Pride & Princesses (32 page)

  
Things were getting complicated.

  
I pulled my hand away. Ethan may be playing most of my solos but I had no idea he was this much of a cheater. Even if he had given me vital information about Mark I was still seething over when and how I might use it. He hardly made Jet and Mark seem like ‘ideal men,’ least of all himself, because he now seemed untrustworthy.

   
Mrs Robinson’s
guide would say,
some boys are strong in the wrong places and weak at the wrong times.
Why hadn’t Jet stood up for Mouche and why was Mark such a snob? What a hateful individual. I didn’t think, even if he was so rich or so handsome, I could suffer another minute in his company.

   
That night I was too smart to write about what happened at the movies in the shared Boy-Rating Guide. But I did jot it down in the original, hidden one. I would explain to Mouche before she read it, after I’d let the news about Mark’s duplicity sink in. In retrospect, I think this part of the story might have driven a wedge between me and Mouche before other events did. I hoped Josh didn’t notice how annoyed I was after I’d spoken to Ethan. Josh was kind of a nice date.

   
Oh, I forgot to tell you, he heard (via Mouche) that we liked a particular brand of perfume that his mother sold called
Junior Miss18
(it was faux French) and he presented me with a bottle of it as a welcome gift! I think Ethan thought it was funny because, although he offered to pay for the popcorn, he wasn’t really that chivalrous.

   
Later at rehearsal the next week he told Mouche (who told me she ‘hadn’t even kissed him’) that he ‘wasn’t a one woman man.’ I didn’t have to warn Mouche because she’d already gone off him with her eye on a bigger prize: winning the competition, and to do that, she’d have to date more people than Ethan Mandel.
 
She’d have to date Mark.

Chapter 19

A proposal

   
The next day, I woke up, plugged in my headphones and started on the one physical activity I tried to do a few times a week, alone, jogging. To clear my head, I ran the track along the path that led from my house to the Sunrise lakes.

   
The main lake divided our neighbourhood from the hidden homes of Jet and Mark and the Princesses who lived high on the hill overlooking the town of Sunrise itself. It was a Saturday and I was up early, preparing for my babysitting duties that afternoon. I still had half of Act Two to memorize and a paper to write for English on the traditional text of
Romeo and Juliet,
a prospect I wasn’t joyfully anticipating.
 

  
I’d woken up feeling extremely angry, although I realized anger was a wasted emotion and I knew I should share my feelings with Mouche but my anger seemed to go beyond all articulation. I was going faster and faster (breaking a sweat known only to me during dance classes) when I rounded a corner. As the music blared loudly in my ears I ran face first into Mark Knightly, almost knocking myself out. He seemed to scoop me up very swiftly in his arms.

    
‘Mark must have been very strong from all the swimming and riding and hunting...’ Mouche said avidly as I relayed the story to her much later.
 
‘I hear back in England they kill animals for sport!’

    
‘Not just in England,’ I said as I read Mouche’s brochures for her charity of the week, the local Animal Protection Society. She was considering talking her mom into taking home a rescue dog which I thought was a very good idea.

    
But I continued, ‘Mark sat me down under one of the many oak trees that lined the path of the gardens that led down to the lakes....’

   
When I came to, he was leaning over me intently and my soon to be enraged eyes stared straight into his remarkably blue, surprisingly honest-looking ones. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans, even though I thought the day had been hotter than usual for this time of year. Too hot in fact. I edged apart from him very quickly, dazed and irate.

   
‘Eww. Get off me,’ I said, when I collected my wits, even though he was only patting my shoulder as I was sitting hunched, against a tree.’

   
‘I’m sorry...we collided.’

    
Always saying sorry went against everything I knew about males.

   
‘I didn’t expect anyone to be...’

 
  
‘Here?’

   
‘Blocking my path,’ I replied.

   
‘Actually I came out here to look for you. I got your number from your cousin, Ella. Then I rang your home and asked your mother where you might be. I...wanted to speak to you...alone.’ My mind was in overdrive while I watched his perfect lips move. Mrs Robinson states,
‘...never be desperate to fling a man your number, let him do the work. If he wants you, he’ll find you. After all, men do traditionally like to hunt and gather...’

    
I snapped out of my reverie. I didn’t like where the conversation was heading.

   
‘I see you don’t have your entourage in tow?

   
‘What do you mean?

    
‘Your fan club, Teegan and Tory and whoever else...’

    
‘Are you...jealous?

    
‘No. I only went with you to Fall Fling because it was Mouche and Jet’s idea.’

    
‘Actually, it was just as much my idea.’

    
‘Oh please, you could have fooled me...’

    
I brushed the autumn leaves off my track pants and stood up.

    
‘Wait,’ he said (so manly).

    
‘I sort of want to finish my jog before my muscles go cold.’
Along with my heart
I wanted to add. Mark had a cute little dimple in his chin that I’m told from reading one of those ancient Chinese tomes on face reading, is a sign of great beauty. Face it, I was out of my league and who would want to be with a boy-man as much of an arrogant nightmare as this one.

   
‘I was...well, I never get the chance to talk to you in rehearsals and I was just wondering if I could introduce you to my sister, Petra, sometime. She’s a bit shy, and she goes to HSYL but no one speaks to her there because she’s the new girl. I’d like her to have some friends her own age, or a bit older because she only mixes with adults twice her age and I’m a bit worried about her. I think she would like you...you’re creative and interesting and...’

   
I was shocked and surprised.

  
‘You mean my manners aren’t too ‘shopgirl’, my connections to the social life of Sunrise High not too ‘common’?’

   
‘What? I didn’t mean, well, I said some things at the time that were honestly meant...’

   
I was fuming.

  
‘But that was before I knew you...before I knew better... I didn’t know how...lovely you...’

  
‘Oh, and as if your remarks at the Fall Fling weren’t enough, do you really think I’d forgive you for ruining the social happiness of my best friend
forever
Mouche Macintosh?’

   
‘...I don’t know what you mean. I know I was unforgivably rude to you at the dance but my sister had just come out of...this place where she was sent for ...well, I was worried about her and I know I behaved badly and....I...’

   
I couldn’t believe all the apologies that were rolling off his tongue. It was as if the
Mrs Jones Guide
was completely wrong about men never apologizing and my head was really more messed up with all our boy rating games than ever before. This was not supposed to happen. My mind should have been clearer than ever by now and I really needed some head space to make sense of Mark’s outburst.

   
I looked towards the lake mist and the water’s edge to clear my mind.
  

   
Mark seemed more confused than ever. Before he could say another word, I turned on my heel and ran back the way I’d arrived. I determined that Mouche should know the whole story. It was time to share all the information I had gathered.
 

    
I returned home and showered. I made some lunch – a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon from a packet where I had to check the use-by date. I texted Mouche, then I remembered she was doing her Saturday shift at the shelter. I suppose I should’ve joined her as it is, according to Mrs Robinson, ‘
very good indeed to help others.’
I fully intended to just as soon as I finished all my extra-curricular activities for the year (dating, essays and the play).
 

   
After lunch, I sat at my desk and wrote a first draft of my English paper. I wrote about the role of women in Shakespearean tragedy and reached the conclusion that Juliet was somehow a younger version of some even stronger females that Shakespeare wrote who were also played, originally, by male actors (young boys). I wondered why it was often men who wrote female characters and when I decided to add my
‘meeting in the park with Mark’
to the shared
Boy Rating Diary
I was very happy that the angry words infused in the pages were written by real girls, not just boys pretending to know what girls think.

    
Sentences and phrases like,
‘he’s a complete and utter moron’
and ‘
I don’t find him that good-looking anymore’
and ‘...
so conceited he
couldn’t be as clever as he thinks he is’
and ‘
his poor sister, fancy having to put up with a brother like that; a hyper-intense bore, a stuck-up
 
snob...’
I wrote the worst words I could think of under the heading ‘
Mark Knightly’
(we were up to page 88 by then) but let’s face it, those words were way harsh because I still didn’t really know him. But if hatred was just the inverse of love, then I hated him an awful lot.

    
I flicked through the combined
Boy Rating Diary
thus far, every section had a different girl’s name and then every boy, a different rating with comments etc.

     
For example:

    
Phoebe Harris:

    
After the first meeting, Teegan, Freya, Brooke and Tory were certainly getting noticed - almost as noticed as we were. Perhaps more. They were following our guide to the letter and it was only due to their extreme narcissism that they didn’t question the logic in say, part six, where we’d added, ‘always wear sexy, furry clothes and show a little skin - men love this,’ when it was so obvious that Mouche and I were doing the exact opposite and covering up in cool jeans and sweaters (admittedly with a little fur around the edges). We wore classic items that kept a little mystery.