From Butt to Booty (24 page)

“Oh my God, I am so sorry.” Tim and Adam bound up to my locker.

That what? It’s a school day? The Mideast is still fighting? The planet is getting too hot to support life? “For what?”

“Stephen, aka Teeny-Weeny.”

“Stop.” I hold up a hand and plead for them to stop. I don’t want to hear anything about him. I don’t. Okay, I want to hear he’s miserable without me and desperately wants me back. I can’t resist. “Okay, what?”

“He’s dating someone,” Adam says.

Tim elbows him. Hard.

I’m stuck on the idea that he could find another girl to date so quickly. It’s only March. My body isn’t even rigor mortised yet.

“And?” Tim prompts Adam.

“What and?” I ask. Trying to keep track of the looks they’re shooting each other is like watching TV and talking on the phone. I’m exhausted in about ten seconds.

“What? Spill,” I say.

“Jenny.” Adam drops his tone.

“Jenny what?” I ask as the reality dawns on me. “No,” I gasp.

“They’re dating.” Tim nods.

“No.” The pain. The humiliation. Where is that damn Sharpie when a girl needs to poke some eyes out?

“I saw them groping in the science wing,” Tim says.

“I’m really sorry.” Adam gives me his sincere look. “Want Tim to beat him up?”

“I will,” Tim jumps in.

“No. We broke up. He can date anyone,” I say, seething.
Anyone but my archnemesis
. Doesn’t he care? Did he ever?

Adam hugs me. “We didn’t want you to be shocked or hear it from Jenny first.”

“Joy. I have history next.”
Way to ruin weeks of a perfectly awful semester
.

“We know.” Tim squeezes my shoulder.

The bell rings. When do I start to think Stephen’s my friend and we laugh about the time we dated? When does that happen?

Ms. Whoptommy looks even more hassled than usual. I don’t think she’s counting points correctly for her notorious post-holiday diet. She usually drops a few small children by now, then puts them back on her hips by June. I really don’t think she’s sticking with the program this year. Perhaps she has an inner rebel and feels the need to buck the system.

“Your project this month is an in-depth look at the Bill of Rights. We will read, discuss and dissect each of our rights as Americans. Then you will pick the right that is most important to you. The right that speaks to your soul.”

God, not another paper. Persuasive writing? A clear journalistic rehash? A pro-con debate fit for a Congressional committee? I can’t wait.

She continues as if I hadn’t been having a personal internal conversation. “However, we will not be writing our feelings.”

I love the “we.” Such a royal definition.

“We will be making a visual statement, an artistic impact.”

Like the great meteor that killed the dinosaurs?

She passes out papers with specifics on them. It’s always a bad sign when the criteria are stapled together in a packet.

“You can use any material that speaks to you, excluding bodily fluids, or excrement from any animal, including yourselves.”

Holy-Mother-of-the-TP, it says something when using poop to visually describe the Bill of Rights has to be explicitly ruled out. She’s probably referring to Bobby’s brick-and-mortar art project from last semester. Let’s just say the bricks were collected in a dog park.

“Also, if you choose the right to bear arms as your personal right, you may not actually use guns, pictures or photographs of
anything remotely resembling a gun. We are a gun-free zone, people.” She clears her throat.

Ashley raises her hand. “Ms. Whoptommy, is that why the Civil War photos were all blacked out in the textbooks?” That unit was four months ago. She’s only now realizing this?

“Exactly, Miss Gray. As I was saying, no weaponry of any kind may be referred to, but you may use arms as your substitute.”

Mannequins all over the county are crying out in fear.

“Like human arms?”

“This is not gross anatomy, Mr. Wilson. You may use pictures, photographs, models or replicas, doll parts or molds of your own arms. They just have to clearly be arms and we’ll count them as a substitute for guns. However, there are many rights I’m sure will speak to all of you—”

In other words, only the really brave or really stupid will actually try to make the right to bear arms into an art project with actual arms. I think I might feel a spark of inspiration.

“You will have four weeks to complete this project and you will not be working in groups.”

There is a God; I don’t have to endure grouping. I sneak a glance at Jenny and Stephen; they’re holding hands across the aisle. I swallow and pray for the period to end or for a brain hemorrhage. Either one would be fine.

Okay, here’s the deal. The idea of asking a guy out is utterly and completely terrorizing. It’s like one of those chocolate Easter eggs filled with Ebola instead of tasty cream. Eat at your own risk.

I mean, what if he says no? I know it’s not the end of the world, but it would ruin my life. Depending on the guy, I’d have to change my schedule so I didn’t have any classes with him, and come up with routes around school taking me completely out of his path so I wouldn’t have to so much as glance at him.

It might mean a whole new group of friends, or even moving to a new school. I don’t think my parents would be happy about that one. I’d have to come up with a good reason.

I don’t know how guys do it. They ask out multitudes of girls and have to get told no at least once in a while. Except for Lucas. I don’t think Lucas has ever heard no in his life.

Then I think about Adam and Tim. They’re as close to in love as two people can be without admitting that they’re in love and they’re fighting about
being seen in public. Which is just cruel. I hate it that they’re worried about the wrong person getting all vigilante, and here I am quaking at the thought of being told no. “No.” It’s a little word.

So how do I grow a pair of balls (temporarily, you understand. I don’t really want testicles) and ask? And who?

You know that saying “go big or go home”?

Well, do I go big and ask Lucas or do I go home? Bad example, but you know what I mean. How do you know who to ask? Is there a signal? An encrypted code? A flashing light?

I need the handicapped dating sensors—like the cross-walks for blind and deaf people, loud beeps and flashing lights. That’d be perfect.

The question that’s been plaguing me for weeks pops out. “What is GAGD?”

“I don’t know.” Clarice shrugs. “A bunch of seniors voted on names. Girl Ask Guy Dance won. Personally, I like GAGD. We could make it into a verb—say, are you going gagging this evening?” She laughs at her own joke.

“Can I just point out one itsy-bitsy thing?” I can’t resist asking this question and perhaps I’m the only one who actually got the memo, but here goes: “Can’t girls ask guys to
any
dance? Are we really limited to one event a year to be forward?”

“Point for Gert.” Maggie licks her finger and writes in the air.

I take a sip of water. “Do guys like it when we ask?”

“I don’t know.” Clarice is surreptitiously watching Spenser eat a handful of French fries.

Maggie is folding her napkin into an origami thingy.

I continue, albeit in a lower voice since Victor appears to be eavesdropping on our conversation. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asks.

“Well, they have to ask first for everything and suffer the nerves and humiliation when we say no. So it’s not fair.”

Clarice shrugs. “Putting it that way, how could they possibly object to being the one getting asked instead?”

“Unless their manliness is somehow hinged on it.” Maggie sails the birdy toward the garbage can.

“Oh.” Clarice looks at me.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I say.

“That could be possible.” Clarice nods.

I’m not sure I follow. “How would that work, exactly?”

“Well, what if the pain and humiliation are like the manly equivalents of menstrual cramps?” Maggie says.

“Huh?”

“It means you’re a man when girls giggle at you when you walk by,” Clarice translates.

“I guess. But back to my point. Isn’t this the twenty-first century? Since when do we have to wait for a guy to think we should go out before we go out?”

“I don’t know. It feels like there’s something wrong with asking a guy first.”

“Does that ever work out?” Here’s the part I’m more interested in.

“I don’t know. I keep reading in all the major mags that guys like aggressive women who let them go along for the ride. But really, isn’t it supermodels who aren’t thought overly aggressive? Like seriously hot chicks who the guy wouldn’t have the balls to ask out? It’s okay for them to ask the guy because it would never occur to him to ask them first?” Maggie is so smart, she’s mind-boggling.

I think there must be fine print in those articles
Cosmo
writes
about assertiveness being “the new sexy.” The fine print states you must be Gisele before asking a guy out. That makes sense.

“So are you?” Clarice gets to the point.

“Huh?” I say, still trying to figure out how to transform myself into Gisele by the end of the week.

“Asking Lucas?”

“I don’t think so.” I glance around to see if anyone is eavesdropping. Even Victor has gotten bored with us. I forget I’m not the most interesting thing in everyone else’s lives.

“You should. I mean, what have you got to lose?”

Dignity? Self-esteem? Face? Pad Thai with a side salad?

“Are you?” Maggie asks Clarice.

“No, Lucas really isn’t my type.” Clarice smiles.

“I meant, are you taking Spenser?”

“I don’t know yet.” She shrugs.

“What are you waiting for?” I ask.

“Some indication that he wants me to ask him, I guess.”

Maggie nods. “I couldn’t do it.”

“What? My Brainiest friend gets cold feet when the invitations are hers to toss?”

“Yeah. I don’t have the nerve.” Maggie looks sheepish.

“But then you won’t be going,” I point out.

“Yeah, so?”

True. Does it really matter if we go? “She’s right. The world won’t end if we’re not there.”

“But we have to wait around for the guys to think about asking us the whole rest of the year. We should at least exercise our right to be turned down.” Clarice nods like she’s come to a big decision.

“Hmm. Maybe that’s the lesson? We’re not big on dances when we really have a choice? We’re not much on boys, either.”

They both look at me, horrified.

“I don’t mean that. I mean we prefer
men.
” Men who understand the importance of being asked because they’ve been turned down more than once in their lives. They should know a good thing when she invites them.

“Men scare me.” Clarice shudders.

“Me too.” Maggie shudders. “They’re so big and silent and intimidating.”

“No, they’re not.” I feel the need to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. Men scare me, too. Who are the girls who are eighteen and dating thirty-year-olds? Obviously, they’re not petrified by shaving prowess and five-o’clock shadow. I wouldn’t know what to do with a man if I was given the opportunity. They’re a little like truffles, all earthy and mysterious and take digging to find. I’m talking about the fungal truffles, not the chocolate kind.

“Yeah.”

“Right.”

We all drift to our next classes thinking man thoughts.