Perfectly Dateless (14 page)

Painfully I realize I’ve been pounded with a basketball to the face. My fingertips go to my lips, which feel enormous. Chase just stares down at me, like I’m an amusement park attraction.

I maneuver to my feet and bolt toward the door.

“Wait!” Claire yells behind me.

I scramble to my dad’s Pontiac and press the alarm button in my haste. Rather than a simple chirp, my dad’s aftermarket alarm begins to wail as though the entire town is having a nuclear attack. It goes on and on while I try to break in, pulling frantically at the knob. The doorway fills with teenagers, each more sophisticated than the next in their Abercrombie shirts and designer handbags.

Claire comes alongside me while I press the key remote frantically. She pulls the keys from my hand. “I was wrong,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be noticed. I want to disappear back into the hole where I came from and never be heard from again.” I cover my face. “Photoshop is my friend!” I wail.

Andy, the young minister in charge of youth group, comes out. He’s got that cool, Christian rock-star haircut, burly muscles bulging out of T-shirt, and ripped jeans. He’s got that hip look and he’s so sweet. We’re supposed to believe because he’s a minister that he would have given us the time of day in high school. But I’m leery.

The alarm blares into the evening sky (which is pink and mocking me), and there’s a murmur of giggles from the doorway. I pull at the lever on the car’s ancient burgundy door, but nothing happens. Andy slips the keys from Claire, and with a few aimed pushes the wailing dies.

I lean against the car and cover my face again. Claire gives the group an obscene gesture with both hands, and the sight of it makes me fall into laughter. “Stop it,” I say.

Only Claire could flip off a church youth group and make it look good and, in her current outfit, preppy. The laughter stops, but the group doesn’t dissipate. I wish there was a cop to say, “Nothing to see here. Move along.”

Andy hands me back my keys but closes his hand around them at the last minute. “I’m going to have a talk with Britney and her friends. I’m sure they didn’t mean to hit you with a basketball.”

“Are you really, Andy?” Claire asks. “Or do you just want us to believe that because it’s easier than dealing with it?” She shakes her head. “You don’t seem to get it. This is our life, Andy. We know they meant it. Daisy has the Angelina Jolie lips to prove it.” She looks at me. “It doesn’t look as good on you.”

“No kidding. Brad Pitt isn’t beside me.”

“So you’re going to let them win?” Andy rests his hand on the roof of the car. “You two seem to think I didn’t go to high school. It wasn’t that long ago that I had my face shoved in a urinal, or my track shoes heaved over the electrical wire in the street, but you go ahead and leave. Give them more power.”

This stops us both, and neither one of us makes a motion to get into the car. Of course, he does still have the keys. “What would you suggest?” I ask.

“Join us for the devotional time. If they make you feel uncomfortable during that, I’ll handle it. All right?”

Claire and I look at each other. “It’s either that or you slink to school tomorrow while everyone talks behind your back,” she says.

I nod and take the keys from Andy. But I do not turn my dad’s cheap alarm system on. “Who does he think is going to steal this piece anyway?”

Claire looks back at the car. “Your father goes through extreme lengths to protect what’s his.” She makes sure I get her meaning with her squinted eyes.

“I don’t want to face Chase,” I whisper to Claire. This romance has caused me nothing but pain, and now it’s getting physical.

The gym is abuzz when we walk inside. Amber and Britney look over their shoulders with their sly smiles, but no one else seems to notice us, and Andy blows his whistle and calls everyone to order. Chase never even makes eye contact with me. In fact, when I open my mouth, he turns away. He takes the basketball, dribbles it, and shoots a basket. Then he turns to me and grins. Was it a good grin? I have no idea.

The boys start pushing the sofas together, and everyone takes their seats. Britney, long and voluptuous (the voluptuous part rumored to be her sixteenth birthday present), crosses her long, bare legs and stares me down. Meanwhile, my lips are throbbing, and I press them together, wishing I’d never agreed to come back into this room. I’m too optimistic. I keep thinking,
Amber, Britney—they don’t mean what they
do
, but I’m starting to think differently.

In this room is every reminder that I am not even remotely perfect and I never will be. Hope springs eternal, but so do mean girls.

“Love is patient. Love is kind. Simple, really,” Andy says. “Are you patient?” He looks at me. “Are you kind?” He turns his attention to Britney.

“You know, I was wrong,” I whisper to Claire. “A night at youth group just may kill you.”

10

“Daisy, your father and I have fabulous news!” My mother grasps the end of the dining room table, her fingers wrapped around the edges.

“Mom, the last time you used the word
fabulous
, I do believe it involved a shower curtain, which by its very nature cannot be fabulous, as it is plastic and cheesy. Real people have shower doors.” I drop my napkin into my lap and focus on the casserole in the middle of the table. “Or by
fabulous
, did you mean on clearance at Walmart?”

“Very funny, Daisy. No, I mean it this time. It’s awesome!” she says, which sounds more disturbing than fabulous. Still, she’s grinning like a hyena at dusk, and my father has come in ready to share in the kill.

“You’ll like this, Daisy. It’s a compromise.”

“I’m getting a cell phone, but I have to pay the bill?”

“No, nothing like that. Who are you going to call when you’re at school and work anyway? I’m always here and you never call me,” Mom says.

“Dad, is this news fabulous? Or does it involve either one of you dressing fly and getting jiggy with it in front of my classmates?”

“Jiggy with what?” Dad says. “What are they teaching you at that school? Are you even speaking English?”

My mother hits the table to focus the attention back on her. “Your father and I have been talking about how hard you’ve worked this year.” She winks at my dad from across the table. He pseudo-smiles and plops a huge hunk of the casserole on his plate. Usually my mother serves him—I swear I live in 1957—but he seems to think this may take awhile, so he opts for strenuous work. “Do you want to tell her, honey?”

He raises a palm and shakes his head. Telling me would involve putting his fork down, and that’s not going to happen.

“All right, well, I told your father about this dating issue and the prom, and we’ve decided . . .”

No. No. Please, they can’t have decided anything. This is not a simple yes or no, you can go or not. This is something more. There has to be some deep, dark, small print to go along with it. With my parents, there is always the fine print and the soul-of-your-firstborn clause.

“You can go to the dance.”

“If someone asks you,” my dad adds. “You’ll nearly be eighteen by then, and you’re right, it will be good practice.”

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad. “I can?” Read: fine print, please?

“Well, wait a minute. There are some rules.”

Did I not say?

“I called the school, and it turns out the prom will be held in a hotel in San Jose. It’s the first weekend in March.”

“Uh-huh.”

“San Jose is a big city, Daisy,” Dad says.

“I’ve heard of it,” I say, inwardly rolling my eyes.

“And they’ll be needing chaperones.”

I look in horror at both of them. I mean, I knew it would be bad, but chaperoning? My mom might as well wear an apron to the dance, or worse yet, her rap getup, and my father . . . there is no question he would wear the tux he wore for his wedding. I know he would. He totally brags about how he got it from the Salvation Army and how Mom has had to let the waist out after all her great cooking, but it still fits. Listen, when your white shirt is popping out of your jacket and your ruffles look victimized, you do not have it, all right?

I look back and forth like it’s a tennis match, trying to figure out who would be worse. I swallow the lump in my throat. Mom would be more obvious, but Dad would actually make me dance with him and his bad suit. I opt for Mom.

“And you were thinking?” I manage, shoveling in some casserole so I don’t say something I regret.

“Well, your father, of course,” my mom says. “He’s the one with the tux.”

“But,” my father says, “they don’t let parents chaperone.”

“They don’t?” I squeal.

“No. Which I don’t understand since I pay enough tuition to have some rights at that school.”

“Calm down, honey. They don’t allow parents, but they do allow pastors from local churches. So we thought if we made a substantial donation to the missions fund—”

“By substantial, you mean more than five dollars? I’m hoping.”

“Substantial for us is different from some of the families at church. Pastor understands that.”

“Maybe another parent will make a substantial donation and he’ll do it.”

“If you’re going to be a smart aleck, you can just stay home with us, young lady.” My dad breathes through his nose, his fork in midair.

“Mom, no offense, but that’s hardly letting out the leash, you know? I’m not going to do anything stupid in front of my teachers. They wrote recommendations for me for college. I don’t think I need Pastor to hover.”

Mom looks hurt. “Well, Daisy, honey, I was only trying to make it happen for you. When your father gave you the purity ring, we thought you understood that this was part of our courtship agreement.”

“Mom, I was fourteen, and Hometown Buffet has frozen yogurt with sprinkles on it—that’s like waterboarding to a fourteen-year-old. I would have agreed to anything.” I see my chance, since my mom is already upset. No use wasting the emotion. It’s now or never. “Mom, Dad, I don’t want to do a courtship. Sarika, she’s totally fine with her dad picking her groom from India, even though she’s half English. She trusts her parents because they know who she is, but I’m not sure either of you understands me.”

“You’re saying you don’t trust us?”

“No, I’m saying I don’t want to marry a pastor. I have different criteria for marriage than you might have for me. I don’t want to end up just waiting on some guy for life. I want a job. A career. I want to go to college for an education, not a man.”

“So you want to spend your life alone, is that it?” my father says with his eyebrow cocked.

“At this point, I don’t even want to get married. I wanted to major in finance and have a career in that, but I’ve been researching neuroscience and—”

“Neuro-what?” My father drops his fork and pushes his plate away. “What is that? One of those majors where you go to school your whole life and never get a job?”

“Dad, we talked about this.” Feigning ignorance is his favorite topic. “It’s the science of the brain and the central nervous system. How it’s organized. It has a few branches, but I think I’m interested in the genetic side of things. I checked, Dad, and I have the perfect prerequisites for it as a major. All my physics and calculus and biology. Claire was right, Dad. I’d be totally bored in finance.”

“Claire! You’re going to take advice from a girl who works at a hot-dog stand in the mall?”

“You told her that was a good job.”

“For her, yes. But—” My dad breaks down and shields his face from me. I stare at my mother. She rises and kneels by my father, putting her arm around him.

“Daisy, can you come back later and eat? I’d like to talk to your father alone.”

“Daddy?”

Just go
, my mother mouths.

But my dad snuffles, wipes his face with his napkin, and stares daggers at me. “This is because of Claire’s father, isn’t it? You’re hanging around over there with all that money and you think that’s the key to life. Going on vacations, fancy cars . . . I told you hanging out with that heathen girl was going to bring nothing but trouble to our Daisy.”

“Dad, it’s not because of Claire’s parents.” Seriously? It’s because of my parents, but naturally I can’t say that. My parents live in abject fear about money. To the point that they have no life whatsoever. Claire’s parents honestly think and talk a lot less about money than my own parents. My dad wants to control his own destiny, but he has no idea that if he just got a real job, he’d have a lot more control than what he has now.

“What about Bible college?” my mom asks.

“Mom, I love the idea of Bible college, so I looked it up, and there are Bible colleges that offer certificates in neuroscience.” I swallow. “But I’d rather go to UCLA or UC Riverside. Pepperdine if I go with finance.”

“Neuroscience,” my dad mumbles. “Can’t you get something useful, like a teaching degree?”

“Neuroscience is a growing field. I’ve even researched postgraduate studies at the University of Buenos Aires.”

“Buenos Aires!” my father shouts. “So you plan to spend your whole life in school. Just like I said.” From the look on my father’s face, you would think I’ve just said I wanted to be a dictator and destroy anything and anyone who stands in my way. “You can major in science at a Bible college.”

“I could,” I agree. “But”—I suck in a deep breath—“that’s not what I want to do.”

My mom wails.

“You’re welcome to make your own decisions, Daisy. You’re nearly a grown woman, but if you choose to go to an unapproved university, I won’t pay for it. You’ve got a dynamic future in front of you, but if you reject God, you’ll—”

“I’m not rejecting God.”

“You will. At the end of a science degree, you’ll come back like all the other know-it-alls and deny that you can’t create anything in the laboratory that didn’t come from God’s design.”

“Dad, I’m not turning into Frankenstein. I’m simply fascinated by the human brain and how things work. I have no doubt in my mind that research would only prove God’s existence to unbelievers. If you feel more comfortable with me in finance, maybe that’s the route I should take.”

He shakes his head. “You cannot argue someone into the faith, Daisy. Faith requires . . . well, faith. We don’t get to see everything here on earth. There are questions we’re simply supposed to have.”