With a shrug of her shoulders she delivered her verdict. “I’m not sure running for president is the answer to your college application problems. I mean, shouldn’t you run for president because you actually want to be president?”
“I do want to be president,” I said. “Weren’t you just listening to what I said?”
“No, I mean, Amy wants to go into politics one day. She has some good ideas about running the school and doing community projects. She’s really organized and stuff.”
I couldn’t believe it. I had opened my soul to Cassidy, and in return she handed me an Amy campaign speech.
“Thanks a lot," I said. "I can tell how badly you want to be my friend.” Then I turned and walked away from her.
When I got home from school, I dropped my backpack on the countertop and opened the fridge. A pan full of some thing that looked like burned pears in gravy lay on the top shelf.
Mom sat at the kitchen table helping Andy with his homework. She called over to me, “The *creme de poire is for dessert tonight. Don’t get into it now.”
As if that were a temptation.
Why couldn’t my mother have been one of those types that baked cookies? When you wanted to drown your sorrows in something, *creme de poire didn’t come to mind. I pushed aside the pan in an attempt to find something edible. Condiments, soy sauce, pickled anchovies. I didn’t even want to ask what she planned on doing with those. I grabbed an apple from the crisper and shut the fridge.
“Did anybody call for me?” I hoped, I really did, that a guy had called, and I would have a reason to break free of my lousy mood. It had happened before. If a guy didn't have my cell number, he called the house.
Mom didn't look up from Andy’s homework. “Nope. Who are you expecting?”
“Nobody. I guess I’m not expecting anybody to call me.” Mom turned in her chair to face me. “You and Brad haven’t made up yet?”
“No. And pigs still don’t fly, either.”
Mom mumbled something to Andy about his paper, then stood and walked closer to me. “I’m sorry Samantha, but you’ll find someone to take his place.”
“I don’t know. It’s so hard to find men these days who appreciate feline head-ware.”
She let out a sigh. “You’re never going to let that cat incident drop, are you?”
I took a bite of my apple.
Mom took a dishcloth from the sink and wiped off the counter beside me. “If you try too hard to get a guy's attention, it just scares him away. Don’t worry about it, and things will start to look up.”
Mom loved to give me dating advice. She hadn’t been on a real date in twenty years, but she still considered herself an expert on all matters pertaining to relationships. Usually I only half listened to what she said, but today I wanted her to reassure me everything would work out all right. I wanted her to promise me I wouldn’t sit home on prom night and have nothing to do but drown my sorrows in strange French cuisine.
“Prom is two weeks from tomorrow,” I told her quietly.
“So why don’t you ask someone?”
“You don’t do that for the prom,” I said, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. After all, some girls did do the asking if their boyfriend lived in another city, or was an underclassman, or had already graduated.
I took my apple upstairs and thought about a guy who’d graduated—a guy with dark hair and deep blue eyes who was coming back to Pullman any day now to work in his parents’
store.
CHAPTER 7
Josh lingered in my thoughts all weekend. By Monday morning I not only wanted to go to the prom with him, I wanted to honeymoon in Spain with him. The thing about Josh was, he was not only gorgeous, he was gentlemanly. The kind of guy who opened doors for women and was polite to his mother. Last year while I cheered at the football games, I saw him more than once giving his little sister a piggyback ride to the concession stand.
How sweet is that? Josh would never leave his date stranded in a parking lot. And even his name had a romantic quality to it. You could passionately whisper “Josh” over and over again without getting tongue-tied.
I was in such a good mood about this prom possibility, I didn’t even get steamed when I walked to my locker and noticed that one of my posters was engulfed by a row of vote-for-Rick posters. They all said the same thing: RICK ROCKS. Apparently he was going for quantity, and not quality. Either that or his spelling was even more limited than I’d supposed.
It didn’t matter. I still had plenty of time to make more posters, and mine would all be unique.
After I put my things away, I went and found my friends standing in our spot by the cafeteria. Chelsea was doing her usual nitpicking about peoples’ outfits, but just to keep myself in good mental condition, I kept my commentaries upbeat. After each one of Chelsea’s critiques, I said, “But I’m sure she’s a very nice person anyway.”
Finally Chelsea turned to me and said, “Samantha, stop it.”
“Stop what?”
She tilted her face down in a patronizing manner. “I wasn’t judging peoples’
personalities, just their ability to keep basic fashion rules.”
“I have to think positively," I said, "or I’ll slip up and lose my bet.”
Rachel rolled her eyes and gave a small snort. “You know, there are worse things than going out with Doug Campton.”
“Like what?”
“Like driving us all crazy with your Little Miss Sunshine routine.”
Aubrie nodded. “If you were any perkier, PBS would drag you away and put you on one of their syrupy sweet kids shows.”
“They would not.” Which just goes to show that you can’t please everyone. Last week Logan insisted I could enter an Olympic event in snideness, and now my friends were ac -
cusing me of being able to host my own children’s show.
Chelsea elbowed me. “There goes Amy, and she looks like she’s dressed to kill—or at least like she killed one of the seven dwarfs to get that outfit. Go ahead and insult her. You’ll feel better afterward.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to do it.”
“Oh, come on,” Rachel said. “It’s not like we’ll tell Logan. You can trust us.”
“No way,” I said. “You’re the one who said I should go out with Doug. You obviously don’t have my best interests at heart.”
Chelsea humphed. “All right. If you want to continue with this escapade, that’s fine.
Just tone it down while you’re around us.”
As if being complimentary was some sort of character flaw.
Despite what my friends thought, I had to win this bet. I wasn't about to admit that I couldn’t go two weeks without insulting someone—not to myself, and certainly not to Logan.
Watching him gloat about it would be worse than going out with Doug.
Far worse.
My friends just didn’t understand about Logan. They’d come to rely on my scathing commentaries on high-school social life as part of their daily routine. Everything would be back to normal after my two weeks were up. Until then I just had to throw in my lot with PBS.
I actually repeated the words compliments, compliments, compliments to myself as I walked through the hallways in between classes. I had to do this because I was afraid Logan actually had told people to spy on me, and I wasn’t sure who might report my doings back to him.
Logan caught up with me as I went to lunch. He walked along beside me with a smile.
“So how’s your day going?”
“Great. Couldn’t be better.” I picked up my pace, but Logan kept alongside.
“Did Mr. Peterson give you the lecture on Freud in sociology?”
“Yep. Mr. Peterson is, as always, a wonderful lecturer.”
“So, do you think all women really have a deep-seated desire to be men?”
Only in Freud’s crazed and demented world. “Probably not,” I said.