The Dating Game (3 page)

“Ew,” Lina said. “That’s weird.”

“And then Jen and her friend were talking about how weird boys look when they’re naked,” Mads said. “All lumpy. I mean, how many naked boys have you seen? They made it sound like naked boys are selling candy door-to-door.”

“It’s just talk,” Holly said. “Everybody acts as if they know what they’re talking about, but they really don’t.”

“It sure sounds like they know what they’re talking about,” Mads said. “I couldn’t have made that stuff up.”

“Did they know you were there?” Lina asked.

“Not at first,” Mads said. “But then they heard me and stopped talking. And when they saw me they asked me where we found that love quiz, because they wanted to try it. I was surprised they knew who I was.”

“Lots of people asked me about the quiz, too,” Lina said. “I mean, when they weren’t gossiping about—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Holly said. “I must have been called ‘the Boobmeister’ about a hundred times today.”

Which sent a hundredth pang of guilt through Mads. “I’m so sorry about the whole Rebecca thing,” she said.

They looked up to see Rebecca Hulse making her way toward them. Holly steeled herself for more fakey-fakey nice-nice.

“Here she comes,” Mads whispered.

Rebecca flipped a long hank of blond hair over her shoulder and leaned her hands on their table. Her white shirt was unbuttoned just enough to show a peek of a pink lace bra underneath. Mads made a mental note to buy a button-down shirt and a pink lace bra as soon as possible.

“Holly, I hope you’re okay,” Rebecca said. “I’m really sorry. I wanted to say it again—I’m so sorry about this whole thing. I swear I never meant for that quiz to get around the way it did.”

She glanced back meaningfully at Autumn, who sat near the fireplace facing the other way.

“It’s no big deal, Rebecca,” Holly said. “It’s given me a chance to work on my snappy comebacks. I was getting rusty.”

“Just as long as you don’t hate me,” Rebecca said.

“I don’t hate you,” Holly said.
I just don’t like you that much
, she added to herself.

“Thank god,” Rebecca said. “Because I really like you, all you guys, and I don’t want anything to get in the way of us being friends.” She started to walk away, but stopped to add, “By the way, nice work bagging Nick Henin. Okay, see you later.”

They watched her walk away and sit down with Autumn. Mads tried to read the label on her jeans.

“Okay, Lina,” Holly said. “You’re Rebecca’s teammate. You know her best. Sincere or insincere?”

Lina knew a side of Rebecca the other girls never saw. They were both good hockey players, and they worked well together on the field. Rebecca could be snotty, but that wasn’t the way Lina knew her. “I think sincere,” Lina said. “Why would she want to hurt you?”

Mads squinted at Rebecca and Autumn huddled across the room. Mads didn’t necessarily
like
Rebecca. She envied her. “Hmmm, I vote insincere. You know what? I bet she’s jealous! She’s hot for Nick! That must be it.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lina said. “That rumor didn’t come out until after Autumn posted the quiz on her blog.”

“Oh, right. Never mind.” Mads paused, opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, and shut it again.

“Mads, do you want to share?” Holly asked.

“When did you sleep with Nick Henin?” Mads asked. “And why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t—” Holly began.

“It was at Ingrid’s Christmas party, right?” Lina said. “You disappeared for almost an hour.”

“Yeah,” Mads said. “I always wondered what happened to you that night, and you never really explained it. But you must have been fooling around with Nick!”

Oh yes, Ingrid’s Christmas party. Holly remembered it well. The thing is, she didn’t recall Nick being there. And she hadn’t realized she’d been gone for so long. All she was doing was sitting in Ingrid’s mother’s bathroom reading an article about Gwyneth Paltrow in
Vanity Fair
.

“I can’t believe how cool you are,” Mads said. “You fool around with a cute senior like Nick and don’t even say anything?”

“No, see, the thing is—”

“Look at Rebecca and Autumn,” Mads interrupted.

“See the way they’re talking? It’s driving them crazy!”

“Can I please finish a sentence? I didn’t sleep with Nick Henin,” Holly said.

“You didn’t?” Mads was confused. How could so many rumors be wrong? “So you just made out a little?”

“I’ve hardly spoken to him,” Holly said. “We didn’t even kiss. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip.”

“Huh.” Mads still couldn’t believe it. When it came to the truth, she generally preferred the most exciting version, and this wasn’t it.

“Then why is everybody saying that you did?” Lina asked.

“God only knows,” Holly said. “People like to make up stories about me for some reason.”

“I think you should take it as a compliment,” Lina said. “It’s like a talent.”

“I do,” Holly said. “What choice do I have?” She was getting impatient. All this talk bothered her more than she wanted anyone to know. “Can we change the subject now? Did any fabulous IHD ideas dropped out of the sky and land in your breakfast cereal this morning?”

The table went silent. After a few minutes Mads began to think out loud. Sometimes this got her into trouble, but sometimes, she found, it was the only way to solve a problem.

“Let’s say Nick started this rumor about you,” she said. “Why would he do it? Because boys are obsessed with sex! They can’t help themselves. Sex talk burbles out of them against their will.”

“It does?” Lina said.

“How else do you explain it?” Mads said. “They say so many stupid things that don’t make sense. And girls are nice and calm and rational.”

“Sure they are,” Holly said. “What’s your point?”

“Everybody knows boys are more into sex than girls,” Mads said. “Our IHD project will prove it. We can set up our own blog, like Autumn’s, just for this project. We’ll take a poll of the students. We’ll ask all kinds of questions, how experienced they are, what they like to do on dates, whatever we want to know. And we’ll use that information to prove that boys have sex on the brain more than girls.”

“We can make it like a quiz,” Lina said. “Like that love aura quiz we filled out, only better.”

“But what would the subject of the quiz be?” Holly asked.

“‘Are You Obsessed with Sex?’” Mads said.

“And then what?” Holly said. “People will just answer Yes or No? That’s not much of a project.”

“We can expand it,” Mads said. “Make it a matchmaking quiz. That way we’ll get lots of responses, and they’ll be more honest.”

“But then everyone will expect us to match them up with people,” Lina said.

“So we will!” Mads said. “It will be fun. And we can save the best boys for ourselves!”

“You’re an evil genius, Mads,” Holly said. “We’ll analyze the quiz answers and prove our hypothesis. Then we can write it all up in fakey scientific language so Dan will think it’s some kind of earth-shaking discovery.”

“Maybe we
will
make a discovery,” Lina said. “Maybe we’ll really learn something about the kids we go to school with.”

“Sure,” Holly said. “And maybe ‘Nuclear Autumn’ will win the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

But secretly, Holly hoped Lina was right. What was really going on in people’s minds? The minute she hit puberty—and got the bod—everyone’s attitude toward her changed. Why? Did they know something she didn’t? Did the way her body looked really make her different from everybody else?

Holly was skeptical. But if this project could answer those questions, it really would be a gift from above.

3

Sex on the Brain

To:      linaonme

From: Your daily horoscope

HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: Stop obsessing, Cancer! No, your head isn’t shaped funny, your feet aren’t gigantic, and your teeth are plenty white. Yes, something is wrong with you. But not that.

Class: Interpersonal Human Development

Teacher: Dan Shulman

Date: Friday, January 21

Proposal for “The Dating Game: Sexual Attitudes Among RSAGE Students in Carlton Bay, California”

by Holly Anderson, Madison Markowitz, and Lina Ozu

Sex on the brain: Who’s more obsessed, boys or girls?

Our hypothesis: Boys think about sex more than girls. To prove it, we will create a special Web log with restricted access—open only to RSAGE students—containing a questionnaire entitled “The Dating Game.” Students will answer questions about their sexual attitudes and experiences. To encourage participation, we will set up the Web site as a matchmaking service and actually match people up with dates. We hope these dates will provide still more data to support our hypothesis
.

After eight weeks we will analyze the data and draw conclusions. Are boys more sex-crazed than girls? Our final paper will answer this question and silence the debate once and for all. p.s. Oh, Dan, you studmuffin, I want to have your babies!

“Mads!” Lina complained when she read the last line of the proposal Mads had typed up. “Take that out.”

“I figured you’d chicken out, so I printed out another copy with no ‘p.s.’” She gave Lina the clean copy. “Coward.”

“Thank you.” Dan was holding office hours that morning to meet with the students about their projects, and Lina had volunteered to present the proposal to him herself.

Dan didn’t have an office of his own, so he had to use the
Inchworm
office.
Inchworm
, a student monthly filled with poems and drawings, was one of two literary magazines at Rosewood. The other was the
Rosewood Journal
, which focused on stories, essays, and photography. Lina liked to write, especially poetry, and sometimes thought of joining one of the lit mags. Dan was the faculty advisor for
Inchworm
, and Ramona Fernandez was executive editor. Lina knew that was no accident.

Lina sat across the desk from Dan while he read the proposal. She jiggled her right knee nervously. She had never been alone in a room with him before, with the door closed and everything.

Dan was a couple of years out of college, not so much older than Lina really, she thought. He was small and fine-boned, which she found charming, with short brown hair and round blue eyes. Every day he wore vintage suits with narrow lapels and skinny ties. Mads said he looked like Linus from
Peanuts
in a grandpa suit, but Lina liked his style, and she wasn’t the only one. Lately Ramona had replaced her usual giant silver cross with a skinny red tie. Talk about super-suck-up. It was supposed to be a symbol of her love for Dan or something. Ramona’s friends started doing it, too, but Lina suspected they were just following Ramona. It was turning into a cult thing. The Dan Shulman Cult.

“It’s certainly ambitious, Lina,” Dan said. “I’ll be curious to see if you can really prove your hypothesis.”

She strained to think of something cute to say. Why hadn’t she planned for this the night before?

“Hey. Speaking of boys versus girls, want to hear a joke?” Dan asked. “I promise it’s one hundred percent stupid.”

“Sure. I love stupid jokes.”

“Okay. An alien walks into a shop and says, ‘I’m from Mars and I want to buy a brain for research.’ The shop owner shows him three brains. ‘This one’s a monkey brain,’ the shop owner says. ‘It costs twenty dollars.’ He holds up the second brain and says, ’This is a human female brain, one hundred dollars.’ Then he holds up the third brain and says, ‘This is a human male brain, five hundred dollars.’

“‘Five hundred dollars! Why so expensive?’ the alien asks.

“‘Well,’ the shop owner says, ‘it’s hardly been used!’”

Lina laughed. “Good one,” she said. It wasn’t funny but it that made it even cuter.

“I figured I can get away with a self-deprecating joke about my own gender,” Dan said.

She wished she could sit there with him all day, casually chatting as if they were comfortable together.

“All right, Lina. Go ahead and post your questionnaire and we’ll see what happens! Good luck!”

He smiled at her while she sat frozen in her seat for a second. She knew this was her cue to leave, but her body was a little late in catching on.

“See you in class,” Dan added.

Finally her legs straightened and held her weight. “Right. Thanks, Dan.”

Holly and Mads were waiting for her in the library. “He likes it,” Lina told them. “He says go ahead.”

“Great!” Holly said. “I’ll post the questionnaire right now.”

The three of them had spent several afternoons that week perfecting their questions. Holly opened an account on a Web log site and set up a blog called “The Dating Game.” She chose a user name, “hollinmad,” and a password for all three girls to use when they logged on.

Holly scanned the quiz onto their blog. A prompt appeared: “Choose a security designation: 1. User Only. 2. Friends Only. 3. Open to All.”

“Choose ‘Friends only,’” Lina said. “So only people we list as friends can access the site.”

“To keep out the hackers,” Holly said. “And kids from other schools.”

“And parents,” Mads added.

“Every entry we make on the blog has its own security setting,” Holly said. “So we get to decide which information to keep private and which to share with everybody else.”

They pasted in the email addresses of all the students in the school and grouped them as “friends.” To log on, the students would have to use their school email addresses.

“So only RSAGE students can read the quiz and answer the questions,” Lina said.

“But only we can see their answers,” Holly said. “Unless we want to make them public. Then all we have to do is change the security setting.”

“I like the part where it says we have 816 ‘friends,’” Mads said.

Lina took over the keyboard and posted an announcement on the school Web site.

Play the Dating Game! Want to meet a cute guy or girl? Want to answer some fun quizzes? Want to help us with our IHD project? It’s easy! Log onto the Dating Game Web log and answer our questionnaire! You must use your RSAGE e-mail address when you log on. Give your name, your screen name, or be anonymous, it’s up to you. We’ll help you find the love you’re looking for. And if you’re not in the market for a date, fill out the questionnaire anyway. It’s for a good cause— helping us get an A in IHD! [Note to juniors and seniors: Come on, you were in tenth grade once. You took IHD. Have a heart and help us out! Note to sophomores: We’re all in this together! Note to freshman: This will be you next year!]