My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan (3 page)

Excellent. Now I have a plan.

Actually, looking over this piece of paper, it seems I more have a list of the results I want
without
the actual plan. Well, at least I’m about to see my football-playing, soon-to-be (possible) boyfriend in French class. Maybe gazing at his gorgeousity will trigger something in me besides the usual excessive sweating. Wish me luck!

AS I RAN TO CLASS
, I realized I had forgotten my French notebook, so I had to double back to my locker. I ran past the library and as I entered the hallway with my locker, I saw Mrs. Cortale, the guidance counselor, sitting at her desk. She was eating a bowl of something that was eight different shades of green. I’m a vegetarian but she goes many steps further than me by being a raw vegan. That means she’ll pretty much only eat what most people would consider a lovely corsage. She’s the school’s resident hippie, and her daughter, Mary Ann, is being raised like one, too. Apparently Mary Ann is forbidden to shave any hair on her body, just like her mom. Unfortunately, while it’s not noticeable on the very fair-haired Mrs. Cortale (née Olsen), Mary Ann’s father is Italian. You do the math. Actually, I will: two plus two equals a full head of black hair under each arm. Plus, her mother believes in “living simple in every aspect,” so Mary Ann’s wardrobe consists only of
two non-animal/​organic/​environmentally friendly, shapeless sack dresses that flow down to the tips of her all-season Birkenstocks. Suffice it to say, she is equal to me in popularity, and typical of my luck, her locker is next to mine. That means that whenever someone writes something mean on her locker, they always add something to mine because the proximity makes it so deliciously easy. The reason I know they write on hers first is because I often arrive to find YOU SUCK or LOSER scrawled across her locker with mine sporting a YOU TOO or LOSER NUMBER TWO. The weird times are when she gets there before I do and wipes her locker off, so I arrive to see a cryptic SO DO YOU scrawled on mine and have no point of reference to be insulted by.

Anyway, I got to my locker and found packages of dental floss taped all over it. Obviously a reference to the spinach incident but quite frankly something I could always use. Finally, I thought, some vandalism that could be repurposed.

I placed the dental floss on the top shelf of my locker, silently cursing that it was plain and not mint flavored. Cheap asses. I walked into Monsieur Bissel’s class right as the second bell was ringing and plopped down in front of Doug Gool. Oh yeah. That’s one of the “great” things about my school district. We always sit alphabetically and, because my last name is Goldblatt, I get to always be in incredibly close proximity to Doug, which would be excellent if weight loss could be achieved from fear-based high blood pressure.

The only advantage to the alphabetical seating is that I sit
diagonally across from Chuck Jansen, my soon-to-be-possibly-one-day quarterback boyfriend. Every day I have an excellent view of his profile (perfect, with a strong nose, pouting mouth, sexily stubbled chin, piercing blue eyes) and often get to see him run his hands through his sandy blond hair, which he boldly has grown longer than the other guys at school. It’s not crazily long (I’ve never been into that hippie look), ending around an inch and a half below his ears.

Of course, I’m just estimating that it’s an inch and half below … who knows?

All right, I admit that I spent hours analyzing his yearbook photo from last year and getting his exact hair dimensions by using basic calculus and a protractor. Sue me.

Anyway, Monsieur Bissel began class by teaching us an idiom that meant something like “I feel hungry and thirsty, but if I had to choose, definitely more thirsty than hungry.” I thought,
When the hell am I ever going to use that in a French conversation?
It’s never been something necessary to clarify in English and I’ve spoken that for the last fifteen years of my life.

Suddenly I heard Chuck laugh and whisper to Becky, his ex-girlfriend, “When the hell am I ever going to use that in a French conversation?”

Gasp! It’s a sign! What are the odds that he would use the exact wording of my thought if we weren’t meant to be together?

Becky giggled and then Chuck laughed louder, and suddenly Monsieur Bissel looked up from his Big Book of Idioms and glared in their direction.

“Chuck?” said Mr. Bissel. “Would you care to tell
la classe
why I just heard a big
rire
from your
bouche
?”

Monsieur Bissel always spoke to us with a crazy version of half English and half French. FYI,
rire
is pronounced “reer” and it means “laugh,” and
bouche
, pronounced “boosh,” means “mouth.”

Chuck looked up innocently and said, “Gee, Monsieur Bissel, I don’t know why my
rire
is so big.” In case the class didn’t get the reference to his rear end, he decided to push it further. “To be honest, my
rire
has always been big, but most people who’ve seen my
bouche
know that it’s even bigger!” His pronunciation of
bouche
sounded much more like “bush,” and that’s all it took for the room to be filled with
rireing
.

“
C’est tout!
” Monsieur Bissel slammed his idiom book closed. “Chuck! Detention
après
school!”

“But he has football practice!” Becky blurted out.

“Not today, he doesn’t,” Monsieur Bissel said curtly. “And for speaking
sans
raising your
main
, Mademoiselle Becky, you’ll be in detention as well!”

Chuck and Becky looked annoyed, but this gave me an idea. I’d never actually spoken to Chuck before but perhaps I could today. He’d be in detention without his moron sidekicks for a full hour. If I could hang out in that room, maybe I could at least become friends with him, if not ask him out. I know it’s crazy to think that he would ever date me, or even that he might be gay, but I’ve decided that sophomore year is the year I’m gonna dream big and go for what I want.

Hmm
, I thought,
how can I get into detention?
I’d already handed in my homework at the beginning of class, so that eliminated the possibility of being punished for not having it. I decided to pull the old talking-without-raising-my-hand routine.

“What’s the homework today?” I asked loudly while Monsieur was talking. I figured interrupting him would be sure to get his dander up. Instead, he chuckled. “My, it’s nice to see such dedication from
un etudiant
.” He looked sternly at the other kids. “Would that more of you were like Justin.” He smiled kindly in my direction. “It’s chapter
quatre
in your
livre
.”

Rats! That didn’t work. I’d have to push it. But how? While he started describing the pluperfect, Chuck began quietly rapping. “Hey, Bissel, ring the bell for dismissal.”

Chuck would do this all the time and pass it down the row. The unspoken rule was that when it got to you, you’d have to repeat the rap you just heard and then make up a new one. The trick, though, was to do it quietly enough so Monsieur didn’t hear but loud enough so the other kids could.

Roger Stanton, who fancied himself a soon-to-be rap star, was next. “Hey, Bissel, ring the bell for dismissal,” he repeated, and added some fancy moves. Then, “Hey, Bissel, this class has no sizzle!”

Monsieur Bissel kept conjugating obliviously, and now Doug Gool was up. “Hey, Bissel, this class has no sizzle. Hey, Bissel, I gotta take a whiz-zle!”

It was my turn. I
had
to get that detention. I decided it was now or never. “Hey, Bissel, I gotta take a whiz-zle!” I rapped, full voice, hoping to get busted. But right at that moment, Monsieur had a coughing fit and didn’t hear. I had to raise the volume on my new rap. Uh-oh! I hadn’t thought of one. I panicked and yelled the first rhyme that came to my head.

“Hey, Bissel, how about a kiss-el?!?!”

Total silence.

Followed by class-wide laughter. As opposed to the Chuck laughter, these guffaws were not in alliance
with
me, but aimed with derision
at
me. They were literally accompanied by finger pointing, just like in a Peanuts cartoon.

Monsieur Bissel turned red.

“Fermez les bouches!”
he bellowed. “Justin! You will be joining Chuck and Becky in detention.”

Yes! Mission accomplished!

“And, class, since you find Justin so
très drôle
 …”

Uh-oh.

“… I want you all to think about him as you write your extra assignment for
ce soir
. A two-hundred-word essay on Paris.”

The bell rang. Doug Gool stood in my way as I got up. “Thanks, dickhead. Because of you, we have to waste our night writing about Gay Paree.”

I tried to move around him. He blocked me. “Hey, everyone!” he yelled. “Don’t forget to do the essay, ‘Justin’s Gay
Paree.’ ” He started repeating it in rhythm. “Justin’s Gay Paree! Justin’s Gay Paree!”

Everyone started chanting it with Doug leading a parade out of the room. That gave me a chance to scurry around them and avoid the glowering of Monsieur Bissel.

Well, at least I got everyone’s mind off the spinach incident.
And
I’m one step closer to snagging Chuck. This kind of thinking is what Spencer calls looking at the glass as half full. He said the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is that an optimist sees a glass half filled with water and calls it half full while a pessimist sees the same glass and calls it half empty.

I got to my locker. Someone had broken the lock. I looked inside.
Hmm
, I pondered,
what does an optimist call a locker half filled with bags of spinach?

I ARRIVED IN DETENTION ONE
minute before the bell rang. There’s a fifteen-minute free period before all after-school activities began and I spent it in the bathroom. Not because of an upset stomach, but because I had just gotten some toothpaste with whitener and realized that I didn’t have time to wait for the results of brushing three times a day for a month. This was an emergency! I needed blindingly white teeth to impress Chuck by 3:15, so I spent a full ten minutes brushing my chompers. Unfortunately, any white that might have been added to my teeth was overshadowed by the red of my bleeding gums. I don’t normally have the gums of a seventy-year-old smoker, but I think the vigorous stroking of my newly bought “firm” toothbrush caused some capillary damage. I thankfully remembered learning in earth science that cold makes things contract, so I swished some cold water in my mouth frantically for the last two minutes and my gums called a truce.

I ran into the detention room (which during the day is the computer room) and saw that the teacher du jour was “E.R.” E.R. is actually Ms. Horvath, the head of the English department
and
the biggest hypochondriac east of the Mississip’. Spencer and I nicknamed her E.R. because she always seems on the verge of being sent to the emergency room. Hmm … I guess we came up with the nickname before his obsession with karma.

Although she always acts put out by her weekly phantom maladies, she obviously enjoys each one because her normal depressed personality seems to come alive only when talking about them. I’m used to seeing her with her arm in a sling gesticulating wildly to some fellow teacher and grimacing about her “bum fibula” or scurrying to her acupuncture session while loudly proclaiming to random passersby, “Those painful needles are simply not helping my colon do its job regularly.” I dreaded what today’s physical duress would be. As soon as I walked in, she waved me frantically over to her desk. I approached warily, and she promptly handed me a preprinted 5 × 7 card from a stack she had next to her. I read it quickly:

I nodded sympathetically and muttered, “Sorry.” She started to say “Thank you,” but all I heard was a raspy version
of the word
thank
that was quickly cut off by a dramatic coughing fit, interrupted only by her looking up to see if I was taking in her star turn. She finished with a noisy spit into a tissue, and then quickly wrote something on a pad, which she handed to me.