And thought, God. I am the worst girlfriend on the entire face of the planet.
Top ten ways you can tell that your boyfriend really loves you:
10. He puts up with your weird mood swings, even the one where you have PMS and you accuse him of liking Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas better than he likes you, although you know perfectly well he’s never actually met Fergie.
9. He lets you pick the movie most of the time.
8. Ditto what dessert you guys are going to share.
7. He knows your friends’ names and asks how they’re doing (although in David’s case this isn’t exactly hard, since I basically have only one friend).
6. He makes sure (to the best of his ability) that when you come over for dinner, the White House chef is serving something you will actually eat.
5. He calls, often, just to see what you’re doing.
4. He thinks you look great even when you don’t have any makeup on.
3. He listens when you whine about your problems and tries to offer you viable solutions for them, even if most of the things he suggests are totally stupid and would never work because he’s a guy and he just doesn’t understand.
2. He doesn’t get upset when he overhears you going on with your best friend about how hot you think that new guy on Gilmore Girls is.
And the number-one way you can tell that your boyfriend really loves you:
1. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it when you opt to spend your Saturday night in front of the TV instead of with him.
6
Except that I didn’t get to. Spend Saturday night watching National Geographic Explorer with Rebecca, I mean. Because at around three o’clock, the phone rang, and when I picked it up, I was surprised to hear Dauntra on the other end.
“Sam?” For some reason, she was yelling. I soon realized why. Wherever she was, it was really noisy in the background.
“Dauntra?” I was kind of surprised to hear from her. Dauntra had never called my house before. I didn’t even know she had my number. I mean, all of the Potomac Video employees’ phone numbers are posted on the bulletin board in Stan’s office, but I didn’t know Dauntra had copied mine down. “What’s all that noise? Where are you?”
“Some police station,” Dauntra yelled. I heard someone in the background going, “Put that down, or the cuffs are going back on.”
“A police station?” I echoed. “What are you doing in a police station? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Dauntra said cheerfully. “I’m just under arrest.”
“Arrest?” I nearly dropped the phone. “You mean…you’re calling me from JAIL?”
“Uh-huh,” Dauntra said. “Because I don’t think I’m going to be out in time to make my shift at the store tonight. Can you do it for me? Four to closing? I promise I’ll make it up to you someday!”
I was still in shock over where she was. Also, I was glad neither of my parents or Theresa was around to overhear my end of the conversation. I wasn’t sure how excited they’d be over someone from work calling me from jail.
“What did you get arrested for?” I asked her.
“What?” Dauntra moved the phone away from her mouth and yelled, “You guys, SHUT UP, I can’t hear her.” Then she said, into the receiver, “What’d you say, Sam?”
“I said, What did you get arrested for?”
“Oh, that,” Dauntra said. “A bunch of us did a die-in. In front of the Four Seasons, you know, where your buddy the president is having his big fund-raiser. Boy, was he ever surprised!”
Um, he wasn’t the only one. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, either.
“So, can you take my shift or not?” Dauntra wanted to know. “And if you can’t, can you call around and see if anybody else can? I only get one phone call, and I really don’t want to lose my job.”
“You only get one phone call, and you called me?” I was shocked. “Dauntra, shouldn’t you call a lawyer?” Then I remembered something. “My mom’s a lawyer. Tell me where you are, and I’ll get her to go down there and—”
“I don’t need a lawyer,” Dauntra said. “Somebody’ll be posting my bail soon. But not in time for me to make my shift. So will you do it?”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, of course. I mean—” I heard someone on Dauntra’s end of the line shout an obscenity. “Oh my God, Dauntra. Be careful!”
“Careful?” Dauntra laughed. “I’m having a blast! Thanks, Sam!”
And then she hung up.
Which was how I found myself, an hour later, manning the cash register at Potomac Video and trying to find a channel on one of the shop’s overhead TVs that was showing the demonstration where Dauntra got herself arrested.
Sadly, the TVs at Potomac Video aren’t hooked up to cable, since they’re just supposed to be used to show whatever movie we’re trying to promote that week. So all I could get was snow. Finally, Stan made me quit and put in the latest Jason Bourne DVD. He hadn’t seemed too surprised when I showed up for Dauntra’s shift.
“I don’t even want to know,” he said, when I attempted to feed him my (made up) excuse for where Dauntra was (visiting a sick aunt). “Just watch out for shoplifters. We get a ton of them Saturday nights. Stupid neighborhood kids with nothing else to do. They think it’s hilarious to rip off an Xbox game or two.”
I was at the cash register watching for stupid neighborhood kids when the overhead bell on the front door to the store tinkled. But instead of Mr. Wade or one of the other regulars coming in to complain about our lack of selection, my sister Lucy walked in.
This was a huge surprise, because so far as I knew, Lucy hadn’t set foot inside Potomac Video for years. Popular people like Lucy don’t have time to watch DVDs, as they are much too busy going to parties and making out with their boyfriends. True, Lucy did spend the occasional Friday night at home, but she always let the video-choosing be done by someone else. Potomac Video, with its life-size cardboard cutouts of Boba Fett and Han Solo, open duct work in the ceiling, and hand-printed signs (RESTROOM FOR EMPLOYEES ONLY. EVERYONE ELSE JUST HAS TO HOLD IT), was hardly Lucy’s kind of place.
You could totally see that she was thinking as much herself as she made her way past the New Releases shelf—attracting the admiration of just about everyone in the place, most of whom were college-age guys in Kiss the Geek T-shirts, arguing over which Star Trek movie to rent. When she finally saw me at the register, her face crumpled in relief, and she came hurrying up to the counter—oblivious of the jaws she caused to slacken along her way—and went, “Hey, Sam.”
“Um,” I said. “Hey. What are you doing here?” Because I would have thought she’d have been out with Jack, or some of her girlfriends, at the very least.
Then I remembered.
“God,” I said, horrified on her behalf. “Did they ground you, too?”
Lucy looked confused. “Who?”
“Mom and Dad,” I said. “You know. For the SAT thing.”
She went, with a laugh, “No, they didn’t ground me.”
I stared down at her. On the TVs all around us, Matt Damon’s image flickered as he said, “They killed the woman that I love!” The geeks over in Sci-Fi, I noticed, were staring at Lucy with the exact same look of intense longing that Matt wore.
“Well, then,” I said, a little confused myself, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh.” Lucy shifted her tiny little Louis Vuitton bag (a gift for her birthday from Grandma) from one shoulder to the other. “I thought I might rent a DVD. You might have heard of it. Something called Hellboy?”
I stared at her. “Hellboy,” I said.
“Yeah.” Lucy looked around the store. As soon as her head moved in the direction of the geeks over in Sci-Fi, they ducked, and pretended to be engrossed in the cover of the new Alien movie. “Do you guys have it?”