How to Be Popular (3 page)

Jason doesn’t believe in in-school romance. In a BIG way.

“Because otherwise,” he went on, at the café table, “you’ll be like those two morons down there. Speaking of which, Crazytop? May I ask what you’re doing?”

I stopped shaking the sugar packets I’d torn open over the balcony railing and looked at Jason innocently. “Nothing.”

“Clearly,” Jason said, “you are not doing nothing. You are most definitely doing something. What it looks like you’re doing is pouring packets of sugar on Lauren Moffat’s head.”

“Shhh,” I said. “It’s snowing. But only on Lauren.” I shook more sugar out of the packets. “‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter,’” I called softly down to Lauren in my best
Jimmy Stewart imitation. “‘Merry Christmas, you old Building and Loan.’”

Jason started cracking up, and I had to hush him as Becca saw my sugar supply running low and hastened to hand me more packets.

“Stop laughing so loud,” I said to Jason. “You’ll spoil this beautiful moment for them.” I sprinkled more sugar over the side of the balcony. “‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.’”

“Hey!” Lauren Moffat’s voice, sounding noticeably irritated, floated up to us. “What—ew! What’s in my hair?”

We all three ducked beneath our table so Lauren couldn’t see us if she realized what was happening and looked up. I could see her between the slits of the fencing around the balcony, but I knew she couldn’t see me. She was shaking out her hair. Becca, crouching across from me, had to put her hands across her mouth to keep from giggling. Jason looked like he was about to pee in his pants, he was trying so hard not to laugh.

“What’s the matter, babe?” Mark came out from beneath the balcony, putting his wallet into his back pocket.

“There’s something—sand or something—in my hair,” Lauren said, still fluffing out her hair—which you could tell she didn’t want to do, since she’d flat-ironed it so straight.

Mark leaned closer to examine Lauren’s hair. “Looks okay to me,” he said. Which just made us laugh harder,
until tears were streaming out of the corners of our eyes.

“Well,” Lauren said with one last shake of her perfectly straight locks, “I guess you’re right. Come on. Let’s go.”

It was only when they’d rounded the corner toward the Penguin that we finally sat up, laughing semi-hysterically.

“Oh my God, did you see her face?” Becca asked between guffaws. “‘There’s something in my hair!’”

“That was fantastic, Crazytop,” Jason said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. “Best master plan yet.”

Except that it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. He didn’t have the slightest idea.

“Can I get you guys the usual?” That’s what Kirsten, our waitress, wanted to know, coming up to wipe down our table—she’d apparently noticed all the sugar I’d spilled on it.

Usually when Kirsten is our waitress, Jason drops his napkin or something and has to crawl around looking for it. Because he feels about Kirsten the same way I feel about Mark: He thinks she’s perfection. And maybe she is. Who am I to judge? Kirsten, who is from Sweden, is working her way through college on the tips she earns at the Coffee Pot. And yet she still manages to maintain her blond highlights, which is just one of the many reasons Jason has spent night after night lying on The Hill, composing haikus in her honor. He gets especially poetic about her when Kirsten wears a men’s white button-down shirt with the ends tied just under her ribs, and no bra.

Personally, I think Kirsten is nice, and all, but I don’t
think she’s good enough for Jason. I would never admit this to HIM, of course. But I’ve noticed she has really dry skin around her elbows. She should totally invest in some lotion.

But tonight, for some reason, Jason didn’t appear to notice Kirsten. He was too busy asking how Monday morning was going to work (not the part about how I was going to change the social structure at Bloomville High with the help of his grandmother’s book—Jason and Becca don’t know about that. Obviously). We were discussing what time we’d actually have to leave the house for school now that Jason has a car—a glorious eight
A
.
M
., to get us there by first bell, at eight ten, as opposed to the hideous seven thirty, which is when the bus shows up in our neighborhood.

“Can you imagine their faces when we pull up?” Becca was saying as Kirsten came over with our order. “I mean, in the student parking lot?”

“Especially if we’re listening to Andy Gibb,” I pointed out.

“The A-crowd,” Jason said, “can eat me.”

“What is the A-crowd?” Kirsten asked.

“You know,” Becca explained as she stirred more Equal into her decaf. Becca’s got weight issues on account of how when she lived on the farm, her parents had to drive her everywhere because there was nothing within walking distance of their house. Now that she lives in town, her parents still drive her everywhere, because they want to show off their new Cadillac, which they also
bought with the I-69 money. “The popular people.”

Kirsten looked confused. “You are not popular?”

This caused uproarious laughter on our part. Which was okay, because we can talk openly about our lack of popularity at the Pot, as we are the only people from Bloomville High who go there. It’s kind of a hippyish place where they hold regular poetry readings and have loose teas in these giant plastic containers.

And besides, not that many teens in Greene County drink coffee (even half coffee, half milk, and a lot of sugar, like I drink), preferring Blizzerds (spelled that way so as not to get sued by Dairy Queen for copyright infringement) from Penguin.

“But you guys are so nice,” Kirsten said when our laughter had died down. “I don’t understand. Aren’t the most popular kids in your school the ones who are nicest? Because that’s how it was in my school, back in Sweden.”

Seriously, that practically brought tears to my eyes. I never heard anything quite so sweet.
Aren’t the most popular kids the ones who are nicest?
Sweden must be the best place to live. Because out here, in the cruel Midwest, popularity has nothing whatsoever to do with niceness. Unless you’re Mark Finley, of course.

“Come on. You guys are kidding me,” Kirsten said with a smile that revealed her crooked eyeteeth—eyeteeth about which Jason has waxed particularly eloquent in his haikus. “You are popular. I know it.”

Which is when Jason stopped laughing long enough
to go, “Wait, wait…so, Kirsten, you’re saying you’ve never heard of Steph Landry?”

Kirsten blinked at me with her big brown eyes. “But that is you. Are you famous, or something, Steph?”

“Or something,” I said uncomfortably.

That’s the thing. Kirsten’s probably the only person in Greene County who hasn’t heard of me.

Good thing I have Jason around to set her straight.

T
-
MINUS ONE DAY AND COUNTING
SUNDAY
,
AUGUST
27, 12:15
A
.
M
.

I should hate him. But I don’t. It’s hard to hate someone who looks that good with his shirt off.

I can’t believe I just thought that. I can’t believe I’m sitting here DOING this, when I swore I wouldn’t. Anymore.

Well, it’s his fault anyway, for not lowering his blinds.

The thing is, what are you supposed to do when you know something is wrong, but you just can’t stop doing it?

Of course, I guess I could stop if I really wanted to. But, um. I don’t want to. Obviously.

Really, if you think about it, it’s just research. On guys. My interest in seeing Jason undressed is purely scientific. Which is why I use the binoculars I sent away to Bazooka Joe for when I was eleven. (Sixty Bazooka
bubble gum wrappers, plus four ninety-five, for shipping and handling. They actually do work. Sort of.) I mean, someone has to observe guys in their natural habitat and figure out what makes them tick. Especially when they’re naked.

But I really do feel guilty about it. Especially about the binoculars.

Just not guilty enough to stop.

Plus, you know, if you ask me, he sort of deserves it—especially tonight, after telling Kirsten the Super Big Gulp story. Like she needed to know about that.

Then afterward he had the nerve to be all, “Hey, let’s go to The Hill.” Like I was really going to go stargazing with the guy who outed me to the one resident of our town who didn’t know about pulling a Steph Landry.

Not to mention I didn’t have my Off! with me and I am not likely to lie on the grass and be eaten alive by chiggers just in order to see a few shooting stars. I mean, this is why Grandpa built the observatory, for God’s sake.

So the guilt? Not so much. Certainly not enough to go to confession about it or anything.

Especially since, even if I did go to confession about it, Father Chuck will say something to my mother—I just know it. And then she’ll tell Kitty. And Kitty will tell her son, Dr. Hollenbach, who’ll tell Jason (or, at the very least, he’ll tell Jason to put his blinds down). And then I won’t get to see him anymore. Naked, I mean.

And that would totally suck.

Plus, you can’t tell me that what I’m doing is all THAT
wrong. Guys have been doing it to girls for hundreds—maybe thousands—of years. For as long as there’ve been windows and people changing in front of them—people who didn’t put down their blinds, anyway—there’ve been other people looking in those windows.

It’s about time we girls had a little payback, is all I’m saying.

And as much as it grieves me to report it, Jason regularly provides some fine, fine payback. I don’t know what he ate when he was in Europe, but he came back looking so hot! He didn’t have those biceps before he left. No way did he have those abs.

Or maybe he did and I just never noticed.

Of course, it’s not like, before he left, I was seeing Jason naked on a regular basis, either. It wasn’t until he moved into the attic, which happens to have a window I can see right into from our upstairs bathroom window, that I noticed I could see him.

And people in my family wonder what I’m doing in the bathroom for so long. Like my little brother Pete, who just banged on the door.

“What are you doing in there?” he wanted to know. “You’ve been in there an hour!”

My big mistake was opening the door.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in bed?”

“Because I gotta pee,” Pete said, barging past me and whipping it out. “Whadduya think?”

“Ew,” I said. I seriously doubt Lauren Moffat has to
put up with her little brothers peeing in front of her in her own home.

Of course, Lauren probably has her own bathroom. She doesn’t have to share it with her four—soon-to-be five—siblings.

“I told you I gotta go,” Pete said, clearly not caring about the psychological scars his being full-frontal in front of me could cause. He looked around, then went, “Hey. Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

“I’m not,” I said. Even though the light in the bathroom was out. I could only see him from the moonlight, streaming in through the windows.

“Uh, yeah, you are.” Pete finished up and flushed. “You’re really weird, you know that, Steph?”

Um. Duh. “Go back to bed, moron.”

“Who’s the moron?” Pete wanted to know.

But he went back to bed. And didn’t notice the binoculars. Thank God.

I guess I should try to be a little more understanding of what his—Pete’s—life must be like. Having the infamous Steph Landry for an older sister, I mean. Obviously, it must put him at a severe social disadvantage, at least in this town.

And yet he’s borne it remarkably well…the teasing, the put-downs, the roughing up on the playground.

The way I see it, things could be worse. I mean, there was this girl in school last year, Justine Yeager, who was an actual genius—she had a perfect grade point average and got the highest score you can get on her SATs, even
the essay part. But she had like zero social skills—she was BOOK smart, but not PEOPLE smart. I mean, worse than accidentally throwing a Big Red Super Big Gulp on the most popular girl in school. No one would sit next to Justine at lunch, not even the B-crowders, because all she ever talked about was how much smarter she was than everybody else.

So whenever things get really bad—like they are right now, when it’s the last Saturday night of summer vacation and instead of being out on a date or at a party or the lake or whatever, I’m sitting in the bathroom spying on my best friend as he undresses and gets ready for bed—I think about how I could have been born Justine Yeager, instead of, you know…me. And it helps.

Sort of.

At least I’m not alone. In not being at a party or the lake, I mean. Jason’s home, too.

And looking mighty, mighty fine.

Okay, this is sick. SICK. I am fully going to ask God for forgiveness about this during Communion in church tomorrow. Since I can’t ask Father Chuck. Might as well go straight to the top. No more middlemen. That’s what Grandpa always advises, anyway.

Although of course Grandpa doesn’t know how much time I spend spying on the naked bod of my future step-whatever-Jason-is-going-to-be-to-me when his grandmother marries Grandpa.

But. Whatever.