The Perfect Couple

17

Marcus gave my arm an urgent little squeeze, prodding me to take up on what he'd begun. At the moment I felt about as vivacious as one of the slugs in Mom's garden, but I've got a Marcus into this and the least I could do was to hold up my end. I gave my head a wild toss and tilted my chin at a neck breaking angle to look into Alan's face although I saw now, with the two boys standing together, that he wasn't as tall as Marcus.

"Hello, Alan," I said, showing him a lot of teeth has Kim had told me to do. Then I greeted to Gloria with a friendly "Hi." Finally, addressing them both, I said, "nice day, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it sure is." I was surprised that Alan was such a mumbler, but he was looking more puzzled by the second and I had the feeling he was trying to remember if I was one of the long line of girls he's gone with since eighth grade.

Gloria responded to my friend the words with frown. "The sun is so hard on my skin," she complained. "I'm so fair." She looked up at Alan for confirmation, but Marcus had trapped him into a discussion of some football formation to prolong the encounter. I didn't want him to overdo it, though and I didn't want to overdo it myself. I drank at marcus's arm.

"We'd better get inside," I said in my new lilting voice. "If we're late to home room one more time, Mrs. Meade I will throw the book at us." I laughed, hinting at where we'd been all those times we supposedly been tardy.

Marcus picked up my cue as if it were an easy ground ball. "You're right, Kelly. We'd better get going." He seemed a wide smile at Alan and Gloria. "We'll see you two around." "Yeah, sure." Alan was muttering now. Gloria muttered something, too, but I couldn't make out the words. They sounded a little like not if we see you first.

I didn't get a chance to talk to him until the middle of the morning when we had English together.

"You look fabulous!" She raved when she caught up with me outside the door. "Your hair looks even better today and that skirt shows just the right amount of leg."

I didn't know if she was admiring me, are the job she done on me, but I found her before saying we'd better get into class. I was fighting for my life in English. I like to read I liked words. Sometimes I'd even look up a word in the dictionary that I didn't have to. But grammar was something else.

Kim pulled me away from the door. "Tell me what happened!" I saw you a Marcus leave for school together. Did you see Alan? Did he see you and Marcus together?

I told her about the scene on the front steps. "I don't think Alan was a bit impressed, but Marcus says it will sink in gradually and the next time Alan sees me he'll really notice me."

"I'd bet Marcus is right." She looked at me closely. "You don't seem very thrilled, though. You know, you've already made a lot of progress. Alan knows you're alive. He didn't before."

I know I'd spill out my feelings to a sooner or later, so I decided I might as well do it now. "I have the feeling Marcus was pushing me at Alan I didn't like it. I want him to help me, but" I made a helpless gesture. "I can't explain how I feel."

Kim rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as if appealing for patience. "Do I have to be your psychologist as well as your fashion advisor?" I recognize a rhetorical question when I hear one, so I didn't bother to answer. "This is the way I see it. Deep down you'd like to feel that you're attractive to all boys, whether you're interested in them or not. You like Marcus only as a friend, but it hurts your eGo to have him push you at another guy. Well, Kelly Black, you better make up your mind what you really want. You can't have it both ways. There! A psychologist couldn't give you any better advice."

"Send me a bill," I quipped. Not that I didn't take what she said seriously. Her dad was a general practitioner, not a psychologist, but he had a lot of psychology books and I know she read them those that were under lock and key.

English passed without Miss Pritchard asking me any tricky questions about who or whom, are dangling participles. After that, study period was all I had before lunch.

I thought Marcus would have lunch with the guys like he always did and that I'd sit with Kim and Becky and some of my other friends. At the cafeteria door, though, Marcus caught my arm and lead me to the line. Kim was right it was nice standing in the cafeteria as if we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but when I caught sight of Alan across the room, I knew that he was the one I wanted and I wish he was beside me in the line. He was sitting at a table with Gloria. He leaned forward as she talked, following the movements of her lips with rapt attention. Marcus could pick me up now and throw me badly at Alan if he would only look at me like that.

Marcus was watching them, too. "I wonder what she's whining about now," he said. "My skin is so fair," he mimicked in a falsetto voice. Then in his own voice he said, "one thing about you, Kelly you're not a whiner."

"Gee, thanks," I said.

Marcus led me to two empty seats away from everyone else. "We want to be conspicuous and you can't be in a crowd," he pointed out.

I've got I would have to push and prod Marcus to get him to act as if you were in love with me, but he continued to lead the way. He said me a bite of his cottage cheese, then, of course, I fed him a bite of my potato salad. The leaned across the table the way Alan had I'm from his expression anyone would have thought he was whispering love words to me. Actually he was telling me the latest price of aluminium and saying we'd soon have enough cans to take them to the salvage yard.

"Alan is looking over this way," he said after a minute. "Here, take a bite of my apple and then I'll take a bite of it."

"Are you sure it doesn't have a worm in it?" This set us off laughing I with all my head tossing and hand waving, I was as vivacious as Kim could have wished.

After lunch break I had American history, which at the present time was my favourite subject because it was the only class I shared with Alan.

At first I horrid along in the hall, but then I slowed down in case he should walk up beside me. If he had any notion of talking to me he'd forget it if I appeared to be rushing. When I reached the classroom I saw he was already in his seat. Luckily, I had to pass him to reach my own seat.

Or maybe it was unlucky. If I didn't follow up on what Marcus and I had started, the scene on the steps that morning would have been in vain. I didn't see how I could follow up, though, without Marcus beside me to give me moral support. I felt as nerdish as the girl at the kerb that day when Alan had jumped out of the Camaro and grabbed Miriam's without even seeing me.

As I got close to Alan I noticed that Lee Jenkins, the guy who sat across from him, was looking at me in a way that boys had never looked at me before. With this proof that I was no longer that nerd by the kerb, I became a bundle of vivacity.

"We meet again," I said gaily, pausing at Alan's desk.

"Huh?" He looked up from his book, blinked, then slowly focused his wonderful eyes on my face. "oh, yeah, you're Kacie."

I laughed, ignoring the fat that Mrs Cole had just called the class to order. "I can never remember names, either. I'm Kelly you know, Marcus's friend."

"Oh, yeah, Marcus." He blinked again, but this time when his eyes focused they became very busy, scanning my person from my autumn leaf hair to the hem of my mini skirt and below.

I should say something, I thought. But what? Or should I at least move to my seat. I couldn't move, though. I felt frozen to the spot. Paralysed. I felt as if I had stage fright, like Kim's mother gets sometimes. Then mrs Cole, who was famous for her sarcasm, brought down the curtain.