Rule 3: Wear raspberry body splash—it drives boys wild!
Rule 26: Do not feel you have to tell your friends who you are crushing on!
Friday morning, on her way to work, Sydney pulled into the drugstore on the corner of Mulberry and Danner streets to grab some lip balm. She couldn’t find hers, and she liked having it at work because it was cold in the hospital. Her lips were always dry.
Inside the store, the assistant manager, Tammy, waved to Sydney from a display of new body sprays.
“How are you today?” Tammy asked, ripping open a cardboard box at her feet.
“Fine, thanks.” Sydney went straight to the lip balms and took a package of two vanilla tubes off the rack. Better to have a backup. She decided she’d grab a bottle of water, too, while she was here and went over to the coolers on the far wall.
When she passed Tammy at the front of the store, Sydney paused, her nose picking up the scent of something sweet. “What’s that smell?”
Tammy straightened and pushed up the sleeves of her floral blouse. “Raspberry body splash. One of the bottles was leaking in the box. Smells nice, though, doesn’t it?”
Sydney nodded, eyeing the display Tammy was putting together. There were bottles of cucumber melon spray and McIntosh apple, something called Hawaiian ginger and another called Japanese cherries.
Raspberry body splash…why was that setting off bells in her head?
The Crush Code. There was a rule about raspberry body splash driving the boys wild. That was one of Kelly’s additions to the new code. She had an entire shelf of body sprays in her bedroom. Sydney typically didn’t use sprays or perfumes or anything really, for that matter.
Did raspberry body splash really drive boys wild or had Kelly made up a useless rule because she hadn’t wanted the Crush Code in the first place?
Well, the spray did smell good, either way. And Sydney wasn’t adverse to trying something new. Would Drew like it? Would it drive him “crazy”? Despite her best efforts, Sydney had yet to reignite the spark in their relationship, and she was almost frustrated with trying at this point.
Trying to save a relationship with body splash was such a dumb idea, but there she was, grabbing a bottle off the shelf anyway.
After paying, Sydney went out to the car and sprayed the raspberry body splash on the underside of her wrist. She didn’t want it too strong. She didn’t want to choke out the kids at the hospital, but a little bit couldn’t hurt, right?
“Hello, Carl,” Sydney said as she entered the boy’s room in West Two. “How are you today?”
Carl, an eleven-year-old who’d just had surgery on his heel, shrugged and flipped through the meager fifteen cable channels on the TV.
“I’m bored. Like really, really bored.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“Getting lunch.”
Sydney thought for a second, then, “How about I bring in an Xbox?”
Carl stopped flipping through the channels to look over at Sydney wide-eyed. “There’s an Xbox here?”
Sydney nodded. “With lots of games, too.”
“Do you have Madden?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll check.”
“Cool! Thanks.”
Sydney went to the media room and stopped just inside the doorway. Quin was there organizing the movies.
He looked up at her through his glasses. His hair was down today around his face and wavy, too, as if he’d washed it and let it air dry.
“Hey,” he said, straightening.
“Hi.” She entered the room, going to the video game shelf. She scanned the titles, running her finger along the spine of each game box. There were so many, more than any video store she’d ever seen.
“Looking for something?” Quin asked.
“Umm…Madden something?”
Quin went to the third shelf, pulling out a football game. “Here you go.”
“You know where everything is, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Oh, hey, by the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you I saw your picture the other day in the art hall. I was really impressed.”
A smile spread rapidly over her face. “Yeah?”
Quin nodded. “The light composition was great, and I loved the fluid motion of the runner.”
Sydney didn’t even pretend to know what he was talking about. “I’m afraid I don’t know much of the technical side of photography.”
“Well, you have a good start on instinct. You can learn techniques. If you want, I can take you out sometime. My schooling has to be good for something, right?”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”
“No. I love photography, and people like talking about the things they love.”
Sydney laughed. “That’s true.”
But what would Drew say if she hung out with another guy? There was nothing romantic about Quin’s invitation, but that wouldn’t matter to Drew. Guys didn’t think like girls did. It wasn’t okay for a girl to hang out with a guy she wasn’t romantically linked with.
It was such a double standard because Drew hung out with Kelly all the time and Sydney never said anything about that.
“I’ll keep the invitation in mind,” Sydney said to Quin. “It’s just, I have a boyfriend and I don’t know if he’d…you know, be okay with it. But I appreciate the offer.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.”
She grabbed the TV cart and headed back to room 412, regret and disappointment settling in her stomach. She didn’t want to hurt Drew, but she really wanted to go with Quin on a photo excursion. Was that so wrong of her? She hated that she had to decide between her boyfriend and a hobby that she loved. The fact was, she could learn something from Quin. He was enrolled at the Brooks Institute!
It just disappointed her that she had to miss such a great opportunity.