Meg Cabot - Ready or Not

“Well, then,” I said, a little confused myself, “what are you doing here?”

“Oh.” Lucy shifted her tiny little Louis Vuitton bag (a gift for her birthday from Grandma) from one shoulder to the other. “I thought I might rent a DVD. You might have heard of it. Something called Hellboy?”

I stared at her. “Hellboy,” I said.

“Yeah.” Lucy looked around the store. As soon as her head moved in the direction of the geeks over in Sci-Fi, they ducked, and pretended to be engrossed in the cover of the new Alien movie. “Do you guys have it?”

“Hellboy,” I repeated. “With Ron Perlman and Selma Blair. Made in 2004. Based on the Dark Horse comic of the same name. THAT Hellboy?”

“I guess so,” Lucy said, looking blank. “I don’t know. Harold recommended it.”

I stared at her even harder. “Harold MINSKY?”

“Yes,” she said. “He said it’s one of his favorite movies of all time. I thought I heard you talking about it, too. Didn’t you like it? I thought so.” She’d reached out to touch one of the Nightmare Before Christmas action figures Dauntra had wrapped around the Need a Penny? Take a Penny. Have a Penny? Give a Penny tray. “So. Do you have it?”

Without taking my eyes off my sister, I said, to the geeks in Sci-Fi, “Hey. One of you grab Hellboy and throw it over here.”

A second later, a copy of Hellboy landed in my hands.

Lucy glanced over at the geeks and smiled. “Oh, thank you,” she said.

The geeks, mortified, scattered for the safety of Documentaries.

“Here you go,” I said, and handed Lucy the DVD.

She looked at the cover and said, “Oh. My. So that’s Hellboy, there, with the bumpy things on his head?”

“They’re horns,” I said. “He files them down.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “Is he, um, nice? Because he looks…not nice.”

“That,” I said, “is the conflict. Hellboy is a demon constantly at odds with his own nature. He is Satan on Earth, yet was raised with loving care by people who had the good of mankind at heart, and now, as an adult, Hellboy has pledged to fight his own nature and save the world from evil. He is redeemed by his love for Liz, who is at odds with her own genetic destiny as a firestarter.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “That’s nice. Okay, well, I’ll take it. How much do I owe you?”

“A buck,” I said. “I’ll give you my employee discount, since you’re family.”

“Great,” Lucy said, and dug around in her purse. As she did so, she asked casually, keeping her gaze on the gum-blackened floor, “You know Harold, right, Sam? I mean, socially?”

I blinked at her. This wasn’t exactly flattering, considering the social circles in which Harold travels. Also…where was this sudden fascination with Harold Minsky coming from?

“Um,” I said. “Not exactly. I mean, he’s my computer lab TA. But we don’t exactly have the same friends. I’m a nerd. But not that big of a nerd.”

“Yeah, but you collect comic books like he does, and stuff,” Lucy said.

“Manga,” I corrected her. “Harold collects manga. I like to draw it.”

“Whatever.” Lucy found her dollar and handed it over. “The point is—have you ever heard about him having a girlfriend?”

I was so shocked, I nearly fell over.

“HAROLD? HAROLD MINSKY?” What girl would touch him? I mean, with that hair? “No. Harold doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

“I didn’t think so,” Lucy said, looking thoughtful. “That’s what makes it so weird.”

“What makes what so weird?”

“Well, the fact that he doesn’t seem to like me,” she said. “I mean, he likes me, I guess. But he doesn’t seem to like me. What I mean is—”

“I know what you mean,” I cut her off. “You mean he hasn’t hit on you.”

“Well, yeah,” Lucy said. “It’s just so…weird.”

The thing is, you can’t even get mad at her, really, for saying something like that. She genuinely doesn’t know any better. Lucy is the kind of girl guys always hit on—all guys, except ones who are gay, or taken, like David. Having a guy not hit on her, the way Harold apparently hadn’t, was a whole new experience for her.

And evidently, not one she particularly relished (SAT word meaning “to appreciate or enjoy”).

“Lucy,” I said. “Mom and Dad like Harold because they think he’s the type of boy who won’t hit on you. So unless you want someone even worse”—although to tell the truth, there really isn’t anyone worse than Harold, nerdiness-wise. Except maybe someone from Rebecca and David’s school—“I wouldn’t complain, if I were you.”

“I’m not going to complain,” Lucy said, giving me a look that clearly said, “Are you crazy?” “It’s just weird, is all. I mean, all boys like me. Why doesn’t he?”

Now I felt a burst of irritation with her. True, Lucy can be the coolest of sisters—case in point, the contraceptive foam she’d gotten me.

But she’s also one of the vainest people on the planet.

“Not everybody judges people on how they look, Luce,” I said to her. “I mean, I’m sure in your circle of friends, that’s de rigueur”—(SAT word meaning “conventional or fitting”)—“but Harold has probably learned to judge people more on their insides than their outsides.”

When Lucy just looked at me blankly, I tapped the cover of the DVD she was renting.

“Like him,” I said, pointing at Hellboy. “He looks evil, right? But he’s not. You can’t always judge people by how they look. Ugly people might be beautiful inside. And beautiful people might be ugly inside. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe Harold thinks your insides leave something to be desired.”

“Why?” Lucy demanded tartly. “I’m not evil. Or stupid, either, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just because I don’t know what waggish means is no reason—”

“Why do you even care, anyway?” I asked her—just to make sure, you know, that she wasn’t, against all laws of nature, falling for Harold. “Don’t you already have a boyfriend? Where is Jack, anyway?”

“Oh,” Lucy said, keeping her gaze on the floor again. “He didn’t come down this weekend. I told him not to. You know, on account of how Mom and Dad are so upset about this SAT thing.”

“Yeah,” I said, a little more sympathetically. “I heard about Bare Essentials. And cheerleading. That must suck.”

“Whatever,” Lucy said with a shrug. “I was kind of over cheerleading, anyway. It isn’t as much fun when you’re the one in charge. I mean, now that I’m a senior, I’m supposed to help make up the routines and stuff. It’s way too much responsibility. Know what I mean?”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard anyone refer to making up a cheerleading routine as too difficult of a responsibility. But I figured I had to take her word for it. I mean, God knew I had never made up a routine. Maybe it was hard. As hard as integrating the subject of a drawing with its background. Who knew?

“Was Jack mad?” I asked her. “I mean, how did he take it?” Because Jack is the sort of person who expects to be treated like he’s the most important thing in everyone’s life.

“Oh, he had a cow,” Lucy said cheerfully. “He wanted to know why he couldn’t be my tutor…like his scores were that much better than mine. Mom and Dad put the kibosh on that right away. They were all, How much studying will you two do, anyway? Plus Dr. and Mrs. Slater want him to concentrate on his own school stuff. He hasn’t really been paying much attention to it, coming down here every weekend, and all of that. He got an F on some project, and they were all bent out of shape about it.”

I could easily imagine this. The Slaters had to pull a lot of strings to get Jack into RISD in the first place, on account of his below-average grades. I guess his whole theory on how grades don’t prove anything didn’t really work out the way he’d planned.