke
could wait a little longer.

Practically everything in the attic was buried under piles of dust. Between sneezes, I opened Dad’s file cabinet and found a bulging folder labeled “Momentum”—which made me think of that great Aimee Mann song. I flipped through student exams but I stopped when I came to a glossy color photograph. A bunch of kids were standing in neat rows under a banner that read
WINNERS OF THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CITY-WIDE HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS CONTEST
. The winners’ names were listed on the bottom of the photo. I remembered my dad attending the awards ceremony last spring, and I grinned at the sight of him; he and his hair were in the back row with the other judges.

Then, I spotted a face in the front row that made me gasp out loud.

“Neil!” I exclaimed, leaning closer to make sure. The glasses-wearing boy in the cableknit pullover was definitely the same sci-fi-reading Neil I’d come to know and not love. He wasn’t bad-looking, I thought as I studied his face. All he needed were cooler frames and better social skills, and he might even qualify as a decent catch. Plus, he must have been a good student. My mom and dad
dreamed
that Stacey or I would win a physics contest, but that was about as likely as either one of us winning the pole vault in the summer Olympics.

My heartbeat sped up as I began to wonder if James might have won the contest too. He didn’t strike me as the physics type, but since he and Neil seemed surgically attached … breathless, I scanned the captioned names on the bottom of the photo, looking for James’s. There was Neil Singh, Hart Crane High School … George Woo, Bronx High School of Science … Francesca Cantone, Hamilton Preparatory School … Sigrid Salinger, Stuyvesant High School. No James Roth.

Wait
. I did a double take on one name. Had I read that right? Francesca Cantone?

The
Francesca Cantone?

Insanely curious, I started searching the photo for Francesca’s glossy hair and made-up face. When I spotted a tall, gawky girl in the next-to-last row, I squinted in disbelief. She had frizzy black hair pulled back in two barrettes, bushy eyebrows, and a slouchy posture. Round, chunky glasses perched on her nose, and she wore a white turtleneck under a frumpy navy blue cardigan. I mentally subtracted the clothes and the glasses, straightened and shortened the hair, plucked the brows …

“What the hell?” I whispered.

Clutching the photo in one hand, I found Dad’s momentum article in a flash, dashed it downstairs to him, and then locked myself in my room, already dialing Audre’s cell.

“Get over here right now,” I said as soon as she answered.

“I’m baking for my party!” Audre cried over the strains of her Alicia Keys CD and the roar of her electric mixer.

Right. Audre was throwing her annual deluxe dessert party tomorrow. She always held her bash on the same night as Millay’s Spring Formal, as an alternative for people (like me and her) who couldn’t stand school dances. This was a touchy subject with Scott, who was actually
organizing
the dance this year. (The two of them had been competing over their respective events all week.) But Audre’s parties are always best at the dances, and, even better, her parents leave her the brownstone for the night, so some crazy stuff usually goes down. Last year, Audre found a drunken couple she didn’t even recognize making out in Langston’s bedroom at six in the morning—the sign of a truly spectacular social event.

“Trust me, Aud,” I assured her. “This is worth taking a break for.” After all, I was putting off
To Catch a Duke
; Audre could part with her whipped cream.

Fifteen minutes later, Audre and I were hunkered down on my bed with the photo, a magnifying lens, and some freshly made cupcakes Audre had brought for me to taste-test for the party.

“Un-freaking-believable,” Audre murmured, holding the magnifying lens over the photo for the eleventh time. “It
is
her. The real Francesca.” My best friend was glowing.