Parallel Parking (11 page)

Scoring: Add up your points, then read the answer that applies to you below.

1
a-1, b-1, c-1, d-0, e-5

2
a-3, b-2, c-0, d-4, e-5

3
a-5, b-2, c-4, d-4, e-5

4
a-1, b-1, c-1, d-0, e-5

5
a-0, b-4, c-4, d-4, e-5

6
a-0, b-4, c-4, d-4, e-5

0–3 points: You know your driving rules pretty well. The real test should be a breeze.

4–15 points: You’re a little shaky on your facts. Better brush up on them.

15–29 points: You have no common sense. You’re going to be a menace on the road!

30 points: You’re completely out of it. I hope you like your skateboard, because you’re going to be riding it around town
for a long time.

To:     linaonme

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: If you really want to help your friends, try secluding yourself in a cave for the rest
of the year.

A
re you nervous?” Lina asked.

“No,”
Ramona said. “Should I be?”

Her voice was pitched a few notes higher than usual, Lina noticed. Ramona would never admit it, but she was nervous.

So was Lina. It was Saturday evening and Ramona was about to leave for her meeting with Rex the Eleventh Grade Boy. Lina had
called to see how Ramona was feeling
about it. She felt responsible. She was the matchmaker. The happiness of Rex and Ramona was in her hands.

Ramona didn’t know that Lina had already met Rex. She didn’t know that Rex was a super-straight preppy. Lina hoped that Rex
would charm Ramona into seeing past their differences and melt Ramona’s cold heart.

“What are you going to wear?” Lina asked.

“What do you mean?” Ramona said. “What I always wear, plus a few extra rings.”

“How can you possibly fit more rings on your hands?” Lina asked.

“Left thumb. Toes,” Ramona said. “Nose, ears, lip. Lots of places.”

“Okay,” Lina said. “Well, good luck. Have fun. Hope you like him. And be nice to him, okay?”

“I can’t make any promises,” Ramona said.

Lina hung up. She was planning to go out with Walker later, and she had instructed Ramona to call her on her cell as soon
as the date was over. As it turned out, Lina heard from Ramona within half an hour.

“Are you out with Walker yet?” Ramona asked.

“No, I’m still home,” Lina said. “I haven’t even started dressing yet. Where are you calling from?”

“Home.”

“Home? What happened? Didn’t he show up?”

“He showed up, all right.”

“And?”

“I took one look at him and wanted to turn around and walk out,” Ramona said. “I hated him on sight.”

“Oh, Ramona.”

“But you would have been proud of me. I didn’t walk out. I gave him a chance, just like you told me to. I sat down, introduced
myself. He’s ultra-preppy, Lina. My worst nightmare.”

“So? Just because he’s preppy, does that mean he’s impossible to like?”

“Yes.”

“Then what happened?”

“He said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s
not
nice to meet
you.’”

“Ramona. You call that giving him a chance?”

“He gave me a bunch of flowers—
pink
roses, which I totally hate. I got up, said, ‘I’m out of here,’ and walked out.”

“You just left him there?”

“What choice did I have?”

Lina rubbed her face in frustration. “You had lots of other choices. One of the best might have been to politely say thank
you and ask if he wanted to get something to eat.”

“That’s not something I’d say. I’ve got to be true to myself, Lina.”

“So you’re not interested in him at all?”

“Lina, he was wearing khaki pants with a crease in them,” Ramona said. “And a pink shirt—what’s with this guy and pink? And
those horrible whales on his belt! I could barely look at him. He’s friends with all those country club people, those Kips
and Chips and girls named Sterling. He’s a monster!”

“But he likes you!”

“So? What do I care? Does that make me somehow obligated to like him back?”

“No,” Lina said. “But you might try getting past the superficial to see what kind of person he is inside.”

“I can see what kind of person he is, very clearly. A person who wears whale belts. That’s all I need to know.”

Lina sighed. Why did Rex’s outside have to be so different from his inside? If Ramona would just talk to him for ten minutes,
she’d see that they were soul mates.

“Why did you go?” Lina asked. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know,” Ramona said. “An adventure?”

“You’d like to have a boyfriend,” Lina said. “Or at least a date to the Hap. Admit it.”

“No. I won’t admit it.”

“But it’s true. Right?”

“I’ve got to go.”

A-ha
. “See you at school Monday,” Lina said.

“Yeah, okay. If I make it in. Five minutes in the presence of a super-prep is enough to make me sick.”

Lina hung up. Ramona’s stubbornness annoyed her. But Lina had known this would be a challenge when she took it on.

She started dressing. She and Walker were planning to hang out at his house and babysit his little brothers. It wasn’t exactly
a dress-up occasion, but she didn’t want to wear what she had on, which was sweats with a hole in the knee and a baggy T-shirt.

She glanced at her computer. She had a new e-mail.

Lina—Have you talked to Ramona? She met me at the Marina, but then she walked off. She hardly talked to me! What did I do
wrong? Did she say anything? Please help me. Rex

If Ramona wanted a boyfriend, she’d have to be more open-minded. It wouldn’t be easy to find another boy who liked her as
much as Rex did.

Rex—Don’t give up yet. Keep at her. Get in her face. Sometimes perseverance works. Maybe she’ll change her mind. Lina

It was a lame strategy, barely a strategy at all. But for the moment Lina couldn’t come up with anything better.

“Ramona, this is for you.” Lina and Ramona were studying in the library when Rex walked up and gave Ramona a small brown box
wrapped in a pink bow. Lina vowed to say something to him about losing all the pink.

“What is it?” Ramona asked, as if she expected the answer to be “dog doo.”

“Chocolates,” Rex said. “
Dark
chocolates.”

Ramona’s eyes flashed happily for a split second.
That’s the way to do it, Rex
, Lina thought.

Ramona opened the box and took out a chocolate. She bit into it, then spit it out.

“Ugh, there’s cherries inside them,” she said. “I hate chocolate-covered cherries.” She dumped the box onto the table and
buried her head in her book. “You can have them, Lina.”

“Ramona!” Lina nudged her with her elbow. “You’re so rude.”

“What?” Ramona said. She looked up. “Oh. Thanks a ton, Rex. You want to make me fail my geometry quiz?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were studying for a test,” Rex said.

“Well, I am, so go away.”

Rex walked away. Lina took a chocolate-covered cherry.

“Why are you so mean to him?” she asked. “He’s only trying to be nice.”

“He’s been bothering me all day,” Ramona said. “After lunch I found a note on my locker. Some stupid love poem. He didn’t
even write it himself. He copied it out of a Shakespeare book. From
Romeo and Juliet
, my least favorite play. So trite. Except for the poison scene at the end—that’s good. If he’d picked one of the tragedies,
especially a slaughterfest like
Hamlet
, I would have been a little more impressed.”

“Let me see the note,” Lina said.

“I threw it out,” Ramona said. “If I want to read Shakespeare, I’ve got the Complete Works at home.”

“He must like you for a reason,” Lina said. “Maybe underneath his clothes he’s got a dark soul.”

“Soul schmoul. His haircut makes me want to vomit,” Ramona said. She put down her geometry book and picked up a music magazine
that was lying on the table. “See what he did to me? Now I’m all distracted and can’t study.” She flipped through the magazine,
stopping at a photo spread of a band called Deathzilla, her favorite.

“Oh, man, look at him.” She pointed to Donald
Death, the lead singer. His black hair was plastered into a sharp, shiny faux-hawk that made his head look pointy. His face
was like a doll’s, eggshell white with two red circles rouged onto his cheeks. His eyes were heavily lined and a red sneer
was painted onto his mouth. Most striking were the two thick black rectangles tattooed over his eyes where his eyebrows should
have been. He was wearing an electric blue latex jumpsuit.

Lina couldn’t see the appeal. She didn’t like his dirge-y, scream-o music, either. But Donald Death was clearly Ramona’s type.

“He changed his eyebrows,” Ramona said. “They used to be all pointy.” She tore the page out of the magazine.

“That’s the library’s copy,” Lina said. “What if somebody else wants to read that magazine?”

“Shove it, Glinda,” Ramona snapped. “This is going into my Love Book.”

Lina snatched the page away from her. “No, it isn’t,” she said.

Ramona looked surprised. “Give me that!”

“No. I’m taping it back into the magazine,” Lina said.

The bell rang for the next period. Ramona rolled her eyes and gathered up her books. “I’ll just come back later and take it
again,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Lina said. It didn’t matter, because the
picture wouldn’t be there. Lina had more important plans for it.

“Can I look in the mirror now?”

Lina surveyed her handiwork. Rex stood before her dressed in black jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket, with
a couple of studded leather bracelets around one wrist. Lina had dragged him downtown to Rutgers Street after school on Friday
for a makeover. He actually owned the black clothes; he’d just never worn them all at once before. The boots were new—she’d
ordered him to buy them.

Now they stood together in the local Sephora, where makeup samples were free and plentiful. Rex wouldn’t go for the cakey
white base, but he let her line his eyes and darken his blond eyebrows. Still, something was missing. She checked the picture
of Donald Death, which she’d brought along for reference.

“Lina? Can I look?” Rex asked. She hadn’t allowed him near a mirror for fear that he would stop her before she was finished.

“Not yet,” she said. She dug a jar of her own hair putty out of her bag and got to work on his
Leave It to Beaver
haircut, the one Ramona found so vomitous. She spiked it out as best as she could.

“There,” she said. He was no Donald Death—and really, what sane person would want to be? But the old preppy Rex was gone,
buried under a ton of hair goo.

“Can I see now?” Rex asked.

“Um, better not.” Lina took him by the arm and pulled him out of the makeup store before he passed another mirror. She didn’t
want him to freak out.

Lina had arranged to meet Ramona at Ruby’s, a café down the street. She didn’t plan on showing up, however. Goth Rex would
show up instead.

“Do you really think this will work?” Rex said. “It seems kind of silly.”

Deep down, she had serious doubts. She said a silent prayer of thanks for Walker—laid-back, easygoing, adorable Walker. No
makeover required.

“It’s a long shot,” Lina said. “But Ramona really likes Goth-y punk guys.”

Lina peeked through the plate glass window of Ruby’s. Ramona sat alone at a table with a cup of tea.

“There she is,” Lina said. “Go!”

She opened the door, gave Rex a shove, and ducked away from the window. She counted to three, then peeked.

Rex stood at Ramona’s table. Ramona looked up. She seemed confused at first, as if she didn’t recognize him.
Good, good
, Lina thought.

Then Ramona started laughing. Not a good kind of laugh. Head thrown back, mouth wide open, chains jiggling. Rex looked pained.
Ramona said something and shook her head. She was still laughing when Rex walked out onto the sidewalk.

“She said I can’t pull the Goth thing off,” he said. “She called me a poseur.”

He stared at his reflection in the plate glass. He tried to rub off the eyeliner. “I look like an idiot.”

Lina felt terrible. “Rex, did you ever think that maybe Ramona’s not the girl for you?”

“She
is
,” Rex insisted. “She just doesn’t know it yet. You’re not giving up already?”

“Well…” Lina said. The thought had occurred to her.

“Don’t—please,” Rex said. “She’d like me if she got to know me—I know she would.”

Lina wasn’t so sure.

“You said yourself that sometimes perseverance works,” Rex said.

“I know, but—”

“Just help me a little longer,” Rex said. “She respects you.”

This made Lina want to laugh. Ramona respected
her?

“You’re crazy. But all right, Rex. I’ll think of something else.”

To:     hollygolitely

From: your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CAPRICORN: Today’s events will be a good test of your patience, tolerance, and ability to throw
a left hook.

A
ll right,” Holly said as she settled into her seat at the Carlton Bay Twin. “Bring on the squabbling sisters and their easily
solved man problems!”

“Yeah!” Sean rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Holly looked at him, surprised. “I had no idea you were such a big fan of romantic comedy,” she said.

“I am when it features Cameron Diaz in a see-through nightie.”

Friday night, Date Number Two with Sean. The classic movie date. Holly punched him in the arm.

“What?” he protested. “I saw it in the Coming Attractions!”

“I thought it was suspicious when you agreed to see this movie so quickly,” Holly said. The snowboarding movie was sold out.