The Legend List

Chapter Seven

Top Five Things I Thought Were More Likely To Happen Than A Date With Brandon Sanchez:

5. That I'd win a Nobel Peace Prize for my efforts in museum curation.

4. That we'd find out Seth's brother and his snooty girlfriend are not actually up in Canada, but that they're top secret spies for the CIA.

3. That Gwen and I would switch bodies in a Freaky Friday type situation.

2. That I would be Queen of two countries simultaneously like my girl Mary Stuart.

1. That the Laurie's Life reboot my Mom is always yammering on about actually happens.

Stepping into Brandon's car feels like it's happening almost in slow motion- like any second the metaphorical clock is going to strike midnight and his Chevy is going to turn into a pumpkin while my pirate costume poofs back into my regular jeans and t-shirt and Brandon will realize he actually has no interest in me afterall.

"Everything cool?" He rolls down the window on the passenger side.

Oh well– I may as well make the best of my Cinderella moment, even if it is fleeting. "Uh, yeah. Yes. Everything's perfect."

We drive off down the street, and Brandon drums his fingers on the steering wheel along with the radio. The inside of his car smells like movie theatre popcorn and the locker rooms at school - a big change from the trusty pine tree air fresheners Seth swears by. When we're stuck at the red light I catch Brandon glancing over at me, and I smile like an idiot but keep my eyes on the road to avoid saying anything stupid and ruin the evening before we even get to the pizza place.

"Is Pizza Town okay? They're open late."

"I'm okay with whatever."

As long as he's sitting across from me, I'd be happy sitting on a sheet of newspaper in an abandoned warehouse with a glass of orange juice and a slice of bread. But the longer I'm alone with Brandon, the more I'm starting to regret that my main source of relationship advice the past few years has been someone with no actual romantic experience with guys.

Gwen is a big fan of a summer romance- more specifically a summer romance with someone at her Jewish summer camp. It was a few weeks of fun, sneaking some kisses by the docks while the counsellors were busy cleaning up after the ceramics lesson, and then she'd get to come back to Lincoln with no strings attached and a really romantic story to tell. She'd spend a whole afternoon when she got home filling Seth and I in on all of the details.

We stop at another red light and Pizza Town is so close that I can see it up ahead. I rack my brain for anything Gwen has said that could possibly be applied to my date with Brandon. I have a feeling he won't be as big of a fan of a romantic hair stroke as Camp-Molly was, so all I have to work with is to try and mimic Gwen's confidence. She is always saying that the best way to attract someone is to be totally and completely yourself. There's obviously no way that I was going to reach Gwen's level of confidence in the next two minutes, so I was going to have to rely on the tagline for my Mom's hair extensions to get me through this one- 'fake it til you make it'.

Brandon swerves smoothly into a parking spot right in front of Pizza Town. Before I have a chance to get out, he's pulling my door open and holding out his hand. Channeling my inner Gwen, I smile up at him like he's the last piece of chocolate cake and I've been fasting on a desert island with nothing to eat for days.

The waitress seems to assume that we're on a date because she sits us at a corner with dim lighting and a candle flickering in the middle of the table. Brandon sits across from me, never looking away.