The Forever Crush (3 page)

I was so lonely in my own thoughts about Forrest that, for a moment, I wished that Mom would have some instant knowledge of the whole situation. Then maybe she'd tell me what to do. Sometimes I got so lonely I told our cat, Donald Hall, about the whole thing. He wasn't a frisky, friendly cat, but I think he understood. More than Mom, at least. Within minutes of the Forrest revelation, she was chatting to me about everyday boring stuff, like what time I needed to wake up the next morning and how I should
please
,
please
,
please
stop using a new towel every time I took a shower.

“Really, Jem. Seven towels a week. Who are you? The Queen of England?”

Eight

A better friend would have just tossed the Fat or Not notebook into the nearest trash can and put an end to it. But instead, I handed it to Forrest when we were at our lockers. They were side by side, which gave me plenty of opportunities during the day to make eye contact, say something witty, or appear so irresistible that he would be overcome with emotion and ask me to be his REAL girlfriend. But these encounters were rarely satisfying. Typically, he said nothing at all. Or just hey.

I decided to give him the Fat or Not notebook because I thought it might make for a good topic of conversation—something that could have sparked more than just a hey. His back was turned so I watched him getting his books from his locker. I didn't want to get caught staring or startle him. I tried to look busy in my locker, but when he stood up I made my move.

“Forrest,” I said, “have you had this yet?”

“Had what?” Forrest asked.

“The”—I whispered—“Fat or Not book.”

“Oh, that. No.”

“Do you want it?”

“Um, no. Yes. I mean, I don't know.”

“Either you do or you don't. Which?”

“I don't know. I don't want to get in trouble or have people be mad at me.”

“So I should keep it or you want it?”

Really, he was exhausting me.

He took the notebook and leaned back on his now-closed locker. He lifted one knee and pressed the bottom of his foot against the locker door, striking a pose while he flipped through. I wondered in that moment if he was trying to look cool for me. But then, instead of meeting my gaze, he looked over my left shoulder.

“McCann! McCann!” squealed Charlotte Bouchard as she came winging by. She casually rested her elbow on Forrest's shoulder and looked into his eyes.

“I do believe you have something of mine,” she said, grabbing the notebook. “Gotta go, but keep in touch.”

We both watched her run down the hall.

“I guess that's that,” I said.

Just as I was about to search my brain for a new topic, Bet arrived.

“Hello to you both. Did I just see you with the Fat or Not notebook?”

“You did, but Charlotte took it,” I said.

“Shoot,” Bet said. “I'm working on a broadcast about it and I just can't seem to get my hands on it.”

Bet was always working on a broadcast. She's the anchorperson for Margaret Simon Middle School's only TV show,
You Bet!
It isn't exactly real TV. Bet produces her video reports and the principal broadcasts them on the school's TV network every Friday afternoon.

“If I see it again, I'll grab it for you,” I said.

“Thank you, Jemma. You're the best.”

Bet squeezed my arm gently, in a conspiratorial way, and left. Bet knew how much I liked Forrest and for how long. That squeeze was her way of congratulating me. I looked at Forrest to see if he caught this girl-to-girl signal.

“Jemma,” Forrest said, “I have to ask you something.”

I swallowed and waited.

Please God, don't let him break up with me already.

So many girls liked him, and it seemed like it would be just a matter of time until he'd like one of them in a real way. And then I'd just be a failed experiment for him, something he might joke with me about at our high school graduation.

“There's this movie thing that I'm invited to this weekend, the day after Thanksgiving. People are bringing girlfriends, so it would be weird if you didn't come.”

“Oh.”

“Unless you have something else to do. I guess I could say you have to go visit your grandmother or something.”

“My grandmother lives in Florida. It takes, like, eighteen hours to drive there.”

“So you want to go to this thing?”

“Um, sure. Why not? Might as well keep up the act, right?” I said this to check if this was him asking me out on a real date, or a date to keep up appearances for our pretend relationship.

“Yeah. I think everyone is convinced,” Forrest said.

Nine

I waited, like lots of other girls, for the Pink Locker Society to answer my question. We were getting so many messages from girls wanting help that I had to pull my question from the very deep inbox and ask that we take it on.

“What about this one who says she's got a pretend boyfriend?” I asked Piper and Kate during a PLS meeting.

“Yeah, I saw that one,” Piper said. “But do you think it's even real? Who has a pretend boyfriend?”

It took all my strength not to answer, “It's me! It's me! And it's driving me crazy.”

Kate swooped in, so naturally helpful.

“I think it could be true. And she says she really likes our Web site. Why not?” she said.

“Okay, Jemma. That falls into the topic of embarrassing things, so I think it's yours.”

“Why is that so embarrassing?” I asked Piper, hoping it wouldn't blow my cover.

“An imaginary boyfriend? It's like she's going around introducing everyone to her invisible friend Harvey, a six-foot-tall bunny rabbit,” Piper said.

I stayed quiet and let Kate defend me.

“Well, if you look again at the message, it's not that she invented a boyfriend out of thin air,” Kate said. “She and this real guy are pretending to go out. Seems different than a completely invented boyfriend. I'll take this one.”

Hurray! I was going to get Kate's four-star advice without her knowing that it was me.

“Speaking of boyfriends,” Piper said. “Jemma, I hear you're going to dinner and a movie with Forrest on Friday night.”

“Dinner and a movie” turned out to be something dreamed up by the beautiful Clem Caritas. Yes, my not-so-friendly locker neighbor. Once a month, a select group of eighth-graders made dinner at someone's house and then went to see a movie. I had never been invited before.

“Oh, goodie,” Kate said. “Me and Brett are going, too.”

“And I'll be there with Dylan,” Piper said.

Dylan was the latest of Piper's boyfriends. He was in ninth grade—a high-school guy!—and played ice hockey.

“A triple date…,” I said a little blandly.

I was worried about all those eyes on Forrest and me. Surely these girls who knew me so well would be able to tell that Forrest and I were a big fat fake.

“Moving on,” Kate said, turning back to the laptop. “Oh crud, study hall is almost over.”

It was hard to keep track of the time down in the school basement. There were no clocks. Were we really still the Pink Locker Society if we hadn't stepped through our pink lockers in weeks? I tried not to think about our beautiful and well-appointed offices now that they were off-limits. It felt like forever ago that we opened our lockers on the first day of school and saw them—the pink locker doors inside our regular lockers. Ever since Principal F. shut us down, we had to keep jackets hung up in our lockers to hide the secret pink doors.

But while I was dreaming of our comfy couch, ergonomic desk chairs, and conference table, Kate was still thinking about Emma Shrewsberry and that question about being fat. It was assigned to me and I hadn't come up with an answer yet.

“What have you found out?” Kate asked.

“I'm working on it,” I said.

This was like saying “I'm almost there,” when I actually hadn't even left the house. I assumed there would be some kind of easy answer to her question. There wasn't.

“Well, remember that it's a two-part question,” Kate said. “She wants to know how to find out for sure if she's fat or not. And, if she is, she wants to know how to lose weight fast.”

I made a mental note to talk with Bet, who was already investigating the Fat or Not notebook.

“Ugh,” Piper said.

“What?” asked Kate.

“It's nothing. Just a stupid message,” Piper said.

“Let me see,” I said, and turned the laptop toward me.

The girls who write this stuff are trashy and cheap. What if boys see this? STOP now!!

Your worst enemy

The three of us were silent for a moment. When girls called girls stuff like that, we knew it was code for other more shocking words. They were like curse words, but it was more than that. They were words that hurt girls and made them feel deeply bad about themselves. Parents would fall over with shock if they knew how often girls in middle school hear them.

A mean eighth-grader, now moved on to high school, thankfully, once called me one of those shocking words on the school bus. I was only in sixth grade and I didn't know what it meant. I had to ask my mother, which led, as you might expect, to my mom actually boarding the bus the next day to discuss the matter with the bus driver. Once I knew the definition I felt better because it in no way applied to me. I hadn't even kissed a boy then.

“There is this high-school girl,” Piper said in a small voice. “She hates me because I'm going out with Dylan. I think it could be her.”

Piper had been called those mean names before, plenty of times, actually. You could tell by her quiet voice and the way she stared at the floor as she spoke. Piper sometimes joked, “Beauty is my curse.” But this was one of those times that it actually seemed true. More often than us regular girls, the prettiest girls got called trashy, cheap, and worse.

“I'm sorry she's being mean to you, Piper,” I said. “But that would mean she knows that you specifically are in the Pink Locker Society. Very few people know, right? High-school girls probably don't know about us.”

“I guess that's right,” she said.

“Then who is it?” Kate said. “Who else would be so angry about periods, bras, and boys?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And if this person hates us so much, why don't they just stop coming to our site?”

Ten

On Friday morning, when I told my mom about dinner and a movie, she teared up again. It wasn't a full-scale sob, like in the car, but there were tears in her eyes. This time my dad was there.

“Oh babycakes, why don't you go lie down a while?” he said, smiling.

Do all parents use pet names for one another? There's “honey” and “sweetheart,” which are fine, I guess. But my parents tended to these random, cutesy names. Mom called Dad “Dearheart,” “Honeybun,” and “Pookie.” Dad, for his part, called her “Mary Bell” and “Babe.” I had previously expressed my desire that my parents stick to calling one another by their actual names, Mary Beth and Jim, but they had ignored my requests. They also continued to call me “Cupcake” even though I told them this was not a nickname suitable for a thirteen-year-old. Of course, I hadn't minded being called “Buzzy.” But that was only because Forrest gave me the nickname after the whole beehive incident.

“Why is she acting so weird?” I asked Dad in a whisper after Mom left the room.

“Oh, she's just … just a little worn out,” he said.

I didn't like the idea of my mother being worn out. I liked Mom to be, well, Mom—certainly not one to cry about me going out to the movies.

“Am I allowed to go?” I asked Dad.

“Go where?” he asked.

Dad was not usually my point of contact for getting permission to go here or there. It was awkward as I explained the group date aspect.

“You're dating now? Oh, I don't know, Jem.”

“It's not a date-date. It's a bunch of people. I'm not five anymore, Dad,” I said, a little louder than I intended.

“No, I suppose not,” he said. “But let's check with your mom.”

When I went to Mom and Dad's room, she wasn't there. I could see her bathroom door was closed, so I broke a rule and started talking to her through the door. She
hated
this. I gave her the essential details and waited for her reply. What I heard sounded a lot like Mom throwing up. Had she eaten too much turkey and pie the day before?

Eleven

Sometimes the most awkward thing in eighth-grade life is not being able to drive. We all felt grown-up and we were going to a grown-up event: dinner and a movie. But we would be arriving at Clem's house in the backseats of our parents' cars. They would stop in the driveway, or (please no) get out of the car and say hello to Clem's parents.

It was decided that Mrs. McCann would take me and Forrest and also pick up Kate and Brett. Piper, lucky duck, was getting a ride from Dylan's older brother who had his driver's license. Clem was already there since it was her house. I didn't know about the other girls—Clem's friends—who I hardly knew.

Clem's house, conveniently, was in a neighborhood close enough that we could walk to the movie theater. My parents—I could hardly stand the thought—would be picking up the four of us after the movie.

I felt so nervous that I wished I could run to Clem's house instead of getting driven there by Forrest's mom. I got ready way too early and then I changed clothes once, twice, three times. I broke into a sweat and wondered if I smelled. Should I shower again? There wasn't time, so I just added more deodorant and wiped my forehead with two squares of toilet paper. I sat on the edge of my bed and felt like I might throw up. This wave of nausea reminded me of Mom earlier today and further rattled me because I still did not understand what was going on with her. She didn't seem sick, even after the barfing.