How To Get a Boyfriend 101

2 : Monday

Step Two: Be yourself! Guys like someone who's honest about who they are and what they like. If you put peanut butter on your mangos, don't hide that from him! If he's really worth your time (and all 101 steps), then he'll accept you for who you are!

"Psh..." my best friend, Blake Turner, says as he reads the second step out loud to me. He looks up at me with mocking brown eyes. "Lix, you're not going to be able to do all 101 steps."

I sigh, running my fingers through my hair, as I look at everything in my room, anything but the open book on my queen-sized bed that Blake is carefully inspecting. He toys with the corner of the page.

"Lix?"

I finally look at him. "Blake, I don't have the willpower to make him like me," I groan. He comes and sits next to me on the floor.

"How about this?" he begins. I perk up. "Every day, you try a new step on him. In 100 days, he should be your boyfriend!"

I'm skeptical. "And if he's not?"

"Then you can sue whoever wrote the book for false advertisement and gender-conforming assumptions," he offers. "It's a win-win situation." I'm not quite sure he understands the meaning of a 'win-win situation,' but I'll take what I can get.

I groan again, then sigh again. "Fine."

There's no harm in trying, I tell myself. Something in my mind told me to buy this book. That means I want this, right? It'll turn out well. I think. I hope. Probably not.

Blake bounces around, pleased with my answer. He flicks his head back, and I'm reminded that my hair will never be as pretty as his. Blake has dark curls that flop like crazy whenever he moves. And they're never messy, somehow, despite being so mobile. He is a living, breathing conditioner commercial. "Okay, now that we've taken care of that, let's get ready for school!"

Remind me; why did I decide to let him sleep over on a Sunday night?

~~~~~~~~

After a timespan that seems to last about two seconds but, in reality, is more like an hour, I find myself separated from Blake in the Hallway of Hell. It takes almost a full minute to locate Jason at his locker a few rows down from mine, talking to a close friend of his, Russell Chen. Just as I've been crushing on Jason since last year, Blake has had the most adorable crush on Russell for a while, too.

He's skilled at hiding it, though, unlike me. Blake has a talent of talking to hot guys, whereas my mouth never manages to do what my brain tells it to do. Half the time, my brain doesn't even know what it wants to accomplish. Just making it out of a situation without choking on my own tongue is a success, in my book.

Well, I should get on with showing my "true self" and stuff to Jason.

My "true self" never thinks things through, so that's how I find myself being carried over to Jason and Russell on feet that have decided to betray me.

I silently cuss out my legs for doing this to me, but I'm interrupted by a "Can I help you?" from Jason, who I'm standing right in front of.

Cue the lights!
Cue the music!
Cue the rose-scented perfume!

Our two protagonists have met, and it's true love at first sight!

Ha, I wish. Instead, I'm standing there with what I am pretty sure is the most stupid expression on my face, a look that clearly says, I'm not quite sure why I'm standing here.

Jason and Russell exchange a look. "Well, we're not quite sure either," Russell says, grinning at me. Like I mentioned earlier in one of my random messes of a thought train, Blake is crushing on Russell. One of the things I like about Blake is his refined taste in men, and Russell fits the bill.