The Pretty One (2 page)

“I don't know,” I say. “Don't you ever get tired of the way everybody around here treats us? We're second-class citizens.”

Simon puts down his brush and eyes me intently. “Are you thinking about changing majors? I bet you could get into the visual arts program.”

In fact, I would love to change majors—but not to visual arts. No, there is only one major I want, and that's theater. I fantasize all the time about what it would be like to be Lucy, the star of the show, the beautiful ingenue. I dream about a world where Drew not only notices me, but
likes
me.

But instead of saying this to Simon, I decide to give him a little demonstration of my (albeit limited) talent. I clear my throat as I get up and walk to the front of the gym, which has been roped off as a make-do dance floor. “If you cared about me,” I begin, melodramatically reciting the monologue my sister is doing in the senior productions. I have run Lucy's lines with her so often that I know them by heart. “You would've remembered him, remembered how he used to smile at us.” I look to Simon for approval and see him trying to hold back a grin as he pretends to ignore me.

“Remember the way he used to tousle his hair?” I continue, only louder. “The way he would run his fingers through it when he was tired or upset? Alas, no! You don't! You've forgotten!” I close my hands and hug my chest, just like Lucy does when she says the line. I'm so in the moment (as Mr. Ted, my drama instructor, would say) that I'm close to tears. “I lost myself and my soul a year ago today.” I place a hand on my forehead and swoon.

“When God carried away our son.”

And then I hear it.

Clap, clap, clap.

I open my eyes slowly and look at Simon. But he's not clapping. The applause is coming from the back of the gym. It's coming from Drew Reynolds.

“That was great,” Drew says.

Oh my God. OH MY GOD!

How long has Drew been standing there? I glance at Simon, the only person in the world to whom I've confessed my secret love. Simon has stopped painting and is giving me a look that can only be described as pure sympathy with a dash of cringe-worthy embarrassment thrown in for kicks.

“Thanks.” Suddenly I let out a giggle that sounds like an AK-47 machine gun. Simon's face turns bright red.

“You should try out for a play,” Drew says. A devastating smile follows, which renders me totally powerless.

So I just stand there and gawk at him like the techie geek everyone knows and expects me to be.

“Have you guys seen Lucy?” Drew asks when he realizes that I'm so mentally challenged, I can only utter the word
thanks.
“I was wondering if she wanted to go over this script.”

Drew, like Lucy, is starring in the senior productions, a total coup for a junior.

“She's at the Seven-Eleven buying Slurpees for the common folk,” Simon pipes up and rescues me.

Drew lets out a chuckle and scratches the back of his neck. I practically gasp when the bottom of his shirt creeps up. “There's a Seven-Eleven around here?”

Although our school is a charter school, it is still technically a Baltimore city school, which means that most of us live in Baltimore. The ones who don't (like Drew, who lives in Towson, so I hear) have to pay to attend. And drive. (Unlike me and Simon, who live about two minutes away by foot.)

“There's one on Cross Street,” Simon says impatiently. “A few blocks away from the market.”

“Ah, the Cross Street Market,” Drew says, raising his eyebrows in recognition. “I love that place. Especially the kielbasa at Mr. Sausage.”

Simon throws me an odd look, probably because he has been thinking about becoming a vegetarian (to piss off his mom, of course).

I, however, think it's adorable that Drew likes the Cross Street Market and kielbasa and immediately add it to his ever-growing list of attributes and reasons why (besides the fact that we both have a penchant for black) he's totally perfect for me. “Me too!” I say enthusiastically. “Have you ever tried the extra spicy Polish sausage? Oh my God! Amazing!”

Simon looks at me in horror, sending me a telepathic message:
Warning! Warning! Fat unpopular girls shouldn't talk about loving any type of sausage with cute popular boys!

I glance nervously at Drew, who just smirks and says, “I'll have to try some next time I'm there.” And then, instead of leaving, he walks toward the dance floor.

Toward me.

Okay, this is one for the journal. It has already been established that Lucy is not around, so why is Drew still here? Any other guy in his league would have been long gone. It's especially surprising because Drew isn't exactly the chatty type. Although he's respected by everyone for his talent, and all the girls think he's really good-looking, he pretty much keeps to himself—but not in that creepy neighbor who's secretly a child predator kind of way. Anything but, actually.

I sigh and make a deal with God, listing all the things I would be willing to give up forever if I could kiss him. Just once. Brownies…Oreos…Coke Slurpees…extra spicy Polish sausage.

“Wow,” he says, admiring Simon's work in progress. “This is incredible. It looks so…real.”

Twizzlers, Twinkies, Doritos…sweet Italian sausage.

“Thanks,” Simon says. I can tell from the glint in his eye that he's proud of himself. As he should be.

Drew continues to wander around as though he was in a gallery. I think about what it might be like to walk hand in hand with him through the American Visionary Art Museum, gazing at paintings and photographs and talking about the difference between the imagined and the real.

“You guys are doing all this for the fall festival?” he asks.

“Yep. I'm going to be painting the apples,” I announce proudly, as if that tidbit will so impress him that he'll ask me to marry him and have his children.

“Megan can draw a great apple,” Simon says a little too loudly, obviously trying to help me score some points. Other than the pity ones, of course.

“Are you guys going?” Drew asks as he puts his hands in his pockets.

I'm looking at his eyes, even though his gaze keeps shifting around the room. I had thought they were just blue, but up close they're a blue-green, slightly more blue than green. If I were going to paint them, I would use a combination of colors, beginning with a sky blue before adding a tinge of emerald green. “You mean to Mr. Sausage?” I mutter.

“To the fall festival,” Simon says in a labored tone that translates into
Snap out of it, dork! This is your big break! You're talking to Drew. Don't blow it.

“No, we're not,” Simon once again responds for me.

A curious expression emerges on Drew's face. So freaking adorable. “Why not?”

Simon picks his paintbrush back up and twirls it in his left hand. “We owe it to the techies who have wandered these halls before us to stay home and watch our
Battlestar Galactica
DVDs.”

Drew laughs. It's not a sarcastic laugh, but a nice, relaxed, hey-you're-funny laugh. Listening to it is as exciting as watching the curtain go up on opening night. “I don't blame you. I'd stay home, too, if my mom wasn't making me go.”

Any other teenage girl, including my sister, would think Drew's statement is a giant red flag. Not only did he admit that he'd rather be home on a Saturday night than at a school function with his friends, but he also kind of admitted to being a mama's boy. But I don't see this as a bad sign at all. In fact, I want to take out my trusty proverbial white flag and surrender to Drew over and over again. But then I remember something.

Lucy already took it from me.

two

extra (noun): a member of the cast with no speaking role who provides background interest in a crowd scene.

By the time Lucy is finished with her salad, she's on to me. “You're awfully quiet,” she says.

Lucy and I are eating dinner alone. This isn't unusual because our dad travels a lot for his job (he's regional manager for Lucky Lou's Burgers), and our mom is a lawyer and doesn't get home until eight or nine at night. Lucy and I have our own little domestic routine, independent of Mom and Dad. Every day we take turns making dinner and eat it at the table together.

“I'm eating,” I say. “It's really good. I love the…” I stab a piece of salad and hold it up to the Tiffany (looking) lamp Mom found at a garage sale and is convinced is worth a million dollars.

“The lettuce. What kind is it?”

“That look on your face is not due to radicchio,” she says.

I put down my fork. It's obvious I have no choice but to confess. “I can't stop thinking about what Drew said.”

“About trying out for a play?” Lucy asks.

“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “I mean, I know he was just being nice and all.”

“Drew's not that nice,” Lucy says. “You have talent. I've told you that a million times.”

I sit up straight and smile at her. I'm still not a hundred percent certain she is telling me the truth because, quite frankly, Lucy is too nice to tell me if she thinks Drew is full of crap, but still. “Really?” I ask.

“Really,” she says with determination. “Let's see,” she says, thinking. “Allan Silberstein is producing a play in December. He talked to me about doing it. There might be a part in there for you. It would be fun if we could be in a play together.”

I think about the last play my sister got me into. I should have known something was up when I heard the name of my character was Arse McDoody. Unfortunately, by the time I found out I had been cast as the backside of a horse, it was too late to bow out.

“No thanks. Besides, Simon said he'll never do that again.” Simon had been cast as the front, so I'm not sure what he was still complaining about.

“No,” Lucy objects. “I'm talking about you having a role. A real role.”

“Like a person?”

“I can't make any promises, but I'll talk to him.”

“Remember the way he used to tousle his hair?” I bark out suddenly, attempting to impress Lucy with my ability to get in the moment just like (finger snap). “The way he would run his fingers through it when he was tired or upset? Alas no! You don't! You've forgotten!” I slam my hand down on the table for emphasis, smack into the tub of butter.

“Oh…,” she says calmly, totally unfazed by my melodrama.

“Speaking of Drew, guess who he asked to the fall festival?”

Drew asked someone to the fall festival? Not that I ever expected him to ask me, but I still feel a little winded, as if I just found out my beloved boyfriend of the past two years has been cheating on me.

“Who?” I manage. I pick up my napkin and begin wiping off my hand.

“Lindsey McKenna,” she says.

Good grief.
Lindsey McKenna?
He was cheating on me with a giant, bubbleheaded, Barbie doll? A girl who drew smiley faces and hearts on all her notebooks and once passed out cards giving people a “free smile”?

“Apparently she's liked him a long time,” Lucy continues, oblivious to my discomfort.

Drew is the first and only secret I have ever kept from my sister. I haven't told Lucy about my crush because I know what she would do if she found out. Lucy is extremely protective of me and she would hate the thought that I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of hooking up with the guy of my dreams, and so she would go to great lengths to reassure me that I actually have a chance at going out with him. And then any time anyone ever mentioned his name she would turn to me with a look of pity mingled with outright grief that broadcast her sentiment to the world: poor, ugly, lonely Megan.

“I guess they hooked up a couple of times over the summer, but Drew wasn't interested in anything serious. So now Lindsey is totally psyched.”

“They
hooked up
?” The thought of Drew, my intellectual hero, in the arms of the vacuous (one of my and Simon's favorite words) girl I once caught walking out of a bathroom stall with Mac Gerard (she must have given him one of her cards because he had a
big
smile on his face) makes me want to woof up my radicchio.

“Yeah,” Lucy continues. “He's got a little bit of a rep. Like, he doesn't let anyone get too close to him and keeps to himself. Some people think he's kind of stuck up.”

“I don't know about that,” I say.

Lucy puts down her fork and looks at me.

I shift my eyes away. “I always thought he seemed kind of sweet.”

She sighs long and deep. “It seems like everyone has a date for the fall festival except for me.”

I don't, of course. And of course, my sister is aware of this little fact. Normally I would point this out in a not so nice fashion. But not now. Due to the whole twisting Allan Silberstein's arm to get me a part thing, I'm trying to stay on her good side. And so I say, “What about Tommy?”

Although Lucy would never admit to it, she loves guys with power. Two of her past three boyfriends have been the director of the spring musical, the most sought-after assignment in the entire school. The director of this year's spring musical was announced several weeks ago: Tommy Calvino. Coincidentally, only days after the announcement, my sister fell deeply in love.

She rolls her eyes and flips back her long, silky hair. “Who knows?” she says, pushing her plate away even though she has only eaten half of her chicken. “Maybe he doesn't want to go with me.” I know Lucy doesn't actually believe that. After all, the whole school knows she's interested in him. And no boy in his right mind can resist Lucy. Lucy reaches across the table and pulls my thumb out of my mouth. “Yuck,” she says, examining my thumb. “Look at your nail. You've bitten it down to the quick. And your cuticles are all chewed up. Are you wearing that polish I got you?”

In an attempt to break me of my disgusting habit, Lucy bought me some polish that tasted like puke and was guaranteed to squash my nail-biting habit in two days. Apparently none of the test subjects had been quite as determined or addicted as I am, since I wore it for a week and all I got was a headache from consuming all those gross chemicals.

“It doesn't work,” I say, pulling my hand away from her and snagging the untouched chicken leg off her plate. And out of the blue I get a visual: Drew with an inflatable Barbie doll, lip-locked and making out.

I put the chicken down as my thumb drifts back in my mouth.

“What's wrong with you tonight?” Lucy asks, looking at me suspiciously. I rarely leave food behind.

“I got a stomachache from all the vegetables in the salad,” I say quickly, thus achieving the impossible. Blaming her for my misery and changing the subject.

“Oh,” Lucy says. “Sorry.”

Oh great. Now, in addition to being nauseous, I feel like I just washed her favorite white shirt with my indigo Levis. “You know I don't like carrots.” There. That's better.

I yank my thumb out of my mouth and stand up. As Lucy walks upstairs, I stack the dishes in the sink, determined not to think about vegetables, Drew Reynolds, his inflatable doll, or the fall festival for the rest of the night.

I wait until Lucy is in our room before stuffing my face with Oreos. They've never failed to settle my stomach in a jiff.

         

I'm hoping that by the time I get upstairs, Lucy will have forgotten all about the fall festival and moved on to more exciting things, like what's on TV. But as soon as I get upstairs she starts yammering away again. And since our house is only fourteen feet wide (like all the other row houses) and only two floors, there's really no place to escape.

We used to live in a big house in Roland Park, but when I announced I wanted to go to CSPA, too, my parents decided it would make more sense if we moved to Federal Hill so we could walk to school. And despite the fact that we'd have more room in a doublewide, it's worked out pretty well. I like city living. The only problem is that even though our house is long and we have this really cool roof top deck, in the winter or when it's raining, like tonight, and I can't escape up to the deck, there's no place to go for solitude. So even though I would prefer to be suffering in solitude, I'm sitting in the bedroom Lucy and I share and working on my latest project, an extra-credit project for my English class, a diorama of the living room of the great Gatsby himself.

“Look at this,” Lucy says. She's in front of the computer in our newly renovated bedroom, sitting at the blond-wood desk I designed especially for our room. In fact, I had pretty much planned out and designed almost every aspect of our room, from the style of the bookcases and placement of the beds (Lucy said she would defer to me since I had a year of set design under my belt). For the carpet I chose a soft, plush green shag (that left footprints when you walked on it), and for the walls I concocted my own creation, a creamy yellow that I named Dijon-lite. Lucy (who loves mustard) said it made her feel happy just by looking at it.

The only thing that Lucy insisted on was that she be able to display her signed headshots of her favorite actors. They were all guys, all Broadway, Tony award–winning stars: Kevin Kline, Matthew Broderick, Michael Cerveris, and her favorite, the guy I knew she was totally head over heels in love with and had seen not once, not twice, but thirteen times: John Lloyd Young, the Tony award–winning star of
Jersey Boys
. So I made a huge bulletin board to hang over her bed.

I place Gatsby's velvet couch in front of his fireplace and carefully set the diorama on my bed. I walk toward the computer and peer over Lucy's shoulder so I can get a better look at the computer screen.

From: Andy Strout
Subject: fall festival

Hi, Lucy,

Do you want to go the fall festival with me? It would be fun.

Andy

“Ugh,” she says. “I hate this.”

Andy Strout is a senior. He's tall, cute, and a drama major.

“Hate what?” I ask, rereading the note.

“Well, I can't go with him. Have you seen his hands? They're kind of long and slender, like the hands of a woman.”

“What?” I ask, annoyed. “Who cares about his hands? He's totally sweet. And he kind of looks like John Lloyd Young.”

“John Lloyd Young?” she gasps, as though she can't believe I would dare to make such a comparison. “Hardly!”

“Well, more than Tommy does, that's for sure. Tommy has blond hair!” And an upturned schnoz. Not that I'm in any position to point fingers. Especially when it comes to noses.

“Andy's fine. It's just that there's no…no
spark
,” she says, snapping her fingers for emphasis.

“So tell him no.”

“It's so awkward,” Lucy groans melodramatically. “And what do I say: No, I don't have a date but I'm holding out, hoping someone better might ask?”

“Tell him it's nothing personal but you only date directors.” I flop down on my bed, cross my arms across my chest, close my eyes, and brace myself for Lucy's reaction.

But she doesn't get mad. “What's wrong?” she asks softly.

“I don't understand what's so awful.” I cover my face with my hands even though my eyes are still shut. “A really cute guy asked you to the dance and you don't want to go with him because another really cute guy will ask you the minute he finds out you want to go with him.”

I can hear Lucy start typing her response. For some reason, I'm finding her seeming nonchalance about this whole thing extremely annoying. I open my eyes and swing my legs off the bed as I perch myself on the edge. “I hope you're telling the poor guy no so he can ask someone else. Do you know how many girls out there would love to go with Andy? Who would kill just to have someone,
anyone at all,
ask them to the dance? Huh?
Huh?
”

Lucy spins around in her chair so she's facing me. She gives me a gentle smile. “You know, you could go to a dance, too. You've just never wanted to.”

I roll my eyes in disagreement as I begin to nibble on my thumb cuticle, fighting back a tsunami-sized wave of self-pity.

“What about Simon?” Lucy asks.

“He doesn't want to go. He hates these things.”

“Maybe he doesn't know that it's important to you.”

Be brave,
I tell myself. “It's not a big deal.”

“And so what if he doesn't want to go? You'll go with someone else.”

“Yeah, right,” I say sarcastically. Just to demonstrate that the conversation is truly over, I walk to the closet and open the door. But before I can pull out my pajamas, Lucy's dollhouse falls out and lands on my foot.

The tears swell in my eyes and the tsunami hits the shore. “Ouch!”

“Are you all right?” Lucy asks, jumping up and rushing to my aid.

“You need to get rid of that!” I angrily kick the dollhouse. It lands in front of the full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door. “It's not like you're ever going to play with it again.”

“I'll figure out a way to fit it in there so it doesn't keep falling out,” Lucy says, as she hurries inside the closet and begins rearranging her shoe boxes.

My sister loves that silly old dollhouse. My grandfather made it for her, and since he died before I was born it is a one-of-a-kind original. Lucy was the first and long-awaited grandchild, so my grandfather went all out, sparing no expense. It has porcelain sinks, is wired for electricity, and has built-in tables, beds, and chairs. Unfortunately, we had kept it in the basement of our old house, and when the basement flooded, the dollhouse did, too.