explained how Connie and I had had “car trouble” and Kurt had come to our rescue, and how Doug had seen me with Kurt and misunderstood.
“No problem,” Sadie said assuredly. “I can spin that story any way you want.” She sauntered over to Doug’s table, more confident than I had ever seen her, a new Sadie, a Sadie very comfortable telling stories.
M Y LIFE was back on track. I spent the afternoon and the next few days successfully pretending to be normal. Sure, Doug and I hadn’t completely patched things up, but he didn’t look away from me when I passed him in the hallways, and once I could have sworn he even smiled at me when he caught sight of me in the chorus rehearsal.
Or maybe it was a grimace. Or maybe he just had something in his eye.
Every night I was on tenterhooks waiting for him to call me and ask me out again. But by now I was used to this state of nervous anticipation and it didn’t shake me, at least not too much.
Kerrie insisted, in phone calls, IM’s, emails, and school chats, that Doug was a typical guy (from Mars) and would have trouble backing down and admitting he was wrong. I should give him time, she insisted, and if that didn’t work, I should just try asking him out, repeating my offer to make up the lost date.
It sounded like a good plan—Kerrie was always good for plans—so I stuck to it, even though it nearly drove me crazy and took every ounce of my self-control.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily, my family suddenly got a bad case of Donna Reed disease. That’s where we all start acting like characters in some old 1950s sitcom, filled with brotherly and sisterly love and activities that have all of us buzzing around our hive like bees on a deadline.
My mother coerced me into going to the fabric store with her again and I actually let her buy five yards of hunter green velvet for a holiday dress for me. Connie told me privately that she was looking into who owned Sadie’s condo. She also talked about hiring me in her office during the summer. Suddenly, I had visions of working side-by-side with her on important life-and-death cases.
And Tony—well, come to think of it, Tony was kind of immune from this strange affliction, so he stuck to his usual schedule of pretending he didn’t know us even when he was in the same house.
So the week passed like a kind of timeless limbo. I was out of the house enough to keep my compulsion to call Doug under wraps. But I have to admit, I felt blue every time I came home and checked the messages, only to find no “Doug-a-gram” waiting to cheer me.
Kerrie insisted that he wouldn’t be the type to leave a message if he was going to apologize, but I wasn’t so sure. A couple times, I did the old *69 routine to find out if he had called, but I never caught his number showing up. Just a few “sorry, that number is not available or private” messages squawked at me, and I assumed they belonged to Sadie. Why the heck wouldn’t she just leave her number?
The weekend came around with no call from Doug. I was desperate, depressed, and nearly delusional. I imagined all sorts of scenarios—from Sadie lying to me about her relationship with Doug to. . . well, trust me, you don’t really want to know.
We had a play practice at school that weekend, the first of many. I was beginning to regret letting Hilary con us all into auditioning. Gilbert and Sullivan wasn’t my cup of tea in the first place, and now it meant going to school on Saturdays.
Plus, I was beginning to think in those darn patter-song couplets. If Dougie doesn’t call me soon/I’ll descend into an endless gloom/So please be kind, oh Mister Doug/And give this girl more than a shrug.
Okay, okay. So I’m not good at the patter thing. But you get the idea. The only silver lining about the rehearsal was that Doug would be there.
Or so I thought. When Kerrie and I walked into the auditorium on Saturday afternoon, he was nowhere to be seen. And he didn’t show up for the
“No problem,” Sadie said assuredly. “I can spin that story any way you want.” She sauntered over to Doug’s table, more confident than I had ever seen her, a new Sadie, a Sadie very comfortable telling stories.
M Y LIFE was back on track. I spent the afternoon and the next few days successfully pretending to be normal. Sure, Doug and I hadn’t completely patched things up, but he didn’t look away from me when I passed him in the hallways, and once I could have sworn he even smiled at me when he caught sight of me in the chorus rehearsal.
Or maybe it was a grimace. Or maybe he just had something in his eye.
Every night I was on tenterhooks waiting for him to call me and ask me out again. But by now I was used to this state of nervous anticipation and it didn’t shake me, at least not too much.
Kerrie insisted, in phone calls, IM’s, emails, and school chats, that Doug was a typical guy (from Mars) and would have trouble backing down and admitting he was wrong. I should give him time, she insisted, and if that didn’t work, I should just try asking him out, repeating my offer to make up the lost date.
It sounded like a good plan—Kerrie was always good for plans—so I stuck to it, even though it nearly drove me crazy and took every ounce of my self-control.
Luckily, or maybe unluckily, my family suddenly got a bad case of Donna Reed disease. That’s where we all start acting like characters in some old 1950s sitcom, filled with brotherly and sisterly love and activities that have all of us buzzing around our hive like bees on a deadline.
My mother coerced me into going to the fabric store with her again and I actually let her buy five yards of hunter green velvet for a holiday dress for me. Connie told me privately that she was looking into who owned Sadie’s condo. She also talked about hiring me in her office during the summer. Suddenly, I had visions of working side-by-side with her on important life-and-death cases.
And Tony—well, come to think of it, Tony was kind of immune from this strange affliction, so he stuck to his usual schedule of pretending he didn’t know us even when he was in the same house.
So the week passed like a kind of timeless limbo. I was out of the house enough to keep my compulsion to call Doug under wraps. But I have to admit, I felt blue every time I came home and checked the messages, only to find no “Doug-a-gram” waiting to cheer me.
Kerrie insisted that he wouldn’t be the type to leave a message if he was going to apologize, but I wasn’t so sure. A couple times, I did the old *69 routine to find out if he had called, but I never caught his number showing up. Just a few “sorry, that number is not available or private” messages squawked at me, and I assumed they belonged to Sadie. Why the heck wouldn’t she just leave her number?
The weekend came around with no call from Doug. I was desperate, depressed, and nearly delusional. I imagined all sorts of scenarios—from Sadie lying to me about her relationship with Doug to. . . well, trust me, you don’t really want to know.
We had a play practice at school that weekend, the first of many. I was beginning to regret letting Hilary con us all into auditioning. Gilbert and Sullivan wasn’t my cup of tea in the first place, and now it meant going to school on Saturdays.
Plus, I was beginning to think in those darn patter-song couplets. If Dougie doesn’t call me soon/I’ll descend into an endless gloom/So please be kind, oh Mister Doug/And give this girl more than a shrug.
Okay, okay. So I’m not good at the patter thing. But you get the idea. The only silver lining about the rehearsal was that Doug would be there.
Or so I thought. When Kerrie and I walked into the auditorium on Saturday afternoon, he was nowhere to be seen. And he didn’t show up for the
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