hot doing it.
Anyhow not only was she not hot but she wasn’t even getting the kind of attention she knew was easy to get. Like the guys who worked at the 7-Eleven and the Tastee Freez. Guys with yellow zits and chains connecting their wallets to their belt loops. Not even those guys.
But now with Jennifer dating Rod, it’s become a possibility. It’s almost that the only thing between Lina and having this popular boyfriend is a little bit of strategy. And to have a good strategy, you must have a practical obsession.
So in a matter of weeks Lina gets to know everything about him. Man, if guys only knew, she jokes to Jennifer, how much we think about them. Lina is always honest about things like that. But Jennifer is not willing to admit she’s ever done anything similar. Like finding out every single thing about someone to whom you have never spoken.
Address.
Phone number by heart. And in two weeks you have dialed the first six numbers about a thousand times, and your heart explodes right before the seventh number and your finger pulses on it, but you never press it. Doing this stretches the same muscles that heroin does.
Parents—their names, what each of them does for a living, and where they do it.
Pet—its name, and when it gets walked. On what street route so you can go with your Walkman and you can pick out an outfit for the walk every day and you turn every corner with a heart full of mosquitoes.
Jersey number.
First girl he ever kissed. And then you create a story about how she sucks. You create stories in the shower about how the girl sucks and how he will not even want to talk about her because she’s not worth the breath. How he’ll almost forget her name. Even though you never will.
Favorite bands, favorite movies, everything that Lina admits you should probably wait until you get to know a person before you know.
His schedule of classes and where exactly to sit in the class you share and how to get there earlier than him so that he won’t think you’re trying to get close.
All of this becomes more important than breathing. Because Lina knows that if she can just have this one guy who is so perfect, then every thing else will be okay. Even not being hot. Everything will be okay and shitty stuff won’t matter.
Like Lina’s mom, who makes her feel like an idiot for wanting more than what she’s got. Who says things like, That’s a silly idea, Lina, and Where’d you get that in your head, Lina?
Like Lina’s dad, who goes duck hunting and she’s dying to go with him but her mom crosses her arms against the idea. She wants Lina and her sisters to be girls. Ladies.
And Lina’s mom asks too many questions. She is always in Lina’s face. She is around all the time. Lina thinks, Get a fucking life. Get your own fucking life. I have never come home from school and been alone in the fucking house.
She wouldn’t care about stuff like that, or she would tolerate it at least, if she could go over to her boyfriend Aidan Hart’s house and watch a movie in his basement room with all the lights off and make out exuberantly but quietly as they snuggle under the scratchy Colts blanket and care about nothing else because they’re so totally in love. Oh man, the word boyfriend. It’s like something she can’t even conceive. It’s this faraway thing and she knows if she ever got it, she wouldn’t ever take it for granted because every day she would wake up and say, Holy shit, I have a boyfriend.
And if he only knew how perfect she was for him. He would stroke her face and say, Kid, I hate that we wasted so much time. We have to make up for it. I have to spend every minute of the rest of my life touching your body.
And she would just put her fingertip to his lips, the way she once saw a hot girl do in a movie, like, Shh, buddy, and then she’d kiss him.
This Friday night, that is precisely what she’s doing. She’s in her room with the lights off and she’s under the covers in her white panties and she’s moving her legs together like a deli meat slicer and she’s imagining her life in movie scenes and she’s kissing him in the rain, at