I Love You More: A Novel (26 page)

The man who was too good to be true.

Like
: to find agreeable, enjoyable, or satisfactory.

Love
: an intense feeling of deep affection; a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone.

With the exception of the word
sexual
, which definitely didn’t apply, although I must admit to being curious about, that definition very, very, very closely described the way I felt about Ryan Anderson. But since it wasn’t one hundred percent accurate, strictly speaking I couldn’t say I
loved
Ryan Anderson, but saying I
liked
Ryan Anderson wasn’t right either. I spent several days searching for a word that was smack-dab in the middle of love and like but didn’t find one, so I was left with having to say that I
really, really, really liked
Ryan Anderson.

At first, I blamed my dictionaries. I mean how was it possible that there wasn’t a word out there somewhere that applied to me and my particular situation? Surely I wasn’t the only eleven-year-old girl in the world who didn’t use words carelessly or misuse them altogether. Then I remembered what the jacket of my newest dictionary said: “We Define Your World.” It also said it was a new edition that included sixty-one thousand entries, which would indicate that its previous editions had fewer words. This raised two questions. Who were “we”? And how did new words get into dictionaries?

To find the answers, I abandoned my dictionaries (for the time being) and began searching the Internet. This was what I learned.

“We” were an undefined number of editors that spent hours scouring books, magazines, and periodicals for new words, new meanings of existing words, and different spellings of the same words. New words got into dictionaries based on usage, which raised another question. Who made up those new words? Answer: a neologist. More information: Neologism wasn’t an official job; anyone could be a neologist. All you had to do was make up a word and get enough people to start using it so it made its way into books, magazines, and periodicals for dictionary editors to discover.

Right then and there, I decided to be a neologist. My new smack-dab in the middle of love and like word was
slike
, which I got by combining the word
super
with the word
like
. I mean how easy was that? Other than the fact that it sounded weird, which didn’t worry me too much (since I figured all new words had probably sounded weird at first), it seemed like a pretty appropriate, even obvious choice. I remember wondering why nobody else had thought of it. I also remember thinking that since I had, I was obviously a natural at this neologism stuff. I rolled my new word over and over my tongue, said it out loud, and made it into sentences. I slike Ryan Anderson. I slike walking home with Ryan Anderson. I slike spelling. I slike my dictionaries. The possibilities were endless.

Now, obviously I was a big fan of dictionaries. In what other book could you read something and know with certainty that it was one hundred percent accurate? Even the Bible fictionalized stuff, mainly because it made for better reading. Dictionaries were not only stuffed with cool words but included descriptions of the nature, scope, and meaning of those words, also known as definitions. But even with all their positive features, I had to admit to myself that there were some not so small problems with dictionaries. They didn’t include any practical instruction or advice on how to apply either the words or the definitions in real-life
situations, and they didn’t provide links or references to places that might offer further information. The words
boyfriend
and
girlfriend
were good examples. They both had pretty lame definitions that didn’t include any information on how to get or keep one or the other. I mean at the very least the definition of
girlfriend
should have referenced the words
self-sacrifice, modesty
, and
pretense
. If it had, then maybe I would’ve been able to avoid the series of events that led to the ultimate demise of my first boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

It started with Mr. Dork. One day, he told us about this hunting trip he took to Canada and how he saved a bunch of his friends from certain death by shooting an arrow straight into a bear’s heart. Most of the kids listened intently, even nodded now and then. As usual, I got annoyed. I couldn’t figure why the kids in my class were always acting all interested in Mr. Dork’s lies, laughing at his jokes, and raising their hands to answer his ridiculous questions, even though they said they hated him. I asked Ryan Anderson about this phenomenon on the way home from school.

“They think he’ll give them a better grade if they do,” he said.

“That’s moronic,” I said. “All they have to do to get a better grade is study.”

“Easy for you to say.” He sounded irritated.

“What does that mean?”

“Not everybody is as smart as you, Picasso Lane.”

I must admit that at the time I thought that was a compliment, I even thanked him, but he got kind of weird after that, and when we got to my house, he said he couldn’t stay. The next day at school, he was back to normal Ryan again.

Then, a week later, something else happened. It was the regional spelling bee, and Ryan and I were the last kids still standing, which I thought was a good thing but, as it turned out, wasn’t. It was Ryan’s turn.

“Mr. Anderson, are you ready?” the pronouncer asked.

“Yes, sir,” Ryan said.

“The word is chrysalis,” the pronouncer said.

“May I have the definition?” Ryan asked. I figured he was just asking that because he could. Who didn’t know the definition of chrysalis?

“A quiescent insect pupa especially of a butterfly or moth,” the pronouncer said.

Ryan thought for a while. The room was so quiet you could’ve heard a bug crawling.

“You have thirty seconds, Mr. Anderson,” the pronouncer said.

Ryan cleared his throat. “Chrysalis, C—R—Y—S—A—L—I—S, chrysalis.”

I was stunned.

“I’m sorry,” the pronouncer said. “That is incorrect.”

All at once, the people in the room let out a moan of disappointment.

Ryan sat back down. I felt really bad for him, but at the same time I felt really good for me.

“Miss Lane,” the pronouncer said.

I stood. A really weird feeling came into my belly, kind of like I was afraid, but I knew there wasn’t any reason for me to worry because I knew how to spell
chrysalis
, and I was pretty certain I’d be able to spell the next word right too. If I didn’t, Ryan would get another word. It wasn’t until later that I realized that somewhere in the back of my brain I probably knew that Ryan coming in second place to my first place would be a problem, but like I said, I didn’t know that then. I rattled off the correct spelling of
chrysalis
. The crowd clapped and cheered. I looked at Ryan and smiled. He not only didn’t smile back, he didn’t even look at me.

“Miss Lane,” the pronouncer said, after the noise from the crowd had died down, “the word is supercilious.”

Ryan was all nice to me after I won, he even congratulated me, but he didn’t walk me home the next day, or the next, and before I
knew it a whole week had gone by, and I was strongly considering making a big show of breaking up with him so everyone would think that us not speaking to each other was all my idea, but the truth was, I didn’t want to. I still liked him.

Now, I had hated the All That Girls since before I could remember. I had vowed never ever to talk to any of them, but I was desperate. The next day at lunch, I filled my tray with only healthy food items, because that’s how they ate, walked boldly toward the table where they were sitting, and asked if I could join them.

They stopped talking and stared at me. Kelly Morgan, the self-appointed group leader, was the first to say something.

“Where’s Ryan?” It was hard to believe that someone could sound snotty when they said only two words.

I shrugged and tried to act as if I didn’t care one bit where Ryan Anderson was. “I don’t feel like eating with him today. I’m mad at him.”

Ashley Adams, who had been part of the All That Girls for more than a year by then, flipped her ponytail and said, “Isn’t that just too bad.”

They all laughed.

“What? The two of you ran out of words to spell together?” Ugly Cindy asked. Unlike me, Cindy Schneider had never grown out of her fat and, really and metaphorically, had a big mouth. How she ever got in with the All That Girls was a mystery to me.

More laughter.

“Yeah, cut the shit, Picasso,” Kelly said. “We all know that Ryan was the one who stopped talking to you, not the other way around.”

I was busted. But it didn’t upset me all that much because I was still reveling in the fact that Kelly Morgan had referred to me by my real name, and that she hadn’t placed an unflattering descriptive adjective in front of it.

“Look,” I said, “I need some advice, and you guys are the only ones that can give it to me.”

Nobody said anything, which was awkward. I thought about all the things I wanted to do right then and there, like stick my nose in the air and walk away, tell Gillian George she had some salad dressing on her chin, which she did, drop my tray
accidentally
on Kelly’s head, and there were a bunch of others. I mean of all the things I wanted to do, not a one of them was resort to groveling. But what choice did I have?

So I said, “There seems to be general agreement that the four of you are very savvy, about boys that is, so I figured I may as well test that assumption.”

“Savvy?” Gillian George asked.

“Knowledgeable on the realities of life,” I said.

They all looked at Kelly Morgan, as if they’d run out of insults and expected her to figure one out.

“
Why
do you know this stuff?” Kelly asked.

“I know a lot,” I said. “Like I know how you can pass the social studies test tomorrow.” I was pretty sure this statement would pique Kelly’s interest since her grades were so bad she was close to getting kicked off the cheerleading squad.

“How?”

“I know exactly what’s on the test.” And I did, because I was late to school the previous day and had to stay after. Mr. Dork said that since I was there, I could help him do some filing, and then he fell asleep at his desk, which wasn’t unusual, so I figured, well, why not take a peek at the social studies test. And guess what? He’d already made a bunch of copies, probably the ones he intended to pass out, so I folded one up and stuck it in my underwear. “How about we consider this a trade. You tell me how to get Ryan back, and I’ll share the test answers with you.”

Four sets of eyes widened. They all started talking at once. It was pretty hard to decipher their exact words, but the gist of it was they were considering it. Then they stopped talking, again all at once. It was like they’d rehearsed. There was a long pause.

“We accept,” Kelly said. “We’ll tell you how to solve your problem.”

“That’s not enough,” I said.

“What else?” Kelly asked.

“It has to work.”

“Believe me,” Kelly said, “it’ll work. Unfortunately the idiot still likes you.”

“He does?” I waited for one of them to call me Pitiful Picasso.

“You are so inept,” Kelly said.

Wow. A big word for Kelly
. “All right. Tell me.”

“First, you have to apologize,” Kelly said.

“For what?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just say you’re sorry and you miss him.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it,” she said.

She’d said
first
, which implied there was a second. “Then what?”

“Do you have any idea why he’s mad at you?”

“No,” I said.

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Maybe you’re the idiot. He’s upset because you won the stupid spelling bee.”

“Why would he be mad about that?”

“Because he didn’t win.”

“But that’s not my fault.”

“Do you want him to be your boyfriend or not?”

“I guess,” I said.

“Then you need to act like a girlfriend,” Kelly said.

“I don’t understand.”

“Girlfriends let their boyfriends win. Girlfriends are never ever smarter than their boyfriends.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m smarter.”

“You’re lame,” Kelly said. The other All That Girls nodded. “Don’t you get it? It is a widely known fact that girls are really the
ones in charge of relationships, but since boys have fragile egos, we need to let them think they are. All we have to do to keep them happy is pretend. Pretend we aren’t as smart. Pretend we can’t lift things or open doors. Pretend
you
, Picasso Lane, don’t know how to spell every single word.”

I’m certain I must have looked as stunned as I felt. I mean, that was the most illogical thing I’d ever heard. Why would I pretend I didn’t know how to spell?

“Trust me on this,” Kelly said. “If you do what I said, you’ll get him back, but if you lose him again because you’re not willing to pretend, that’s not on me.”

Kelly Morgan was the last person I’d ever trust, but I knew she wanted that social studies test bad, and what did I really have to lose, other than my pride that is, so I did exactly what she said. I apologized to Ryan and told him that I missed him. At least that last part was true. He immediately got nice to me again and resumed the practice of walking me home. I gave Kelly Morgan and the other All That Girls copies of the test. They all got A’s. I got four new friends.