Perfectly Dateless (8 page)

“We need a volunteer!” my dad bellows.

To my horror, I hear my mom shout, in her Cyndi Lauper voice, “Chase Doogle, why don’t you come on up?”

I turn to see my crush running toward the stage. It’s all very surreal, as though I’m in a bad nightmare and I’m suddenly going to wake up to find it was all my imagination—my terribly vivid, perfect, spot-on, searing imagination. I shut my eyes tight, hoping when I open them, this will all go away.

“Chase,” my mother says to the audience, “has known my daughter since kindergarten. Daisy, stand up and say hello.”

I keep my eyes shut. Spontaneous human combustion. Dickens said it happened in
Bleak House
. It could happen. Or the Rapture, that could happen, and I’d float away happily, never looking down.

“Yoo-hoo! Daisy, wake up!” my mother calls.

I am slunk down as far as I can be without being on the floor. I open my eyes and shoot her the stare of my life.
Please,
Mother. I’ll never ask for anything again.

“Our daughter Daisy . . .” My father continues in his Elvis voice with his tilted lip and popped collar. He’s the old Elvis. The fat one who OD’d, who is hardly the model for a talk on self-restraint. Or bullying, or whatever this hot mess is about. “She says no one at this school knows her, but that isn’t true. We all feel like we don’t fit in, and it’s hard to trust those around us. That’s why we wrote this play about the trials of peer pressure, so you could know you’re not alone.”

My mom meets my gaze again. “You’re not alone.”

I may not be alone, but how I wish to high heaven I was at this juncture.

My dad rips off his Elvis jacket, slaps on a baseball cap, and flips it backward. My mother rips off her red wig. She’s wearing some form of Lego hair that appears snapped onto the top of her head. She flicks her suspenders on her shoulders, and they’re joined by two young break-dancers in saggy jeans. Rap music pulsates throughout the gym. Chase backs away slowly.

“Yo! Yo!” my dad chants directly at Chase. “I may not be cool or dress like you, but I got deep feelings roiling round in me too.” He hammers his hands toward the ground and back at his chest. “Yo! Yo! Don’t want to be a label sleaze. Hear me out, I dress as I please. Don’t judge me by my size, shape, or color. I am the way God made me.”

“I’m so tall!”

“I’m too short!”

“My face is a wreck!”

“I might as well be invisible!”

“That’s how we roll. That’s just how we roll!” the chorus goes.

It continues, painfully, for a full ten minutes. I can’t watch! All I can remember is something about getting jiggy with it and how we roll.

When it’s over, I’m numb.

Claire grins. “Well, you’re not invisible now. Be careful what you wish for.”

“Are they kidding me? I can’t go to a dance, but my parents can sing in front of the entire school and get jiggy with it?”

Sarika shrugs. “That’s just how we roll.” She starts to laugh.

I rush out the door, but I’m surrounded by students and get stopped in the crowd. There are so many talking at me, I get only tidbits.

“So cool!”

“That rocked!”

“I wish I had parents like that!”

“You’re so lucky!”

I scramble away with Claire next to me. “Did you hear that? I’m lucky to have deranged parents? Are they kidding?”

Claire’s expression turns somber. “In some ways, you are. It wasn’t that bad, Daisy. It was kind of cute.”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, it was. Besides, no one knows who you are. What are the chances they know you’re their daughter?”

“Daisy!”

“Shh!” I snap at the sound of my name. “People will know who I am!” I turn to see a guy following us out of the gym. “Do I know you?”

“Your parents just pointed you out,” he says.

My life is over.

“I don’t think so.” Suddenly I’m Peter denying Jesus, and the guilt overwhelms me. “Yeah, I’m Daisy.”

As the stranger approaches, I see he’s about the same height as me, maybe a tad shorter. He’s tanned like a Spanish warrior with dark chocolate eyes, cropped hair, and seriously cute dimples. He has a regal, Spanish-royalty look to him, and I could easily picture him in a brightly colored uniform with gold buttons.

“Did you know dimples are actually a birth defect? The result of a shortened muscle.” I did not just say that.

His hand covers his left cheek, and I feel Claire slap my back.

“Hi, I’m Claire.” She thrusts out her hand, but I push it away.

“Isn’t Greg looking for you?” I ask her.

“Excuse my friend, she spouts useless trivia when she gets nervous. Which I take to mean she finds you cute. If she starts talking numbers, I’d run. See ya.” Claire bops off like the traitor she is. Chase is standing by the gym doorway staring at us. He shakes his head and disappears back into the gym, fighting the exiting students like a salmon swimming upstream.

I look back at the dimples in front of me.

“You’re blushing.” He laughs, and his dimples appear in full.

I feel my cheeks. “Too much sun, I guess.”

“I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Max.” He rakes his hand through that gorgeous black hair. “I wanted to say that no one knows me either. So now we know each other. I thought maybe that would do us both good.”

“Well, Max, maybe I can show you the ropes of being an unknown. I assume you’re at least new?”

“Yeah.” He looks back toward the gym. Chase is standing beside Amber—who is pointing at me and laughing. “Maybe your days of anonymity are over. I wanted to say ‘hey’ before that happened.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” I keep talking to Max, but I can’t take my eyes off Amber’s flirtatious stance. “Good things don’t happen to me.”

“What?” Max asks.

I meet his deep brown eyes to force my attention away from Chase. “Do you ever feel like the Lord uses you for comic relief? I’m an understudy.” I’m talking to myself more than Max, but he lifts my chin with his thumb so my attention is fully on him.

“Only Satan would make you believe such a thing.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“The public school down the street. They didn’t offer AP History and I need it for my major. I’m going to pray for you, Daisy. You’re not looking at the right things.”

“They have that accent at the public school?”

“Oh, you meant where did I originally come from.” He laughs. “Argentina. I’ll catch up with you later. I just wanted to introduce myself before you disappeared into the crowd.”

That. Is. What. I. Do. Best.

He starts walking across the quad. “I have to get to wood shop.”

“Wait, Max! What’s your last name?”

“Diaz!” he yells back. “And I find you cute too, Daisy Crispin! Save a few random facts for me, okay?”

6

Checks R Us is a check-printing company, and my employer has a horrible track record for quality. The employees screw things up in the factory. I get yelled at in the office. Interesting system, but it pays well. Banks, customers—pretty much anyone who needs to vent—has my number and an issue. It’s good practice for school since no one seems to notice I’m an actual person there either. Until today, when I’m an actual person with parents who rap. Oh, the shame of it!

When I started this job, I seriously thought about not going to college rather than pursuing my mother’s dream of me marrying a preacher. Then I did the math of listening to cranky bank tellers until I was sixty-five, and my head about exploded. So I applied like a madwoman for any and
every
college that would accept me.

My co-workers are still on the phone, taking their own rash of crap. The thing about people yelling at you? They don’t want to be put on hold while they scream because they might lose momentum, and they’re like a torrent of steam or a freight train that will bear down on you. Not pretty. There’s usually some coarse language involved and lots of soothing words on my part. I might consider a career in wild animal training.

I adjust my headset and answer the phone. “Checks R Us, this is Daisy speaking. How may I help you today?”

“Daisy, this is Bev at Wells Fargo. Our customer received an order with someone else’s address, and this is not the first time it’s happened.”

Nor will it be the last, Bev. Apparently you’re not familiar
with our company.
“Bev, I’m terribly sorry about that. There must have been a mix-up in the plant. Let me get that reordered right away.”

Everyone’s off the phone at this point, staring at me while I finish. We’re at our ancient metal desks, arranged in foursquare order, and the phones have died down. Friday afternoon at the banks has started. Very few of the banks complain on Friday because they’re too busy to call us.

“Hi, everybody.”

“So . . . how’s school?” Lindy, my supervisor, is head customer-service rep. She’s from Peru, tiny, serious-natured, and supports her family (including her mom and sisters) with this crappy job. She’s also the youngest besides me, but the most mature—which isn’t saying much. She takes her job seriously but puts up with the rest of us. And our need to vent. Lindy is the type of girl who brushes past all the negativity on the line with her very genuine friendliness. “You made it through your first week.”

“School is the same. Lots of homework, plenty of fashioni-stas, not much fun.” I decide not to venture into the territory of my parents bustin’ a rhyme.

“Who cares about that? Any cute guys this year?” Kat asks. “We keep hoping for you, honey.”

“If there are guys, they’re nowhere near me.”

“Oh, honey, you come to Kat and I’ll get you all set up. Such a pretty girl like you, so smart and all. You should have a boyfriend.”

“She’s not allowed to have a boyfriend,” Lindy reminds her.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. My son has had girlfriends her age,” she says. “You gonna be a nun, honey?”

Her son also lives with her and has a baby mama, but that’s hardly the point. There has to be some middle ground. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. The world is not black and white. Despite what my parents think. Despite what Claire thinks.

“It’s a quiet day,” Lindy says. “We had that mad rush there, but otherwise it’s been very quiet all day. I think Gil had some numbers he wanted you to check too.”

A moment later Kat slams down the phone. “I ain’t showing no public school moron my paystub to take no handout. They can kiss my derriere.”

Kat’s a single mother and smells like an ashtray with a chaser of stale coffee. She wears a cheap perfume to cover the odor, but honestly, the sharp stench is worse. But if you’re ever in a battle? You want Kat on your side. She is the sweetest lady, but she could probably take on Evander Holyfield, so if I didn’t work with her, I wouldn’t know the kind heart that lurks behind her linebacker presence. In fact, if I met her on the street, I’d probably cross it to avoid a confrontation. Don’t like what that says about me, but I’m glad she’s on my side.

“You getting your homework done with this job, Daisy?” Kat asks. “You work so much. You should take it easy.”

I nod. “Not really an option in my house. All my parents have to keep up with is me, so they tend to check on me regularly.”

“You get your education, baby. You don’t want to do this kind of job forever. Your parents know all about it. You find a job you love and every day is like a party.” She pauses to hack a few minutes. “That’s what they tell me anyway.”

Gil comes out of his office. “What’s all this talking? You girls file if the phones are quiet!” He reminds me of the young teacher trying to earn respect. He barks most everything but then waits to see if he’s been heard. If we ask him a question, he gets flustered and acts as though he already made himself clear.

Gil Keegan is the owner’s son. He cannot stand to watch anyone sit still—it’s a personal affront to him. He’s stuck in this job because his father has bigger fish to fry, and Gil’s determined to feed his ego from the job, if nothing else. He’s darling, though, only twenty-four, recently out of college, and he looks like Josh Lucas. When he talks, no matter what he says or how rude he sounds, I find myself drifting into the movie
Sweet Home Alabama
and seeing the prince hiding behind the redneck. Or, in this case, the prince behind the powerless owner’s son. Hey, my dream life helps me get through the day, all right?

Anyway, Gil is cute, achingly so. And if he laid a hand on me, both our fathers would kill us, so there is this unrequited, Shakespearian thing going on between us. My mom would love it in a book. Not so much with me as the star.

Gil spends the majority of his time on Maple Story pretending to be married to some character from Japan. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to run out to 7-Eleven to pick him up a game card so he can buy a pet, or a house, or something to succeed in his imaginary world. I sure hope it’s better than this world for him, because this one seems tedious.

“Daisy, you have a minute?” Gil asks. He turns back to my co-workers. “Get to work if the phones aren’t ringing.”

Kat doesn’t even bother to wait for him to leave the room before bursting into her trademark cackle.

I look around. “It’s your minute,” I tell him as I follow him into his office.

“Sit down,” he says as he sits behind his desk. He pulls out a ledger with pencil markings dating back to another decade. “I tried to make a spreadsheet for this, and nothing is adding up. I need this information entered into a computer so I can analyze the numbers.”

I nod.

“Naturally, this will be between us.”

“It’s okay, Gil. I assume you make money from the Porsche you drive. How much is none of my business.”

His lagoon-colored eyes narrow. “How’d you get so good at numbers at your age?”

“I used to play office as a kid. I’d find my dad’s bills in one place, invoices in another. I started organizing them at five, my mother says. They bought me a computer, and by ten, I was doing my father’s invoicing. I learned early that it’s always good to have money in the account to pay your bills.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“I like order,” I say. “My parents not so much.”