Flirting with Disaster (9 page)

“Who’s that from?” Mom asked.

“Hazelle,” I answered. “It’s an e-mail for writers.”

“That’s nice.”

“I guess so. But she’s never really included me in writerly things.”

“Well, maybe things have changed,” Mom said.

Yeah, like she knows the vote for editor is coming up soon.
I clicked on the next e-mail. It was from
Ashley
. I gasped.

Mom came up behind me as she heard the gasp. “What’s the matter?”

“There’s a message from Ashley. She must have gotten my e-mail off a forward from Penny or something.”

“What is it?”

“A forward. If you send it on to ten people plus the person who sent it to you by the end of the day, you will know your true love within a week.”

Dad piped up from the next room, “You don’t have a true love. You’re not even allowed to date!”

“Turn the volume on the telly up, Dad,” I called back.

Mom remained still behind my chair for a minute before speaking up. “Hmm. I don’t know if I’d advise that. Maybe your friends don’t want all these forwards. People get kind of annoyed with forwards, Savvy.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not in my generation. We’re used to it. It’s only the technological dinosaurs that mind them. We know what we’re doing. Plus, Ashley will totally know if I don’t return it to her. And she’ll be mad.”

Mom looked down at me and shrugged. I could tell she hadn’t changed her mind. I hadn’t changed my mind either.

“Has her mom or Penny’s mom talked to you about the garden club yet?”

“Not exactly. But I did get an e-mail from Penny’s mom, and it was sent to the whole garden club. I’m not sure what to make of it. I’ll forward it to you and you can let me know what you think.”

“Okay.” I turned back to Ashley’s forward and stared at it. I really didn’t know what to do.

Chapter 17

“Are you going to [email protected]?” Penny asked me at lunch on Monday. “Or do you want to hang out after school?”

“I’d love to. I’m not going to [email protected] until Thursday—the day before the fund-raiser. I’m going to help Becky finish up the e-mails and send them out for her. So I’m open today!”

After school we walked down the streets of Wexburg to Penny’s house. Well,
estate
would actually be a better word, even though it was called Hill House. Her housekeeper—yes, housekeeper—opened the door and let us in. “Hullo, Miss Penny,” she said, her graying blonde hair pulled back in a serviceable bun. “And who’s your friend?”

“This is Savvy,” Penny said. “Mrs. Simmons,” she introduced her back to me.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

We went upstairs and sat on Penny’s floor. A few minutes later Mrs. Simmons brought up some milk and warm cookies—biscuits, as the Brits say. This was the life. I started daydreaming. I’d be writing for the
Times
of London. My weekly column would be a huge hit. So huge, in fact, that one day an agent would call me at the office and offer me a book contract that would pay enough for me to buy a Hill House of my own. Complete with a Mrs. Simmons, who would always have hot cookies for me and my friends. . . .

“Savvy!” Penny jiggled my arm. “Are you okay? I’ve been talking to you for like a minute and you haven’t answered. Plus, you just got a text.”

“Sorry!” I said, reemerging into the real world. I looked at my phone. “It’s from Hazelle.” I scanned it. “Just a little note reminding me that there’s a newspaper meeting in the morning.”

“Oh,” Penny said. “Is she the new editor, then?”

“Not unless Natalie gave up, and that’s about as likely as sharks swimming up the Thames. The election is in two weeks. Just before the last few weeks of school.”

“So you’re going to vote for Hazelle, then?”

I nibbled the crispy, buttery edge of another cookie and let the warm chocolate melt across my tongue. “I don’t know. Natalie says she’d let me write a column about spirituality.”

Penny’s eyebrows shot up. “She said that?”

“Almost.” I plucked a third cookie, promising myself I’d forgo my weekly pilgrimage to Fishcoteque on Friday. “And she said she liked my [email protected] article idea.”

Penny’s eyebrows remained raised. “And what about Hazelle?”

I shook my head. “Brian dumped her, I think. She’s really low about it. Didn’t see that coming.”

“It’s hard to figure guys out,” Penny said. “Did you forward Ashley’s ‘true love’ e-mail to her? Maybe it would have helped.”

Oh. Yeah.
I had forgotten all about it, and now the twenty-four hours had come and gone. I tried to veer the conversation in another direction. “I’ve been studying guys’ body language lately. Have you ever noticed that if they lean toward you with their arms crossed, they’re interested and want to impress you but are not committing?”

Penny grinned, leaped up, and grabbed a piece of her art paper. She sketched a guy in that pose. “Like this?”

I laughed. “Exactly! And if they sit with their toes pointing inward toward each other, then they’re insecure.”

Penny quickly inked another boy, this one looking just like a kid in my literature class.

“So what does a guy look like if he’s just about to kiss you?” I asked.

“Personal research?”

I admitted it was. “I’m going to be sixteen in a month. You know, sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” I sighed heavily to dramatize the moment, but she smiled softly at me. She knew it bugged me, and she knew how I hoped it would be remedied. And with whom.

Penny drew a boy leaning close, but not too close, looking both tentative and hopeful.

“Looks like Oliver,” I teased her, and she blushed. “You know what? We should make a dude decoder for girls and e-mail it to our friends. I’ll do the writing; you do the drawing.”

She agreed, and as I called out my observations, she drew the sketches for each one.

We scanned the sketches and descriptions into the computer and sent them out to everyone we knew from Penny’s e-mail, but signed with both our names.

“That was such a good idea,” Penny said. “I haven’t been able to use my art for much lately. I’ve got a friend, actually, who’s getting ready to apply to art school. I’ve asked her if she’ll work on an art project with me because I’d really like to learn from her.”

I nodded slowly. Something about this was sounding familiar.

“I think we could both contribute to each other’s projects—you know, working together, like you and I do. Plus, well, I could really use her help.”

I swallowed hard. “Oh. What did she say?” My stomach was starting to feel sick. Too many cookies, probably.

“She’s going to enter her portfolio for art school soon, and I think she wanted to do it on her own. But, well, I prayed about something for the first time ever. You know, like you do. And I think she might just work with me.”

My chest felt heavy when she said,
. . .
 
prayed . . . like you do.”

Because lately, I hadn’t been.

In an instant I knew why this whole art scenario sounded familiar. It was last week’s AFT column. Penny clearly hadn’t read it, which was fine—it’s not like she even knew I wrote it. And right now I was really glad she didn’t know I wrote it. I could only hope that “Needs to Draw a Conclusion Soon” hadn’t read it either.

Not likely.

Chapter 18