Chapter 10
Madeline
“So you’re going to be his secret fake girlfriend?” Selena considered me from the passenger side of my convertible in blank astonishment.
I’d shown up at her house early that morning to convince her to come with me to act as a lookout while I cut the lock off the cafeteria dumpster. She refused to do that, by the way, but had given me a bowl full of cat food to leave nearby for Mascot.
“I only agreed to fake date Cooper because it’s for a good cause,” I said.
“The cause being that you want your parents to die lonely?”
I shouldn’t have expected her to understand. “No, I just don’t want Cooper as my stepbrother. That’s a very good cause.”
Selena pushed away strands of hair that the wind blew in her face. This was the downside of riding in a convertible—hair control. “Your parents only have a couple of dates lined up. Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun?”
“No, because if they got really attached to each other and then we broke them up, I’d feel horrible. This way is better.”
“And Cooper agreed to this?” Her tone indicated she’d thought Cooper had more sense.
“He’s the one who suggested it.”
“Mmmm,” she murmured knowingly. “Does his plan involve making out and then having zero commitment to you afterward? Maybe the boy has ulterior motives.”
“Ew, no.” I scrunched my nose. “Neither of us would ever suggest that.”
“Ew?” Selena repeated. “Did you just ‘ew’ to making out with the hottest guy in our class?”
“He’s not the hottest,” I said, although no other names came to my mind right off. “Henry is really good-looking. So is Jasper.”
“Both of those guys have girlfriends.”
Which was irrelevant to the case since it was all theoretical. “Cooper isn’t my type.” Jocks were all brawn and ego. Who wanted to put up with that?
Outside, rows of houses and immaculate lawns went by, doused by the morning sunshine.
I hardly saw any of it. My mind kept circling around my conversation with Cooper.
“He and I talked about how to go to the homecoming dance without actually going with each other, which means I definitely need a date to the dance. I can’t get dressed up, take pictures with him for our parents, and then be forced to hide out at your house all night.
I refuse to let Cooper believe that no one thinks I’m worth springing for dinner and a corsage. ”
Selena huffed and her voice turned snippy. “In this scenario, didn’t you just say that I would be sitting home during the homecoming dance? What are you implying about me and my corsage-less status?”
I hadn’t meant it that way. Selena was pretty even though she never did anything with her hair, hardly put on any makeup, and seemed content to wear nothing but jeans and T-shirts.
The real reason she didn’t date was that she refused to flirt.
She thought flirting made women look stupid.
And also, she could be intimidating when it came to smart-people things.
Last year, I set her up with my date’s friend so we could double to prom.
After dinner, her date made some offhand comment about an alternate universe, and she spent the entire limo ride telling him that people misunderstood quantum theory.
She got quite passionate about it when he made the mistake of defending the multiverse using movie references.
Big mistake. And then Selena couldn’t understand why the guy spent most of the dance scrolling on his phone instead of paying attention to her.
If I never hear about the complexity of wave function collapse mechanisms again, that will be just fine.
I ignored the offended look she sent me now. “Right, you might go to homecoming, and then how would we explain to your parents that I’m over at your house, dressed up and hanging out in your room without you? I need to find a date.”
“Neither you or Cooper should go,” she insisted. “You won’t be able to pull it off.”
This is another thing about super smart people. They think everyone else is incompetent. “I think we can manage to pull it off.”
She sighed and shook her head knowingly. “I guess I should start making some homecoming dance disaster bingo cards. First square: At the last minute, your parents volunteer to chaperone and wonder why you’re dancing with other people.”
“You can’t fit that all in one square.”
“They’ll be big cards.”
After some more of her bingo card pronouncements of doom, I asked her opinion about guys who’d be good homecoming date candidates.
The guys in drama were out. Two were my exes, and I wasn’t about to get back together with Mr. Self-Destructive or Mr. Codependent.
The other guys in drama either had girlfriends, were too wild, or were too young.
That was the problem with being a senior girl.
Fewer choices. My mind landed on my physics lab partner, Boden Parish.
His thin frame and boyish features made him appear younger than a senior, but that was fine.
Despite being tall myself, when I didn’t wear makeup, strangers routinely thought I was about fourteen years old.
Boden was on the serious, quiet side. He always laughed at my jokes, sometimes giving them more laughter than they deserved. That was probably a sign of interest.
“What do you think of Boden?” I asked her. “He’s cute. Plus, he’s smart. Maybe I should ask him if he’d be my trig tutor.”
“I can help you with math,” Selena said.
I love Selena for wanting to help me, I do. But she understands math so well that she doesn’t really know how to explain it to normal people. She also has no patience when I want to stop midway through my homework to talk about completely unrelated subjects.
Guys never mind stopping to talk.
“Thanks,” I said, “but if he comes over to help me with a math assignment or two, we’ll get to know each other, and if things go well, I can drop hints about homecoming.”
“Which reminds me of another bingo square. If your father goes to the homecoming football game with Cooper’s mother, how will you explain that you’re sitting with Boden?”
No idea. I adjusted my sunglasses. “I have a month to figure something out. Maybe I’ll tell our parents that Boden and one of the cheerleaders are doubling with Cooper and me, and that’s why we’re sitting together.
I might also have to tell my father and Ms. Nash that Boden has an extreme phobia of strangers to keep them from talking to him. ”
Selena looked upward. “New bingo square: Your parents ignore your instruction, introduce themselves, and tell Boden he and the cheerleader make a cute couple.”
Not gonna think about that. “We should double. Boden hangs out with smart guys. I bet he has a friend who’d like to go.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll pass. I don’t want to be stuck improvising excuses when your dad catches you. I’d like to keep my good-influence status.”
I never should have told Selena that my dad thinks she’s a good influence on me. She brings it up far too often. She’s never told me whether her parents think I’m a good influence on her, and I’ve never asked.
There are some things it’s better not to know.
c c c
That day at school, I flirted with Boden in physics but somehow couldn’t bring myself to ask him for tutoring help. I hoped he would make the next move.
He didn’t. Ditto for Wednesday. My love life was stalling, but Dad had a great time at dinner that night with Ms. Nash.
I came to school early each day to put out cat food near the dumpster for Mascot. He eyed me with suspicion, watching me from a distance. As soon as I left, though, he padded over to inspect my offering and eat it.
My father was allergic to cats, so feeding Mascot was as close as I would come to owning one. I was determined to win him over. One day, he would let me pet him. One day he’d purr for me.
On Friday, I saw Cooper, Jasper, Amelia, and Dahlia standing around the hall during lunch, talking. Dahlia was smiling, her body angled toward Cooper, while she tucked her hair behind her ear.
Cooper grinned back at her, oblivious to her personality flaws. And okay, maybe I was being judgy. I’d hardly ever talked to her in person, but I’d heard an earful from two junior girls in drama class who’d tried to befriend her when she first moved in last year.
They’d invited her to go to a movie, and she’d told them she had family plans that night.
Then she’d shown up at a party that some seniors were throwing.
She’d flirted with half the guys there and turned them all down when they asked her out.
The phrase she used was, “I’m not saying my answer won’t be yes later, but for now, it’s no. ”
And for some inexplicable reason, the guys didn’t seem upset with that treatment. It was like she’d become a competition they all wanted to win.
The next Monday, when the drama girls asked Dahlia how her “family plans” involved going to a party, she laughed and said, “Some of us have cooler families than others.” No apology or explanation.
So yeah, good luck with her, Cooper. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.
That day in physics, the class explored electricity by building simple and parallel circuits. I smiled and talked with Boden, determined that today I’d ask him about helping me with my trig homework.
His black glasses perched on his nose, and his tousled dark hair looked like it had been styled with a little too much enthusiasm, which gave him a quirky charm.
Mr. Johnson was taking forever to come around to all the groups and check off our work. While we waited, I pressed the button that lit up the lightbulb. We’d done everything right. Another one hundred percent on the lab.
“Does it bother you that we don’t know how electricity actually works?” I asked.
“We know how it works,” Boden replied like it was a stupid question. “That’s the whole point of the lab. When you give electrons voltage, it creates an electric current.”