M or F? (17 page)

“Wow—everybody's here!” Marcus said brightly. “What's everybody doing here, Frannie?” His eyes flashed dangerously, like he wanted to smash a scoop of ice cream on my head.

“Sorry,” I mouthed silently as Jeffrey scanned the menu above Marcus's head. But Marcus didn't notice. His eyes had flicked back to Jeffrey, watching him intently as he skimmed the list of flavors. Marcus looked like he was trying to use laser vision to bore into Jeffrey's skull and read his thoughts. That made me feel even worse, because I was almost sure that I knew what Marcus was thinking—Does Jeffrey think I'm lame because I'm stuck wearing this stupid outfit? Is Frannie embarrassed to be my friend? Does the International Club think I'm a jerk? Poor Marcus. I never should have let Jeffrey come here. . . .

“We decided to do something fun for our International Club meeting,” Jeffrey explained absently. “Hey—” His eyes landed on Marcus's, and his grin widened. “Maybe we'll have all of our meetings here from now on!”

Marcus turned from pale to green. His face was really working the whole kaleidoscope of horror colors.

“Oh, ho, ho, Jeffrey, you kidder,” I put in quickly. “You don't want the International Club to gain a zillion pounds, do you?”

“Yeah, man, mix it up.” This comment was from Cal, who was putting a scoop of vanilla into a root beer float. “Maybe you guys could go bowling or get your tarot cards read.”

“Jeffrey, this is Calvin,” I said.

“Nice to meet you.” Jeffrey smiled.

“Jeffrey!” Astrid called from the booth. “Come here zo ve can order!”

Jeffrey nodded, then turned to me. “Coming?”

“In a sec,” I told him.

He gave us all a little wave and headed off to join the rest of the ICers. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so, sorry,” I whispered to Marcus the minute Jeffrey was out of earshot.

Just then, Goth in a Box—Tina Tamarino—slapped an order on the counter in front of Cal. “Since when are you in the International Club?” she asked, snapping her gum, looking at me darkly from underneath black sparkly eye shadow. “I need a Colonel Custard butterscotch sundae.”

“Hey, is that the guy you're dating?” Cal asked me.

“Isn't he cute?” I said.

“Are you actually going out with him?” Tina asked.

“Can we have a moment here?” Marcus snapped, looking miserable. “Frannie, you know that working here is my secret identity.”

I felt a flush creep up the back of my neck. Jeez, I'd already apologized. What did he want from me? “I'm sorry.”

“What would happen to Superman if Lois Lane went around telling everyone that he was really Clark Kent?” Marcus demanded.

“He'd probably be a lot less confused, dude,” Cal suggested.

“Stay out of it, Cal,” Marcus growled in this very un-Marcus way.

Whoa. Part of me couldn't help thinking that Marcus was really overreacting. I mean, it wasn't like he needed to impress Jeffrey or anything.
I
was supposed to be the one who felt self-conscious. Still, another—bigger—part of me totally understood. In a way, Jeffrey was
our
project. We both wanted him to like us. “I know. I didn't mean for this to happen,” I said in a low voice. “I didn't suggest coming here, I swear. See, Jeffrey asked if I wanted to hang out after school. I told him I was meeting you here, and then . . .” Well, and then Jeffrey had invited the whole IC to hang out at Scoops.

Marcus narrowed his eyes even more. “So—you were just going to blow me off?”

“No—of course not!” God! Didn't he know me at all? It was almost like Marcus was
looking
for a fight. “I'm not supposed to meet you until later,
remember
?” I ran my fingers through a hunk of hair . . . and got stuck.

Cal frowned. “Is that a new hairstyle?” he asked.

“No,” I said with a groan as I tried to extricate my hand from my hair. “New gel. I'm trying to go all natural—but that seems to translate into major frizz.” It was also making my head itch, but I didn't want to get into it. The products had been Jeffrey's suggestion. I should have known better than to take hair product advice from a guy.

Marcus looked annoyed. “Can we stick to the subject?” he demanded.

“What was the subject?” Cal asked.

“People, table three needs water; table six needs sundaes; and Tina, a very rude man is waiting for Colonel Custard to get him with a silver serving dish in the ice cream parlor, so let's have a little less chatting and more working, okay?” Margaret twisted her pink-frosted lips into a smile. “Don't look now, hon,” she said to me, “but a certain blue-eyed cutie is looking your way. Is that the guy?”

I smiled and waved at Jeffrey. “That's him.”

“What's
Glenn
doing here?” Marcus demanded as he flung a scoop of ice cream into a dish. “Don't tell me he's from Canada too.”

“No—he's from Alaska, remember? Jeffrey just asked him if he wanted to come along at the last minute,” I explained. Actually, I think Glenn had kind of gotten railroaded into coming, just as I had.

“So you and Jeffrey are
actually
going out?” Tina repeated, like she was some journalist for
Goth Beat
who wanted to make sure she had her story straight.

“Yeah,” I told her. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Cal repeated. “What's up?”

“Is he one of those tongue-all-over-the-face kissers?” Margaret wanted to know.

I winced. “I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Tina repeated, her dark eyes narrowed.

Marcus made this snorting sound, which I chose to ignore.

“If you haven't kissed the guy,” Cal put in, “how can you be sure that you're really going out?”

“That's what I'm saying, Cal,” I said, a little sharply. To tell the truth, his comment stung. Of course, there were reasons that Jeffrey and I hadn't kissed—first, I'd nearly exploded at the Polish food fest; then we'd hung out as a threesome with Marcus; then there was the whole STF thing. . . . But still, it did seem strange that he'd never made a move.

“They've hung out a bunch of times,” Marcus said loyally. “And they've been on a real two-person date.”

Tina pursed her lips. “It
sounds
like going out.”

I was grateful to Tina for saying that, even though she didn't really sound convinced.

Cal wasn't impressed. “When a guy is interested, he goes for the kiss.”

“Don't listen to them, Frannie,” Marcus said as he drizzled butterscotch over a sundae. “This is just like the time that they all told you not to go for the guy who worked in the sausage store.”

“I'm telling you,” Tina said crinkling her nose, “that guy had a really weird smell.”

“That was good advice, man,” Cal insisted. “And Frannie, all I'm saying is, maybe you need to clear things up.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. I had to admit, Cal had a point.

“Well, don't look now,” Margaret said to me, “but some blond girl is moving in awful tight to your man.”

I didn't even have to look. I knew it was Astrid. “Okay, I gotta go,” I said quickly. “Marcus, I'm sorry—I'll make it up to you later.” I scurried over to the International Club booth and squeezed in on the end, next to Jeffrey and across from Glenn, who grinned at me. He was sitting underneath a picture of a giant sundae that seemed to be attacking the Grand Canyon. Whoever did the interior decorating at Scoops definitely had an original sense of style.

Jeffrey smiled at me as I sat down, and a queasy little butterfly fluttered through my stomach. Why haven't you kissed me? I wondered, feeling kind of like I was back in eighth grade. What am I doing wrong? But I managed to smile back weakly, and Jeffrey turned his attention to the conversation.

“No, the problems with Eritrea are a lot more complicated than that,” Makonnen was saying.

I nodded and made a little
hm
sound, like I knew all about it. Of course, meanwhile, I was scanning my brain. . . . Eritrea, I thought. Skin disease or African nation? I wasn't a hundred percent sure—but I knew it was one or the other. Oh, man, I thought. What have I been
learning
in school? Why don't they teach us these things?

“What's
your
opinion, Frannie?” Astrid asked me. This little smile played at the corners of her mouth, like she knew I wasn't sure what Eritrea was. Hate her. It only made things worse that she'd recently gotten a super-cute pixie-style haircut, and I was sitting there with an all-natural sticky frizz ball on my head.

Okay, say something that covers both skin diseases
and
African nations, I thought. I shook my head sadly. “Makonnen is right—Eritrea
is
complicated. So many people are suffering—”

“That is so true, Fran,” Jeffrey said warmly, like I'd just said the most brilliant thing in the world.

My stomach fluttered again. I'm a genius, I thought. A genius who has no idea what she's talking about.

“The situation between Eritrea and Ethiopia is very much like what's happening between India and Pakistan,” Rajeev put in.

Okay, now we were getting somewhere! Eritrea
was
an African nation! I gave myself a little mental pat on the back as the other International Clubbers debated the matter back and forth. Sometimes hanging out with Jeffrey and his friends felt a little like being a contestant on
Jeopardy
. It was kind of thrilling to feel like I finally had a few points.

Tina delivered a table's worth of ice cream goodies, waggling her shaved-off-then-painted-back-on-again black eyebrows at me. I sipped my water as she handed me a one-scoop sundae with a napkin wrapped around it.

Unwrapping it slowly, I held the napkin under the table and peeked at it. Sure enough, there was a note:
Astrid looks like she wants to kill you! Smooch, M.

I looked over at Marcus and he grinned at me. My head felt light with relief. . . . At least he wasn't mad at me anymore.

And it seemed like I'd finally done one thing right, I thought. Actually, that whole Eritrea thing reminded me of Marcus's little Coogie Fuji test the night before. I have to admit, I admired Sundance for telling the truth and not trying to play it cool. I guess you have to be the kind of guy who doesn't care about cool if you're going to go around wearing jeans and cowboy boots in Chicago, right?

Actually, I'd had a great time the night before. I hadn't realized that line dancing would be so much fun! I mean, nobody cares if you suck or anything—so I'd really let loose, dancing and whooping and hollering like a maniac. Why not, right? I was never going to see any of those people again. Except for Patricia and Manfred, and they'd been hollering just as loudly as I was. Besides, I knew that Marcus would never tell anyone about what an idiot I'd made of myself. He'd be too embarrassed for me.

Just thinking about it made me giggle.

Suddenly, I realized that everyone at the table was staring at me.

Omigosh. Had I just giggled
out loud
? I cleared my throat, hoping desperately that we hadn't been discussing world famine or something. Jeffrey was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read, and a knot of nerves tightened across my chest, making it hard to breathe. Please tell me that I haven't done something that's going to take my future-smooch-probability rating down to zero, I begged silently.

“I agree with Frannie,” Glenn said after a beat of silence. “The UN
is
a joke.”

“But it
could
be so important if the leadership were effective!” Jeffrey argued.

This set the club off again.

I smiled my thanks at Glenn, who winked. Leaning toward me, he whispered, “I wasn't sure about Eritrea, either.”

I laughed, and the knot of nerves across my chest loosened a little.

“So,” Glenn said after a minute, “seen any good movies lately?”

I shrugged and took a bite of my mini-sundae. Mmmm. Marcus knows just what I like—a half scoop of Chocopalooza and a half scoop of vanilla, hot fudge, whipped cream, and three cherries—no nuts. “Well . . . Marcus keeps dragging me to these film festivals. So I just saw
Persona
.”

The left side of Glenn's mouth ticked up into a smile. “And?”

I rolled my eyes. “I hate going to movies that make me feel dumb,” I confessed. I tried to sneak in a little scalp scratch. God, my head was itching horrendously.

Glenn laughed. “Oh, man,” he said with a grin. “Nobody
ever
admits that they have no idea what that movie is about.”

“
Thank
you,” I said warmly, digging into my sundae. “Marcus loved it, but I didn't get it at all. I
hate
having to use my brain when I see a movie. I just want to laugh and have a good time. It's not like I'm looking for extra things to get depressed about.”

“Give me kung fu any day,” Glenn agreed.

“Marcus loves kung fu.” Hey! There's something Marcus and Glenn have in common, I thought. I knew Marcus thought Glenn was kind of annoying, but I was really starting to like the guy. It would be so great if my best friend and Jeffrey's best friend got along. I started picturing them having animated talks about directors while Jeffrey and I made out on the couch. . . .

Without thinking, I tried to twirl a piece of hair around my finger. My finger got stuck again.

I tried to play it off, but Glenn noticed, of course. “Are you using some new kind of gel?”

I sighed and glanced in Jeffrey's direction. He was talking to Leila, so I leaned forward and whispered, “It's all natural.”