But not this Friday night. This Friday night, she was going over SAT vocabulary words with—and this was the part that had me convinced I had the wrong house, the wrong sister, the wrong everything—Harold Minsky.
There are a lot of places I might have expected to see Harold Minsky. Potomac Video, for one, in the very anime section I’d just spent an hour organizing. Or possibly the sci-fi shelves. I would definitely have expected to see him in the computer lab at school, where he practically lives, in his capacity as teacher’s assistant to Mr. Andrews, the computer lab supervisor.
I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see Harold in the manga aisle at our local Barnes and Noble, or standing in front of Beltway Billiards, where he and his friends spend hours attaining high scores on Arcade Legends.
But I can’t say I expected, in a million years, ever to find Harold Minsky in my house…much less sitting across the dining room table from my sister Lucy.
“Waggish,” Lucy was saying thoughtfully as I walked in. “You mean, like a dog?”
Harold said, in a bored voice, “No.” Then, when there was no reply from my sister, he prompted, “It’s an adjective.”
“Waggish.” Lucy looked up at the ceiling, as if expecting the vocab fairy to tumble down from the chandelier and help her out. Instead, she noticed me standing in the doorway with my mouth sagging open.
“Oh, hi, Sam,” she said brightly. “Do you know Harold? Harold, this is my sister Samantha. Samantha, this is Harold. You know. From school.”
I did know. Harold was my computer lab TA. I said, “Uh, hi, Harold.”
Harold nodded at me, then turned his bespectacled head (how could it not be, when his parents had named him Harold?) back toward Lucy. What could they have been thinking, by the way? Didn’t they know that naming a kid Harold was a self-fulfilling prophecy, guaranteed to turn him into all that the name stood for: glasses, a crop of weedish brown hair that was badly in need of cutting, an unsteady gait stemming from a frame that had shot up six inches over the previous summer, making him one of the tallest guys in school not actually on the basketball team, and an orange Hawaiian shirt, the tail of which flopped out from the waistband of his too-short Levi’s?
“Come on,” he said in a no-nonsense tone that I’m sure no male member of the species had ever used on my sister before in her life. “You know this one. We just went over it.”
“Waggish,” Lucy said obediently. Then, to me, added, “Oh, I got that thing for you, Sam. That thing we talked about the other night? It’s on your bed.”
At first I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then, when she winked slowly, it hit me—and I blushed. Deeply.
Fortunately, Harold was too caught up in getting my sister to come up with a definition for waggish (SAT word meaning “mischievous in sport; roguish in merriment or good humor; frolicsome”) to notice me.
“Lucy,” he said severely, “if you aren’t even going to try, I see no point in wasting my time and your parents’ money—”
“No, no, wait,” Lucy said. “I know this one. Really, I do. Waggish. Doesn’t it mean ‘happy’? Like, the football victory left him feeling waggish?”
I had to pass by the living room to get upstairs. My parents were both sitting in there, pretending to read. But I knew they were listening to Lucy and her new tutor.
“Hi, honey,” my mom said, when she saw me. “How was work?”
“Workish,” I said, keeping my head ducked in the hope that she wouldn’t notice my still-bright-red cheeks. “How long’s that been going on?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, toward the dining room.
“Tonight’s their first session,” Mom said. “I called the school, and they told me this Harold is the best SAT prep tutor they’ve got. Do you know him? Do you think he’ll be able to help her?”
“Well,” I said slowly. “If anyone can, I’d guess it would be Harold.”
“They tell me he’s a shoo-in for Harvard,” my mom said. “All the Ivies, actually.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like Harold, all right.”
“I asked for a female tutor,” my mom said, making sure to lower her voice so that Lucy and Harold couldn’t overhear her, “because I didn’t want there to be any…romantic complications. You know how boys can be about your sister. But when I saw Harold in action with her, I knew he’d be perfect. It’s almost as if he doesn’t even realize she’s…well, the way she is.”
It was nice of my mom not to come right out and say what we were all thinking: That Lucy is so gorgeous, guys on the street routinely fall in love with her on sight, and often trail after her, holding out scraps of paper with their cell phone numbers scrawled on them, which Lucy always politely takes, then deposits without a second thought in her bedroom trash can when she cleans out her purse every evening.
“Um,” I said. “Yeah. That’d be Harold, all right. He doesn’t go in for that popularity stuff.” Or girls much, really. Unless they’re named Lara Croft and live inside a Playstation.
“I don’t care if he falls in love with her,” my dad said, roughly turning a page of the newspaper he was holding. “So long as he gets her score up, I’ll be happy.”
“Oh, Richard,” my mom said. “Not so loud. David called while you were at work, Sam. He said to call him back when you get a chance.”
“Huh,” I said. “Great.”
Only I didn’t mean great. I actually meant the opposite of great. Because I knew why he was calling. To find out what Mom and Dad had said. To find out whether or not we were going to get together over Thanksgiving to play Parcheesi.
And the truth is, I’ve never actually been the hugest fan of board games.
What would he do, I wondered, if I said no? No, I don’t want to go to Camp David with you for Thanksgiving, David. Would he dump me? I mean, if I just came out and told him that while he might think we’re ready for sex, I’m not so sure?
No. No way. David’s not that kind of guy. For one thing, he’s a total nerd—I mean, card carrying, with his vintage Boomtown Rats T-shirts, Converse high-tops, and long, strictly sci-fi related TiVo To Do list. And let’s face it, nerds simply don’t dump their girlfriends for not putting out, the way jocks seem to. Or so I’ve heard, not actually being acquainted with any jocks.
And for another thing, I know David really loves me. I know that because of the way he can be making fun of my hair one minute, and nibbling on my neck, telling me how hot he thinks I look in my new Nike shirt the next. I also know because I’m the last person he speaks to every night before he goes to sleep (he never forgets to call my cell….if I’m already asleep—or pretending to be, like I was last night—he leaves a message) and the first person he calls when he wakes up (not that I always answer, since I am not fit to be spoken to before my morning diet Dr Pepper).
And he doesn’t call just because he feels like he has to or I’ll have a breakdown—the way Lucy does with Jack—but because…well, he wants to.
No, David’s not going to dump me if I tell him I’m not ready. He loves me. He’ll wait.
I think.
Besides, if he did dump me, the press would eat him alive. Not to sound braggy, but I am quite beloved by the American people for saving the life of their leader.
Although that was pre–dye job. Who knows how Margery in Poughkeepsie is going to feel about me once she sees my new apparently Ashlee Simpson–esque do?
“This Return to Family initiative David’s father is promoting,” my mom said, breaking in on my musings about my sex life—or lack of one. “I really like the idea. Sometimes I feel like I never get to see you kids, you’re all so busy.”
I just stared at her, completely shocked.
“Whose fault is that?” I practically yelled. “This part-time job thing wasn’t exactly MY idea, you know.”