Inside Girl (6 page)

Meredith laughed—and so did the guy behind me in the lunch line. I turned around and almost jumped out of my skin. He was wearing jeans, a red polo shirt, and
these really cute John Fluevog shoes that looked like they were stolen from a bowling alley, and his eyes were crinkled up with laughter. And it was him: Bennett Keating, the second-cutest boy in tenth grade.

“I know,” he said. “I forgot my lunch too. It's so stupid—surrounded by all these good restaurants, and we're stuck eating this.”

“Y-yeah,” I stammered, willing myself not to blush. “It's really ridiculous.”

“I'm Bennett.” He offered me his hand to shake but, like an idiot, I was still holding my tray. “I don't think I've seen you around before.”

“Oh. Well, I just started here. I mean, I'm a freshman. My name's Flan.”

“How're you liking this place so far, Flan?”

“It's nice.” I wished I could stop sounding so boring. I grabbed a bagel and set it on my tray, then held a paper cup under the soda machine and pressed a button. A fine spray of Dr. Pepper got all over me, but fortunately Bennett didn't seem to notice. “I mean, the people here seem really cool. It's great how many student clubs and activities there are and stuff.”

“I think so. Some people find it really hard to navigate at first, though.” He cleared his throat. “I'm actually doing a piece for the school paper about the new class's impressions of Stuyvesant.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Maybe I could interview you?”

“Sure!” I tried not to squeak.

“What're you doing after school?”

“Um …” I glanced toward Meredith and Judith, who had fallen totally silent—out of shyness or because Bennett was flirting with me, I couldn't tell which. “The three of us usually hang out, so—”

“Well, then, we should all go get some ice cream. We deserve it after this lunch. There's a great place right around here—Cones, have you ever heard of it?”

“Wow, I love that place.” Cones was an adorable little ice cream shop just a couple of blocks from my house. “Meredith, Judith—you want to go after school?”

They nodded silently, each wearing a big smile.

“All right. Nice to meet you guys,” he said, sailing off into the cafeteria with his tray. As soon as he was out of earshot, Meredith and Judith practically exploded with whispers.

“That was so awesome!” Meredith cheered into my ear. “Oh my God, Flan, he really likes you! That was like love at first sight!”

“And he has tons of cute friends! This is so amazing!” Judith was so happy, she was nearly jumping up and down.

My luck couldn't have been better. Two totally
wonderful things had just happened at once. First, Bennett had asked me out, and second, Meredith and Judith had started trusting me again. This was turning into an amazing day—and all because of Tater Tot casserole. Who'd have thought?

On the way out of the cafeteria, Bennett stopped by our table with two of his friends: that snobby guy Eric (who mentioned twice that he was entering some male modeling competition, even though I could tell by one look at him that he needed some major manscaping—at least an eyebrow wax and a better haircut—before he could even
think
about being in print ads) and this other kid, Jules, who was kind of heavyset but had cool black-framed glasses that made him look like he was in an emo band.

When school was over, we all met at the front entrance and walked out together. It was great, leaving school with three cute guys, and I started to feel like maybe I wasn't such a loser after all.

In fact, I was more worried about Meredith and Judith. As soon as the guys showed up to meet us, they started to get all giggly and only talk to each other. I've seen girls act like that before, but I've never quite gotten it: you can know a girl who's totally cool, funny, whatever, but as soon as you put her into the
same room as a cute guy, she suddenly will only giggle and whisper to her best friend like she's nine years old, and no one watching her would ever be able to guess that she's actually an interesting person. Then again, I've known lots of seemingly normal guys who burp and tell dirty jokes to impress the girls they like, so I guess it goes both ways.

“So, do you guys all work on the
Spectator
?” I asked.

Eric rolled his eyes. “Journalism, ugh. What's the point? Since when do people want to see pictures of drowned cows and starving babies?”

“That's not really what we focus on in the school paper,” Bennett said.

“I'm the photographer,” said Jules, “and I made a rule for myself to keep drowned cows and starving babies to a minimum.”

“Unless it's a story about the cafeteria food,” Bennett joked, glancing at me with a flirty smile. I laughed. Meredith and Judith were way ahead of us on the sidewalk by now.

At Cones, we got a table near the window. I ordered mint chocolate chip, and Bennett paid for it. I wondered if that made it a date, but before I could overanalyze it too much, Jules started telling this crazy story about his West Highland terrier and how she managed to get inside his building's ventilation system.

“The people downstairs thought a giant rat was coming after them. And we were like, ‘No, that's just Muffy.'”

“I wish I had a dog,” I said. “The last time I had a pet was when I was in fifth grade. She was a chinchilla.”

“What happened to her?” asked Bennett.

“Don't ask,” I sighed. Zsa-Zsa had actually crawled down the stairs during one of my brother's parties, only to be crushed under the wheels of a Vespa that Patch's friend Mickey had driven into our house. Mickey had felt terrible about it, and he'd made up to me by hiring a skywriter he knew to write, “SORRY PATCH'S LI'L SIS” in the sky.

“You didn't finish your story, Jules,” said Meredith shyly, stealing a glance over at him. I could tell she liked him because of how she kept pushing her cup of ice cream around the table with her spoon. “I hope your dog was okay.”

“She was fine. But we had to pay to get the claw marks hammered out of the air ducts.”

We sat there for maybe half an hour, talking and laughing and joking around. I noticed after a while that Bennett's elbow was touching mine on the table. But I didn't move my arm, and neither did he. It was awesome.

When we were all packing up our stuff to leave, Bennett sort of lingered, putting on his hooded sweatshirt and zipping it up slowly, like he was waiting for something.

“Hey, Flan,” he said, “remember how I'm writing that article for the
Spectator
? About freshmen at our school?”

Between the ice cream and the flirting and the joking around, I'd actually forgotten. But instead I said, “Yeah, sure,” as I slung my backpack up onto my shoulders.

“Well, I didn't really interview you yet. Where do you live? I could ask you some questions on the way to your house.”

“Oh,” I said. A sick feeling crept into my stomach and curled up there. “Well, I mean—I guess—”

Meredith and Judith looked at me with these “oh
my God, what are you doing” sort of expressions on their faces.

“Hang on just a sec,” said Judith, grabbing me by my elbow. “I want to show you something.” She dragged me over to the glass case that held all the flavors of ice cream. Meredith followed us. “What are you doing?” Judith hissed at me as we stared down at a carton of butter pecan. “I mean, you're shy, okay, I get that, but think about it! This is huge—Bennett Keating wants to walk you home!”

“That sure looks delicious,” I said loudly, for the benefit of the guys who were awkwardly standing around the little shop's entrance. Then I whispered, “I don't know. I just feel like it's maybe … too soon. I barely know him.”

“Too soon to walk around with him? That's how you get to know someone!” It was pretty ironic that she was getting so worked up about this, considering the fact that she and Meredith had been practically mute the whole time we'd been hanging out with the guys. I almost said so, then stopped myself at the last second.

“He seems pretty nice,” Meredith added in an undertone. “I don't think he's going to start stalking you or anything. But I know how you feel. I've never hung out with a guy by myself either.”

I shook my head, thinking of Jonathan, my ex, and all the time we'd spent talking up in my room while parties raged below. “No, that's not really the prob—”

“Then just do it!” Judith gave me a little push and I stumbled back in Bennett's direction, just as someone appeared behind the counter to offer me a free sample of butter pecan.

“Okay,” I said, smiling at Bennett as best I was able. “Let's get going.” But as we walked out to the street, I flipped open my cell phone and texted SBB as quickly as I could. ON MY WAY HOME, I wrote. STAY OUTTA SIGHT.

So Bennett walked me home. His survey only took about ten minutes, because he forgot some of the questions and he also forgot to write down any of my answers, which I thought was totally cute. Either he was really absentminded, or being around me made him shy, which seemed more likely, the way he kept looking over at me and then looking away again when I made eye contact. I'd never been with a guy who was actually shyer than I was, and it kind of surprised me how much I liked getting him to talk. It's sort of like how SBB calms me down by being more freaked out than I am—quiet people bring me more out of myself. I even cracked a few jokes and got to hear him
laugh, which was great. His laugh was even cuter than his voice.

The one weird thing about the walk was the way he kept trying to impress me.

“I really like the Village,” he said. We were taking a kind of long way back to my house, which was just fine by me. “It's a fun place to hang out. You see that club over there?”

“Oh yeah.” I nodded. He was pointing at Turquoise, this dance club that was really hot a little over a year ago before it got kind of lame and touristy. I'd been there a lot in junior high when my brother was on the VIP list. My favorite part was an area toward the back, behind the artificial waterfall, where you could sit and watch people dancing through the constantly spilling water. I'd mostly hung out there, drinking Shirley Temples and talking with Jonathan about stupid stuff while everyone else bumped and ground around like crazy animals. At the end of one evening, this one girl had gotten up on the bar and started stripping and dancing around, but they were afraid to pull her down because she was wearing these really insanely tall stiletto heels, so most of the guys just hooted and took pictures of her with their cell phones. And then eventually they formed a net with their hands and she jumped and they all caught her.

“Yeah, my sister's boyfriend's best friend works behind the bar,” he said shyly. “One time I went there and hung out with them. It's a cool scene. It was kind of empty that night—quiet, you know, but really chill. Maybe I could get us in there again, if you wanted to see it. But we'd probably have to sneak in through the back.”

“Cool,” I said, looking down at my shoes. I felt kind of bad, like I should tell him I'd already been there a million times, but I felt like that might make him embarrassed.

We walked on toward my house, and I started thinking that Bennett had planned to take me the long way on purpose, because he kept telling me stories about every little place we passed.

“Hey, check it out,” he said when we walked past a comic book shop. “I saw Zen Wemble here one time—do you know who that guy is? He created this character named Boulderman for Marvel. I heard they're making it into a movie with Josh Hartnett. Anyway, Wemble was doing a signing and I even got to talk to him for a couple minutes. He was really down-to-earth, really friendly.”

“That's so cool,” I said. “Do you like comic books a lot?”

“Sure.
X-Men
,
Batman
, all that stuff.” Bennett
gazed longingly into the window of the shop as we passed. A bunch of little action figures were set up on display in a scale model of Gotham. “But, you know, I read regular books too. It's not like I'm one of those creepy comic book guys who has a life-size model of the Blonde Phantom.”

“You mean you don't have a safe full of vintage comics still in their original sleeves?” I joked. “Or Spider-Man pajamas?”

Bennett didn't meet my eyes. “No, of course not.”

And it was weird, because with every story he told me about how interesting his life was, the more normal and kind of sweet he seemed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard a guy brag about seeing a celebrity or not getting carded, because all the guys I knew either
were
celebrities or hung around with them enough to be on the VIP list. But most of those guys were annoying flirts who had better relationships with the salespeople at Barneys than with their girlfriends. And then I looked up and found we were already in front of my house.

“Well, I guess I better get going,” I said, starting up the steps.

“Sure,” said Bennett. “I guess I'll see you.”

“Okay.” I took out my keys and started to unlock the door. But then Bennett came a little closer, so he
was standing right behind me. I turned back around and felt myself starting to blush. My heart felt like it might explode. Was he going to kiss me?

I looked into Bennett's eyes. They were gray and really pretty, sort of like stones that have gotten worn down by the waves on a beach. He had a bunch of freckles on his nose.

“I guess I'll see you at school tomorrow,” he said.

“Okay.” We stood there for a long moment, not even an arm's length away from each other. Bennett ran his hand through his hair a few times. Finally, I felt really awkward and turned to go in the door. But right then he moved forward. His mouth bumped into my ear, and I hit him in the chest with my shoulder.