My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan (20 page)

Chuck and Michelle started taking their red-carpet walk but no one looked at them. Everyone was watching Becky, who had never sounded better. I was so happy for her. Halfway through, her father moved all the way to the front of the stage. I didn’t know whether he wanted to see her performance up close to prove to himself it was really her or if he was trying to psyche her out. It didn’t matter. Becky belted out the final chorus, and when she got to the last note, she leaned down and sang it right to her father. People in the audience probably thought she was giving him a shout-out, but I knew it was more like the finger.

When she finally cut off, everyone started cheering wildly. Chuck and Michelle stood in the back, on the red carpet, waving like the applause was for them. When Chuck waved, I could see the bicep in his arm go up and down. Ahh. He and Michelle started making their way back to the stage as Becky ran over to me and gave me an enormous hug.

“I did it, Justin! I did it! I didn’t crack once!”

“Or go flat and sharp at the same time!” I added, but thankfully the crowd’s cheering was too loud for her to hear my unnecessary specification.

I pushed her back center stage and told her to take another bow. She bowed twice and ran offstage smiling and laughing.

Chuck and Michelle had made their way back to the stage, and I decided to go through with the public dare. I couldn’t break tradition. And I knew Spencer had to be onstage for it, so I walked to the microphone.

“Everyone, listen up,” I said. “I’d like to congratulate our king and queen.” There was applause again but not as much as there had been for Becky. “And because I have a duty to fulfill, I’d like to call Spencer Larsen to the stage.”

There was a smattering of applause, which quickly faded out. Spencer looked at Mary Ann and then at me. There was silence while he decided what to do. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew he wouldn’t be able to take the public awkwardness. Sure enough, he started walking onstage.

I was standing center stage, with Chuck right next to me and Michelle next to him. Even though Chuck and I were in the same light, for some reason it made
his
skin give off a glow. Ahh. Once Spencer came onstage, I tore my eyes away from Chuck and started talking to the crowd again.

“I’ve been given a challenge to show who I am tonight.”

I started to get nervous but also excited. Becky had said that your first kiss was the one you had with the person you loved or could fall in love with.

“I’d just like to tell everyone out there that, no matter where you fall on the cool meter, you deserve friends. And you deserve people to be nice to you.” I tried hard to express what I had come to realize while standing in my trance in the hall. “Unfortunately, though, you will one day have to face the fact that not everyone is going to like you, or like your friends, or your boyfriend or girlfriend.”

“What’s your point, Goldblatt?” yelled Vito Klimzak, one of Doug Gool’s sidekicks.

Oddly, I heard nothing from Gool himself. Ms. Horvath (E.R.) shushed Vito, but that one sound must have strained her voice because I saw her immediately clutch her hand to her throat (under her neck brace) to soothe it.

I tore my eyes away from her and said, “My point is, it’s time to show this school who I really am.”

Dare I say it all?

Yes.

“And more importantly”—I decided to use good grammar as a shout-out to Ms. Horvath—“
whom
I really love!”

I saw Ms. Horvath approve of my grammar with a nod. Not surprisingly, that seemed to send her neck into another spasm.

“Go for it!” someone shouted from the back.

I looked at the whole audience—Quincy, Savannah, Mary Ann (with Doug, of course, lurking nearby). I saw Becky standing near the front of the stage with her dad. She had a perfect view. I then looked at Chuck and his blue eyes and his
dimple and his sparkling ivory teeth. I savored his looks and then said a silent
goodbye
in my head. I took a deep breath, popped an emergency Listerine strip into my mouth, and in front of the whole school, I had my official first kiss.

With Spencer.

HOW DO I WRAP THIS
up? I guess by telling everything that’s happened since the dance. Hmm … I’d better first finish telling what happened
at
the dance.

When I went to kiss Spencer, most of the audience definitely went into shock but none more so than Spencer. I had kept my eyes open as I approached his face, and not only was I almost blinded by his bright red hair (which, of course, looked amazing) but I also saw his eyes open wider than I’ve ever seen them. It was like those close-ups they have of actors in disaster movies when they see the White House being blown up or the Golden Gate Bridge being eaten by a monster. But as soon as I locked lips with him, he closed his eyes and I closed mine. Mmm … I’m happy to report that it was exactly as Becky told me it would be. I remember it as a perfect combination of hot and cold: fireworks
and
chills.

Spencer and I broke away, and almost immediately the
shocked silence of the crowd turned into lots of applause and cheers.
And
lots of boos. With a healthy dose of “fags” thrown in. I didn’t even look to see who was doing which. It finally made no difference to me if the kids from Cool U approved or not. My whole dream of the school worshiping me was officially over. It ended when I was standing in that hall being harassed by Inner Spencer and I took time to calmly think. At that moment, an enormous fog was lifted off me. I realized how crazy it was to ever think I would get the whole school to want to be friends with me. And even if I could do it, they wouldn’t be friends with
me;
they’d be friends with a version of me I’d have to work nonstop to maintain. It felt so good to realize I could just be myself and have real friends like Becky. After I figured that out, I suddenly realized who I really wanted to kiss. Yes, Chuck was gorgeous, but once I found out he was fooling around with Michelle while he was with Becky, I got the opposite of a “talent crush,” hereby known as a “personality repulser.” I could look at Chuck and appreciate his stunningness, but I knew I would feel grossed out to actually kiss him. Yes, I had sympathy for him if he really was in the closet, but that didn’t give him an excuse for cheating on Becky. Or being self-centered. Or flirting with me just to get something. Or never paying me back my twenty dollars!

After all my fantasies of Chuck were cleared out of my head, they were replaced by thoughts of Spencer. He was so sweet and supportive of me, and I always thought he was cute. I just never really took more than one second to think about
how much I liked him because my mind was so preoccupied with Chuck or my stupid popularity plan.

Back to what happened after the kiss: Spencer and I separated and I stuck out my hand.

“Friends?” I asked.

He stuck out his hand but didn’t shake mine yet.

“Boyfriends?” he asked tentatively.

“Yes!” I yelled, then shook his hand and had my
second
kiss.

And with that, I looked at Mrs. Hall near the sound booth, pointed to her, and said, “Back to the music!”

The DJ started blasting a Beyoncé song that made Ms. Horvath hysterically clutch her neck brace with both hands, implying that the volume of the music could somehow make her head fall off. I rolled my eyes at Spencer as we walked off the stage holding hands. Then I realized my mistake.

“Sorry about that,” I said quickly.

“About what?” asked Spencer as we made our way across the dance floor to a quiet spot down the hall.

“Well,” I began, waiting for the sermon, “I … uh … sort of rolled my eyes at you when E.R.”—I quickly corrected myself—“I mean, Ms. Horvath acted like …”

“Acted like Beyoncé’s volume was going to make her head separate from her body?” he finished for me.

“Yes,” I said sheepishly.

“So why are you apologizing?”

“Because I know”—I tried to remember how Spencer would put it—“that eye rolling is poison for the soul … or
bad karma … or something.” I looked at him, hoping I’d said the right thing.

“Oh, Justin, stop,” he said, looking at me with a grin. “I know I made you crazy this year with my spiritual-this and spiritual-that stuff.”

I didn’t know whether to admit it. “Sort of …,” I said, and trailed off.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a mistake.”

“Um … it was?” I asked, trying not to show how hopeful I was that he’d dropped all of that.

He explained. “After that whole thing happened with Mr. D …” He stopped for a second. Mr. D was that teacher Spencer really liked who left the school.

He continued quickly. “I guess I was so upset that I thought if I immersed myself in some kind of spiritual quest, it would be cleansing.”

I must have looked confused, because he added, “It was sort of like those body cleanses where you only drink juice for a month.”

Ah. I nodded because I’d just read about those juice fasts in an article revealing how celebrities stay thin.

“Did it help?” I asked.

“I guess I do feel much better now. But it also prevented me from asking you out.”

“You mean … you had thought about it before?” I asked.

He looked at me like I was a moron. “Justin, I’ve wanted to kiss you since my Labor Day barbeque.”

HE DID? That was so many months ago! “Then … then why didn’t you?”

He looked away. “Because I was an idiot. I thought that denying myself things I wanted would be good for me. You know, like a monk.”

Who tries to be like a monk when they’re fifteen?

“That’s also why I went kosher,” he added.

Wow. He found the most annoying parts of
all
religions.

I began to feel frustrated. If he had asked me out months ago, none of this stress would have happened. “Spence, if after a while you realized it wasn’t really working, why didn’t you stop your stupid self-denial and tell me you liked me?”

“I was going to,” he said, annoyed.

“When?” I asked, just as annoyed.

“New Year’s Eve.”

Oh.

I smiled sheepishly. “I guess I messed that up.”

He nodded. “We both did. I should have said something. But I was feeling jealous of Chuck.”

“Then why did you want me to kiss him tonight?”

“I just wanted you to be happy.” Typical Spencer. “If it wasn’t going to be with me, I wanted you to stop torturing yourself about Chuck and just go for it.”

“But what if somehow it had worked out?” I asked in a slight panic. “You know, if I somehow got to date Chuck for a while. I never would have known you liked me.”

He smiled. “I went all those months without speaking to
you, Justin. I knew I could endure however long you dated Chuck.”

“You would have waited for me?”

He nodded. “I would have waited for you.”

I relaxed.

Then—

“So …,” I said nervously, “I also need to ask … have you stopped immersing yourself in all that Eastern religion/​meditation/​kosher stuff?”

“Yes,” he said, “for the most part.”

I brightened up. “So I can go back to making fun of people?”

“No!” Spencer said immediately. Then he added, “Not unless they deserve it.”

Yes!

E.R., get ready to be dished daily.

Uh-oh. I suddenly remembered: What about Mary Ann Cortale? Why did he have to start dating her on the night I kissed him?! Hmm … I guess I could demand that he break up with her, or we could sneak around behind her back until summer break.…

No. I couldn’t do it. I had to speak up.

“What about Mary Ann?” I asked pointedly.

“What about her?” he asked, confused.

I grabbed his hand and walked him back to the dance floor. I didn’t see her but knew we had to find her. “Before we do another thing, you need to tell her this is serious.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding even more confused.

I was now getting extremely annoyed. “Because I’m not the kind of boyfriend who will let you have a girlfriend!”

Then he started laughing.

Rude!

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he said.

I was not amused. “Then why are you her date tonight?” I asked haughtily.

He suddenly stopped laughing. “Uh … I can’t tell you that.”

“What?!” I asked, furious.

“I’m sorry, Justin. But I can’t tell you.”

Suddenly I heard a horribly familiar voice.

“Yes, you can.”

What the—? On the best night of my life, I had to still deal with him?

That’s right, lurking as usual was Doug Gool. I guess he thought since I wasn’t cool anymore, he could start bothering me again. Well, I suddenly realized, now that I’m not afraid of people knowing I’m gay, I’m also not afraid of him.

“Shove it, Gool!” I said, and gave him the finger. I started walking away with Spencer but then realized Spencer wasn’t with me. He was still standing with Gool.

“You don’t have to protect me, Spencer,” I said as I waved him over. “Just walk away from him.”

“Justin, come over here,” Spencer said calmly.

Oh no. Was he back to his “we’re all one under a loving spiritual being” business? I thought he gave that up when he started missing bacon.