There was a pause. Then Catherine said the most surprising thing. She went, “Well, I kind of want to go.”
I was speechless. If Catherine had said she was thinking of shaving her head and joining the Hari Krishnas, I would not have been more surprised.
“You want to go to Kris Parks’s party?” I said it so loudly that Manet, who’d been sleeping on my bed with his head in my lap, woke up and looked around, startled. “Catherine, have you been using those fruit-scented markers again? Because I thought I told you that they make you all—”
“Sam, I’m serious,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded very small. “We never do stuff normal kids do.”
“That is so totally untrue,” I said. “Just last month we went to the Drama Club’s production of The Seagull, didn’t we?”
“Sam, we were like the only people in the audience who weren’t actually related to someone who was in the play. I just really want, for once in my life, to see what it feels like. To be, you know, part of the In Crowd. Haven’t you ever wondered?”
“Cath, I already know. I live with one of them, remember? And it isn’t pretty. There is a lot of hair gel involved.”
Catherine’s voice sounded small. “It’s just that I may never get another chance, you know?”
“Cath,” I said. “Kris Parks has been nothing but mean to you the whole time you’ve known her, and now you want to go to her house! I’m sorry, but that is just—”
“Sam,” Catherine said, still in that same small voice. “I met a boy.”
I nearly dropped the phone. “You what? You met a what?”
“A boy,” Catherine said, really fast, like if she didn’t get it all out at once, she’d never say it. “You don’t know him. He doesn’t go to Adams. He goes to Phillips Academy. His name is Paul. My parents know his parents from church. He’s always at Beltway Billiards when my brothers and I are there. He’s really nice. He has high score on Death Storm.”
I guess I was in shock or something, since all I could think of to say was, “But . . . what about Heath?”
“Sam, I have to face reality about Heath,” Catherine said, sounding braver than I’d ever heard her. “Even if I ever did get to meet him, no way is he going to go out with a high school girl. Besides, most of the time he lives in Australia. When am I ever going to be in Australia? My mom and dad barely even let me go to the mall by myself.”
I was still in shock. “But they’re going to let you go out with this Paul guy?”
“Well,” Catherine said. “Paul hasn’t exactly asked me out yet. I think he’s shy. That’s why I was thinking I’d ask him out. You know. To Kris’s party.”
I completely failed to see the logic behind this. “Cath, why don’t you ask him to go see a movie with you, or something? Why do you have to take him to Kris’s party?”
“Because Paul only knows me from church,” Catherine said. “And from Beltway Billiards. He doesn’t know I don’t hang with the In Crowd. He thinks I’m cool.”
I didn’t know quite how to put this next part, but I figured I had to say it. That’s what best friends are for, after all. “But, Cath,” I said. “I mean, he’s going to know you don’t hang with the In Crowd when you walk through Kris’s front door and she says one of her typically nasty things to you in front of him.”
“She won’t do that,” Catherine said, more confidently than I’d ever heard her.
“She won’t?” I was very surprised to hear this. “Do you know something about Kris that I don’t know? Has she undergone a religious conversion, or something?”
“She won’t say anything mean to me if you’re there,” Catherine said. “And you bring David.”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it.
“David?” I cried. “Cath, I am not going to Kris’s party, and even if I did, I would never bring David. I mean, I don’t even like him. You know I don’t. You know who I like.” I couldn’t say the name out loud though, just in case Lucy picked up the extension, which she does frequently, to complain that I’ve been on too long and that she needs to make a call.
I didn’t have to say his name, though. Because Catherine knew who I was referring to.
“I know, Sam,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded small again. “Only . . . well, I just thought ... I mean, if you think about it, he’s kind of like your Heath, you know? Jack is. I mean, he doesn’t live in Australia, but. . .”
. . . my chances of ever getting him were like nil. She didn’t have to say it. I knew what she was thinking.
Except that Catherine was wrong. Because I was going to get Jack someday. I really was. If I was just patient, and played my cards right, he’d look around one day and realize that I was—that I had always been—the perfect girl for him.
It was just a matter of time.
Top ten Signs that Jack Loves Me and Not My Sister Lucy and Just Hasn’t Realized it Yet:
10. Whenever he sees me, he asks if I’ve read the latest issue of Art in America. He never asks Lucy if she’s read it, because he knows all Lucy ever reads is the Star Track section of Parade magazine’s Sunday supplement.
9. He burned that CD for me. And true, all it had on it was whale music, which is what Jack likes to listen to while he paints, but the fact that he went to the trouble is indicative of his yearning for us to make an emotional connection.
8. He paid for my double cheeseburger meal that time at the mall when I forgot my wallet.
7. He let me have all the yellow ones out of his box of Jujubes when we all went to see the Harry Potter movie (even though technically Jack is opposed to the commercialization of children’s book characters: he just went because the Jackie Chan movie playing at the theatre next door was sold out).
6. He said he liked my pants that one time.
5. He complains that Lucy takes too long putting on her make-up. He told me he prefers a girl who wears no make-up. Um, that would be me. Well, except for concealer. And mascara. And lip gloss. But other than that, I wear no make-up at all.
4. When I told him my theory about how all left-handers were once part of a pair of twins, he said that made sense: he is left-handed too, and has always felt a sense of aloneness in the world. Rebecca’s theory—that we are all descended from a race of aliens who accidentally crash-landed on this planet and lost all their advanced technological knowledge in the ensuing fiery conflagration of the mother ship—did not impress him nearly as much. And Lucy’s theory—that Mr Pibb and Dr Pepper are the same drink, just with different packaging—impressed him not at all.
3. When the Drama Club needed volunteers to paint scenery for the production of Hello, Dolly, Jack and I both signed up, and later ended up painting the same plywood street lamp (he did the trim, I did the highlights). If that was not kismet, I don’t know what is.
2. Jack is a Libra. I am an Aquarius. Libra and Aquarius are known for getting along. Lucy, who is a Pisces, should really be going out with a Taurus or Capricorn.
And the number one sign that Jack loves me and just doesn’t know it yet:
1. Fight Club is his favourite book too. Right after Catch-22 and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
On Tuesday, when Theresa drove up to the corner of R and Connecticut, across from the Founding Church of Scientology, you couldn’t even see Capitol Cookies. You couldn’t see Static either.
That’s because so many reporters were standing on the corner, waiting to interview me as I made my way into Susan Boone’s.
Don’t even ask me how they found out what time my drawing lessons were. I guess they figured out when David’s were, since they knew he and I were in the same class (that had been in the papers, when they’d explained how I’d happened to be standing on the same street corner at the same time as Larry Wayne Rogers and the President).