“Um,” I said. “Well, Jack really loves you, you know. He can’t help missing you.”
“Yeah, but he could help being a controlling freak, couldn’t he? God, it’s good to have him off my back. ‘I can’t believe you’re going to the game instead of spending time with me,’” she said, in a surprisingly dead-on imitation of her former boyfriend. “‘Sometimes I think you care more about your stupid squad than you do for me.’ Like my wanting to have fun with my friends was some kind of personal insult to him!”
I couldn’t believe this. Lucy and Jack, broken up? Really broken up, from the way it sounded, not just one of their many fights. Could it really be over between the two of them? That was it?
“But you went out with him for years and years,” I said. “You guys were voted couple most likely to get married.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said. “Well, it didn’t work out, did it?”
“But he was your first,” I exclaimed.
“My first what?” Lucy asked.
“Hello,” I said. “Your first LOVE.”
Lucy made a face. “Tell me about it. If I’d known better, I wouldn’t have picked anybody so moody. And so needy. If I’d have known better, I’d have picked someone more like—”
I stared at her. “Like who?”
“No one,” Lucy said quickly. “Never mind.”
“No, I mean it,” I said. “Who? You can tell me, Luce. I want to know. And I won’t tell.”
David, I thought. She’s going to say David. Of course she wants a boyfriend like David. David made up white-trash names for us. She and Jack never had white-trash names for each other.
And she knows when David calls me, it’s never to make sure I’m not out with some other guy, but because he genuinely cares about how I’m doing, and wants to hear how my day went.
And she sees how David walks me to the door every time he brings me home. And okay, this is also sometimes the only opportunity we have to make out, which might contribute a little to David’s motivation.
But whatever. Lucy doesn’t have to know that. Jack never walked Lucy to the door.
She wants a boyfriend more like mine. She has to.
And I can’t say that I blame her. God. Now that I think about it, David is like the perfect boyfriend.
So why am I being so mean to him?
“It’s just,” Lucy said, with a sudden, hiccupy sob. “It’s just that…he’s so smart!”
Poor Lucy. David certainly is much smarter than Jack. There’s no denying that. It’s true Jack’s a gifted artist, but that doesn’t necessarily make him smart. I remember he once insisted Picasso invented fauvism. Seriously.
“Yes,” I said sympathetically. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”
“I mean, there’s something very attractive about a guy who knows…well, everything,” Lucy went on, starting to sound close to tears again. “Jack just THINKS he knows everything.”
“Yes,” I said, thinking Poor Lucy. If only David had a brother. “Yes, he did, didn’t he?”
“I mean, all that time he was going on about being an urban rebel…how much of a rebel can you be if your parents are paying for everything?”
“True,” I said. “Very true.”
“The thing is, Jack was just a poser,” Lucy said, still teary-eyed.
“Yes,” I said. You could never call David a poser. He is always, solidly, exactly who he is, and no one else. “He was a bit of one, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t want to go out with a poser,” Lucy said. “I want the real thing. I want a real man.”
Like David. Well, you could hardly blame her.
“You’ll find him,” I assured her. “Someday.”
“I already have,” Lucy said. “Found him.”
Causing me to go, “Wait. What?”
“I found him,” she said with a sob. “B-but he doesn’t want me!”
Then she buried her head, with a wail, into my lap.
“Wait.” I looked down uncomprehendingly at the red-gold puddle of silk spread out across my thighs. “You found him? WHERE?”
“At s-school,” Lucy wept.
And, even though I’d known, deep down, that she wasn’t talking about David, this was still something of a relief. That it wasn’t my boyfriend she was pining for.
“Well, that’s great, Luce,” I said, still feeling confused. “I mean, that you found someone so soon—”
“Aren’t you even listening to me?” Lucy demanded, sitting up and glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I said, he d-doesn’t want me!”
“He doesn’t?” I stared at her. “But why? Does he already have a girlfriend?”
“No,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, is he…I mean, is he gay?” Because that was the only reason I could think of for a guy not liking my sister, if he wasn’t already in love with some other girl, like David.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, then, why—”
“I don’t KNOW why,” Lucy said. “I TOLD you that. I’ve done EVERYTHING I could to make him notice me. I wore my shortest mini last time I saw him—the one Theresa threatened to put in the trash if I wore it outside the house ever again? I spent two hours on my makeup. I even wore lip liner. And what did I get for it?” She pounded a perfectly manicured fist against the mattress. “NOTHING. He still doesn’t know I’m alive. I asked him, you know, if he wanted to go to the movies this weekend—to the new Adam Sandler—and he said…he said…he said he HAD OTHER PLANS!”
She grabbed a pillow and clutched it to her face as she wailed into it.
“Well,” I said, blinking uncomprehendingly, “maybe he did. Have other plans, I mean.”
“He didn’t,” Lucy sobbed. “I could tell he didn’t.”
“Well…maybe he doesn’t like Adam Sandler. Lots of people don’t.”
“That’s not it,” Lucy said. “It’s me. He just doesn’t like ME.”
“Lucy,” I said, “everybody likes you. Okay? Every guy who isn’t taken or likes guys and not girls likes you. It has to be something else. Who is this guy, anyway?”
But Lucy just shook her head and wailed, “What does it matter? What does any of it matter when he doesn’t even know I’m alive?”
Lucy flopped back across the bed, weeping stormily. I stared down at her prone figure, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. My sister—the cheerleader; the Bare Essentials salesgirl; the titian-haired goddess; the most popular girl at Adams Prep—was in love with some guy who didn’t like her back.
No. No, that was just all wrong. That did not compute.
I sat there, trying to digest all this. It didn’t make any sense. What kind of boy, asked out by the prettiest girl in school, said NO? She had said he was smart…well, how smart could he be if he turned down my sister? Unless he—
Suddenly, I gasped, as the full horror of what she was trying to tell me sank in.
“Lucy!” I cried. “Is it HAROLD? You like HAROLD MINSKY?”
Her only response to this was to weep harder.
And I knew. I knew it all.
“Oh, Lucy,” I said, trying not to laugh. I knew I shouldn’t have found the situation funny. I mean, after all, Lucy was genuinely upset. But my sister and Harold Minsky? “You know, Harold probably isn’t all that used to girls asking him out. Maybe you, you know. Surprised him. And that’s why he said he had other plans. I mean, maybe he just said the first thing he thought of.”
This made her raise her head and blink at me tearfully.
“What do you mean, he isn’t used to girls asking him out?” she wanted to know. “Harold’s so smart. Girls must ask him out all the time.”
Now it was REALLY hard not to laugh.
“Um, Luce,” I said, not quite believing I was having to explain this to my older sister—the girl who had just informed me of an alternative use for the bathtub faucet, “not all girls are attracted to boys like Harold. I mean, a lot of girls like boys for their, um, bodies and personalities, and not so much for their minds.”