The Trouble Is

Chapter 10: The Parks Department

We spend the morning making a loop through the center of town, dropping off books and clothes and picking up Taco Bell along with the latest Cosmopolitanand Peoplemagazines. We stop at the park across from our former junior high school, where the hosts a summer kids club. It's a chaotic mess of kids and kickball and tetherball and board games and crafts managed by teenagers with really loud whistles hung from handmade, braided lanyards.

THere's a huge oak tree at the edge of the parking lot that shades a picnic table that has somehow managed to stay in place for another year. The table has been repainted, but our names are carved deep enough into the wood to still show past the brilliant-blue paint. This is our spot. Below our names I can still see the faint outline of the letters "BFF."

It's not too hot yet, so we hang there for a while, flipping through Cosmo, discussing the benefits of threading our eyebrows and the proper way to apply mascara to avoid clumping. We are just getting to the survey on sex when I hear a voice calling to the kids.

"Lunch time," the voice says in a kind of singsong-ish voice. "What could be more important than a little something to eat?"

The voice is kind of raspy, even when he's shouting to be heard. It's him: it's the new guy from the lake.

"I think that's a line from Winnie the Pooh," Katie says. "I should know. I watched it plenty of times with you and Dougie. And is that . . . ?"

Her voice trails off a little as she pulls down her shades to get a better look, and her head moves up and down as if she's checking him out. She gives a little whistle, then goes back to her bean burrito, pushing the bean mix out of the top of the tortilla like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. Yeah, it's kind of gross, but she does it in this way that makes you believe that it's the only way to really enjoy some Taco Bell.

"His name is East," I say, nodding slowly. "At least, I think his name is East."

"Well, he certainly knows we're here," she says, looking up again and openly staring at him. He glances our way and then starts calling kids in by name, ruffling their hair and gently pushing them into place on worn seats of the picnic tables. That's Katie, I think. She always looks head-on at people.

"He's looking at you," she whispers without really moving her mouth, like some kind of movie spy or stalker. "I think he's into you."

I feel a little weird looking back at him. Maybe it's his unusual voice or the Pooh Bear quote. My mother used to read the Pooh books to me at night long before we watched all the videos with Doug. Before she got really sick, she was working her way through the books with Doug. I shuddered a little at the whole weird-juju aspect of it all.

East stands there with the sun bouncing off his shades and his baseball cap turned around backward. He hands out juice boxes and says something to the kids while looking at us again. He's wearing gym shorts and a parks department t-shirt. I've never seen sexier gym shorts. He is way out of my league, I think. I close my eyes and imagine him standing close. He is smiling at the kids and laughing some kind of private little laugh at each kid as they grab for the little boxes of purple and red liquid sugar.

Katie leans toward me and whispers, "You are braver than you think."

More Pooh. And sooooo Katie: never afraid to be corny and seize the moment all at the same time. She reaches over and grabs my wrist, raising my hand a few inches in a little wave. His smile flashes at me like perfect white lightning, and then he waves back and turns to the kids crowding around him. I am still frozen in place, feeling a little bit like my cheeks are flushed or something.

"Well," Katie says, laughing, "maybe not that brave. But it's early days yet. There's much, much more to come, Annalisa."

I laugh at her, noting that she has once again changed my name. Lunchtime is over, so we pack up and head back to the car. As I buckle up, Katie starts the car, cranks up the air, and then just sits there.

"So what is it you want in a boy?" she asks. "Surely you've updated the list since junior high. Hit me with it. Start with his looks."

Actually, I have not updated the list at all. Somewhere along the way, I decided that the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing was not meant to be. Our town is too small, and the boys are too ridiculous for me to imagine liking any of them. I think about this for a bit while we just sit there with the air blowing full blast into the scorching heat of the car.

"I guess I don't have a particular look," I start to say. Katie interrupts me quickly.

"I totally call bullshit on that," she says. "I know exactly the look for you: tall, tan surfer boys with big vocabularies."

"A vocabulary is not a look," I clarify.

"You know what I mean," she says, suddenly serious. I can see her mind working through things. She has never understood my lack of interest in the boys of T.R. High School.

"What's it going to take to pierce through that icy armor, A?" she asks.

I blink a little in surprise at the sullen moment. One, two, three, pause. One, two, three. My hands twitch with the desire to touch each finger to thumb repeatedly. I force my eyelids closed and still myself.

"First of all, icy armor is not technically possible," I say, raising my index finger in the air to silence her until I can finish. "That's like an oxymoron or something. However, you are correct about the look, but that's just the first part of it."

"Well, there are plenty of those kinds of boys around here," she says, forehead crinkling a bit in confusion. "What's been the problem, then?"

"Too much baggage," I say. "They know too much about me, and I know too much about them. I want the chance to be who I want to be with a guy. I want to reinvent myself into someone . . . well, someone cool and confident and beautiful, and all that. I don't want to be that geeky girl they've known since who makes all the lists."

"I get it, I guess," she says. I can tell she is trying to understand in her way. But Katie has something in her that demands she conquer things. She is not one to wait around for something better. She evaluates the situation and goes for the best option available. She must catch the hottest guy, force him to love her, and then break his heart. I've watched the cycle over and over again since seventh grade, with one sad boy after another. I'm the one who spends hours on the phone listening to them try to figure out what they did wrong. I try to tell them the truth: They did nothing, and that's just Katie. She always wants what she doesn't have. It's in her spidery DNA. They should be glad she doesn't kill them when she's finished with them like a black widow.