Claudia Gets Her Guy Read online

  Kristy held up her hands. “Fine, fine,” she said. “You don’t have to get all huffy.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t he ever get tired of making prank phone calls while we’re having meetings?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a prank,” I said. I took a deep breath. It was time to spill the beans. “Actually, he wanted to know what color dress I was planning to wear to the dance.”

  “Why would he want to know that?” asked Mary Anne, bewildered.

  “Because he wants to buy me a corsage,” I said bravely. “He’s going to be my date. I’m going to the Cupid’s Arrow Dance with Alan Gray.”

  For a few moments, the room was silent.

  Then Kristy exploded. “You what?” she exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind?” She stared at me for a second. Then she laughed. “Oh, I get it,” she said. “This is a joke, isn’t it?”

  I shook my head. “Nope,” I said. “We’re just going to the dance together, that’s all.”

  “So you’re going to sit here and tell me that Alan Gray is your new boyfriend,” Kristy said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Not my boyfriend,” I answered. “I never said that. I just said we’re going to the dance together. As a matter of fact, we’re going as friends.”

  “Friends don’t buy each other corsages,” Kristy pointed out. “And anyway, you and Alan Gray aren’t exactly friends.”

  “Well, maybe we will be after this.” I folded my arms too.

  Mary Anne and Stacey had been sitting there silently. Finally, Mary Anne spoke up.

  “I think it’s nice,” she said. “Sometimes people aren’t what they seem. We have to be open-minded about Alan.”

  I shot her an appreciative glance. Yay, Mary Anne! She understood.

  “I just don’t believe this,” Kristy said, waving her arms around. “This is Alan Gray we’re talking about. Alan Gray!”

  Stacey giggled. “He is kind of cute, if you think about it.”

  You know how in cartoons smoke sometimes comes out of people’s ears when they’re really mad? I thought that was going to happen with Kristy. She glared at Stacey.

  “Cute?” she asked. “Cute?” She shook her head. “That’s it. I give up on you guys.” She put her head down on my desk.

  We all cracked up.

  “So, how did it happen?” Mary Anne asked, leaning forward.

  “Did he, like, confess to a secret crush on you?” asked Stacey.

  “Not exactly.” I explained how he’d thought the note was for him. (I didn’t say who the note was originally for — but Stacey could probably guess.) “He was so pleased that I was being nice to him that I couldn’t exactly tell him it was for somebody else,” I said. Then I told them what he’d said about wanting to be a better person.

  Kristy, whose head was still buried in her arms, groaned when she heard that. “And you believe him?” she asked.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Mary Anne told me. “I think that’s very sweet.” Her eyes looked moist.

  “That’s what Erica thought,” I said. “I told her about it when we walked home from school.”

  Kristy groaned again. “I can’t believe you guys are acting like he’s just a normal guy,” she said. “Don’t you see? This is probably a setup for some huge prank.”

  For a second, I wondered if she could be right. Then I remembered that soft look in Alan’s eyes. “You’re wrong, Kristy,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter what you think. I’m the one who’s going to the dance with him.”

  “I give up,” said Kristy. She glanced at the clock. “Anyway, it’s six. This meeting is adjourned.”

  Soon afterward, Kristy and Mary Anne left. Stacey stayed behind, rearranging some things in her backpack.

  “So, Claudia,” she said, not looking at me. “What about Jeremy?”

  Just hearing his name made my stomach flip over. Jeremy. What about him? I didn’t know what to think anymore. In a way, it was easier just to concentrate on Alan. Things with Jeremy were too confusing, too weird. Why had he been avoiding me? Why had I been avoiding him? Were we ever going to end up together? What if he asked me to the dance now?

  I would have loved to talk everything over with Stacey — the old Stacey. But even though we were speaking to each other again, things weren’t the same. I wasn’t ready to open up to her. Especially on the topic of Jeremy.

  “I don’t know, Stace,” I said slowly. How could I put it? “I guess I really don’t want to talk about Jeremy with you.”

  I was trying to be nice but firm. I didn’t want to have another fight with Stacey, but I wasn’t ready to be best buds with her again either.

  Stacey stopped fooling with her backpack and glanced up at me. For a second, she looked hurt. Then she nodded. “Fair enough,” she said.

  She picked up her stuff and walked out the door.

  “Fair enough.” But was it really fair that I didn’t want to talk to Stacey? And even if it were, did that mean it was right?

  Stacey’s words echoed in my head as I gazed out the car window. My dad was at the wheel. It was Saturday, and we were headed for New York for a day at the Metropolitan Museum — with the Yashimotos. When they had come over for dinner two nights before, we had begun talking about art (guess who started that conversation) and heard that they hadn’t yet been to the Met, so my parents and I insisted on taking them there.

  As we whizzed down the highway, I couldn’t help thinking about Stacey. Usually, when I’m headed to New York, I’m on my way to hang out with her there. We’d done all kinds of fun things when she was in the city visiting her dad: We’d gone to Broadway shows and to the Hard Rock Cafe; we’d explored Greenwich Village and checked out Central Park. Stacey taught me a lot about enjoying New York. In fact, she took me to the Met for my first time.

  Maybe, I thought, I wasn’t being fair. Maybe I should have said more to Stacey. Maybe these bad feelings between us weren’t going to end until we both opened up a little more. And maybe I could be the one to open up first.

  It was something to think about.

  Meanwhile, I had to put thoughts of Stacey aside and focus on the Yashimotos. This was a special day for them. They were going to see so many wonderful things.

  “Do you like paintings?” I asked Mrs. Yashimoto, who was sitting next to me. We had borrowed Kristy’s family’s minivan for the day so we could fit everyone into one car. (Everyone, that is, except Janine. She had a study date that afternoon.)

  Mrs. Yashimoto looked at me quizzically.

  I pulled out a pamphlet I’d brought along, a guidebook to the Met. I pointed to a picture of one of my favorite paintings in the museum, a Degas, showing ballet dancers warming up. “Painting,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” gasped Mrs. Yashimoto. “I like very much.”

  “I like it too!” piped up Maiko. “Pretty dancers.”

  “Is that all they have there?” asked Yoshi. (He had stopped acting so shy around me by then.) His arms were folded across his chest. I could see he wasn’t impressed by the Degas.

  “No!” I said. “They have everything. Paintings and sculptures and pottery and jewelry and whole rooms that show how people used to live. And armor they used to wear too. You’ll like that. They even have an entire building inside the museum.”

  “Building?” asked Mr. Yashimoto from the front seat. He turned to look at me. “What sort of building?”

  His English was improving every day. He had been on several job interviews in the past week — and one of them was at my dad’s office! It sounded as if he had a good chance of finding a position there.

  “A temple,” I told him. “The Temple of Dendur. It was a gift of the Egyptian government, and it’s in this huge glass room. There’s a pool of water near it, in the same spot where the river Nile flowed when the temple was in Egypt.”

  I knew a lot about the temple because it had become a favorite place for me. Whenever I go to the Met, I spend time there. It’s very peaceful, and sometimes you just need a rest
after you’ve been roaming the galleries looking at all the beautiful things.

  “Can you swim in the pool?” asked Maiko.

  I shook my head, laughing a little. “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s not that kind of pool. It’s not very deep.”

  Mrs. Yashimoto was smiling, but I could tell she had lost track of the conversation. I had noticed at the dinner at our house that even though she tried hard to listen, sometimes we just went too fast for her. I looked over the pamphlet until I found a picture of the temple with its pool. I showed it to her. “No swimming,” I said, pointing to the pool and smiling.

  “Ah,” she said, nodding. “Maiko love swim.”

  “Maiko loves swimming?” I asked.

  She nodded again. “Maiko loves swimming,” she said, carefully echoing the way I’d said it.

  “So do I,” I told Maiko. “But we’re not going to swim today.”

  “What do you like to do?” my mom asked Yoshi.

  “Run!” Yoshi answered loudly. “And play with my ball. And eat ice cream and candy and pizza!”

  “He sounds like an American boy already,” my mom told Mrs. Yashimoto.

  “You like lasagna too, don’t you?” I asked. I had helped my mom make lasagna for our dinner. She had been worried about what to make, but I had assured her that the Yashimotos liked to eat “American food,” even though lasagna is more Italian than American. Sure enough, Yoshi had asked for seconds.

  Our dinner had been interesting. When they arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Yashimoto presented us with a gift — a box of dried fruit that had been wrapped so beautifully that none of us wanted to open it. I knew, from what I had learned about Japanese customs, that this was not out of the ordinary. People always bring presents when they visit, and sometimes they are very extravagant.

  They also asked if they should take off their shoes. That may sound weird, but again, it’s the custom in Japan. Families take off their shoes when they enter their homes or when they’re visiting. (I guess they have to be careful to make sure their socks don’t have holes in them.) In schools, kids have outdoor shoes and indoor shoes.

  Speaking of school, here’s another interesting Japanese custom. Guess who cleans Japanese schools. The students! For a period of time every day the kids take out brooms and mops and go to work making their school shine. (Kids also take turns serving one another lunch.) Somehow I can’t quite imagine American students doing that. But in Japan they’re used to it.

  The Yashimotos were very polite throughout dinner. They ate everything we offered them, even though I knew some of the food must have seemed strange to them. Did you know that many Japanese people eat fish for breakfast? Sounds yucky, but then they probably think blueberry pancakes are weird.

  “Here we are!” said my dad finally, pulling into a parking garage near the museum.

  I felt a little tingle of excitement. I have been to the Met many times, but I still haven’t seen everything there. The place is huge! You could spend a lifetime wandering around, drinking in all the beautiful art.

  “I want to see the armor!” cried Yoshi.

  “That sounds very interesting,” Mr. Yashimoto agreed.

  “But what about the pool?” asked Maiko.

  “And paintings?” put in Mrs. Yashimoto shyly.

  “Maybe we should split up for a while,” my mom suggested. “There are so many of us and there’s so much to see. We can meet in an hour or so, just to check in.”

  That’s how I ended up in a roomful of Rodins with Mrs. Yashimoto and Maiko.

  That gallery is awesome. It’s a long room filled with sculptures by one of the great masters of all time. Rodin — his first name was Auguste — understood the human form very well. He could convey all kinds of emotions through his work.

  “Beautiful.” Mrs. Yashimoto sighed as she took everything in. She moved among the sculptures, examining each one carefully.

  I was gazing at the way Rodin had sculpted a man’s arm, trying to understand how he could create muscles that were so real-looking, when I heard an argument behind me.

  “No! I am a good girl,” Maiko was saying.

  “But you can’t touch the artwork.” That came from a tall, burly man in a guard’s uniform. “That’s not allowed. No touching, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Maiko, sniffling a little. “I did not know.”

  Mrs. Yashimoto rushed to them. She knelt down to hug Maiko and spoke to her in Japanese. Then she stood up and faced the guard. “Sorry,” she said. “Very, very sorry.” She looked frightened.

  “It’s my fault,” I said, joining them. “They’re new here, and I didn’t explain all the rules.”

  The guard nodded.

  Mrs. Yashimoto still seemed upset. “It’s all right,” I told her. “Let’s go sit down and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  We headed out of the Rodin gallery and found a bench near some Impressionist paintings.

  Trying to talk slowly, I explained to Mrs. Yashimoto that the guard was not really angry and that Maiko was not in trouble. Then I explained to Maiko that museums were places to look but not touch. She listened closely, nodding.

  Finally, she jumped to her feet, all signs of her tears gone. “Can we go to the pool now?” she asked.

  I checked my watch. “As a matter of fact,” I said, “It’s just about time to meet everyone there.” We headed off for the Temple of Dendur.

  It was a long, long day at the museum. As we drove home late that afternoon, I sighed with satisfaction, thinking of everything I’d seen in the past few hours. Gorgeous paintings. Silver swords with beautiful engravings. Egyptian statues and Chinese silks. Tapestries from Russia and furniture from castles in England. Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is like taking a tour through history and like going around the world, all in one day.

  My feet hurt.

  I was exhausted.

  But I was happy too.

  And when I thought about Stacey again, I knew just what I had to do. Spending so much time with the Yashimotos recently had made something very clear to me: Good communication may not be easy, but it’s very, very important. Misunderstandings happen all the time, whether or not you’re speaking the same language. And it’s important to clear them up before they grow into something worse.

  Like a fight between best friends.

  It was time for me to talk to Stacey — for real. No more polite chitchat, no more angry words. Just straight talk. Maybe it wasn’t too late to save our friendship.

  I called Stacey as soon as I walked in the door that night; suddenly I couldn’t wait to talk to her.

  But Stacey’s mom reminded me that Stacey was in New York for the weekend. (Can you believe it? We could have run into each other at the Met!) That meant that the earliest we could really talk would probably be on Monday afternoon, before our BSC meeting. I would have to be patient.

  I saw Stacey on Monday morning as soon as I walked into school. Right away, before I could chicken out, I asked if she would come over early for the BSC meeting. “I think we need to talk,” I said. She agreed without any hesitation. That made me feel good.

  Stacey walked with me down the hall toward my locker, telling me a little about her weekend in New York. Suddenly, she stopped short. “Whoa!” she said. “Check that out.”

  I followed her gaze. There, set against a bank of lockers, was a huge, bright bouquet of flowers. “Those are beautiful!” I said. “Look at those colors.” This wasn’t a wimpy bouquet with pink and white flowers. This was a powerhouse of color with red, yellow, purple, magenta, and orange flowers all bursting together.

  We drew closer.

  “They’re by your locker,” said Stacey. “That’s funny.”

  We exchanged glances. She raised her eyebrows.

  “There’s a card on them,” she pointed out. She bent closer. “Claud,” she said, excited, “your name is on the card!”

  “No way! Really? But who —” I reached down and picked up the card, my heart thudding
a little. Had Jeremy finally decided to let me know how he felt? “ ‘Dear Claudia,’ ” I read. “ ‘Some flowers are red, some flowers are yellow, when I think of what you said, I feel like a lucky fellow.’ ”

  “Who’s it from?” Stacey asked.

  There was no signature on the card. Just an initial. The initial “A.”

  “It’s from Alan,” I said, feeling a little strange. On the one hand, the flowers were gorgeous, and I felt wonderful that someone cared enough to leave them at my locker. I was beginning to realize that Alan Gray could be a really sweet guy. On the other hand, I wondered if he was taking things a little too far. Was I going to have to have a talk with him? After all, I thought we were going to the dance as friends. Do friends send each other huge bouquets of flowers?

  “Claud?” Stacey asked, examining my face. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m impressed,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t have thought Alan had it in him. These are really nice flowers.”

  “But what am I going to do with them?” I asked. “I’d like to take them home, but I can’t just leave them in the hall all day.”

  “You’ll have to squeeze them into your locker,” said Stacey. “I can’t help you, though. The bell’s about to ring and I have to go to my own locker. Talk to you later!” She took off down the hall, leaving me to figure out how to fit an entire garden into a tiny space that was already filled with gym clothes, notebooks, art supplies, and a few emergency items such as a Milky Way bar and a bag of Smartfood.

  I did some quick rearranging. Then, just as I’d finally started to stuff the flowers into my locker, who should walk by but Jeremy. “Hi,” I said. (That was about the most either of us had said to each other for at least a week.)

  He didn’t answer. In fact, he ignored me and kept on walking.

  I gave the flowers one last shove, slammed my locker shut, and ran after him. “Jeremy,” I called, “wait!”

  He didn’t even slow down.

  I felt like a fool, but I kept following him. “Come on, Jeremy,” I said.

  He stopped and turned to look at me. His face was cold. “What do you want?” he asked.