M or F? (5 page)

Marcus's fingers flew across the keyboard. “I'm telling him that you'll come . . . and bring a few other people for the heavy lifting.”

“Perfect.”

The response came right away. <>

My heart thudded in my chest. Ohmigod, I thought, he's going to know it's me. Somehow.

“‘I'll be the one in the red shirt,'” Marcus said out loud, typing away.

I blinked, not getting it. “What?”

“Let's tell Jeffrey you'll be wearing red,” Marcus suggested, his hand hovering over the mouse.

“Oh . . .” For a minute, I wanted to say,
No, no, forget it!
But Marcus was staring me down. It was too late. I was on the brink of going for it . . . and I knew that Marcus was going to shove me over the edge, no matter what I said. “Okay. Yeah. Red.”

Marcus typed it in.

<>

“That's ironic,” I said. “What do you think, Marcus? Are we M or F? After all, you're doing all the typing-slash-conversational work.”

“But you'll be doing the dating,” Marcus pointed out. <> he typed.

Marcus clicked send, and I flopped back on my bed pillows, overwhelmed by a sickly combination of excitement and dread.

So this is what going for it feels like, I thought.

Jeez, I feel like I'm about to barf.

 

 

“What am I doing here again?” I whispered to Marcus as we walked toward the rear yard at the community center. A card table had been set with snacks and drinks, and a bunch of people—about half of whom were from our high school—were milling around. I waved to Julie Miller, who was standing in a little knot of girls from the pep squad over by a wheelbarrow full of sod. Jeffrey was standing in a group next to hers, holding a clipboard and looking gorgeous in a navy plaid shirt and faded jeans. He didn't look my way, thank God. I wasn't ready for him to see my red T-shirt with EVIL GENIUS written across the front in sparkly letters—not yet. I still hadn't decided on the perfect opening line.

“You're here to start living happily ever after,” Marcus said, just as Ethan Schumacher hustled over to us.

“Hey, guys!” Ethan chirped, grinning hugely. “Marcus, I should have known I'd see
you
at a beautification project.”

Marcus looked bored. “I'm really into plants,” he lied.

“Hi, Ethan,” I said, feeling kind of sorry for the guy. I mean, Ethan is nice. He's kind of like a Jack Russell terrier or something—all crazy energy and misdirected affection. But Marcus basically thinks that Ethan is a big yawn. Not that it stops Ethan.

“Do you guys want to join our mini-squad?” Ethan asked. “We're in charge of digging up old bulbs.”

“Actually, we've got some friends joining us,” Marcus said.

“Oh.” Ethan looked kind of disappointed, but he recovered. “Okay, well, you know where to find me!” Giving a cheerful wave, he trotted off.

“Frannie! Marcus!”

I turned to see Jenn trotting toward us, followed closely by Belina and Keith. I only got to feel about a split second of relief before I realized that something was horribly wrong.

“What the . . . ?” Marcus murmured.

“What are you wearing?” I asked as the group walked up to us.

Jenn and Belina exchanged looks.

“Jenn said we were supposed to wear red T-shirts,” Belina explained.

I looked at Jenn, who looked confused. “Well, I asked you what you were wearing,” Jenn explained in this don't-you-remember? voice. “And you said a red T-shirt and jeans. You just sounded so definite, I thought that was what we were all supposed to wear.”

Belina looked at her.

“Like we're a team,” Jenn went on. “You know—the red team.”

“Mine's plaid,” Keith put in.

“Plaid isn't a color,” I told Keith. “You're wearing red.”

“Okay, so we're all in red. Who cares?” Belina eyed me carefully. “Is there a
problem
with the red shirts?”

I hesitated. When I'd told my friends about Green Up Day, I hadn't actually explained the real reason we were going there. I'd just said something crazy about community service and getting involved, and they'd gone for it. But now we were all in red—how would Jeffrey know which one was me? It might have almost been comforting to be able to hide amid the red camouflage until I was ready to make my move with Jeffrey. But the bad news was that Jenn's shirt was tight in all the right places, and her blond hair was tied back in a perfect ponytail, while mine was sort of piled loosely on my head and fastened with a chopstick. Ohmigod, I thought frantically, what if Jeffrey thinks he was chatting with
her
and then gets disappointed when he finds out it was
me
?

Marcus stepped in to help me out. “No problem,” he said quickly. “But now everybody's so matchy-matchy, except for me.”

I glanced over in Jeffrey's direction and immediately had to rub my neck in a desperate attempt to pretend that I hadn't been looking in his direction because at that very moment, he was headed our way, clipboard in hand.

“You're wearing red too,” Keith pointed out to Marcus.

Marcus looked down at his shirt. “It's
rose
,” he corrected.

Keith shrugged. “Whatever, dude. It's in the red family.”

“Hey, guys! Whoa—the red team!” Jeffrey held up his clipboard and flashed his super-white smile. “With one rose member,” he said to Marcus.

“I'm wearing plaid,” Keith pointed out.

“Okay,” Jeffrey said, then glanced down at his clipboard. “Do you guys mind if I put you in mini-groups? A lot of people have started working already.”

Marcus looked at me, but I was pretty much incapable of speech or movement at that moment. My brain was in overdrive, trying to process about a hundred thoughts at once: Please let him know it's me, oh, please don't let him know it's me, what is he thinking right now, is anyone else here in a red shirt, he looks so cute with that clipboard, is he smiling at Jenn or just smiling in general, does he remember that conversation we had last year about nineteenth-century hats, do I have anything on my face right now, etc, etc.

“Just let us know where you want us,” Belina said as she shoved her hands into the front pockets of her carpenter jeans. That was when I noticed how huge her boobs are. Thank the God of Small Things that she's obviously with Keith, I thought, eyeing her red shirt.

“Let's see, I need one person to oversee rosebushes and four people to plant maples.” He looked up at us. “Any takers?”

He looked directly at me and smiled, and I nearly had a heart attack trying to decode what it meant. He wasn't giving any signals that he was looking for someone in a red shirt. I felt like I was going to faint and wished frantically that I could read minds. Does he know it was me? Does he even remember our conversation?

“Your name is Marcus, right?” Jeffrey said, turning to Marcus. “Since you're in the rose shirt, why don't you take the rose garden, and the others can take the trees.”

“Sure,” Marcus said.

“Ooh, I love maple trees!” Jenn said happily.

Jeffrey grinned at her. “And I'm sure they love you,” he said.

Grr! Stupid Jenn. Looking good in her red shirt and loving maple trees.

Marcus elbow-nudged me.

“I love maple trees too,” I said quickly.

Jeffrey gave me an odd little smile. “Great,” he said. He looked like he was about to say something else.

“Jeffrey!” someone called.

Oh, jeez, I thought, rolling my eyes. It was stupid Astrid. She was standing in the middle of a group from the International Club, waving a trowel.

“Be right there!” Jeffrey called. “Okay, guys, thanks so much for volunteering,” he told us. “Let me know if you need anything.” He hustled off.

I watched him go, wondering what on earth had just happened.

 

 

Two hours later, I was covered in mud, my back ached, and I smelled like manure. I never would have signed up for this if I'd known what a pain in the butt trees can be, I thought as I shoved more manure onto the pile at the base of the thin trunk. The chilly, wet spring earth was freezing against my kneecaps.

“Is it me?” Jenn asked. “Or is our tree crooked?”

“It's you,” I snapped, even though our tree was practically growing sideways. Standing up, I opened a bag of mulch and tried to aim it at the base of the tree, but it landed all over my shoes. Damn it! I thought, kicking mulch out of my clogs. Damn you, Nature!

Jenn looked doubtfully over at Belina and Keith's tree. They were already on their third maple, actually. Those two are just this amazing team. All of their trees poked straight toward the sky and were surrounded by a tidy ring of mulch, like they had been professionally landscaped.

“Do you two need some help?”

I looked up into Astrid's green cat eyes. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and she looked really pretty and healthy, in this sort of European Woman of the Forest way. What is she doing here? I wondered. Hasn't she had enough green-upping? Her mini-team had already finished planting a ring of shrubbery around the entire perimeter of the garden. What a show-off, I thought, despising her German efficiency.

I was just about to tell her that we had everything under control when Jenn piped up with, “Ooh, would you help us? I think our tree is all wrong.”

“Sure.” Astrid looked down at me with this do-you-mind? look on her face.

I felt this weird flash of protectiveness for my mound of mulch. I didn't want Astrid touching it. Especially since I didn't want Jeffrey to see what a bad planter I was. But I had to admit that our maple looked pretty sad, hanging there like a leafy seesaw. I shrugged and backed away from the mulch.

Faster than I would have thought possible, Astrid cleared the dirt and mulch from the roots, yanked the maple out of the ground, dug our hole about a foot deeper, and dropped in the tree—straight up. “There you go!” she said brightly.

“Oh, thanks!” Jenn said eagerly as she accepted the shovel and started dropping dirt in at the base. “Frannie, would you just hold the trunk straight for me?”

Astrid gave us a smile, then walked off toward the corner of the garden where Jeffrey was finishing laying a brick path with two other guys from our high school. I narrowed my eyes as Astrid picked up a brick and Jeffrey smiled at her.

Jenn followed my glance. “She is so helpful, isn't she?”

I glared at her. Helpful? She's stealing my man! “That's what she wants you to think,” I snapped.

Jenn blinked. “Oh,” she said.

I sighed. Poor Jenn. It wasn't her fault that I was having a horrible day. Actually, it was my own. I couldn't stop kicking myself for not walking right up to Jeffrey and telling him that I was whoosie1988. It seemed like every minute that passed made doing that more awkward and impossible.

My knees creaked as I stood up and looked at our tree. Poor little guy, I thought sympathetically. He's been through a lot today.

“Nice tree,” Marcus said brightly as he walked up to us. Reaching out, he wiped a smudge of dirt from my forehead.

“Why are you so clean?” I demanded grouchily, eyeing his pristine rose-colored shirt.

“I was in charge of writing labels for the roses,” Marcus explained.

“Hey,” Belina said as she and Keith joined our group. “It looks like things are wrapping up around here.”

“Is anyone else starving?” Keith asked. “We could head to Giant Sombrero for burritos.”

Giant Sombrero is our favorite Mexican place. That isn't really the name of it, by the way. Its real name is El Rey del Sol—but it has a giant sombrero out front, so that's what we call it.

“I'm not sure Frannie is done,” Marcus said.

“Oh, we're done,” Jenn said confidently, giving our tree a leaf pat.

Marcus looked at me, his hazel eyes boring into me. “Are you?”

Belina toyed with one of her baby dreads. “Why are you guys acting all secret spy mission?”

“It's nothing,” I said quickly. “Forget it.” I glared at Marcus, wanting to kill him for suggesting this Green Up thing in the first place. This whole day had been a total bust. I'd had a miserable time, I'd nearly murdered a tree, and Jeffrey hadn't even noticed me. I'd had enough. “Let's get out of here.”

Belina looked like she didn't believe me, but she knew better than to press. “Okay,” she said finally. “Jenn, let's put the shovels by the shed.”

“I'll help you,” Keith volunteered.

“What are you doing?” Marcus hissed as soon as the others were gone. “You aren't leaving here until you talk to him.”

I shook my head. “I'm not talking to him now,” I said. “I look horrible, capital horror.”

“You're talking to him,” Marcus said.

“No, I'm not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You can't make me.”

“Um, excuse me?” said a voice behind me.
The
voice. The deep, rich, poetry-reading voice. I stared up at Marcus, cringing. Please, no, I thought.

“Hi, Jeffrey!” Marcus gave me a smug smile. I could practically read the thought bubble over his head: Ha, ha. You have to talk to him now.

Taking a deep breath, I tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear and turned to face Jeffrey.

“Frannie Falconer,” Jeffrey said.

My name had never sounded so beautiful. “Hi,” I squeaked. What do I say what do I say what do I say? Damn it—two hours of kneeling in manure, and I still didn't have an opening line!