The (Almost) Perfect Guide To Imperfect Boys (22 page)

He didn't answer.

“What's a cinch?”

“Girls,” he blurted.

“Girls?” I repeated.
“Girls?”

“That's not what I think,” Zach added quickly. “It's what Kieran says, my stepbrother in Florida, remember? And it's just like a memory trick.”

“You mean a mnemonic device?”

“Yeah. To help me remember.”

“Remember what?” I stared at him. “You have amnesia?”

“No, no. It's just a few tips Kieran gave me about social things. No loud laughing, no dumb jokes about boogers, grow my hair over my ears, stuff like that.”

“And he also said stuff about girls?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

He looked away. “Finley, forget it, all right?”

“No,” I said firmly. “Too late. I'm not forgetting anything.”

I peeked at Ms. Krieger. She tapped on her wristwatch and mouthed the words
One more minute.
I nodded back at her, and mouthed the words
I know.

“All right,” Zachary said finally. “Here it is. When I went down to Florida last spring, I felt like a loser. I don't know, like Freakazoid. So Kieran gave me five rules to follow, but I couldn't always remember them, so he turned the first letters into an acronym:
CINCH
.”

“So
CINCH
stands for something.”

“Yeah. Like HOMES or ROY G BIV.”

“Yes, I got that,” I said impatiently. “What do the letters stand
for
?”

“It's kind of private. You're sure you really want to—”

“Tell me, Zachary!”

“Whatever, fine.” He shrugged. “
C
is for ‘contact,' especially eye contact. Kieran said people like it if you look them right in the eye.”

“Especially girls?”

“Uh-huh.”

Especially if your irises are almost purple.
“Keep going,” I encouraged.

“
I
is for ‘interest.' Kieran said if you want people to like you, show an interest in what they're interested in.”

“Like photography?”

“Whatever. It doesn't matter. Ask them questions, compliment them, tell them it's a cool hobby.”

“And they'll believe it, right? What's
N
?”

“
N
is ‘names.' Kieran says to say people's names when you're talking to them.”

“By people you mean girls?”

He nodded. “According to Kieran, girls like it when you use their names in a sentence.”

“Do they. How profound.”

“He knows a lot of girls, actually. Although he has a girlfriend.”

“Lucky her. What's the other
C
?”

“Um.”

“You forgot? It's not much of a mnemonic, if you can't even—”

“No, I remember.” He started tapping his foot. “The other
C
is for ‘chance.' He said to admit I screwed up last year, and to ask for a second chance.”

“Which you do, by the way. Constantly.” It was funny, but my mouth was feeling dusty. “What's
H
?”

“Okay. So you know how much I grew this past year? I feel kind of weird about it.”

“Why?”

“Because it's freakish. I used to be incredibly short, and now suddenly I'm incredibly tall. But I don't
feel
any different; I'm still majorly uncoordinated. And people expect boys to be athletic, especially when they're big, so Kieran said to say I'm working on my hook shot.”

“
H
is for ‘hook shot'?”

“Yeah,” Zachary said.

So that explained why he wouldn't shoot hoops with Maya and me in the gym. “Hook shot” was just a thing to say. It wasn't true; he still couldn't play basketball.

I took a deep, shaky breath. “And the idea is that if you do all this, if you follow Kieran's five easy rules, girls will be a quote-unquote cinch?”

“Well, theoretically. According to Kieran.”

“Well, thank you for these valuable insights,” I said, standing. “You two have clearly solved the mystery of middle school girls.”

“And now you're mad at me?” Zachary asked.

“Uh. Yeah?”

“Why? For CINCH? But it was just a dumb mnemonic!”

“Oh please,” I sputtered. “You followed those stupid rules. You believed them. You wrote
CINCH
on your
wrist
, didn't you? And you obviously think all girls are the same, just this giant generic blob.”

“No, no.” He looked up at me with round, surprised eyes. “The CINCH stuff wasn't about
insulting
anyone. It was just supposed to organize things in my mind. Exactly like the
Life Cycle
.”

“You know what?” I snapped. “I'm sorry I even showed you the
Life Cycle
. You don't deserve all the stupid sticky notes.”

“Wait. Finley—”

“I'll meet you at the principal's office today after
school. You'd better show up. And don't say my name, either, all right?”

Then I ran out of the library.

I went to the bathroom instead of Spanish.

And I turned on the hand dryer to drown out my thoughts.

“Fin, I really think we should go in there with you,” Olivia said. School had just ended, and we were standing in front of the principal's office. “Because we were just as involved as you and Maya.”

“Well, not
just
,” Hanna reminded her. But she didn't add,
I warned you it was vandalism. And all I did was act as lookout, remember?

“Thanks,” I told them. “But if you guys come in with Zachary and me, it might seem unfair to the boys, like it's all of us girls ganging up. And the whole point is to tell Fisher-Greenglass that we
had
a war going on, but it's totally over now, it's past tense, so
she doesn't think Maya might do something else.”

“You think it'll work?” Olivia asked, wrinkling her nose. “Because with Hairy Hands involved—”

“Maya can't get in trouble again. So we need to try.”

We watched Zachary coming down the hall with Drew and Ben walking closely behind him.

“Hey,” Zachary said. His face was pale, and his eyes didn't meet mine, like he thought I was mad at him. Well, if he thought that, he was right. Because I was.

“Let's get this over with,” he said quietly.

“Okay, but what are they doing here?” I said, pointing at Drew and Ben.

“We heard Maya might get kicked out of school,” Drew said. “So if you need us to say something . . .” He shrugged.

“That's ridiculous,” I said scornfully. “No one's getting expelled over a blob of flypaper!”

Although as I said this, it occurred to me I had no idea what people got expelled over. Up until last week, Maya and I had thought Zachary had been expelled for fighting with Jarret. It was funny—if you could use a word like “funny” in these circumstances—how things had changed since Zachary had arrived. Returned.

And of course, if flypapering Señor Hansen's room
didn't get Maya expelled, it would get her yanked from gymnastics. Which was almost as horrible.

“We should go in,” Zachary murmured. Still not looking at me.

“Just wait out here, okay?” I said to Drew, Ben, Olivia, and Hanna. “Don't leave, in case she wants to talk to you. Um, and thanks,” I added to Drew and Ben.

They nodded seriously.

And then Zachary followed me over to Ms. Hanrahan, the principal's secretary, who for some bizarre reason had decorated her desk with assorted trolls.

She pursed her lips at us, like she had just sucked on a big lemon. “Yes?”

“We'd like to talk to Ms. Fisher-Greenglass,” I said. “Please.”

“What about?” Mrs. Hanrahan tapped on her mouse with a bubble-gum-colored fingernail.

“Crimes against humanity,” Zachary said.

Oh no, was he getting weird now? I jabbed his back with my thumb.

“An incident,” I said. “Behavioral.”

Mrs. Hanrahan's perfectly tweezed eyebrows rose.

“Involving school property,” I added.

She aimed a fingernail at the door. “Go ahead in.”

My stomach knotted.

Ms. Fisher-Greenglass was on her cell when we walked into her office, so she pointed to two seats in front of her desk. Her office was surprisingly messy—stacks of papers on the floor, an overfull garbage can, a few overgrown plants tangling up her windowsill. But somehow the mess made me feel a teeny bit calmer. A person who tolerated messes would tolerate youthful hijinks, wouldn't they?

“Let's assume we can reschedule,” she said into her phone. “I'll be in touch in the a.m.”

On the other hand, I thought, using “a.m.” for “morning” sounded too businesslike. Not youthful-hijinks-friendly. Possibly a bad sign, actually.

“Yes?” she said, finally, making her face go neutral, which was probably a skill they taught you in principal school. “And what brings you two here this fine afternoon?”

“Flypaper,” I said.

“Ah, yes.” She folded her hands.

“Which was actually my fault, not Maya's. But I was just trying to make a sticky frog tongue—”

“To get back at me for the pizza box,” Zachary said. “And the croaking and the water.”

“Which was obnoxious. But it was all payback for the
Life Cycle
—”

“Which was also obnoxious. Although it was private. Until it wasn't.”

“Okay,” Ms. Fisher-Greenglass cut in. “Can we please back up here for a minute?”

But Zachary ignored her. He was looking at me, blinking. “What I mean,” he said, “is that we both did a bunch of stupid things, okay? But I still think of you as a friend, Finley—not as a generic blob or a dumb mnemonic, but as a person. Because truthfully, who cares what you wrote in that
Life Cycle
? What matters is how you acted. And you never treated me like Freakazoid, even when I was Freakazoid. So if you're in trouble now, or Maya is—”

“Zachary,” Ms. Fisher-Greenglass said sternly. “I'm having a hard time following all this. And I thought we were discussing the flypaper.”

“We are,” Zachary answered. “But just punish me, not Maya or Finley, okay? I'm not even staying at this school, anyhow.”

“What?” I gaped at him. My cheeks flushed hot,
and at the same time my hands went cold. It was weird, like my body was in two different time zones. “You're
not
?”

He shook his head. “My dad wants me back in Florida next week, to finish the school year down there. My mom has these, whatever, work commitments. A bunch of travel overseas, I don't know.”

“Oh.” I swallowed.

“There's this whole custody thing they're working out.” Zachary was staring at the principal's tangled plants, which were suddenly lit up by the pale winter sunshine. “I thought they'd agreed on me staying here permanently, but apparently not.”

“That isn't right,” I managed to say. “To change their minds on you like that.”

“Yeah, I guess. But it's important for my mom, so . . .” Now Zachary was staring past the plants, out the window, as if he were already gone from school, already back in Florida with his dad. In a completely different time zone.

And I thought what an idiot I was, how selfish, to be dragging him into the principal's office when he was dealing with all of that at home. But he should have said something in the hallway, before we came in
here. Or a few hours ago, in the library, when I shoved the
Life Cycle
at him. And fought with him about that stupid
CINCH
tattoo.

Because how was I supposed to know things if he didn't tell me?

And then telling me
here
, in front of the principal?
Now
, when we'd come to defend Maya?

It just seemed unfair. To all of us. All of it.

Fisher-Greenglass unfolded her hands. “Yes, Zachary, your mom called me with the news this morning. I told her I was really sorry to hear it, because you were doing so well. Especially socially.”

He shrugged. I didn't know what else to do, so I nodded.

Fisher-Greenglass added, “And I'm sure many of your classmates will miss you.”

She caught my eye and gave me a sympathetic smile, like she understood that Zachary's news affected me, too. The principal was actually a nice person, I thought. But she couldn't fix this.

Nobody talked. The bell rang. We could hear a bunch of kids laughing loudly out in the hallway, and then Ms. Hanrahan call out, “
Walk
, please,” followed by more laughing and the sound of frantic running.

Ms. Fisher-Greenglass cleared her throat and said, “So about all this flypaper nonsense: I take it there's been some back-and-forth between the eighth-grade boys and girls?”

“Yes, but it's over now,” I said.

“Good to hear that, Finley. You know, you certainly caused Mr. Lundquist some extra work, and we could have had a pest infestation from those crumbs. And I'm not just talking about houseflies. Also, I don't know if the flypaper fumes were toxic, but they were certainly unpleasant.”

Irk. Something else I hadn't thought about.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “They were supposedly organic.”

“Even if they were, that doesn't mean the whole school should have been inhaling them.” She studied my face for a few seconds. “All right, Finley,” she finally said. “I haven't decided anything official yet, but I can tell you there'll be a service project in your future involving some sort of payback to the school—maybe assisting Ms. Krieger in the library.”

“Oh, sure, fine with me,” I said quickly.

“As for Maya, she has a few things to iron out with Señor Hansen, but we're in the process of working
on that. I can't tell you very much right now, just that she'll be back in school on Monday, and she'll have some sort of service project as well.” Ms. Fisher-Greenglass turned back to Zachary, and suddenly her voice was kind again. “Zachary, the thing for you right now is to get yourself home. It sounds to me like you need to start packing.”