Slob - Ellen Potter [59]
“Oh. Weird. Anyway, Izzy said I was going to get you killed, and I promised him I’d fix it all if he just didn’t say a single word to you about it.”
“He kept his promise,” I said.
Jeremy smiled. “I figured he would. He’s a really decent guy. Anyway, that’s when I wrote the note about following Mason. I knew that if you followed him, you’d see he wasn’t the one stealing the Oreos and you’d stop trying to catch him, and that might prevent a hideous buck knife attack. Switchblade attack. Whatever. But see”—she rubbed her hand across her cropped hair—“it was all for nothing. I cut it anyway. Well, the GWAB members cut it, actually. They passed the scissors around and all took a few snips. I wanted to punch them the whole time. But I just couldn’t do it anymore, sneaking around and lying and seeing you get all excited about Nemesis. It felt too crappy. And anyway”—she eyed me cautiously—“Mom’s gone. It’s not like she’s going to care.”
I looked at the sad little red cap of hair, with a hank of it tufted up at the top.
“Dad would have said you looked like a pumpkin,” I said.
“Ha-ha,” she said dryly. Then she said. “Probably”
“And Mom would have tracked down every member of GWAB and made them sorry they ever learned how to use a pair of scissors,” I said.
“Yeah, she would have. Mom was tough.” Jeremy lifted her eyebrows and smiled. She looked around at the bits and pieces of Nemesis and her smile disappeared. “Maybe we could put it back together. We don’t have to give up yet.”
I nodded.
“You know,” she said, “I always thought there was a chance Nemesis really could work. I thought if anyone could do it, you could.”
“Thanks, Jeremy.”
“I’m not Jeremy anymore, remember.”
“Oh, right. I kind of got used to you as Jeremy.”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe I’ll hang on to it for a while longer.”
17
There’s this thing called The Three-Month Rule. It works, it really does. The rule is that it takes three months for things to really change.
For example, it takes three months to:
1. Go from 57 percent fatter than the national average to only 10 percent fatter than the national average
2. Grow out a bad haircut
3. Realize that your radio telescope doesn’t work and turn it into something entirely different
4. Become pretty good friends with someone you had previously thought was a psychopath
5. Have people stop making fart noises when you walk by them
There are some things that can happen more quickly than three months. One of them is to patch up a misunderstanding between friends. Well, with some people it might take three months, but Izzy happens to be one of those forgive-and-forget types. He did sulk a little when I sat down with him at lunch the day after I had accused him of being a thief.
“Oh, so now I’m your friend again?” he said.
“Jeremy confessed,” I said. “She told me that she was the one who was taking my Oreos. I’m sorry, Izzy. I’m sorry I called you a thief or thought anything rotten about you.”
“Oh, man,” He raked his hands through his hair. “Did you tell her that I didn’t snitch on her? Oh man, she probably hates me.”
“She knows you didn’t snitch,” I assured him.
He blew out a puff of air that sounded like a pneumatic bus door opening up. Then he remembered me and opened up his huge paws in a pleading way. “I was between a rock and a hard place, man.”
“Understood.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. But let me ask you this. How long have you had a crush on my sister?” I said.
“What?” He narrowed his eyes at me.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” I told him.
He blushed, then shot me a shy look. “A while, I guess. Does she still like that Andre dude?”
“Andre’s not worth one of your hangnails, Izzy. Jeremy is no dope. She’ll figure that out.”
Which brings me to the last item on my list . . .
It takes three months for a girl to:
6. Really appreciate a guy like Izzy and figure out that a guy like Andre is not worth one of Izzy’s hangnails
So three months later takes us right into January. It’s one of those January thaws in New York City