Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love (2 page)

“Laura has not asked Will to the dance,” Emma-Jean said.

“But she's going to!” Valerie said.

“Any second,” Kaitlin said.

“She's totally in love with him,” Valerie said.

“They're together,” Kaitlin said. “Everyone knows that.”

Emma-Jean had a different perspective on this subject. But before she could share it, a chicken nugget came soaring through the air. It bounced off Valerie's head before landing squarely on the front of Kaitlin's sweater. Laughter roared from the boys' table, where Brandon Mahoney could be seen wielding a plastic spoon like a baseball bat. Emma-Jean's friends began to simultaneously shriek and giggle at such ear-splitting decibels that nobody heard the bell ring, and Mr. Petrowski had to shoo them from the cafeteria.

Walking through the crowded halls, Emma-Jean thought about asking Will Keeler to the Spring Fling. The idea caused her heart to flutter like the wings of the hummingbird. The sensation was unsettling, but not entirely unpleasant.

C
olleen sat in last period science class, and she was trying really, really, really, really hard to concentrate on what Mr. Petrowski was saying about the esophagus. But she kept thinking of Noah's Ark—about all the pigs and pandas and gorillas and ladybugs and how they'd all marched two by two, two by two, two by two onto the ark. Except for the unicorn, who couldn't find a boy who liked her, so she was left behind. To drown in the flood.

Colleen was the unicorn.

All her friends had boys they liked, and they were marching with them two by two, two by two, two by two toward the Spring Fling. Except for Colleen, who had no boy, and would be left behind to drown.

In chocolate fondue.

Colleen sighed. She looked around the room at the boys and she felt like crying. Why didn't any of them like her? Colleen was never pushy or mean. She didn't smell bad (she hoped not . . . she breathed into her hands and sniffed . . . no, just bubble gum). Okay, so she wasn't cute like Kaitlin or funny like Valerie or talented like Michele or brilliant like Emma-Jean. But when Colleen looked in the mirror, she didn't only see braces and freckles and hair that needed way more body. She saw a face that seemed friendly and nice and ready to hear your biggest secret she would never, ever tell.

Why didn't people see that? Her friends saw it, she was pretty sure. But why not the boys?

Probably because they never looked at Colleen.

And oh gosh! What about Emma-Jean? What if she really asked Will Keeler to the Spring Fling? It would be Colleen's fault, for putting Emma-Jean on the spot at lunch. Emma-Jean didn't even like dances. But now because of Colleen, Emma-Jean might actually ask Will Keeler. And what would Will say? Probably he'd laugh and say, “I would NEVER go to a dance with YOU!”

Or maybe Will wouldn't say exactly that because he wasn't mean like some people. But still, Colleen would have to explain to Emma-Jean—in the nicest possible way—that a cute basketball boy like Will with a million friends would never go to a dance with a . . .
different
kind of girl like Emma-Jean. Colleen hoped Emma-Jean would understand. Emma-Jean was a total genius, but some things she just didn't get.

Colleen thought about Emma-Jean now, the amazing way she didn't worry about what people thought of her, how she didn't notice that Brandon Mahoney made a robot face whenever she walked by, how she knew almost nothing about boys or clothes or makeup, but everything about birds and flowers.

Colleen scrunched down in her chair and looked out the classroom window. A bird was singing. She listened harder, the way Emma-Jean might listen. It was such a pretty sound, like the sweet little song inside Colleen's ballerina jewelry box. Colleen listened more closely, until the bird seemed to be singing just for her, until she felt herself being lifted out of her chair and carried out the window, and suddenly it was like she was high up in a tree with the bird. And from way up there, the world around her looked huge, and her school looked so small, and she got this idea—a whispery, feathery idea—that one day she wouldn't be in middle school, and maybe then she wouldn't be so worried every single minute.

And she remembered that she was really lucky. It was true. She was the luckiest girl in Connecticut, or at least in the top 100. She had her incredible mom who made sure the house was totally organized and that Colleen was never late for anything. She had her amazing friends. She was getting her braces off in fourteen months. And she had just been made head of the snack committee for the St. Mary's Church youth group, which meant that she was in charge of planning Father William's birthday party, which was just three days away. Her mom had even promised to help Colleen make the cupcakes with marshmallow frosting they'd seen on their favorite cooking show. How lucky was that?

The bell rang, and Colleen floated back to her seat. She picked up her backpack, which seemed as light as a cloud. She carried her lucky bird feeling with her through the hallways, smiling at everyone she saw, even if they didn't seem to see her.

She went to her locker and opened it on the first try. On the inside of the door there was the acrostic poem Valerie had written to her last month for her birthday. Colleen loved looking at it because it was so sweet and Valerie was such a talented poet.

Colleen was about to close her locker when she noticed a folded piece of paper stuck in one of the vents. She pulled it out and unfolded it.

Colleen looked around. She held on to her locker because fainting was a definite possibility. Who could have written this? Could it be that a boy . . . liked her? Was this really happening?

Maybe that bird really
had
brought her luck!

But then she looked at the note again, and another idea hit her in the head like that time her math book fell out of her locker and she almost went into a coma.

Emma-Jean had written the note. She felt sorry for Colleen because no boy liked her, and she wanted to help. Like she'd tried to help back in February, when she by accident almost ruined Colleen's life. Of course that didn't matter now. They were friends. But didn't Emma-Jean ever learn?

Colleen looked at the note again. The lucky feeling was gone. Her bird had flown away.

A
change had come over the seventh-grade wing, and Emma-Jean sensed it the moment she entered the school building the next morning. Like a flock of starlings swarming before a storm, Emma-Jean's peers were suddenly abuzz with excitement over the Spring Fling.

Indeed, Emma-Jean had never seen her peers in a state of such emotional agitation, not even last month, when their custodian Mr. Johannsen revealed that his handsome fifteen-year-old grandson Carl had been cast in a role on a popular television series. Laura Gilroy's reaction to that news had been particularly extreme; she had clutched her chest and gasped
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
in a manner that caused Emma-Jean to rush to her side, prepared to administer CPR if necessary. To Emma-Jean's relief, Laura had recovered quickly, as evidenced by the robust tone in which she shouted,
“Will you back off?”
into Emma-Jean's ear.

Emma-Jean watched her peers with keen interest throughout the afternoon. Wherever she looked, girls were huddled in whispering conferences, plotting their Spring Fling strategies. Boys who ventured too close were waved away with sly smiles and gentle chiding.

When the girls were ready to issue their invitations, they did so with surprisingly little ceremony. A few of the bolder types simply walked up to their quarries in the hallway and blurted out, “Want to go to the Spring Fling with me?” over the noise of slamming lockers and squeaking footsteps. It was in this manner that Kaitlin invited Neil Messner, who accepted with a blushing nod as his friends slapped him on the back.

More bashful girls used their friends as intermediaries; Michele hid outside the teachers' lounge while Valerie and Kaitlin cornered Leo Daniels in the doorway of the band room. He was clearly delighted with their message, though in his excitement he dropped his bass, which barely missed Valerie's foot.

Emma-Jean found the scene fascinating yet perplexing. It was as if an enchantress had stepped out of one of the fairy tale volumes in the library and waved her wand over the seventh-grade wing. Of course Emma-Jean didn't believe in anything as fanciful as fairies or magic spells; she was firmly grounded in modern scientific principles. But clearly there were mysterious forces at work. Even the teachers took notice.

“What's gotten into these kids!” she heard Mr. Petrowski saying as she rounded the corner between classes. “They're out of control.” He was speaking to Ms. Wright, Emma-Jean's esteemed language arts teacher, who was filling her thermos at the water fountain.

Emma-Jean hung back, eager to hear Ms. Wright's insights. Not only was her teacher one of her closest friends, she was one of the wisest people Emma-Jean knew. Earlier in the year, when Emma-Jean was still eating lunch by herself, Ms. Wright would often pull up a chair so that they could discuss a poem they had read in class, or to share a story from her childhood in the African country of Ghana, where the breezes smelled like roasting pumpkins and acacia flowers. Ms. Wright always had expansive views on important issues.

“Oh Phil,” Ms. Wright said, “love is in the air. These kids are like the birds and the bees. They've got spring fever. You remember what it was like to be young, don't you?”

Usually Mr. Petrowski dismissed statements of this nature with a jowly frown and wave of a beefy hand, but now he looked wistfully into the distance.

“I guess I do,” he said.

Emma-Jean was intrigued by Ms. Wright's hypothesis. She thought of the joyous song of the yellow warbler outside the science room and the bees buzzing sprightly among the lilacs. Perhaps this excitement among her peers was a seasonal phenomenon.

But then she had an alarming thought: Did she have spring fever too? Was it communicable, like pinkeye or an intestinal virus? Perhaps this explained the fluttering of her heart that struck whenever she saw Will.

She frowned, rejecting this notion. Unlike her peers, Emma-Jean was logical to her core, not easily carried away on emotional tides or flights of fancy. And after giving the matter some serious thought, she had determined that her friends were correct: Will was not a suitable match for her.

After all, she and Will had little in common. Unlike Emma-Jean, who had an impeccable academic record, Will was a mediocre student who spent most class periods drumming his pencil on his desk and exchanging bored looks with his friends. Unlike Emma-Jean, who had far-ranging interests including nature, poetry, and the study of Hindi, Will's only passion was the sport of basketball, which Emma-Jean considered monotonous and excessively loud.

Then again, Emma-Jean and Will shared a special kinship. Earlier in the year, Will had helped Emma-Jean by throwing a pear at Brandon Mahoney when he was pestering her in the cafeteria. She in turn had come to Will's assistance by solving a vexing problem involving Mr. Petrowski, his beloved Cadillac, and some missing chocolates. Will had been very pleased with the results of Emma-Jean's efforts on his behalf. “I owe you one,” he'd said to Emma-Jean not long ago. He'd put his hand on Emma-Jean's head and, like a king bestowing a title on a noblewoman, pronounced her “a good kid.” Perhaps this was not the most regal title, but it was obvious that Will held Emma-Jean in high regard.

Emma-Jean puzzled over the issue of Will Keeler throughout the afternoon. It was like a complex algebra problem, with hidden integers and variables Emma-Jean couldn't quite grasp. Laura Gilroy was certainly part of the equation, though her value was hard for Emma-Jean to calculate.

Emma-Jean was quite sure that Will did not have any affection for Laura.

He dodged her in the hallways and ignored her flamboyant dance displays on the blacktop. Most striking of all was a dramatic scene that Emma-Jean had surreptitiously witnessed at the last seventh-grade dance. Emma-Jean had stepped out of the girls' room to discover Will and Laura standing together in the deserted hallway. Emma-Jean had concealed herself in an alcove and observed the scene undetected.

“So you have to dance with me,” Laura had said.

“I don't dance,” Will had said.

“Not even with me?” Laura had asked in an odd, babyish voice.

“Gotta go!” Will had said, rushing away and leaving Laura to mope outside the girls' room.

Oddly, none of this had dampened Laura's ardor for Will; as recently as yesterday, she had reaffirmed her plan to invite him to the Spring Fling.

“I'm just waiting for the perfect time to ask,” she had said to Emma-Jean's friends, casting her proprietary gaze across the blacktop to where Will was playing basketball with his friends.

Emma-Jean now tried to imagine how Laura would react if another girl asked Will to the dance. The image that came to mind—a snarling dog—caused Emma-Jean to blink.

No, it would not be prudent to ask Will to the Spring Fling. In fact, she should put Will Keeler completely out of her mind.

But after the final bell had sounded, Emma-Jean found herself standing outside Will's social studies class. She followed him down the hallway and to his locker, mesmerized by the reflection of the afternoon sun on his golden hair. He looked surprised when he turned and discovered her standing behind him.