The Girl Who Invented Romance (8 page)

“Ridiculous. He brings her presents every five minutes. She must have noticed by now.”

“Okay, don’t believe me. But there’s no romance in those gifts, Kelly. He just has to keep shoveling this junk at her in order to keep her happy. She’s a grown woman acting about fifteen. Wendy doesn’t act like that,” he finished contentedly. “I tell Wendy I love her, she believes me and that’s that.”

I resented his making Wendy sound better than Mom.

“Wendy and I,” said Parker loftily, “have an honest relationship. No pretenses like Mom and Dad.” He pranced off to his room, singing scraps of melody. Love songs to Wendy. I gathered up my quizzes. Lace, chocolate, laughter, candlelight, dancing … not romantic?

I rejected Parker’s theory.

Because if my parents’ romance was fake, then whose could be real?

Parker thought his with Wendy was real.

It had lasted three months.

But how long does love have to last to be real? If Daddy had loved Ellen for eight years and nothing came of it, then what
was
love anyhow?

Somebody made five hundred copies of my romance quizzes and passed them out in the halls the next day at school.

Public humiliation builds character, I told myself. I smiled when people teased. I agreed that
plaid
and
whipped cream
were pretty weird words on a romance quiz.

Parker pounced on me in the halls. Waving a quiz in his hand, he said furiously, “I cannot believe my own sister actually did this.”

“It seemed reasonable at the time.”

“Kelly, the whole school is—”

“I know, don’t say it. Just stand next to me in a supportive fashion like a decent old big brother.”

“It would be easier if you were a decent little sister. Do you know how people are laughing?”

“Yes, Park. I know.”

He relented. Park hadn’t been voted Nicest Boy for nothing. Putting an arm around me, a rare move for us, he said softly, “Good luck, Kelly. I think it’s going to be a long week for you.”

By the end of the day, however, teasing had tapered way
off. By the final class, not more than ten or twenty people even mentioned the quizzes.

I stole a look at Will.

He was not stealing one at me. He was listening to the American history teacher. How can anybody concentrate on the Last Frontier when there are important things happening, like the girl next to you being totally humiliated, needing a new compliment? One she can put on the shelf next to
You have the smile of a pixie
.

Wendy came on with her soap.

I relaxed, thinking it would take some of the heat off me.

“It’s been a long sorrowful day for our beauteous Allegra,” said Wendy. “Allegra”—Wendy’s voice rose—“has taken”—Wendy’s voice became frenzied, as if Allegra had taken an overdose or a flight to New Zealand—“a quiz on romance. Her score is forty-seven. She has failed miserably. The entire world knows now that Allegra is totally lacking in romantic appeal.”

I stared at Will’s back. How could he have done that? How could he possibly have told Wendy about my score?

“Taking to her bed,” cried Wendy, “Allegra will eat nothing but classic SPAM. No whipped cream. No violins playing. In vain, Greg pounds upon her front door.”

“Way to go, Kelly,” said Honey.

Wendy played sound effects, stringed instruments and ratta-tap-tap of knuckles on wood.

I had sound effects of my own to endure. Laughter from every classroom at Cummington High. At me.

I put my head down on my arms and hid from my world. Which of them was worse—Will or Wendy? Bad enough that Will told. But my own brother’s girlfriend using me like that? Turning me into material? Just the day before she had defended me and I had trusted her. She was definitely paying me back for riding in the backseat when she wanted to be alone with Parker.

Will’s back remained motionless, broad and, in annoying coincidence, plaid. A wool plaid shirt I would gladly have strangled him with.

“Greg is not a man to glance backward,” Wendy continued. “Jumping into his midnight blue car, Greg takes to the road. As he cruises past her house, the alluring Octavia, gowned in ruffles and velvet, redolent of lilac, rushes out into the street.” Every time she used one of my words, she leaned into it and laughed slightly. “Greg slams on the brakes and shouts, ‘Octavia! What is your romance quotient? Come! Take a test ride with me.’ ”

Faith said, “I think this is the best dialogue she’s done in weeks.”

Everybody else said, “Shhh!”

“But Octavia is beyond romance.” Wendy’s voice turned throaty. She rasped, “ ‘Forget romance, Greg,’ says Octavia. ‘I’m pregnant.’ ”

There was no need to say “Shhh!” this time.

“ ‘What I need is money,’ says Octavia.”

I don’t suppose our teen pregnancy rate is different from the rest of the nation, but here in Cummington, we
certainly don’t refer to it. Teen sex, if indeed there is such a thing, occurs beyond the city limits.

In her bright wrap-up voice, Wendy continued, “Tune in tomorrow to find out if romance can—”

The mike went off.

There was time for everybody to notice that Octavia had not asked for marriage but for money. I could think of things she could do with Greg’s money but regardless of her final selection, Octavia was not going to make Cummington happy.

Dr. Scheider read a few more announcements in a shaken voice.

Then the final bell rang and the class instead of leaving school burst into a discussion of the soap dialogue. They had forgotten my quiz. They talked about Octavia and Wendy.

When everybody was too caught up speculating about Wendy’s future to be aware of him, Will turned around and held up his hand like a stop sign. “I didn’t do it,” he said fast.

I snarled at him.

“Really. I didn’t tell her. Honest.”

“Right. Wendy overheard us from the principal’s office. Two floors and a half mile of hall from here.”

“I don’t blame you for suspecting me. Any detective would. But I’m innocent. It’s coincidence. She picked forty-seven out of thin air.”

“No air is that thin.”

Will didn’t give up. He was long enough to lean across the space between our desks, put both enormous hands on my books and look mournfully into my face. I considered smacking him but it would just draw more attention my way.

He was truly upset. I looked into the conceited eyes that had never bothered to focus on me and realized that Will Reed really wanted me to believe him. He cared about my opinion of him.

I could not understand. He had told Wendy—nobody else could have told her—and he could only have done it to be mean, so why care about me now?

“Could she have found your magazine?” asked Will. “Maybe you left it out and she and Park found it with your answers written in.”

I
had
left the magazine in Park’s car. Maybe she and Parker had taken the quiz. Jerk that I am, I had circled my answers. Wendy could add. Wendy would love adding up that she, Wendy Newcombe, was a Queen of Romance, and I, Kelly Williams, had failed the course.

I sighed and nodded. “Could be, Will. Okay. I believe you.”

Will’s anxiety faded. He smiled a real smile, a boy’s smile, a warm and wide true smile at me.

For a moment as long as a crush, our eyes locked. My heart was pounding. I struggled to say or do something—anything!—to keep him looking at me like that. (Invite him over to make fudge? Throw a Frisbee? Ask to see his
baby pictures?) But Will unfolded himself, reached his height of six feet four inches and loped silently out of the room.

At home, trauma was waiting.

My mother was holding a letter in her hand, staring at it as if it were a bomb. “What’s wrong, Mom?” I said, frantic, thinking death, dismemberment, fatal disease, the relatives in Ohio.…

“Your father’s high school reunion,” said my mother bleakly. “He wants to go. He can’t wait to go. I have to send in our acceptance.”

“Oh, but, Mom! That’ll be such fun. Even I can’t wait for my high school reunion and I’m not even a senior. It’ll be such fun to find out what happened to everybody. Whether they got what they hoped for. Whether our class had anybody famous in it. If the Most Likely to Succeed really did. Oooooh, Mom, you’ll have a great time.”

My mother flopped onto the couch and drooped all over the throw pillows.

“No, huh?” I said. “Why not?”

She shrugged, getting looser and floppier and more depressed all over the sofa. My brother’s dumb lecture on Mother and Daddy’s marriage came back to me. “Because of Ellen?” I said dubiously.

She leaped to her feet. “Kelly, what made you think of Ellen? Does Daddy talk about her? Why did you think of Ellen so quickly? How do you even know about Ellen? What is there to know?”

She was pale. She ran her tongue over her lips and I thought, Park was right! She’s afraid of Ellen. “Because Daddy talks about her now and then when he’s telling stories about when he was a boy,” I said, trying to be casual. “That’s all.”

Mother shivered and sat down again.

“Oh, Mother, Ellen’s probably fat and repulsive. Has five kids who are all delinquents. Thinks a big day is making instant chocolate pudding.”

“No, she isn’t.” An involuntary shudder rippled over my mother’s face and body. “Ellen already got her reunion invitation. She wrote to your father. She enclosed a photograph. She wants us to get together before the reunion.”

“So what’s she like? Can I see the photograph?”

My mother’s smile was forced. “She’s beautiful. Looks ten years younger than she is. And you can’t see it. Your father has the letter and the photograph with him.”

“With him? You don’t mean in his wallet?”

“Maybe not in his wallet, but he didn’t leave it behind.”

I sat down next to her. For the first time in my life, she leaned on me. “I know how silly this is,” she said. I felt like a woman friend, someone on her side, not her little girl. It felt wonderful, even though she was scaring me. “Ellen is
stunning. She always was. And he was so excited to hear from her.”

“Do you have the letter memorized? Quote it to me. I want to know what we’re up against.”

“Up against?” said my mother. “Kelly, I’ve felt up against Ellen for a long time. If I gain five pounds, I know Ellen would never lose her figure. If I forget the punch line to a joke, I know Ellen would tell more sophisticated jokes and never forget the ending. If I get lazy for a few weeks, I know Ellen has endless energy and everything she does is brilliant and makes money and headlines.”

I giggled. “I feel that way about half my class.”

The doors were flung open. In came Wendy and Parker.

Mother ceased to be a woman friend and became a mom after school, offering Oreo cookies and ginger ale while the children chattered. Passing out napkins. Listening.

“So you got suspended for two days,” said Parker to Wendy. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“It is the end. I don’t like to be in trouble. I just like to make a splash.”

At my expense, I thought. I willed Wendy to look sorry and guilty the way Will had, but she didn’t notice. It was so ordinary for her to use people that she forgot in the space of a few hours she’d ever done it.

I was still envious of Wendy. I’d always be envious of Wendy. But I no longer wanted to be Wendy.

Maybe she dates Parker because subconsciously she
wants his niceness to rub off on her, I thought. Maybe she’s attracted to the one thing she doesn’t have.

Wendy split her Oreos, licked the icing off and set the uneaten chocolate halves back on the table. Now, there’s self-control.

Parker told Mom about the soap opera dialogue and how Dr. Scheider felt that since a possible use for that money was abortion or becoming a single mother, Wendy had to think more clearly about the effect of her soap opera on her innocent listeners, and therefore the best deterrence to future unpleasant dialogue was suspension. I thought dismemberment would be better but I restrained myself from saying so. I would have had to admit that I was the one with the forty-seven intimacy quotient.

“Well,” said my mother, “the school doesn’t like you to pretend that pregnancy can happen to high school juniors.”