Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble

“Over there,” I say, nodding my head toward Red Leather Break-dancing Jacket. “That one in the hideous jacket with the epaulets. See him? The one staring at us.”

“Oh, right.” The Meet Your Party booth attendant nods. “Right. Very menacing. Hold on, then, I’ll have your boyfriend over here, giving that git the thrashing he so richly deserves, in a second. ANDREW MARSHALL. ANDREW MARSHALL, MISS NICHOLS IS WAITING FOR YOU AT THE MEET YOUR PARTY BOOTH. ANDREW MARSHALL, PLEASE FIND MISS NICHOLS AT THE MEET YOUR PARTY BOOTH. There? How was that?”

“Oh, that was great,” I say encouragingly, because I feel a little sorry for him. I mean, it must be hard to sit in a booth all day, yelling over a loudspeaker. “That was really-”

“Liz?”

Andrew! At last!

Only when I turn around, it’s Red Leather Break-dancing Jacket.

Except.

Except that it WAS Andrew, all along.

And I just didn’t recognize him, because I was distracted by the jacket-the most hideous jacket I’ve ever seen. Plus he seems to have had his hair cut. Not very flatteringly.

Sort of menacingly, in fact.

“Oh,” I say. It is extremely difficult to hide my confusion. And dismay. “Andrew. Hi.”

Behind the glass of the Meet Your Party booth, the attendant bursts into very, very loud laughter.

And I realize, with a pang, that I’ve done it.

Again.

You’re compromising your feminist principles.” That’s what Shari keeps saying.

“Stop it,” I say.

“Seriously. It’s not like you. Ever since you met this guy-”

“Shari, I love him. Why is it wrong that I want to be with the person I love?”

“It’s not wrong to want to be with him,” Shari says. “It’s wrong to put your own career on hold while you wait for him to finish his degree.”

“And what career would that be, Shar?” I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation. Again.

Also that she would station herself next to the chips and dip like this when she knows perfectly well I’m still trying to lose five more pounds.

Oh well. At least she’s wearing the fifties black-and-white Mexican swing skirt I picked out for her at the shop, even though she claimed it made her butt look too big. It so doesn’t. Except maybe in a good way.

“You know,” Shari says. “The career you could have, if you would just move to New York with me when you get back from England, instead of-”

“I told you, I’m not arguing with you about this today,” I say. “It’s my graduation party, Shar. Can’t you let me enjoy it?”

“No,” Shari says. “Because you’re being an ass, and you know it.”

Shari’s boyfriend, Chaz, comes over to us and scoops up some onion dip with a barbecue-flavored potato chip.

Mmm. Barbecue-flavored potato chips. Maybe if I just had one…

“What’s Lizzie being an ass about now?” he asks, chewing.

But you can never have just one barbecue-flavored potato chip. Never.

Chaz is tall and lanky. I bet he’s never had to lose five more pounds before in his entire life. He even has to wear a belt to hold up his Levi’s. It’s a mesh leather weave. But on him, mesh leather works.

What doesn’t work, of course, is the University of Michigan baseball cap. But I have never successfully managed to convince him that baseball caps, as an accessory, are wrong on everyone. Except children and actual baseball players.

“She still plans to stay here after she gets back from England,” Shari explains, plunging a chip of her own into the dip, “instead of moving to New York with us to start her real life.”

Shari doesn’t have to watch what she eats, either. She’s always had a naturally fast metabolism. When we were kids, her school sack lunches consisted of three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a pack of Oreo cookies, and she never gained an ounce. My lunches? A hard-boiled egg, a single orange, and a chicken leg. And I was the blimp. Oh yes.

“Shari,” I say, “I have a real life here. I’ve got a place to stay-”

“With your parents!”

“-and a job I love-”

“As an assistant manager of a vintage clothing store. That’s not a career!”

“I told you,” I say for what has to be the nine hundredth time, “I’m going to live here and save my money. Then Andrew and I are moving to New York after he gets his master’s. It’s just one more semester.”

“Who’s Andrew again?” Chaz wants to know. And Shari hits him in the shoulder.

“Ow,” Chaz says.

“You remember,” Shari says. “The R.A. at McCracken Hall. The grad student. The one Lizzie hasn’t stopped talking about all summer.”

“Oh, right, Andy. The British guy. The one who was running the illegal poker ring on the seventh floor.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s not Andrew! He doesn’t gamble. He’s studying to be an educator of youth so that he can preserve our most precious resource…the next generation.”

“The guy who sent you the photo of his naked ass?”

I gasp. “Shari, you told him about that?”

“I wanted a guy’s perspective,” Shari says with a shrug. “You know, to see if he had any insights into what kind of individual would do something like that.”

Coming from Shari, who’d been a psych major, this is actually a fairly reasonable explanation. I look at Chaz questioningly. He has lots of insights into lots of things-how many times around Palmer Field make a mile (four-which I needed to know back when I was walking it every day to lose weight); what the number 33 on the inside of the Rolling Rock bottle means; why so many guys seem to think man-pris are actually flattering…

But Chaz shrugs, too. “I was unable to be of any aid,” he says, “not ever having taken a photo of my bare ass before.”

“Andrew didn’t take a photo of his own ass,” I say. “His friends took it.”

“How homoerotic,” Chaz comments. “Why do you call him Andrew when everybody else calls him Andy?”

“Because Andy is a jock name,” I say, “and Andrew isn’t a jock. He’s getting a master’s in education. Someday he’ll be teaching children to read. Could there be a more important job in the whole entire world than that? And he’s not gay. I checked this time.”

Chaz’s eyebrows go up. “You checked? How? Wait…I don’t want to know.”

“She just likes pretending he’s Prince Andrew,” Shari says. “Um, so where was I?”

“Lizzie’s being an ass,” Chaz helpfully supplies. “So wait. How long’s it been since you saw this guy? Three months?”

“About that,” I say.

“Man,” Chaz says, shaking his head, “there is going to be some major bone-jumping when you step off that plane.”

“Andrew isn’t like that,” I say warmly. “He’s a romantic. He’ll probably want to let me get acclimated and recover from my jet lag in his king-size bed and thousand-thread-count sheets. He’ll bring me breakfast in bed-a cute English breakfast with…Englishy stuff on it.”

“Like stewed tomatoes?” Chaz asks with feigned innocence.

“Nice try,” I say, “but Andrew knows I don’t like tomatoes. He asked in his last e-mail if there are any foods I dislike, and I filled him in on the tomato thing.”

“You better hope breakfast isn’t all he brings you in bed,” Shari says darkly. “Otherwise what is the point of traveling halfway around the world to see him?”

That’s the problem with Shari. She’s so unromantic. I’m really surprised she and Chaz have gone out as long as they have. I mean, two years is really a record for her.

Then again, as she likes to assure me, their attraction is almost purely physical, Chaz having just gotten his master’s in philosophy and thus, in Shari’s opinion, being virtually unemployable.

“So what would even be the point of hoping for a future with him?” she often asks me. “I mean, eventually he’ll start to feel inadequate-even though he’s got his trust fund, of course-and consequently suffer from performance anxiety in the bedroom. So I’ll just keep him around as a boy toy for now, while he can still get it up.”

Shari is very practical in this way.

“I still don’t get why you’re going all the way to England to see him,” Chaz says. “I mean, a guy you haven’t even slept with yet, who obviously doesn’t know you very well if he isn’t aware of your aversion to tomatoes and thinks you’d enjoy seeing a photograph of anyone’s naked ass.”

“You know perfectly well why,” Shari says. “It’s his accent.”

“Shari!” I cry.

“Oh, right,” Shari says, rolling her eyes. “He saved her life.”

“Who saved whose life?” Angelo, my brother-in-law, moseys over, having discovered the dip.

“Lizzie’s new boyfriend,” Shari says.