Can True Love Survive High School? (2 page)

“Okay.” Britta stared at the screen. “Brains, definitely. Sense of humor is nice. A good heart. I don't care about money or athletic ability or music. Honesty, yes.”

“And looks?” Holly asked.

“Well … yes. Okay. Looks are good. And a sense of responsibility.”

“Any dealbreakers?” Holly asked, going over the list. Britta chose drugs and bad skin.

“Now,” Holly said. “Let's go through some boys' questionnaires and see if there's anyone you like.”

They scrolled through the boys who had signed on to the site looking for matches. Britta found something wrong with every one of them.

“Too stupid—I know, he's in my French class. Too dull. Too full of himself—you can tell from the picture … ”

“Girls!” Jen called up the stairs. “The Fowlers are ready to leave!”

Britta stood up, shrugging. “Oh well.”

“You're not getting off that easily,” Holly said. “Don't worry, I'll find somebody good for you. You can't tell everything from these questionnaires, you know. You've got to take a chance and meet a person face-to-face.”

“It's just—I don't know,” Britta said. “What if I really like someone and he doesn't like me back? I don't think I could stand it.”

“It can be rough,” Holly said. “But it's worth the risk. Don't worry, Britta—someone will like you a lot. I know it.”

2

El Diario

To: mad4u

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY'S HOROSCOPE: VIRGO: You think you're getting away with something. You will find out later that it got away with you.

El Diario del Dating Game by Madison Markowitz (a new diary feature on the Dating Game Web log!)
(Yes, I'm ripping off Nuclear Autumn. So what? Is she the only person in the world allowed to have an online diary?)

Autumn Nelson was in Mads' class. She detailed every moment of her life on a popular blog called “Nuclear Autumn.”

I have a few things to get off my scrawny chest. Like this: LITTLE SISTERS SUCK. Mine, let's call her “Audrey,” is probably the most annoying creature who ever lived. You don't need to know the gory details (involving a brand-new pair of boots chewed to smithereens because a certain eleven-year-old spawn of Satan let our puppy loose in my room … Sure, she claims it was an accident, but no one who knows Her Satanic Majesty could doubt that she did it 100 percent on purpose)— let's just say Audrey and I have been fighting a lot lately. It upsets M.C. (my mother). I think it upsets the Dark Overlord (my father) too, but he's so spaced out and in his own world it's hard to tell. M.C. wants it to stop. She has actually threatened to send me and Audrey to a couples counselor to work out our problems! But now there's a new threat—and this one is even worse.

My mother has written a play. It's based on her life from birth to age twenty-two, and it's the stupidest play ever. It's called
Touched: The Story of a Sensitive Girl.
Is that not vomitous? I wouldn't care, except that the Carlton Bay Playhouse has actually agreed to stage it. Yes, in a theater. In public. To a paying audience!

(It's a very small theater, and they have a new director, and M.C. says they're going experimental. Is “experimental” a euphemism for “crazy?”)

Audrey wants to be in the play, and M.C. wants me to be in it, too. I'd have to play my own mother at the turning point of her life: the moment she discovered, at age 13, that she has ESP.

Yes, M.C. has ESP. Or she used to; she says her power has faded with age. It's a terrible skill for a mother to have even a little of, when you're her daughter. She always kind of knows what you're thinking, or she thinks she does, which is almost as bad.

Anyway, M.C. is not usually so bossy, but being a playwright is her lifelong dream, and it's making her insane. (She's a pet therapist in real life. I thought
that
was her lifelong dream, but she keeps changing it.) I don't mind the idea of acting in a play. But I won't stand on a stage and speak lines like this:

“Oh, Papa, Mama, don't you see? I'm having such a strange feeling, like something's vibrating in my head. I'm getting a message … The telephone is about to ring. It's going to be the plumber … yes, the plumber. He can't come until tomorrow!”

The phone rings a few minutes later, and the plumber says he won't be able to fix the clogged sink until the next day. My character and her parents are stunned at my psychic abilities.

I refuse to audition for the part. M.C. can't make me. And that is my final word on the matter.

To get off the subject of me for a minute, I would like to ask my readers out there a question: Did anybody besides me see the way Rebecca dissed Autumn at lunch this afternoon? She nearly spat in Autumn's face when she tried to sit down at their usual table. Are they having a fight? What about? If you know, e-mail me. Not that I care.

This is Madison Markowitz, over and out.

“She's thinking, ‘If I talk on my cell while I wander around aimlessly with nothing to do, everyone will think I have a life,’” Mads said. She and Stephen were sitting on a bench at the marina on Sunday afternoon, watching the people stroll by and playing a game Stephen made up called “What Are They Thinking?” At that moment a platinum-haired girl walked slowly past a group of boys, chattering and laughing into her cell phone. Mads was convinced that she was pretending to be talking to some very witty friend for the boys' benefit.

“She's fake laughing,” Mads said. “Look. She's saying, ‘You want to fly me to Hawaii in your private jet? But Hunter, I already have a date tonight.’”

“And the boys are thinking, ‘Why is that girl walking so slowly? Does she think she's hot because she has a cell phone?’” Stephen said.

“Oh look! Now she's thinking, ‘I hope no one noticed me picking my thong strap out of my butt,’” Mads said.

“But someone did notice,” Stephen said. “Eagle-eye Mads.”

Mads laughed. Stephen had a way of liking everything he saw in Mads—even the things she didn't like herself. It made her feel good.

“What about that guy?” Stephen asked, pointing at a thirty-something man with a thatch of blond hair so stiff and perfectly coifed it looked like it had hairspray in it. Mads had never seen someone walk so stiffly, with such ramrod posture.

“He's thinking, ‘If I don't move my head, my hair will stay perfect,’” Mads said.

“Yeah,” Stephen said. “‘But if one single strand comes loose, I'll never be able to show my face in public again!’”

Mads leaned against Stephen and he put his arm around her. She really liked him. She wished she could spend more time with him, but he was a junior and she was a sophomore, and they had no classes together. And most days after school he helped his mother in her studio. She was a sculptor and Stephen did apprentice work for her, cutting pieces of metal and wood to her precise specifications, welding, hauling things around, stuff like that.

A good-looking couple strolled by, hand-in-hand. At the sight of them, Mads' breath caught in her throat. The boy was lean and broad-shouldered with longish, shaggy blond hair and a handsome face made somehow handsomer by a slightly too-big nose. The girl was blond, too, with straight hair and bangs and slender legs. The two of them had a golden aura of cool around them. They stood out.

The girl, as Mads knew, was Jane Cotham, nineteen, a part-time student at Geddison, a local college. The boy was Sean Herman Benedetto, senior at RSAGE, star swimmer, and the monster crush, if not the love, of Mads' life.

Stephen nodded at Sean and said, “He's thinking, ‘I wonder if my glutes look good in these jeans?’”

“Heh, yeah,” Mads said, half-laughing. She was zoned out, staring at Sean. He had that effect on her. And she couldn't help thinking that his glutes
did
look good in his jeans. He gave Jane's hand a little tug, pulling her closer to him so he could wrap his arm around her. He was so into her. Anyone could see it.

And Jane is probably thinking, “I'm the luckiest girl in town,”
Mads thought, but she didn't say it out loud. It was a good thing Stephen couldn't read
her
thoughts. She liked him a lot, but Sean … he was, like, on another level.

They disappeared into a shop, and the spell was broken. Mads leaned happily against Stephen's thin arm. He was cool in his own way, so smart but not snobby. Mads could be flighty but Stephen saw through it. He found the sense in her nuttiness.

“Too bad you don't have ESP like your mom,” Stephen said. “Then you could
really
read people's minds.”

“Oh god, don't remind me.” Mads dropped her head on his shoulder. She knew what awaited her when she got home. That stupid play. Her mother, M.C., had been campaigning hard for Mads to audition for the part of “Teen Mariah” all week. Audrey already had all of “Little Mariah's” lines memorized.

“Maybe it won't be so bad.” Stephen got up and pulled Mads to her feet. It was nearly dinnertime, time to go home. “It might be fun to be in a play.”

“Stephen, you don't know what this play is like. It's not exactly Eugene O'Neill. It's not even
Cats
.”

“Poor Mads, the reluctant actress.” His arm around her, he pulled her toward his car, a red Mini Cooper. “Just tell your mother you don't want to do it. Say you're too busy with school or something.”

“I've tried!” Mads said. “I've begged and pleaded and cried. I've threatened to run away and join a cult. She doesn't care. She thinks Audrey and I will learn to get along better if we're in this play together. And it's her dream to see her daughters playing her on stage. She's on some kind of wack ego trip.”

“Sounds like it.” They got into the car and drove through the narrow streets of Carlton Bay, a small, pretty waterfront town that stretched across a row of gentle hills to a green valley. Stephen dropped her off at her house. “See you at school tomorrow. Hope so, anyway.” She turned toward him. He pulled her close and gave her a long, slow kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Any lingering thoughts of Sean disappeared like soap bubbles. Her first real boyfriend! It was better than a daydream.

The warm feeling Stephen gave her dissipated as soon as she opened the front door to her house. “Oh, Mama, I can't live on a farm in Minnesota forever,” Audrey recited, quoting one of her lines from the play. “I must be near the ocean. I have to see the sea before I die!”

As a girl, M.C. had been Mary Claire Olmsted, third child of Minnesota dairy farmers. The play was about her childhood and her rebellious decision to leave the farm at seventeen to go to college at Berkeley in California and be a hippie.

Instead of her usual Bratz Doll/Britney-on-tour wear, Audrey was dressed in her best approximation of a Minnesota farm girl's outfit: white puffy-sleeved blouse, red gingham jumper, hair in two strawberry-blond braids. On her feet were a pair of shiny red shoes. Typical Audrey to have such a Hollywood-fake vision of Minnesota.

“Who are you supposed to be, Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz
?” Mads said.

“I'm trying to stay in character as much as possible before my audition,” Audrey said. “Haven't you ever heard of Stanislavsky's Method of Acting, you ignoramus?”

“Cram it,” Mads muttered, brushing past Audrey and hoping to escape into her room. Where did she get that Stanislavsky stuff? She was usually more Powerpuff Girl than Russian intellectual.

“Girls, dinner's ready,” M.C. called from the kitchen. Mads veered right and headed for the kitchen. Good thing she was hungry, because she couldn't think of another good reason to suffer through a meal with these people.

Her father, Russell, pulled a tray of whole wheat biscuits out of the oven. M.C. set a hot vegetable-and-cheese casserole on the table. “Ho, Madison!” Russell cried in his jolly voice, nabbing Mads on her way to her seat and kissing the top of her head.

“Hi, Dad.” Her father was the only sensible person in the family. Or maybe he just seemed that way because he generally kept his mouth shut while his wife and daughters expressed every thought that popped into their heads.

Audrey sat down. M.C. poured them ice water.

“Papa, please pass the corn and them sweet, sweet tomaters,” Audrey said in a fake hick voice. She and Mads never called their parents “Papa” or “Mama.” That came from the play.

“You don't have to be in character all the time, you know, Audrey,” Russell said. “We're out of corn and tomaters. Have some ratatouille. It's got cheese in it.”

“And anyway, I never talked like that,” M.C. said. “I certainly never said ‘tomaters.’”

“I'm doing the Method!” Audrey snapped. “I have to become Little Mariah—
my
version of her. You people have no respect for the way an artist works.”

“Artist?” Mads said. “You mean a big fat slice of ham! Oink oink!”

“Mama! Papa! That young 'un is picking on me!”

“Don't tease her, Mads,” Russell said, but the twinkle in his eye told her he was on her side.

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for my play, Audrey,” M.C. said. “I wish Madison could muster up a little more interest.”

Mads scowled and took a bite of ratatouille. It was scalding hot. She spit it back out on her plate and reached for her water glass.

“Mads can't act,” Audrey said.

“I could if I wanted to,” Mads said. “I just don't want to at this time.”

“I think you'd be wonderful,” M.C. said. “If you'd just try out for the part, I know you'd catch the acting bug. What harm could it do?”

“It's embarrassing,” Mads said. “I don't want to do it.”

“I wish you'd at least try,” M.C. said.

“No.”

M.C. frowned. “I don't like this new attitude of yours, Madison. You never used to be so stubborn!”

“Honey, don't push her,” Russell said.

“It's just—she's being so unreasonable!” M.C. cried. Her blue eyes were moist behind her red cat's-eye glasses. “It's the very first production of my very first play. I'd think she'd be proud of it! All I'm asking is that she try out. That's all.”

Mads felt bad. She knew this play meant a lot to her mother. And she'd be happy to go to opening night and clap louder than anybody. But why did she have to act in it?