The Girl Who Invented Romance (3 page)

“Don’t you wish there were boys on these squares?” I said. “You wouldn’t buy properties, you’d get boys. You wouldn’t win dollars, you’d win dates.”

“I don’t think there is a board game like that,” said Megan.

“But if there were, I would buy it,” said Faith. She put the three players at GO.

“I have poster board,” I said. “We could copy out the squares but put boys’ names where the streets are. Like here.” I pointed to the powder blue squares facing me. “We could substitute Angie and Jeep and Will for Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental.”

Megan and Faith didn’t even bother to listen. Megan took the first turn. Megan always takes the first turn and I am always annoyed and I have never said anything.

I didn’t say anything this time, either, except, “I’m sure I have poster board somewhere, but my room is too messy for me to find it. I’ll cut computer paper into squares instead.”

I taped boy squares over the streets and penciled little cartoons of the basketball starters on them. I wrote their names in what was supposed to be romantic script but was actually just messy handwriting.

“You’re going to ruin the board,” complained Megan. “When you peel that junk off, you’ll tear the whole surface.”

“The boys have to have values,” I said. “Like property. But not dollars. Let’s give every boy a numerical rating. One to ten.” I stuck Mario and Scott onto Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens.

“Jeep’s a ten,” said Megan.

“No,” said Faith. “Angie’s the ten. There cannot be more than one ten in the game, and it goes to Angie.”

“Jeep is more handsome,” said Megan.

“Angie is more wonderful.” Faith wrote
10
under his sketch.

Megan glared at us both. “You can’t have a board game with a boy named Angie anyhow. Not everybody in America lives in a town that’s half Italian. They don’t even know that boys can have names like Angelo. Like when I visited Miami, I met a boy named Jesus. He was cute too.
But you can’t run around putting Jesus on your list of romantic boys.”

I sighed. “Let’s not worry about everybody in America. Let’s make the game just for us.”

“Think big,” said Megan. “Market it nationally.”

Market it?

“Let’s not use names from the basketball team after all,” said Faith. “Let’s pick out romantic names.” Faith smiled happily, remembering romance plots and heroes who swung their women up on horses and took them to exotic locales and rescued them from danger. “Dirk,” said Faith. “Lance. Brandon. Nicholas.” She batted her eyelashes. Faith has wonderful eyes. Very large, sunk so there’s lots of room for various shades of eye shadow. Long naturally dark lashes that sweep her cheeks just like a romance book cover heroine’s.

“Real people,” said Megan scornfully, “are not named Dirk. Let’s go all-American. Christopher. Michael. David.”

I know a dozen Michaels, and I never tire of the name. I think it’s beautiful. I added another square to the Monopoly board and called it Michael. I gave him 9. Might as well have high stakes.

“Stephen,” continued Megan, making her own squares now. “Josh. Mark. Alexander. Stanley.”

“Stanley?” Faith demanded.

“I used to have a cat named Stanley,” explained Megan. “We got him from the shelter and that was the name he came with. They were named alphabetically, like hurricanes.”

Faith tore Stanley off the board. “Stanley is not a romantic name. I refuse to have him. With my luck I’d win Stanley and you’d win Lance.”

Megan threw her Scottie dog at Faith.

Faith flung her iron at Megan.

“What are you two doing?” I said. “Fighting over Stanley? Stanley doesn’t exist.”

“Sorry,” said Megan, handing the pieces back to Faith to set back down on GO. “I was just excited. I react that way to boys.” She started counting out money.

“We’re not going to buy the boys,” said Faith.

“No, but we’ll need cash for our dates,” said Megan. “My dates are going to be expensive. I’m expecting jet planes and five-star restaurants. And no bouquets of roses. I want diamonds.”

I stared at my Monopoly board until my eyes went out of focus. The solid square of utilities and avenues shifted position and condensed, getting softer and rounder. My game board would not have right angles and sharp turns. It would be hearts. Perhaps a series of interlocking hearts.

GO TO JAIL turned to lace and love.

INCOME TAX became holding hands and candlelight.

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD was flowers and chocolates.

I saw lettering: curlicues of antique script with hearts and flowers intertwined. Initials carved on trees. Notes on handmade paper and sweet secret messages on tiny cell phone screens.

I saw romantic moments. Exchanges of the little prizes from the bottoms of cereal boxes and exchanges of gold bracelets engraved with names. Drives in the backseats of stretch limousines and drives in the front seats of fabulous sports cars. Balloon bouquets arriving at front doors and laughing couples airborne in hot-air balloon baskets. Sweet soft waltzes with one head on one shoulder, and hard, pounding crowds screaming at bands singing that one special song.

“I’ll invent Romance: The Game of Love,” I said. It would be pink. Several shades of pink, rosy like the dawn of love. Perhaps the board itself would be scented.

“I don’t know,” said Megan. “I think this is stupid. I’d rather play Monopoly, where at least you know what you’re after. With boys, who knows? And we can’t invent a board game of romance, because how would you win? How would you know when you ever got to the end of the game? What exactly is it that you’d win?”

My board was now a mishmash of computer paper, bad drawings and overlapping strips of tape. Only in my mind was it laced with romance.

“I’m going home,” said Megan. “I may call Jimmy up and yell at him till I feel better.”

Faith slid off the bed. “I’m tired myself. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kelly.” She stretched, yawned and stretched again. She started to put away the Monopoly pieces for me but I put my fingertips on the board and held it down against the denim spread. I was still thinking.

They had become bored as fast as they’d gotten interested, but that was because I didn’t have a game yet, just an idea. They couldn’t go far on ideas; they had to have the real thing. But maybe I could give it to them.

Romance: The Game of Love.

Megan had asked the right thing. What would you win?

What does anybody want to win?

Happily Ever After.

M
s. Simms stood in front of her sociology students in her usual peculiar posture, left hand cupped beneath her right elbow, so her right arm was propped toward the ceiling. In this hand, she held her lecture notes, precisely angled to block her face from the class. She is the only teacher I have ever had who writes out what she plans to say.

“I just wish her notes could block out her voice as well,” Angie muttered.

Poor Ms. Simms has a voice pitched too high. She sounds like a six-year-old, but she’s about my parents’ age, and hefty. Even after all these months of lectures—she has a great deal of information she is desperate to impart—I’m startled when that squeaking voice emerges from that massive chest.

“She’s not so bad,” whispered Faith.

Angie rolled his dark eyes. “She’s too intense for me. I like laid-back people.”

Our row, from door to windows, has Wendy, empty seat, me, Faith and Angie. Faith sat with her knees turned to the window so she could watch Angie all period long. She was pretty obvious about it. Angie had never noticed.

Ms. Simms lowered her cupped elbow fractionally and peered around the class. “Angelo?” she screeched. “Is that you talking?”

Angie is one of those people with the perfect name, like a policeman named Copp or a surgeon named Cutter. He is the angel of his first and last names. “I’m sorry, Ms. Simms.” The smile had its usual effect. Ms. Simms raised her elbow and vanished again behind her notes. Faith sighed longingly over the smile not directed at her.

“I am opposed to people who call me Angelo,” murmured Angie, more or less in Faith’s direction. “I wish I had a real name.”

Faith was close enough to touch his tight dark curls. I knew how much she wanted to. “How about Dirk?” she suggested. “Or Lance?”

Angie lit up. “Dirk,” he breathed. “It’s me. Can’t you see me on my mission, screwing the silencer on my weapon as I prepare to vanquish the enemy?”

“Perfectly,” said Faith. “Next to you is a beautiful blonde filled with adoration.”

Angie put on a tough but carefree expression and began scanning a distant horizon for possible national enemies. Faith choked back a giggle. Angie continued performing for her. She had certainly overdosed on romance books if she was telling Angie to have a beautiful blonde next to him. Faith has dark hair.

I had dice in my purse. I hadn’t told Faith, who had apparently forgotten about our original little romance game. But I had not forgotten. Sociology was the right setting. Sweet, oblivious Angie. Terrific Jeep. Conceited Will. Losers Chuckie, Kenny and Avery. Various ordinary types to fill the other squares.

The game would be my own indoor activity. Playable only during sociology.

A secret.

Unless, of course, I rolled Jeep and won the plays on the squares, and Jeep asked me out, and Wendy got jealous, and I was the Queen of Romance. Then I wouldn’t keep it a secret. I would laugh and toss my gold-ribbon hair and know I had truly reached Happily Ever After.

Ms. Simms was talking about quizzes, but not the usual sort with a grade. It was just another of her weird weekend assignments. Each of us was to design a quiz for the rest of the class to take. “Statistically correct,” she said. “Data to be interpreted in a reasonable fashion. Controls that can be measured.”

Nobody was listening to her. That’s what sociology is at Cummington High. A forty-five-minute stretch of not listening.
That’s why it was a perfect place for my romance game.

“I like this, Faith,” said Angie. “I’ll even let you sit with me at lunch if you’ll tell me more about Dirk and his beautiful blonde.”

Across the empty desk next to me, Wendy was perking up. Wendy rarely participates in sociology because she despises Ms. Simms. But she’s always on the lookout for material for her soap opera. That is what she always told Parker. “Material,” she’d say intensely. “Let’s go find material.” Then they would vanish for three hours in Mother’s car. At night. My father muttered, “I bet I know what kind of material they’re finding, all right.” “Don’t tell me about it,” said my mother, who is of the old school of parenting: What you don’t know cannot hurt you. My mother is a great believer in wrapping yourself in cotton wool. Not that she ever has to wrap herself. My father is a great believer in protecting her. He provides the cotton wool, she shrinks inside it and they’re both happy.

I felt around in my purse for the dice.

“And the quiz you devise may be on any subject whatsoever,” said Ms. Simms, “but it must have questions each of us in this classroom can answer. We will then compile responses and get a clear profile of our own class.”

“Anything whatsoever?” repeated Will. “Like … how many of us prefer imported to domestic chocolate? Which of us are abused by our parents?”

Everybody but Faith laughed. She was too busy being
thrilled about sitting with Angie at lunch. I was pretty thrilled for her. It was truly romantic: naming a romance name and winning the best boy, the one you’ve always yearned for. I couldn’t quite believe it. Neither could Wendy, who was leaning forward to catch whatever Angie was saying next to Faith.

“Excellent suggestions, Will!” cried Ms. Simms. She was so excited, she lowered her elbow. “A series of questions designed to glean statistics on child abuse right in our room. Now, that will be meaningful.”

“Some of us might decline to answer,” Jeep pointed out.

Will laughed. “Then the rest of us will know that under your sweatshirt, you’re covered with bruises.”

Jeep grinned at Will, and Will grinned at Jeep. Probably the only time all week Will would do that. Normal emotions came second to conceit in Will. “I am covered with bruises,” said Jeep. “It’s my fellow basketball players. They beat up on me. I’ve been meaning to report it to the proper authorities but Will pays them off.”

Will finished grinning, which for him was a short-term exercise. Now he was just bony and snobbish. If he ever grinned at me the way he had at Jeep, I’d know that I possessed a million dollars Will needed in five minutes.

I rolled one of the dice gently across the surface of my desk.

It rolled off onto the floor, making a tiny clatter, and kept on rolling away from me. I couldn’t believe it. One limp toss and the dumb thing was gone forever under Will’s desk.

Will heard the faint rattle, frowned slightly and bent over to retrieve the die.

He looked around to see where it had come from. When Ms. Simms wasn’t looking, I signaled him. Will narrowed his eyes at me. I nodded,
Yes, that’s really mine; yes, I want it back
.

Will got up, strolled back to me and handed it over.

“Will?” said Ms. Simms.