The Dating Game (7 page)
Mads read paco’s questionnaire carefully. “Who do you think it is?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Holly said.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” Mads said. “It’s not Sean. Sean’s a senior, and paco says he’s in eleventh grade.”
“So what? You’re too good to date juniors now?”
“It’s not that,” Mads said. “It’s just that I want Sean. Do you think he submitted a questionnaire?”
Holly shrugged. “How could we tell?”
“I’ll figure it out,” Mads said. “If his questionnaire is here, I’ll find it.”
“But what about paco?” Holly said. “He’s in love with you!”
“That’s got to be a joke,” Mads said. “Wouldn’t I know if somebody was in love with me?”
“Maybe he’s shy.”
“Forget it. Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t ‘Sean’ the same name as ‘John,’ only Irish? Here’s a senior, code name john,’ who says he looks like Ashton Kutcher except with blond hair!” Sean kind of looks like Ashton Kutcher with blond hair!”
Sean didn’t look much like Ashton Kutcher, but Holly had to admit that nobody at school looked more like him than Sean.
“Look—he says he wants us to match him with somebody,” Mads said. “I volunteer. Let’s match him with me!”
“What if it isn’t Sean?” Holly asked.
“It’s got to be Sean! I’m going to e-mail him right now.”
To: john
From: Mad4U
Re: Dating Game
John, you asked us to make a match for you, and we have! Your date will be a sophomore, 15 years old. If you’d like to meet her, name a time and place and we’ll set it up. Congratulations!
Five minutes later, an answer appeared.
To: mad4u
From: John
Re: oh yeah
Set it up. How about vineland, after school on Wednesday. Cool?
Mad4u: Cool. She’ll see you then. How will she know you?
John: just tell her to find the Ashton Kutcher look-alike.“
That was easy,” Holly said. “Too easy.”
“Stop being so cynical,” Mads said. “Isn’t that one of the reasons we started this blog? To make getting dates easier? And it’s working, see?” She saved the e-mail in a special computer file marked “Sean.” “Now we’re all taken care of. Let the dating games begin!”
Death to the Normals
To: linaonme
From: Your daily horoscope
HERE IS TODAY’s HOROSCOPE: CANCER: Grab your ray gun! An alien life form is about to land on your planet and destroy your life as you know it. This is not a joke.
L
ina: You and Holly and Madison have done an excellent job devising a thesis and plan for your project. Go girl Just be sure to keep careful track of your statistics. I appreciate your offer to let me participate in the study, however, since I’m not a student, I’m afraid my answers would pollute the statistical pool and distort your results. I am looking forward to seeing your first progress report!
Dan
Lina lightly touched the smiley face Dan had made on her paper. Did he put smiley faces on everybody’s papers? Only on the good ones? Only on hers? He probably put them on the good ones. He’d left the papers in his outgoing mailbox for all the students to pick up, so anyone could read his comments. Under those circumstances he probably wouldn’t put anything personal on a paper. Still, she liked to think there might be a secret message for her hidden somewhere in his comments. “Go girl”? Could that mean something? Besides the fact that he used dated slang? After all, three girls were working on the project, not just one.
She folded up the paper and put it away in her bag. She planned to save it in her keepsake box, along with her dad’s school ring, a valentine from a boy she’d liked in first grade, and her “Best Hustle” medal from field hockey, among other exotic memorabilia.
Hockey and Dan were weirdly linked in Lina’s mind. She loved playing hockey, loved the way the wooden stick rang in her hand when she smacked the ball just right. She remembered a game near the end of last season, against Rosewood’s rival school, Draper. It was a beautiful day and the small bleachers were packed for once, rare for a JV match. Her father had promised to leave work early to catch the game, and she found herself glancing at the bleachers to see if he’d arrived. He hadn’t had a chance to see her play all season, but he was her biggest fan, and once in a while he even put on his old lacrosse pads and played goalie against her in the backyard.
During the third quarter she spotted Dan loitering near the sidelines, tie loosened, hands in his pockets, dark sunglasses on, watching, and her heart jammed in her throat. Rebecca passed the ball to her. She gave it a mighty whack and it sailed into the goal. The bleachers went crazy. “Good shot, Lina, good shot,” the coach yelled. Lina scanned the crowd for her dad one more time. He wasn’t there, but Dan was, clapping and cheering, and it was almost as good.
Two months had gone by, and Lina still thought about that hockey game at least once a day. Now she found herself drifting down the hall past the
Inchworm
office. Through the glass window on the door she could see Dan sitting at a desk, checking proofs.
If she joined
Inchworm
, she’d get to see Dan more. She’d thought about it many times. She loved to write poetry, but she didn’t like the poetry
Inchworm
usually published. Most of it was written by Ramona or her friends Siobhan Gallagher, Maggie Schwartzman, and Chandra Bledsoe. All charter members of the Dan Shulman Cult. It was very cryptic, so only they could understand it. There was a lot of blood, death, knives, skulls, and vampire and religious imagery … Emily Dickinson meets Night of the Living Dead. But since they all worked on the magazine, they controlled what was published.
“Excuse me.” Ramona and Chandra brushed past her on their way into the office. Ramona’s thin red tie was knotted at her throat as usual. Chandra’s was black. Those stupid ties! Lina hated the ties. They mocked her. Imitating Dan’s dress was no way to pay tribute to his wonderfulness. The best way was Lina’s way—silent, painful worship.
“Spying?” Ramona sneered.
Lina was startled. “No! I’m not spying! Why would I be spying?”
Ramona grinned like a jack-͋-lantern. She’d drawn an exaggerated lip line around her real mouth and painted it in with violet lipstick. A little lipstick trickled down from the corner of her mouth, as if she were bleeding, or drooling grape juice.
“We’re planning an
Inchworm
reading for next week, if you want to come,” Chandra said. She was new to the goth thing and hadn’t quite gotten the evil down yet. “We’re going to make the office look a like slaughterhouse, with blood and body parts everywhere. The theme is ’death to the Normals.’”
“Oh,” Lina said, nodding politely. “Sounds good. I’ll tell all my friends.”
Ramona heard the sarcasm in Lina’s voice. She waited for Chandra to go into the office. Then she whispered, “I can see it in your eyes, Lina. You think you’re better than we are. But you’re not. Stop hiding from the truth. You’re just like us. Death to the Normals. Don’t worry, we’d spare you. You’re not normal.”
“Great. Thanks.” Lina stood frozen in place, watching while Ramona went up to Dan with a sheath of hand-scrawled pages. She knew that was supposed to be a good thing, not being normal. To Ramona, at least.
“I’ve had a breakthrough,” Ramona announced. “My soul has finally reached a higher plane. I stayed up all night documenting it in verse.”
“You’re so prolific, Ramona,” Dan said. “What would
Inchworm
do without you?”
It wouldn’t suck
, Lina thought.
Why did she care what Ramona and her friends did? It had nothing to do with her. But it upset her. Everything about them. Especially the ties.
She was a normal, popular girl, right? Well, popular-ish. She and Holly and Mads were friendly with the cool kids but they weren’t indisputably the cool kids themselves, not yet anyway. But Lina wasn’t like those fringe-dwellers. She didn’t pierce weird parts of her body or dye everything dyable or worship some made-up goddess of death.
But she did love Dan. And so did they. Deep down, maybe she was more like them than she wanted to admit.
Mr. Yuck
To: mad4u
From: Your daily horoscope
HERE IS TODAY’s HOROSCOPE: VIRGO: Someone is broad-casting geek rays—and you’re receiving them loud and clear.
M
ads scanned the parking lot at Vineland for Sean’s car. He drove a Jeep. No sign of it. He must not be here yet.
She waved to Holly and Lina, who’d dropped her off. They waved back and drove off to wait out the date at Holly’s. Mads walked into the café and looked around. No Sean, and no one else who looked like a blond Ashton Kutcher, either. Mads went to the bathroom to check her hair, makeup, and clothes. This was the most important day of her life. Her first date with Sean!
Holly and Lina had helped her get ready. Mads insisted she wanted smoky eye makeup for the mysterious look she believed appropriate for a blind date, even a blind date that took place at four in the afternoon. So Lina smudged black eyeliner around her eyes and Mads wouldn’t let her stop until she looked like someone had punched her. Holly was in charge of the red lipstick.
Mads studied the results in the bathroom mirror at Vineland. She wasn’t sure how she looked, but one thing she knew, and liked, was that she didn’t look like her usual self. As far as she was concerned, that was an improvement.
She wanted to look sexy but she didn’t want to overdress. The eternal problem. So she wore fishnet stockings under her short corduroy skirt instead of her usual tights, and high-heeled boots. She left her black hair hanging down naturally.
She went back into the café and picked out a table. It was four o’clock exactly. She grabbed a magazine and flipped through it, trying to look casual. Ten minutes went by, fifteen. Where was Sean?
At 4:17, the door opened and a gangly, pallid boy with giant feet and a brown pageboy haircut walked in, flourishing a red satin cape. Mads recognized him. He was a ninth-grader known as Yucky Gilbert. His real name was Gilbert Marshall, and he was supposed to be super-smart. He’d skipped two grades and was only twelve. People called him Yucky because he was beyond dorky, snorted when he laughed, and ate things like peanut-butter-and anchovy-sandwiches for lunch. You could tell because he often had a bit of anchovy paste stuck to the side of his mouth at the end of the day.
Mads went back to her magazine, but a shadow fell across the page. She looked up. Gilbert, who was tall for his age but skinny, loomed over her.
“Hello, Madison,” Gilbert crooned.
“Hello.” Mads went back to her magazine.
“May I sit down?”
“No. I’m waiting for someone.”
“I know.” Mads looked up. How could he know?
“You’re waiting for me,” Yucky Gilbert said. “I’m ‘John.’”
Mads swallowed. She felt lightheaded.
“You’re John? But you can’t be! John looks like Ashton Kutcher! He’s a junior!”
Gilbert flipped his cape and sat down across from her. “Sorry. I lied.”
“You lied! That’s not allowed! How can you be matched up with the right person if you lie on your questionnaire?” Mads was furious.
“What’s a little lie when the love of your life is at stake?”
“The love of your life?” Mads stared at him, not understanding. She still couldn’t accept that Sean Benedetto wasn’t going to show up.
Gilbert reached for her hand. She snatched it away.
“Madison Markowitz, you are the prettiest girl in the whole school. The town. The state of California. The good old U.S. of A. The Western Hemisphere. The—”
“Stop! I get it,” Mads snapped.
“The universe,” Gilbert finished. “And I’m gazoygle about you.”
Mads squinted at him. “Gazoygle? What does that mean?”
“It’s Blastoph—a special alien language I made up myself. It means I’m crazy about you.”
“Does your special alien language have a word for ‘Get lost’?” Mads asked. “Or ‘Leave me alone’?”
“Of course,” Gilbert said. “But those are phrases, not words.” He reached for her hand again. Mads sat on both her hands to keep them from veering into his air space.
“I understand—this is a big surprise,” Gilbert said. “I’ll go to the counter and get us something. What would you like? They have cupcakes with jelly beans on them.”
“I would like you to go away,” Mads said. “I’m not having a date with you.”
“You have to,” Gilbert said. “You fixed yourself up with me. And anyway, what about your project? You have to report on our date.”
“Who says? You lied on your form, so it doesn’t count.” Mads’ eyes frantically darted around the room. Who was there? Who saw her talking to Gilbert? Sitting at a table with him? On a date with him!
This was exactly the opposite of what Mads was hoping to accomplish. She wanted experience. She wanted a more mature image. She wanted Sean. She was not going to get any of those things from dating a geeky twelve-year-old. Just being seen with him would nuke her rep back to the Stone Age.
“You—you made yourself sound like a totally different person,” Mads said. “How could you do that?”
“I used Sean Benedetto as a model,” Gilbert admitted. “I mean, why not? Girls like him. It seemed like the best way to get a date.”
“It’s wrong!” Mads said. She got up from the table before someone she knew walked in and spotted her.” And I won’t go on a date with a liar! Under false pretenses! Et cetera!”
She stormed out of the café, tripping over a rug in her high heels. She could call her mother to come pick her up, but she didn’t want to wait, and her house wasn’t too far away. So she walked all the way home in her heels, tears and black makeup streaming down her cheeks.
mad4U: total disaster! my date wasn’t sean. who do you think it was? imagine the worst person possible
.
linaonme: hitler?
mad4U: no, doofus, someone who goes to rosewood. yucky gilbert!
mad4U: hollygolitely???
hollygolitely: oh my god.
mad4U: he totally lied. i stormed out of there and walked home and now i have a wicked blister on my heel
.