“True,” I said. “Very true.”

“The thing is, Jack was just a poser,” Lucy said, still teary-eyed.

“Yes,” I said. You could never call David a poser. He is always, solidly, exactly who he is, and no one else. “He was a bit of one, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t want to go out with a poser,” Lucy said. “I want the real thing. I want a real man.”

Like David. Well, you could hardly blame her.

“You’ll find him,” I assured her. “Someday.”

“I already have,” Lucy said. “Found him.”

Causing me to go, “Wait. What?”

“I found him,” she said with a sob. “B-but he doesn’t want me!”

Then she buried her head, with a wail, into my lap.

“Wait.” I looked down uncomprehendingly at the red-gold puddle of silk spread out across my thighs. “You found him? WHERE?”

“At s-school,” Lucy wept.

And, even though I’d known, deep down, that she wasn’t talking about David, this was still something of a relief. That it wasn’t my boyfriend she was pining for.

“Well, that’s great, Luce,” I said, still feeling confused. “I mean, that you found someone so soon—”

“Aren’t you even listening to me?” Lucy demanded, sitting up and glaring at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I said, he d-doesn’t want me!”

“He doesn’t?” I stared at her. “But why? Does he already have a girlfriend?”

“No,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, is he…I mean, is he gay?” Because that was the only reason I could think of for a guy not liking my sister, if he wasn’t already in love with some other girl, like David.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, why—”

“I don’t KNOW why,” Lucy said. “I TOLD you that. I’ve done EVERYTHING I could to make him notice me. I wore my shortest mini last time I saw him—the one Theresa threatened to put in the trash if I wore it outside the house ever again? I spent two hours on my makeup. I even wore lip liner. And what did I get for it?” She pounded a perfectly manicured fist against the mattress. “NOTHING. He still doesn’t know I’m alive. I asked him, you know, if he wanted to go to the movies this weekend—to the new Adam Sandler—and he said…he said…he said he HAD OTHER PLANS!”

She grabbed a pillow and clutched it to her face as she wailed into it.

“Well,” I said, blinking uncomprehendingly, “maybe he did. Have other plans, I mean.”

“He didn’t,” Lucy sobbed. “I could tell he didn’t.”

“Well…maybe he doesn’t like Adam Sandler. Lots of people don’t.”

“That’s not it,” Lucy said. “It’s me. He just doesn’t like ME.”

“Lucy,” I said, “everybody likes you. Okay? Every guy who isn’t taken or likes guys and not girls likes you. It has to be something else. Who is this guy, anyway?”

But Lucy just shook her head and wailed, “What does it matter? What does any of it matter when he doesn’t even know I’m alive?”

Lucy flopped back across the bed, weeping stormily. I stared down at her prone figure, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. My sister—the cheerleader; the Bare Essentials salesgirl; the titian-haired goddess; the most popular girl at Adams Prep—was in love with some guy who didn’t like her back.

No. No, that was just all wrong. That did not compute.

I sat there, trying to digest all this. It didn’t make any sense. What kind of boy, asked out by the prettiest girl in school, said NO? She had said he was smart…well, how smart could he be if he turned down my sister? Unless he—

Suddenly, I gasped, as the full horror of what she was trying to tell me sank in.

“Lucy!” I cried. “Is it HAROLD? You like HAROLD MINSKY?”

Her only response to this was to weep harder.

And I knew. I knew it all.

“Oh, Lucy,” I said, trying not to laugh. I knew I shouldn’t have found the situation funny. I mean, after all, Lucy was genuinely upset. But my sister and Harold Minsky? “You know, Harold probably isn’t all that used to girls asking him out. Maybe you, you know. Surprised him. And that’s why he said he had other plans. I mean, maybe he just said the first thing he thought of.”

This made her raise her head and blink at me tearfully.

“What do you mean, he isn’t used to girls asking him out?” she wanted to know. “Harold’s so smart. Girls must ask him out all the time.”

Now it was REALLY hard not to laugh.

“Um, Luce,” I said, not quite believing I was having to explain this to my older sister—the girl who had just informed me of an alternative use for the bathtub faucet, “not all girls are attracted to boys like Harold. I mean, a lot of girls like boys for their, um, bodies and personalities, and not so much for their minds.”

Lucy threw me an outraged look. “What are you talking about? Harold has a great body. Underneath those floppy shirts. I know, he spilled some of Theresa’s paella on one and he had to take it off for her to put in the wash and I saw him in just his undershirt.”

Whoa. Harold must have been working out or something in his basement, because if he had a good bod, it certainly wasn’t from playing on any of Adams Prep’s sports teams.

“It’s just,” she went on, “I mean, I watched Hellboy. I told him I watched Hellboy. And we had, you know, a nice conversation about how difficult it must be to defend others against the forces of darkness when you yourself are the prince of darkness. I would have thought, from that, that he would have realized—”

When her voice trailed off, I asked gently, “Realized what, Luce?”

“Well, that he shouldn’t judge ME by the way I look,” she said, her eyes very blue and indignant. “I mean, I can’t help looking like this any more than Hellboy can help looking the way he does. I may look like a stuck-up popular girl, but I’m not. Why can’t Harold see that? WHY? I mean, Liz saw past Hellboy’s horns.”

I had never heard Lucy speak so passionately about anything. Not even cheerleading. Not even Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. Not even Bare Essentials’ new fall line of bikini briefs.

It didn’t seem possible, but…she might actually really be in love with Harold. I mean…really in love with him.

I wondered if Harold has the slightest idea of the feelings he’s awakened in my sister’s 34C demi-cup underwire.

“Maybe,” I said carefully, since a cheerleader—even an ex-cheerleader—in love is a volatile thing, “you should give Harold the benefit of the doubt. I mean, maybe he does see the real you, under your, um, horns, and just can’t believe someone as…horny as you would ever like him back.”

That didn’t come out at all right, and Lucy’s wide-eyed glance told me I’d screwed it up, big time.

So I said, “Look, maybe you should just ask him out again for this coming weekend, and see what he says.”

“You think?” Lucy peered at me through swollen—but still beautiful—eyes. “You think he might just be…shy or something?”

“It’s possible,” I said. Although shy wasn’t the word for it. Oblivious, maybe. Or possibly afraid Lucy had only asked him out as a joke. “You never know.”

“Because I was thinking it might be because…because I’m so stupid.”

“Lucy!” I looked down at her, my heart swelling with pity for her. Pity! For Lucy! The girl who had always gotten everything she ever wanted…until now, apparently.

Because the thing was…well, there’s a really good chance she’s right. About Harold not liking her because she isn’t exactly class valedictorian. I mean, what do the two of them even have in common? Lucy is all about capped sleeves and Juicy Couture jeans. Harold’s all about…well, megabytes.

“That can’t be true,” I said, even though, of course, a part of me thought there was a pretty good chance it could be. “I mean, you aren’t, you know, book smart, like Harold. But you know a lot of stuff I bet he doesn’t know. Like about…um—”

But the only thing I could think of that Lucy might know about that Harold wouldn’t was, well, birth control.

“I memorized all those stupid vocabulary words he gave me,” she said bitterly. “Estuary and plinth. Hoping it would make him realize, you know, that I’m really trying. I mean, I want to be smart like him. I do. Just like Hellboy wants to be good. But Harold barely even noticed. He was just like, Good. Now memorize these other words.”

“Oh, Luce,” I said. “You know…you really should ask him out again. It may never have occurred to him that you like him…you know. The way you do. He may just think you like him as a friend.” I hoped.

Lucy gazed unseeingly at my giant poster of Gwen in her wedding gown—taken from Us Weekly and blown up on the White House color copier—and sighed. “Well. All right. I guess I could ask him out again. God.”

“God, what?”

“Well, I mean…” Lucy looked thoughtful. “Now I know how all those girls in school must feel.”

“What girls?”

“The ones who ask guys out,” she said. “And the guys always say no. I had no idea it felt like this.”

“Rejection?” I tried not to look too amused. “Yeah. It can really suck.”

“Tell me about it.” She looked at the clock. “God. I have to do like ten more pages of vocab before I can even think about bed. Thanks for the pep talk, but I gotta motor.”

I stopped her in the doorway, though. “Lucy?”

She paused and looked over her shoulder, her face impossibly beautiful, in spite of the tears and the pieces of Manet’s fur she hadn’t picked off yet. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you and Jack broke up,” I said. “You deserve better. Even if he was, you know. Your first.”

“My first,” Lucy said. “But hopefully not my last.”

“He won’t be,” I said. “And Lucy?”

“Mmm?” she said.

“You do realize,” I added awkwardly, “that the same guy who played the Count of Monte Cristo played Jesus in that movie Mel Gibson directed.”

It was finally Lucy’s turn to look shocked. “He did not!”