Little Miss Red (6 page)

That night, after watching the
Top 100 Craziest Femme Fatales
special that I had TiVo’d on SOAPnet (I’m sorry, but Sydney from
Melrose Place
so deserved to be in the top five rather than number thirteen), I made a list.

I wrote
Michael Rosenberg: Pros
at the top of my notebook paper.

Then I wrote
Michael Rosenberg: Cons
on the next page.

I could have kept going, but I figured that was enough. I sure was glad there was a second half to Operation Remotivation. Otherwise, I would have had to break up with Michael immediately.

I picked up my cell and pushed his name on speed dial.

“Yo, what up? It’s not nine yet,” he said when he answered.

“I know. I just…missed you so much, I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the phone and calling you.” Okay, so it was kind of a lie, but it felt like a remotivating thing to say.

“Oh. Well, thanks. So, what’s up?” was his reply.

I cringed as he did #5 on the “Cons” list. “Nothing. How are you?”

The only response was the blare of the TV in the background.

“Michael?”

“Huh?”

“I said, how are you?”

“Fine.”

I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. I made a mental note to add “doesn’t like to chitchat” to my list.

“Oh, and in addition to missing you, I wanted to see if you wanted to come over tomorrow night,” I said.

“For what?”

“To hang out.”

“With you and Jeremy?”

“No. Just with me,” I replied. “Tomorrow night is the Asperger’s support group.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. I guess so.”

He sounded as if he was about to get a cavity filled.

“You don’t want to hang out alone with me?”

There was a pause. “Of course I do.”

Dante once told Devon that being apart from her was as painful as when he had an impacted wisdom tooth. Was it too much to ask for a boyfriend who felt that way about
me
? I made another mental note to add “no interest in making out when parents aren’t home” to the list.

I decided to go all out. “I was thinking I’d get us some sushi,” I said. Even if I had to go behind my mother’s back and use a month’s worth of allowance.

“Sushi?” he perked up. “From Nozawa?”

I sighed. If only Michael got as excited about me as he did about an inside-out yellowtail roll, we wouldn’t be in this situation. “Uh huh,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied.

“Good. Want to say six thirty?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Okay. Bye,” he said as he hung up.

My heart sank. I thought back to the night a few years before when we stayed on the phone so long we both fell asleep mid-conversation and woke up to find our batteries had died. Why couldn’t it be like that again? Grandma Roz was always saying, “The only constant is change,” but why couldn’t just the bad things change and get good? Why did the good things have to change too?

I picked up
Propelled by Passion
and started tracing Dante’s biceps. “Oh, Dante,” I sighed. “Why can’t you be real and ten years younger and not a male model?”

Jeremy hated the Asperger’s support group meetings (“How would you like to spend two hours surrounded by people who won’t look you in the eye and who spout random facts about things you don’t care about?” he’d say to me every time I tried to get him excited about it), which is why Mom and Dad always tried to bribe him by taking him to the Olive Garden for dinner first. As soon as they left the house at five o’clock, I went up to my parents’ bathroom and started a bath. I had a bathtub in my bathroom, but I figured it would help get me in the right mood if I took a bubble bath in the big sunken tub. Because it was a special occasion, I decided to use some of Mom’s expensive bath oil.

There’s no way Michael’s going to be able to resist me now
, I thought as I slid into the tub. Especially because the oil was called Irresistible. Just to make sure, I used three
quarters of the bottle. That probably explained why, as I reached for a washcloth, my butt slid on the bottom of the tub and my head ended up underwater.

“Whoops,” I sputtered when I was upright again.

“What’d you do—wash your hair with vegetable oil?” Jordan asked when she and Ali showed up with the sushi and I emptied out my “Savings Fund for Unnecessary, yet Wildly Dramatic Accessories” that I kept in a shoebox in my closet.

“Is it that bad?” I asked, running my hand through it. I didn’t have to work hard; my hand just slid right through.

“Um—” Ali said.

“—kind of,” Jordan finished.

Ali sniffed. “How much perfume did you put on?”

“Just a few sprays,” I said. I held my wrist out to Jordan. “Do you like it? It’s my mom’s. It’s called Eau de Desire.”

“Well, on its own I bet it wouldn’t be that bad, but mixed with the bath stuff, it kind of gives off a Lysol smell,” Jordan said.

“Um, you guys? You’re really not helping here,” I said. “This is Operation Remotivation—not Operation Make-Me-Want-to-Stick-My-Head-in-an-Oven-Before-He-Gets-Here.”

“You know why Sylvia Plath stuck her head in an oven?” Jordan asked. “Because she knew that no matter what, her stupid poet husband was always going to be seen as the
talented one. Because that’s the kind of evil, patriarchal society we live in!”

Ali and I ignored her and started cleaning up the family room. The good thing about Jeremy having Asperger’s was that he was a neat freak, so, really, all we had to do was straighten the piles of
Psychology Today
s (Mom’s),
Golf Digest
s (Dad’s), and
TV Guide
s (Jeremy’s).

“What is that?” I asked as Ali took a bottle out of her knapsack and started spritzing it around the room.

“It’s an essential oil thing called Nights of Passion. You spray it, and it’s supposed to,” she looked at the label and read, “‘magnetize your beloved to you.’ I stole it from my mom’s night table drawer.”

I wrinkled my nose. “It smells like the locker room at school.”

Ali shrugged. “You only get one chance at Operation Remotivation.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “Keep spritzing.”

It was already six fifteen by the time we had finished straightening and spritzing and putting some baby powder in my hair in hopes of soaking up some of the oil (a trick Jordan had read in
Allure
back before she had become a Young Feminist). After Jordan and Ali left, I brought my iPod down and cued up my “Best Romantic Songs Ever” playlist. I usually only played it when I was reading Lulu’s books, but tonight I needed all the help I could get.

At six thirty the doorbell rang. That was another thing
about Michael—he was always on time. I used to love that about him because I felt like it meant he didn’t want to miss a single moment with me, but now it really took away the mystery. For instance, in
Leveled by Longing
, it drove Devon insane with passion when the Brazilian samba dancer would say he’d call her right back and then she wouldn’t hear from him for weeks.

“Yo, what up?” Michael asked when I opened the door.

I tried not to cringe. Would I fall back in love with him if he talked normally? And didn’t he realize a
HIP-HOP HEEB
T-shirt was
so
not sexy?

“What happened to your hair?” he asked.

“I got a little bath oil in it,” I replied.

As he walked in, he started sneezing. “Are you wearing perfume?”

I nodded. “A little.”

“Why? You never wear perfume.”

I shrugged. “It’s a special occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?”

Obviously, I couldn’t tell him that the special occasion was Operation Remotivation. “Never mind.”

I started toward him to give him a kiss, but before I could do it, he walked into the family room and plopped down on the couch with the remote.

I moved in front of the screen. “So what do you think of the dress?” I asked, modeling it.

He kept clicking the remote. “I like it,” he said, barely looking at me. “Remember, I helped you pick it out?”

When he stopped clicking, I turned around to see what he was watching. A girl with blonde cornrows was shaking her butt in a music video.

“Do you think she’s pretty?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s okay, I guess.” But from the way he kept leaning to the right to see the screen, it was clear he thought she was more than okay. Was that the problem? Did he want a hoochie mama instead of a nice Jewish girl like me? Finally, he tore his eyes away from the TV. “Did you get the sushi?”

“Yeah.”

“Can we eat it in here?
Best Rap Videos of the Last Decade
is on at seven.”

“I was thinking we could eat in the dining room,” I replied. “I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”

“I guess,” he said, standing up. “So can we eat now? I’m starved.”

“Yeah. But wait a second.” I reached into my pocket and took out a tie that I had borrowed from my dad’s closet. “First, you have to put this on.”

“You want me to wear a
tie
to eat sushi?”

“No. You have to wear it as a blindfold¸” I said, as I put it around his eyes.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

I took his arm and started leading him to the dining room. “Crazy about you,” I replied, which is what Dante always said to Devon.

He stopped and lifted the tie off of his left eye to look at me. “What has gotten into you?”

I ignored him and kept leading (more like yanking) him to the dining room. When we arrived, I removed the tie. “So what do you think?” I said excitedly.

I had taken every candle I could find in the house and put them on the table. Because there were about twenty of them, lighting them had been a huge pain in the butt—especially since I had singed the tips of my hair a few times in the process. The way I had taken all the pieces of sushi and edamame and put them in the shape of little hearts gave it a superromantic effect. I would have liked to be able to take credit for the idea, but the truth was Dante had done the same thing for Devon, except instead of sushi, he had used Hot Tamales.

“It looks cool,” he replied. “But you don’t think any of the wax dripped on the sushi, do you?”

That was it. It was too much. I tried to hold it together, but like Devon, I had a passionate nature that made it difficult to hide my emotions at times—especially when I was PMSing, which I was. As I sat there watching Michael inspect a piece of spicy tuna for candle wax, I burst into tears.

He looked up from the sushi, confused. “What’s the matter?”

Operation Remotivation was a bust. It wasn’t working. It was
never
going to work. At least not with Michael. I realized that the moment to have The Talk had arrived. To tell Michael that as much as I loved him, I wasn’t
in
love with him, and because of that, we should probably go our separate ways—which is what Devon had told the hippie rain forest activist she had met in Costa Rica in
Riddled by Remembrance.

But I just…couldn’t. Literally. Because when I opened my mouth to tell him, I choked on the mint I had been sucking on to make sure I had minty-fresh breath when we kissed. When I could breathe again, I started crying again.

“Why are you crying?” he asked, puzzled.

“I’m not,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I mean, I
was
, a second ago, but now I’m not. Now I’m just sniffling. I think I’m just PMSing.”

He put down the sushi and walked over and gave me a hug. Michael’s kisses no longer set my loins aflame with passion, as Devon would say, but he
did
give awesome hugs. He used just the right amount of pressure. “I’m sorry,” he said as he squeezed me.

How was I going to give that up? I started to cry again.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” I said, willing myself to buck up.

After a few more squeezes, he let go of me. “You sure you’re okay?”

I nodded as I swiped at my eyes some more.

“Good. Do you want to go fix your makeup?”

“Why?” I sniffled.

“I don’t know. Because you look a little bit like a raccoon?” he suggested.

I could tell he was trying to be helpful, but it didn’t stop me from bursting into tears again.

“You don’t have to,” he said, patting me again. “I just thought, you know, you might want to, before we eat. Not because it would gross me out or anything while I was eating, but because, you know, you have such pretty eyes.”

I started crying harder. This was why I was so
confused
. What was I supposed to do when he went and said something so romantic?

“I’ll be right back,” I sniffled as I walked toward the bathroom.

After I splashed some cold water on my face and ruined one of my mom’s good guest towels with mascara streaks, I stared at myself in the mirror. “Why are you throwing away something so rare and precious?” I said to my greasy-haired, puffy-eyed reflection in the mirror. “Michael
loves
you. Maybe he only said it once, on your fifteenth birthday, because you refused to let him have that second piece of cake unless he did, but that’s just because, like a lot of guys, he has trouble
talking about his feelings.” I blew my nose. “Millions of girls would
kill
to have someone like him,” I said. Okay, maybe not
millions
of girls—maybe just Annie Bellamy, who went to Buckley, his high school, with him and always freaked me out when I saw her because last year she had gotten into Wicca and I was afraid she was going to put a spell on me.