Dear Diary,
Another Scoundrel alert: a boy named Braden offered to tutor a girl in Terry’s geometry class, but it turned out he was correcting all her answers so that when he told her what he’d done, she’d feel obligated to go out with him. And then for extra creepiness he threatened to turn her in for cheating if she said no. Which is pretty much what Gus Trenor did to Lily Bart in House of Mirth, only with math homework instead of the stock market. And no gambling addiction or tragic use of sleeping pills.
I know Alex Ritter is the reason we started the Scoundrel Guide in the first place, but on balance, he’s not the worst of the bunch.
M.P.M.
before I could put my plan into effect. After making excuses to my friends, I hurried home on foot. There was no sign of Alex Ritter, though I knew this was the day of his piano lesson.
Despite my trepidation at the task ahead, I relished every crunch of leaves underfoot, the bursts of red still on the trees, watery golden sunlight softening the crispness of the air as it washed over my skin. It was a perfect fall afternoon, the sky so clear it felt like being cradled inside a giant blue marble. There should have been a name for days like this, but all the ones I could think of—halcyon days, salad days—referred to summer, which struck me as unfair. Who needed the obvious charms of June when you could have the burnished richness of autumn?
After stashing my backpack in my room, I crept back down the stairs and out the front door, careful not to let the screen door slam behind me. Since I wasn’t sure how long piano lessons typically lasted, it seemed wisest to get into position early. A row of hydrangeas bordered the yellow house. Squeezing between the shrubbery and the porch, I settled in to wait.
Muffled strains of music drifted through the walls. It sounded like the same few bars played over and over, with brief interludes of silence. I was beginning to regret not grabbing a snack, and a sweater, when footsteps thudded toward the front of the house. The door opened.
Peeking through the porch railing, I confirmed the identity of the student before hissing, “Pssst.”
Alex Ritter started, fumbling the book of sheet music in his hand.
“Over here,” I whispered.
He took a tentative step toward the edge of the porch, squinting down at me through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Mary?”
I nodded, distracted by the eyewear. The effect was very different from his usual look: less perfect, more vulnerable.
He glanced over his shoulder before turning back to me. “No thanks. I’ll pass.”
My mouth fell open. He was turning me down already? “I haven’t even told you what I want—”
“I’m getting a very strong ‘drug deal’ vibe. Contrary to what you seem to think about my personal habits, I’m actually a pretty clean-living guy.”
“I’m not trying to sell you anything!” I stepped closer to the railing. “I need your help.”
The suppressed laughter fled his expression. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He was still studying me intently, checking for injuries, I presumed. “You wear glasses?”
“My contacts were bothering me.” His hand moved to his hair, but he stopped short of touching the curls, sliding a self-conscious glance my way as his arm fell to his side.
“I shouldn’t have said that about your hair. Obviously I’m not one to talk about styling products and all that.” I flapped a self-deprecating hand at my ponytail.
A gust of wind sent leaves scudding along the sidewalk.
“Is this like when my sisters describe someone’s outfit by saying she ‘tried really hard’? I have the feeling next you’re going to tell me I seem like a ‘very sweet person.’”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
His lips twitched. “That’s a relief.”
“I always wanted curls,” I continued, determined not to be maneuvered into insulting him again.
He tapped the music book against his thigh. “Do you know what my sisters called me when I was little?” I shook my head, unwilling to hazard a guess. “Little Orphan Allie.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine him as a little boy with golden ringlets and winsome blue eyes. Possibly in a blue velvet sailor suit and knee socks. “My sisters called me Uriah Heep,” I admitted, matching his confidence with one of my own.
“Excuse me?”
“From David Copperfield. Because I was always spying on them and touching their stuff.”
He gave a huff of laughter, but I didn’t mind. It was still better than his nickname.
“My hair sucks,” he said a moment later, staring into the distance. “If I don’t put anything on it I look like Albert Einstein. And I can’t shave it off because my skull is too lumpy.”
“People used to think you could tell things about a person from the shape of their cranium. Phrenology. It was a pseudoscience.”
“Do I even want to know how you know that?”
“Moby Dick.”
“And here I thought it was about whales.” He peered down at me. “I guess you used your spying skills to find me here, Uriah?”
I nodded. “I wanted to ask you something, if you have a minute.”
“Should I come down, or do you want to keep doing it like this?” He waved a finger between us. “Because I’m pretty sure the neighbors think I’m talking to myself right now.”
“Or maybe—” I clamped my lips together, cutting off what I’d been about to say. This was nothing like the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and only a blithering idiot would suggest otherwise. “Yes,” I said instead. “Good idea.”
We met on the sidewalk. He looked expectantly at me.
“I guess we can go to my house.” I pointed in that direction, trying to mask my uncertainty with a purposeful air. My mental to-do list consisted of one bold-print item: Ask Alex Ritter for Romantic Advice. I hadn’t thought beyond that to the practical details, including where such a dialogue should take place.
The sidewalk wasn’t quite as wide as I could have wished, but it would have been weird to walk behind or ahead of him, so I resigned myself to the tight quarters, clasping my hands behind my back after my fingers accidentally brushed his.
Alex cleared his throat. “Is this about the dance?”
I stumbled, staring at the cracked pavement as if it were to blame. “How did you know?”
He shrugged and looked away. His body language suggested he was too polite to answer.
“Oh my gosh,” I exclaimed as the penny dropped. “You think I’m about to ask you to go with me. Why on earth would—” Halfway through, the question answered itself. No doubt there was a line of girls eager to solicit his company for Winter Formal. He probably needed one of those big red number dispensers they had at the deli counter to keep track of them all.
“Trust me, that is not what I wanted to talk to you about,” I assured him. “First of all, it’s not about me, per se. It’s more of a group thing.”
“You want me to go with all of you?”
“What? No. This is something totally different. Mostly. But still serious and respectable.”
“I would expect nothing less from you, Mary.”
I couldn’t tell whether this was a genuine compliment, so I held my tongue as I led him around the side of my house and unlatched the gate leading to the backyard. Leathery leaves blanketed the grass, crumpling underfoot. The Porter-Malcolms were not as vigilant as some of our neighbors when it came to raking.
Seating options were limited, now that we’d taken down the reading hammock for the season. Not that a hammock would have been in any way appropriate for the two of us. That left only the wrought-iron bench, which seemed very small, once we were standing in front of it.
Brushing if off, I gestured for him to sit. “Would you like some tea?” The words sounded stiff and formal, like I was pretending to be an adult, and an elderly one at that. It was hard to strike a balance between thank-you-for-doing-me-this-favor and I-swear-I’m-not-trying-to-woo-you.
“And crumpets?” he asked.
“We don’t have crumpets.”
“Curds and whey? Blackbird pie?”
I frowned at him. “Black bird?”
“Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.” He smiled his lazy smile, patting the bench beside him. There was barely room for me to sit without pressing against him somewhere; I opted for knee-to-knee contact as the least embarrassing. “You have that storybook quality, Mary.” He took his glasses off and stuck them in the pocket of his shirt.
“Don’t you need them?” I asked.
“I can see you.” He was doing that thing again, his eyes traveling slowly over my face and hair, a deliberate perusal that made me feel intensely visible. It was only natural to look back at him with equal focus, noting how the autumn sunlight gilded his hair, and the slight freshness of the breeze brought a hint of pink to his cheeks. If he was handsome in the hallways at school, out here, on a day like today, he could have been a fairy prince, amusing himself by toying with mortals.
An idea danced at the back of my mind, spurred by the gleam in his eyes, the half smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. Could it be that this light made everyone lovely, including me? That would explain his rapt attention, and the stillness that seemed to envelop the two of us. It felt like the universe was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
Or maybe that was just me.
“You wanted to talk?” he prompted.
I gave a jerky nod to hide my confusion. “I need your help, actually.”
“Anything for you, Mary.”
The familiar teasing came as a relief. At least now I knew he was joking, unlike the silent . . . whatever that had been of a moment before.
“It’s about what you said the other night,” I began. “At the game.”
“You’re still looking for a good nickname?”
I shook my head. “The part about chemistry. Spark. Finding someone you actually like, who’s also a sensible dating option. A nice, safe romantic object . . . person.”
“Safe as in boring?”
“No! Definitely not someone blah. Or annoying. But not a criminal either,” I added, thinking of Terry. “I know about the big stuff, like evaluating their moral fiber—judging whether someone is a reprehensible human being and all that.”
“That’s good,” he replied with mock solemnity.
“And I also know it can’t just be about physical attraction,” I continued, ignoring the aside. “Because appearances can be deceiving. A person who seems intriguing might turn out to be really condescending and full of himself, for example.”
He brushed at the front of his sweater, a navy-blue cable knit. “I hate it when that happens.”
“I’m asking how you can be sure you’re making a smart choice—going for someone whose company you’ll actually enjoy? Obviously I know love at first sight is unrealistic.”
“Obviously.” He tapped his chin. “They don’t cover this in your books?”
“It’s not quite the same situation. There were a lot of other factors back then.”
“Such as?”
“Bloodlines, property, who has enough cash in her dowry to keep the ancestral estate running. That kind of thing.”
“Romantic.”
“Yes, well. That was the era of arranged marriages. It was basically a financial transaction. But it’s not really that different from now, when you think about it.”
He waved at me to go on.
“It seems to me high school is all about the social hierarchy. Everyone’s trying to figure out their rank, only nowadays it’s not just a question of having an aristocratic title. There are other status symbols.”
“Shoes,” he suggested.
It was probably a joke, but I nodded anyway. “The right clothes, how you look, who your friends are, any kind of public notoriety. It all gets taken into account. And then you look for an eligible partner, meaning someone on your level, or slightly above.”
Alex shook his head.
“What?”
“No one is walking around calculating who to date.” He pretended to scrawl numbers on the palm of his hand.
“Maybe not literally, but I bet you there’s an underlying logic to it.” I opted not to mention the obvious example of him and Terry, his equal in beauty.
“It’s not that complicated.” He tapped my arm. “How did you and your girl gang hook up?”
“Oh. It’s kind of a long story.” Which I had no intention of sharing. Especially the part involving him.
“Okay, but at some point you realized you like hanging out with each other. The conversation flows. You make each other laugh. There’s good energy.” He looked expectantly at me.
“Yes, but there has to be some difference, or else everyone would go around kissing their friends.”
“That would be rude. Unless they were into it.” He wagged his eyebrows like a mustache-twirling villain in a black cape. “Seriously, though. It starts with that same kind of connection.”
A light bulb went off in my head. “Like in Howards End!”
“I don’t do porn, Mary.”
I sent him a quelling look. “It’s a book. There’s this really famous line—‘Only connect.’” I waited for him to make some expression of amazement.
“That’s it?”
I gave a sheepish nod. The truth was that I’d always found it a bit opaque myself. Was it supposed to be a person-to-person thing, or something vast and philosophical? I glanced hopefully at Alex. “What do you think it means?”
“In your book or . . . ?” He circled a palm between us, presumably indicating the world at large.
“With real people. Like you were saying. When it’s more than platonic.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It can be a lot of things. You might like the way a person laughs, or how they think, their smell—anything that makes you want to cross a room to talk to them.”
“And then?”
He shifted on the bench, bringing his hip and thigh into contact with mine. “You get to know them.”
Moving away would have been awkward, so I held perfectly still. “And?”
“And then you feel something, or you don’t.”
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Like what?”
He didn’t answer right away, as though there might be some other layer to my question he needed to decipher first.
“Like your day is better when you see them,” he said, looking steadily at me. “And you think about them when they’re not around. Or make excuses to get close, because you wonder if their skin is as soft as it looks. That kind of thing.”
I swallowed. “Oh.”
“Why do you ask, Mary?” He stretched his arm along the back of the bench. “Are you having feelings?”
“It’s for my friends,” I said hastily.
“You have feelings for your friends?”
“No! Not kissy feelings, anyway.” I blew out a breath before starting over. “I mean they’re counting on me to help them find dates for Winter Formal. Except Arden, of course. She’s all set.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not worried about that.”
“You already have someone in mind?”
“Me?” I gave a nervous choke of laughter. “I barely know anyone.”
Alex gestured at himself. “What am I, chopped liver?”
My gaze fixed on the leaves at our feet, but not quickly enough to hide my blush. “I’m still new to all this. I don’t have your vast experience with affairs of the heart—” Crap. “I mean expertise. Which is why I asked you for help.” His expression remained dubious. “Like how an FBI agent might consult someone from the other side of the law to help with a tricky investigation.”
“So I’m a serial killer, and you’re using my inside knowledge to catch a different murderer?”
My shoulders slumped. It had sounded so persuasive when Terry talked about her crime shows. “I just remembered how you knew that Will guy was a dud.”
He snorted under his breath.
“Yes, well, it may have taken some of us a little longer to figure it out.”
“That was the accent, probably. Happens to the best of us.” With the arm draped along the back of the bench—the one I’d been pretending not to notice, while secretly enjoying its warmth—he patted me on the back. “What you need is the opposite of him. Someone fun. Easygoing. Capable of smiling without spraining his jaw.” He tugged the end of my ponytail.
“Of course,” I breathed, stunned by the undeniable brilliance of his suggestion. “If Will was a Cecil Vyse, then obviously the antidote is to find a George Emerson!”
Alex frowned. “You lost me.”
“It’s from a book,” I explained. “Cecil is the snobby upper-crust fiancé, and George is the one she ditches him for, because he’s authentic and passionate—the kind of person who goes skinny-dipping in the woods with some other guys and kisses Lucy in a field of violets.”
“So he swings both ways?”
It was my turn to frown. “I think the swimming scene is about being at home in nature and not bound by propriety and suffocating social strictures, but it’s possible I missed some subtext.” There was no time to worry about that now. Leaping to my feet, I offered Alex my hand. “Thank you.”
His warm palm pressed against mine. When he didn’t let go, I tugged lightly, pulling him to his feet. My gaze traveled from our clasped hands to his face. “I should go in and do some . . . things,” I said faintly, swallowing against the sudden dryness in my throat.
The pounding of my heart measured out the time as I waited for him to reply. The look in his eyes was impossible to read. Inside the house, the phone rang.
“You probably need to get that.”
It felt like there was a different question layered under that one, but I had no idea what he was asking or how to answer, so I nodded dumbly.
Alex released my hand. I watched him disappear through the gate. Only then did I walk slowly toward my back door, and a phone that had long since stopped ringing.