Remembering Raquel (2 page)

Lest anyone call me quick, the third girl I asked was Joyce Lin. Even though we were in the hallway, between classes, she stopped and pulled out a notebook and pen.

"P," she spelled out loud, "R, O, I, A. Right?"

"Yeah..." Surely it didn't bode well that she had to write down the name of her date. On the other hand, she hadn't needed to verify my name, just the spelling.

She was counting—the days till the dance? I wondered. But when I leaned in to look at her notebook, there wasn't a calendar, but a list.

"Seven," she told me.

"Seven what?"

"You're boy number seven to invite me to the dance—chronologically. But if I rated by preference, you're much higher, so there is a chance. If something should happen to..."—she studied the page—"four of these other boys, I'll be happy to go with you." She snapped the notebook shut and left me to figure out for myself if I should be depressed for getting scorned, or relieved that there were two boys lower on her list than me.

Which was better shape than Erin McCall would leave me in. Even though Erin had seen my humiliation at Zoe Kanisky's hands, she was the fourth girl I invited to the dance because she's almost as beautiful as Zoe, but not quite as mean. Or so I thought. Erin called me an ugly toad. "Like I would want a formal picture taken with you," she said.

Which I extrapolated to mean "No, thank you.

That night I must have been kind of mopey, because my mother kept after me.

"I'm fine," I told her all through dinner.

Later, when I was doing my chem homework on the couch in front of the TV, she came and sat next to me. "What about that dance?" she asked. Geez, a dance is just the kind of thing a mother gloms on to—while setting the recorder for a show that airs while I'm away just slips right through her mental grasp. "You going?" she asked.

"Nah," I said.

"Don't tell me you haven't asked that girl yet—what's her name? Suzy?"

"Nobody's named Suzy anymore," I told her.

But she couldn't be deflected that easily. My mother's the kind of person who likes to solve problems.
Facilitate
is the word she uses. If I said I'd changed my mind about asking Stacy, Mom might well have called Stacy herself to try to facilitate a date with her.

"Stacy's real popular," I said. "She's going with someone else.
All
the popular girls are already going with someone else." Because I was feeling sorry for myself, I added, "I'm not good-looking enough for the popular girls to bother with."

"You are very good-looking," my mother insisted.

"For a toad," I muttered.

My mother kissed the top of my head. She said, "You are a handsome boy who will grow up to be a handsome man."

She's my mother. It's her job to think that.

"Well...," my mother started, in what I recognized as her about-to-facilitate tone.

"What?"

"Why don't you call that girl who helped you with math last June?"

"Raquel?"
I asked.

Raquel had tutored me for the final two weeks of school, after our teacher had pointed out that I needed to get an 87 on my final exam. Otherwise I'd flunk math and have to take it over in summer—and I wouldn't be allowed to graduate with the rest of my eighth-grade class.

"She was nice," Mom said. "I remember how the two of you would get to laughing. But at the same time, she helped you grasp those math concepts."

"Yeah, but, Mom—
Raquel?
"

"I'm just saying," Mom said, standing up to head back to her reading chair, "someone who can make you laugh might be a better choice for a date than someone who calls you a toad."

Ned and Paul would mock me something terrible. They'd point out that Raquel was about as big as all the other girls I'd asked, rolled into one.

Which she wasn't. Not exactly.

And that's how my
friends
would react.

Still, I thought of how Raquel had come over every evening for two whole weeks. Made math fun. And understandable. The morning of the exam, she gave me a little white feather and told me that as long as I held on to it, I would ace the test; and that—in a pinch—I could also use the feather to make me fly.

I'd actually walked into the test grinning. The only bad thing was Paul had asked me why. When I'd tried to explain, he'd gone "Huh?" So I'd had to spell it out: "You know, like Timothy Mouse giving Dumbo the feather for his self-confidence." And Paul had said, "Yeah? You've got the big ears for it, but which one of you really looks most like Dumbo?"

But, feather or tutoring, I'd gotten an 89 and passed the test and graduated with all my friends.

I still have that feather—somewhere.

I thought of Erin rejecting me because I wouldn't look good enough in the photographs.

"Maybe," I told Mom.

That was last week. And I was, seriously, thinking of inviting Raquel to the spring formal.

Welcome, traveler to Gylindrielle's World.

Things I like:

• Sword of Mawrth (Of course—Sword of Mawrth is part of my world as Gylindrielle. But Gylindrielle's World is kinder gentler greener; and happier than the Sword of Mawrth world. No running amuck with swords or barbed weapons, or even barbed tongues allowed. No denizens of Hades welcome. In Gylindrielle's World, all friends are true, and all food is nonfattening. Dragonflies are intelligent and friendly, birds don't poop, corners are not sharp, Christmas is never disappointing, and root beer is free.)

Hmm, I'm having trouble thinking of anything else I like. I'll have to come back to this. Meanwhile, let's move on to:

Things I hate:

• mean people

• homework

• homework assigned by mean teachers

• hospitals

• hospital workers who are mean

• snack food that tries to pretend it's not that bad for you by labeling for impossibly small servings—like: 3 potato chips. Yeah right.

• weather that's too cold (meaning below 68 degrees)

• weather that's too hot (meaning above 72 degrees)

• hairdressers that don't listen to what you want—for example, Julie at the Hair Emporium: WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

• mosquitoes that whine in your ear at night. I mean, if you're going to suck my blood, go ahead and do it. When I'm in bed, I'm too tired to try to find you anyway. But must you gloat and keep me awake?

• oh yeah—and did I mention MEAN PEOPLE?

So, welcome to my world. Feel free to look at my drawings. (Each one is labeled as to medium, and if there's a story behind it.) Feel free to comment, but only if you have nice things to say. Am I telling you that I'm the kind of person who only wants to hear good things about herself? Well,
duh
! I'm guessing you are, too—but maybe you're just too shy to admit it.

A special welcome to everyone from the Sword of Mawrth boards. I am ALWAYS ready to talk about the game.

Meanwhile, if you've got no life of your own and you've got time to kill, go ahead and read my ramblings.

POSTED 3 DAYS AGO:

TUESDAY/08:03PMEDT

Our school is having a big dance next week. I don't know why I got it into my head that it might be fun to go. I mean, it's not like I can dance, or like I want to spend even MORE time with my classmates than I am legally mandated to by New York State, or like I'm into the music the rest of the people my age listen to and talk about, or like I want to hear ANY music at a volume that has been scientifically verified to liquefy a human brain so that you can't carry on an intelligent conversation but are reduced to that horror-of-all-horrors: SMALL TALK.

• "Lively music, huh?"

• "Good snacks, huh?"

• "I like what you did with your hair No, I said
hair.
HAIR.
HAIR.
Never mind."

So why did I want to subject myself to that? Maybe I have a brain tumor that has skewed my ability to reason. But something got me thinking that it might be fun, and something got me thinking that maybe someone would ask me to go, and then something got me thinking that it's only a week off. Maybe—can it be possible?—maybe NO ONE will invite me after all, and if I'm to go, I'll have to go unescorted. Solo. By myself. Wallflower Dead meat. Women and small children, avert your eyes from the sight. But at least then I won't have to worry about the dreaded SMALLTALK. Because in all likelihood NO ONE will talk to me anyway I can keep those deep thoughts about the music and the food and anybody's hair to myself.

I have come to a conclusion—and at the same time I have a newly formulated GOAL in LIFE. Next time Mrs. Bellanca assigns one of those essays she's so enamored of, I can submit this:

***

WHAT I SEE FOR MY FUTURE

by Raquel Falcone

I will never have a boyfriend, so I will no longer obsess. Instead, I will take in stray cats for companionship. I will become the prototypical CAT LADY every neighborhood has (or should have). I will specialize in ugly or deformed cats, but—since they have had a hard enough life as it is—I will not have them neutered or spayed. (The little critters need to have some fun.) This, of course, will result in more cats, which is fine because my short-term goal is to make myself a nuisance to my neighbors with offending smells, noise, and clutter Eventually I will die, but since I have no friends to care about me, no one will notice, and my cats will feed upon my body. Which brings me to my long-term goal: contributing to what the Walt Disney Studios Philosophy Department has so eloquently termed The Circle of Life.

T
HE
E
ND

Feel free to comment.

©
current mood:
cranky, with dramatic overtones of self-pity

Responses to this thread:

TUESDAY/08:27 PMEDT

COMET GIRL:
Comment?
Comment?
Several fallacies there, Raquel, including that—if you will recall—I taught you how to dance when we were in 4th grade. Don't blame me if you can't remember how.

Fallacy # 2 is that you have no friends to care about you. Excuse me? What is this friendship bracelet with your name on it that I have dangling from my wrist? Just because you've forgotten that I taught you to dance is no reason to deduce that I am no longer your friend.

Fallacy # 3 is that your choices for this dance are:

• get invited

• go alone

• don't go

We are living in the 21st century.
You
can invite someone, you know.

Fallacy # 4 is that cats will turn on a master who has died and eat her I have read on this matter It's all a matter of timing.
Dogs
will eat a dead master—usually several days after the demise, when they have reached the point of starvation, usually after tearing up the house, looking for any other food and/or a way out.
Cats,
on the other hand, do not wait for a master to die, but will try to eat anyone who has stopped moving. This is why you should never let a cat sleep with you on your bed. Unless you're a restless sleeper, the cat is likely to mistake you for dinner.