Sloppy Firsts_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [80]
And that reason is Marcus Flutie.
Talk to you later, he said. Really, he meant it.
It all seemed so hopeless on Monday morning. He didn’t talk to me before homeroom because he was too busy macking with Mia, his moronic girlfriend. He didn’t talk to me during homeroom. He didn’t talk to me after homeroom because he was too busy macking with Mia. Again.
When he sat down in back of me in first period, I assumed we were back to our silent-partners-in-crime routine. But then he tapped me on the shoulder, and said something so random that I was afraid he was back on the junk.
"Did you know that the average American spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green?"
"What?"
"Six months wasted, waiting for permission to move on," he said.
"Uh-huh."
"Think of all the other stuff you could do with that time."
I was totally confused. "In the car?"
"In your life," he said.
"Oh."
Then Bee Gee started talking about FDR’s New Deal and that was the end of that.
And so it went for the rest of the week. Before History class, Marcus would tap me on the shoulder and ask me a question that, on the surface, had nothing to do with anything. But then it would evolve into a conversation about something much more than I expected, considering the randomness of the opening statement. It’s hard to explain. It was like a verbal Rorschach test.
By Friday, I wasn’t surprised that asking me to pick my favorite actor wasn’t really about choosing between John Cusack and the guy who played Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles, but a way to launch into a discussion about how every magazine article or TV appearance that brings a star "closer" to his fans actually adds another brick to the towering altar at which we worship the cult of celebrity.
Or something like that.
These conversations are like a shot of schnapps with a Tabasco-sauce chaser. Short, sweet, and strange, as well as capable of making me hot, wobbly, and confused.
What a difference a week makes. Just 168 hours ago, we didn’t talk. Now we do. Of course, the downside to this maxim is that by next Friday, it could all be over between us.
I can’t let that happen. There are too many issues we haven’t discussed that need to be covered before we can continue this … whatever relationship: The Dannon Incident. The Origami Mouth. Middlebury. Mia. Three boxes of donuts. Heath’s death. Hope.
Knowing what I do about his need for nocturnal amusement, I’ve decided to take control of Monday’s conversation by asking Marcus a more straightforward question: I can’t sleep at night. Can you?
Let’s see how this evolves.
the ninth
He called!
Caller ID is the best invention ever, ever, ever. Because seeing Marcus’s name and number in the tiny window gave me just enough time to take a long, deep, anti-hyperventilation breath before speaking.
"Hello?" I said, high-pitched, as though I’d just taken a drag off a helium tank.
"Tonight I’m not going to ask you a question to make you talk," Marcus said, without so much as a hey, hi, or how’s it going.
"No?"
"Nah," he said. "The question was a conversational construct."
"A what?"
"Just something I threw out there to get us started."
"Oh."
"But we don’t need it anymore."
"We don’t?"
"We don’t," he said. "We can talk just fine without it."
For one hour and forty-seven minutes, we proved him right.
Here, an incomplete list of topics from tonight’s convo: pregnant chads, the Olsen twins, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, fake tattoos, Igpay Atinlay, the universe’s unseen dimensions, cloning, clichéd guitar gods in leather pants, year-round schooling, plastic-surgery junkies, Napster.
I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation like this. I discovered I had opinions about things that I didn’t even know I had opinions on. Unlike computer-genius Cal, whose conversational shtick now seems so … Calculated in retrospect,