Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

In last night’s dream, Cody saved Waneeda’s life. She was drowning in an angry sea under a hard, ash-coloured sky. “Help! Help!” she was shouting. “Help! Help!” But, of course, there was no one to hear her desperate screams. There was no land in sight, no boat in the distance, not so much as a gull wheeling overhead. And then, as the icy fingers of the sea were pulling her under for the last time, Cody Lightfoot (in his pinstriped suit and black T-shirt) suddenly dove in beside her. His arms were strong and warm around her. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, dear Waneeda. Everything’s going to be all right.” She woke up tangled in the blankets, a pillow clutched against her.

Even now, so many hours later, as she and Joy Marie walk home together on Friday afternoon, last night’s dream keeps replaying itself in her mind, making Joy Marie’s chatter no more than background noise. Until Joy Marie says something that makes Waneeda almost choke on the candy she just put in her mouth.

“What?” asks Waneeda. “What did you say?”

“God, Waneeda…” Joy Marie makes her why-don’t-you-ever-listen-to-me? face. “I said that Clemens says that Cody Lightfoot seems pretty solid. You know, interesting and intelligent and kind of a mensch.”

“Clemens,” repeats Waneeda. “Are you saying Cody Lightfoot talks to Clemens?”

Clemens Reis is the geek’s geek. Waneeda, who lives behind Clemens, has known him since they were in diapers, and so can attest that he was always a peculiar child (in the video of her earliest birthday parties, Clemens is the scowling one who refused to wear a party hat or sing), but puberty has made him even more peculiar. He has an eccentric nature and an independent, argumentative mind. Physically, he is thin and gawky, with hair that is long not as a statement of cool or rebellion but because he never remembers to get it cut. His glasses are held together by a paper clip. Clemens is the kind of boy who can tell you how many helium balloons you’d need to make a cat fly (depending on its weight, of course) and who will tell you (whether you ask or not) what percentage of global greenhouse-gas emissions is caused by cows. He wears a hat knitted by his grandmother and saddle shoes. It is miracle enough that two such different examples of a carbon-based life form as Cody and Clemens should inhabit the same planet, let alone speak to each other.

“He talks to Clemens all the time,” says Joy Marie. “At least he isn’t a snob like everybody else in this school.”

“I guess that’s true.” Waneeda has, in fact, seen him talk to people even she wouldn’t talk to.

Waneeda chews on a cherry-flavoured ball of corn syrup and sugar in the way of someone considering the possible origins of life. No one expects less of Waneeda than Waneeda herself. Indeed, you could say that one of her strengths is that her lack of ambition is comfortably matched by her lack of expectation. But now something shifts ever so slightly, and she starts to consider the possibility that, maybe, there might be a chance that – someday, somehow – Cody Lightfoot will talk to her somewhere that isn’t in her dreams.

Since the social hierarchy of Clifton Springs High is slightly more rigid than that of feudal Europe, every group has its own table in the cafeteria.

Sicilee’s group sits in the centre of the room, which is both symbolic (she and her friends, after all, are at the centre of the school’s social life) and practical (so they can both see and be seen).

Today, Ash, Loretta and Kristin are discussing the weekend’s trip to the mall.

“I have to take back that dress I got,” Loretta is saying. “I mean, it looked great in the store, but ohmigod when I tried it on at home? I looked enormous. You should’ve seen my butt!”

Ash nods knowingly. “It’s the mirrors. They have special mirrors that make you look skinnier than you are.”

Kristin doesn’t think it’s the mirrors. She thinks the fault lies with mass production. The clothes are made to fit everybody, so they fit no one.

Loretta looks impressed. She never thought of it like that before.

Ash says that doesn’t mean she’s wrong about the mirrors. Everybody knows about it. She saw it on TV.

Sicilee isn’t really listening. She seems to be smiling at Loretta and Ash, but really she is gazing beyond them, to a table at the side of the room where today Cody Lightfoot sits with Clemens Reis and his loser friends, looking like a movie star visiting a homeless shelter at Thanksgiving. Why is he sitting with them? They’re nobodies. They’re less than nobodies. They’re crustaceous growths on the skin of society. If anybody else – anybody, even Kristin, even her own mother – was to eat lunch with Clemens, Sicilee would be so grossed out that she would never be able to speak to them again. But that, of course, is not the way she feels about Cody. All that really bothers her is the fact that he isn’t sitting with her.

Last week ended no better than it began. Even though Sicilee shares a classroom with Cody Lightfoot every day, she knew him no better on Friday afternoon than she had on Tuesday morning.

She watches Cody put the Thermos back into his old-fashioned workman’s lunchbox and take out a small container as though he is doing something truly remarkable that no human teenager has ever done before. Sicilee stifles a sigh. None of the boys she considers her friend ever brings his lunch from home. None of them wears his hair the length Cody does, or dresses the way Cody dresses – or causes Sicilee’s heart to miss a beat when he smiles either.

Cody removes half a sandwich from the container. Her eyes follow the sandwich as it moves towards his squashy, kissable lips. Sicilee’s own sandwich sits untouched on her tray. She has less interest in food right now than in learning to weave straw baskets.

“Don’t you think so, Siss?” asks Loretta.

Sicilee nods automatically. “Uh huh.”

Last Friday, Sicilee finally managed to be right behind Cody as they left English, and asked him, conversationally, about changing schools in the middle of the year. “It must be such a drag,” said Sicilee. “Starting all over again, I mean.”

Cody said that it wasn’t a problem. He embraces change.

To stop herself from saying that she wished he’d embrace her, Sicilee offered to show him the town.

But this wasn’t a problem either.

“I’ve been here before. You know, visiting my dad. So I know my way around.”

But Sicilee still wasn’t daunted. She invited him to a party on Saturday night. “You know,” said Sicilee, “so you can meet everybody.”

“Everybody?” Cody grinned. “That’s going to be a pretty big party.”

Unsure as to whether or not he was making fun of her, Sicilee laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not really a party person,” said Cody. And then (just when she was starting to think that, for some unfathomable reason, he was being deliberately dense) he gave her a smile that could have heated every house in Clifton Springs for the rest of the winter, lowered his voice intimately and added, “I’m much more into one-on-one.”

Now, as she watches him lick something from his fingers, Sicilee wonders again what he meant by that. Was it a come-on? Did he mean one-on-one with her? Or did he mean one-on-one with someone else?

Cody brushes crumbs from his mouth. His hand is wide and solid, the fingers delicate and long. Sicilee gulps her flavoured water, stifling a sigh.

If he meant he’d rather see her alone than with dozens of strangers, then why on Earth doesn’t he ask her out? It’s not as if she hasn’t given him plenty of encouragement. The only way she could do more to bring attention to herself would be to wear bells. Risking sweat and dishevelment, Sicilee rushes to English every day in the hope of sitting beside him. She used to lurk at the back of the class with Kristin, passing notes or checking her texts, but now she puts herself right near the front, raising her hand whenever Mrs Sotomayor asks a question, whether she knows the answer or not, and loudly agreeing with everything Cody says. Oh, I think so, too, she says. At the end of English, she risks broken bones again, frantic to be the person behind Cody as he leaves the room. She is always strolling through the corridor when he goes to his locker in the morning. She is always in the main hall when he leaves in the afternoon. If it weren’t for the fact that she gets a ride every day from Mrs Shepl after school, she’d be tempted to follow him home.

And does Cody notice all her efforts? Does he not. Any other boy would be flattered. Pleased with himself. Any other boy would go straight to the seat she’d saved for him every day, not just when there’s nowhere else to sit. Any other boy would lean close to compare notes. Borrow a pen. Compliment her. Tease her to find out if she has a steady boyfriend. Beg her for a date.

But Cody, of course, is not just any boy. Which is both a point in his favour and an obvious drawback, because he could only notice Sicilee less if she were invisible. Or someone else. Some dull, dumpy girl with limp hair and no dress sense. Sure, he smiles back when Sicilee smiles at him; he nods when they pass in the hallway; he talks to her when she strikes up a conversation. But he smiles and nods at and talks to a lot of people (including people Sicilee didn’t know were in the school before she saw him smiling and nodding at and talking to them). Sicilee stifles another sigh. That first glimpse of Cody, crossing the main hall with his schedule in his hand, was the last time she’s ever seen him alone.