55. Double Date
Spring comes, but it sure doesn’t bring hope.
Sometime in March, as I’m minding my business and ignoring things like emails waiting to be read and missing students and the shadows of dead girls I once loved, I get approached by Dan something-or-other who is in my grade and has never acknowledged me once that I can remember. I’m surprised the guy knows my name.
“Hey, Chris, what’s up?”
Dan says this as if we talk a lot.
“Hey,” I say back, pretty confident he doesn’t really want to know what’s up in my life. How long does he have to hear my answer?
“Hey, I got a favor to ask you.”
I’m wondering if he starts every sentence with hey.
“Yeah, okay.”
I’m at my locker and can’t help glancing around to see if this is a prank. He’s not carrying anything from the salad bar in his hands, so I guess I’m lucky there. Not that I could see someone like Dan ever doing that. Dan’s one of the midpack boys. I see him hanging around with Ray and his buddies. Or some of the jocks. Or some of the burnouts. I haven’t really ever noticed Dan, because to be honest there isn’t much to notice about him.
“You know Georgia, right? Georgia Wilson?”
I nod. Georgia is a pretty brunette I’ve seen hanging around with Kelsey. She seems a bit stuck up, but that’s just based on her looks and on the fact that she’s never looked or talked with me either.
“Hey, I got something to ask you, and man, I’ll totally owe you if you help me out.”
“Okay.”
“Look, I’ve been trying to go out with Georgia for like ever, and she just gives me the cold shoulder. You know her, you know? I mean, hey, I get it, but still. I just want her to go out once, you know? So the thing is, I was with her and her friend Kelsey. You know Kelsey, right? Well, they were talking and Georgia was teasing her because she likes you but never in a million years would ask you out, so I kept on about Georgia going out with me, and Kelsey suggested a double date.”
“Kelsey suggested that?”
“Yeah, totally. Not lying.”
“She’s asking me out?”
“No, are you crazy? Look, you can’t even tell them that I was talking to you. She’d flip—Kelsey, that is. She’d die. I couldn’t believe she even suggested something like this, but whatever. She must really like you.”
“She’s basically been ignoring me in art class.”
“Yeah, that’s girls. Georgia goes from talking to me one week to ignoring me the next. Whatever. It’s their time of the month or week thing or whatever. Can’t figure them out.”
I might have expected some things to happen to me today, like falling into a black crater or seeing a life-sized bunny rabbit following me around, but I sure didn’t expect this.
“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.
“Ask Kelsey out.”
“What?”
“Come on, man. She’s cute.”
“I thought this was a double date.”
“Yeah. Say that we want to double with them. Georgia will totally go for it, because she wants Kelsey to get together with you. She thinks you’re like some mysterious guy or something.” He laughs in a way that says you’re not mysterious you’re just kinda a loser that I need to use for the moment.
“Well, I gotta check my calendar,” I say.
“Okay, you do that. But then let me know.”
Dan apparently doesn’t recognize sarcasm.
“So how am I supposed to do this?”
He slaps me on the back, and I feel like I’ve been permanently imprinted with his handprint. He might be middle of the pack, but the guy is strong.
“How do you ask a girl out? I mean, how’d you ever ask out Jocelyn?”
I look at him to see if he’s joking. Or worse, to see if he’s mocking.
“Man, a hundred guys wanted to go out with her. You had to be doing something right, huh?”
I nod, but carefully.
“Sucks that she moved, you know. But whatcha gonna do?”
Again I try to see if he’s mocking me, but nothing I can see says that he is.
“Just let me know, okay? Talk to Kelsey sometime today. Let’s do it this weekend if it works, okay, man?”
He takes off, and I’m left to wonder how I’m going to ask out a girl who no longer talks to me. We haven’t spoken much at all since she gave me that Valentine’s Day card. I’ve tried.
But you haven’t tried that hard, have you?
And I wonder why I said yes.
Did you have a choice, really? And do you have any other pressing things to do, really?
I think about Kelsey. She’s cute and fine, but I know that the best thing I can do for her is stay away.
It’s one date. It’s one thing to help a guy out. You could use some more friends, right? And you could have some fun. Right?
I’m surprised Kelsey wants to have anything to do with me.
I think back to not long ago, just a lifetime ago, when Rachel figured out a way for me to ask Jocelyn out.
Maybe one day eventually I’ll grow up and learn to ask girls out on my own.
“Hey.”
The universal word for teen boys everywhere. This can mean many things. It can be a sign that we’re alive, or it can mean that yes we’ve just crashed our car into the tree, or it can mean absolutely nothing.
Kelsey no longer paints by me, but today I’ve brought my painting over by her.
“Can I—do you mind?”
Those eyes peer behind her glasses like a face hiding behind a window. She blushes.
“How’re you doing?”
“Fine,” she says.
I can’t imagine a date because I can’t imagine her talking enough to me to make it last longer than ten minutes.
“You like what I’m doing to my fruit?”
She glances at my canvas and nods.
“See, that was a test. That’s not fruit. Those are people. That’s a portrait of my family.”
Kelsey looks at me, then back at the picture. “Really?”
“No. Just kidding.”
She can’t help but laugh, and that means I see her braces.
For a while I try to make some kind of conversation, but most of the things I say sound so stupid. It’s really amazing this girl wants to go out with me. I’m still hoping that Dan wasn’t pulling a prank on me.
“So, uh, hey.”
There it is again. This time it means Look, I’m about to go out on a limb when I’ve been hiding behind the tree for some time now, and you might laugh in my face but that’s okay because I can always follow up your rejection with another hey.
“Do you know Dan?”
I’d say his last name, but I don’t know it because we’re not quite buds.
“Yes.”
“Well, I was just wondering—we were talking today—”
“You were talking to Dan?”
Already Kelsey sounds like she doesn’t believe me.
“Yeah. And we were wondering about maybe—well, sometime maybe on Friday or Saturday—”
“He made you do this.”
“What?”
“How’d he do it?”
“Do what?”
Kelsey looks annoyed, and suddenly she doesn’t seem like such a wallflower.
“He’s been trying to go out with Georgia since forever, but I never thought he’d do something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“I didn’t know that you knew Dan.”
“Well—I mean—not really well, but—”
“So then why?”
“I was just—we were just thinking—”
“Chris, please. I’m not that stupid.”
“What?”
“Do you do everything someone asks you to do?”
“No,” I say, genuinely surprised. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
Yeah, Chris, what is it?
I’m not sure how to answer this. I’m also not quite sure why Kelsey is irritated. With me.
“Look, I’m sorry, I just—”
“Is this some joke or something?”
“With who? What? I was asking the same thing.”
She nods, looks serious, then goes back to painting.
“I just thought it’d be fun.”
“Hanging out with Dan?”
I laugh. “Are you kidding? I mean, seriously … why would I want to hang out with Dan?”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“It’d be fun hanging out with you. And not by some stupid picture that looks like death that I’m painting while not even looking at you.”
For a second, I really have no idea if Kelsey’s going to laugh or sneer.
Thankfully, she lets out a slight giggle.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” I say. “I just—I thought it sounded like a fun idea.”
“Okay,” Kelsey says.
I nod. Then let the silence make me wonder exactly what she just okayed.
“By okay, do you mean—?”
“Saturday evening. You guys come over to Georgia’s house by seven. We’ll figure out the rest then.”
“Okay,” I say.
And yes, I guess it is okay.
Not sure how this will work out, but I’m not worried.
I’m just glad Kelsey’s talking to me again.
It would sure be awkward if we weren’t speaking on our first official date.