Sam Cruz's Infallible Guide to Getting Girls by Tellulah Darling Page B

teamwork.
    What is so tough to understand?
    Monica has just raised her fortieth protest about this campaign. Of course, she has yet to come up with a single replacement idea.
    “What’s your problem?” I ask, out of patience.
    I can tell she’s plucking up her courage to speak. Just say it already.
    “My chocolate is about love,” she whispers. She clears her voice and speaks up. Meaning I can barely hear her. “All this ‘reframing its context’? It goes against chocolate’s nature.”
    “Chocolate is chocolate,” I reply. “It doesn’t have a nature. It doesn’t have to be about love. It can be about divorce. Or hemorrhoids. That’s up to the individual user.”
    “I think I want to embrace the love.”
    Save me from females and their love crap. Time to inject a little hard truth into her world. “And I think if you do, you’ll be like everyone else, fighting for sales, boring in your thinking, which will translate into a product that was once unique and delicious but now could be any old dusty box nubbin with a cloying strawberry center no one wants.”
    Her eyes widen. Guess she didn’t expect that.
    Well, the truth hurts.

Chapter eighteen
     
    Thongs itch. It takes me forever to get the stupid eyeliner on properly and I don’t always feel like primping my hair to look like I just stepped out of a salon.
    Guess the thrill is wearing thin. Or more accurately, the upkeep is.
    I really enjoyed everything about my makeover at first. It was fun to play with makeup and clothes, I loved the looks I got, and my hookups have been pretty cool.
    But it’s complicated some parts of my life too. Like most of my classes are honors level. Nerd city. Which is fine, because I’m a geek and our tribes get along just fine. We are equals on an intellectual playing field.
    But now, the guys in my classes don’t know what to do with me. Their already hampered social awkwardness has soared off the charts, which is seriously impinging on my ability to work with them in groups.
    Instead of a stimulating exchange of ideas, they grunt and lurch around me like a bunch of zombies with the occasional blatant nudge to each other.
    Sigh. I’m also seriously annoyed because I’ve had to deal with Jeremy making cutting comments about “sellouts” all through Civics class since I’ve skipped a couple meetings of our city-wide teen environmental club.
    Even though I’m totally committed to a better world for people and animals alike, I’m not yet ready to sit in the same room with him and Leslie while I fight for it. It’s going to take time. As I can’t tell him that, or, well, won’t, I’m having to endure his insults.
    It’s more than just name-calling though. He’s acting like I’m some whore spreading my poxied wares on the desk.
    Meanwhile, I’ve got his douchebag friend Max trying to put the moves on me. Figures he’d be the one geek to rise to the challenge. I think I pulled a muscle brushing off old Octo-arms and his “accidental” groping.
    And I don’t want the other guys at my school who have suddenly noticed me. I may be new and shiny but they’re still gross. They don’t seem to get that I didn’t get a lobotomy and haven’t suddenly forgotten years of stupid nicknames and basic ignoring.
    I thought that getting noticed for all the right reasons would improve my life. That being at the top of the desirability food chain was the way to go.
    Actual field experience is proving quite different.
    I think that peacocks have the right idea. They’re born with a beautiful plumage that requires no upkeep. Just whip it out, shake your tail feather, and you’re good to go. Plus, it’s the male that has to do all the work attracting the female to his lovely feathers, which I think is brilliant.
    If only society worked that way.
    All I want to do is go home, put on some sweats, and eat a bag of chips. But that’s the first step of a slippery slope ending in me at three hundred pounds and hoarding animals,