The Boy Project Read Free

gorgeous. If he were a movie star, big-time directors would say stuff like this about him:
I
must
have Alex Brantley for that role so thousands of girls will pay to see my wonderful movie over and over and over just to look at him. Then my film will be a box-office hit and I’ll win an Academy Award!
I can see why Tabbi likes to dream about him. But it’s only a dream.
    Tabs:
Sigh.
He’s such a nice person.
    Me: Nice, yes. But have you ever noticed that he doesn’t look at girls like us the way he looks at Maybelline?
    Tabs: Meaning . . .
    Me: I always feel like he’s looking at me like I’m something absolutely boring. Like a chair. Or a dictionary.
    Tabs: I’m pretty sure he doesn’t look at me that way!
    Me: Uh-huh.
    Tabs: He’s perfect.
    Me: Not.
    Tabs: Name one thing about him that isn’t perfect.
    Me: Maybelline.
    Tabs: Besides her.
    Me: He chews gum NONSTOP. I’ve heard the bottom of his desk has so much gum stuck to it that it’d bounce like a superball if you threw it down on the sidewalk.
    (I think I could overlook the gum chewing though, if I had a chance to date someone like him. Not that I ever will.)
    Tabs: I wish I was a piece of gum.
    Me: Ewwww.
    Tabbi wasted a lot more time talking about Alex, as if talking about him would increase her chances with him. Which it won’t. I fell into barely listening and interjecting an “uh-huh” or “yep” every now and then. It was hard to concentrate. Probably because the more she talks about
her
crush, the more I think I should confess mine. But every time I get ready to tell her how I feel about Evan, something holds me back. I guess I don’t want to jinx it.

Wednesday, January 3
Early. Too early.
    It’s still mascara black outside. But I can’t go back to sleep after that disturbing dream I just had about James Powalski — the boy Tabbi kissed during the spin the bottle.
    It was one of those forgot-my-homework type of dreams. I was scrambling through my locker, tossing papers over my shoulder. Then someone handed me the exact paper I was looking for. I turned around and found myself staring into James Powalski’s face. (If you could smell things in your dreams, I’d have known it was him
before
I turned around. Thankfully, though, smells don’t creep into dreams.)
    James’s face isn’t monster-terrible or anything. Still, it’s pretty disturbing to have someone like him show up in your head when that head is resting on a satiny pillow and attached to a body wearing spaghetti-strap pj’s. At first I wondered if my dream meant that I was still jealous about Tabbi’s kiss with him. But luckily I realized that he probably just popped up because he’s the last guy I took notes on yesterday. I’m going to have to be more careful about who I study last. Here is the card I made for him.

    Normally I wouldn’t even pay attention to someone like James, but I’m forcing myself to be objective because I want reliable results. Plus, some of the things I don’t like about James are fixable.
    For example, I heard that all of the guys at the
other
middle school have to line up after gym and reach for the stars. Then the coach goes down the line and sprays every pit with Right Guard. Now, if someone
happened
to leave an anonymous note for Coach Little giving
him
that idea, I’m sure he’d jump on it. He never misses a chance to humiliate us, and standing with your pits exposed is not exactly a confidence-building exercise. So if I ever decided I had a crush on James, I might just have to author such a note. (And forever after, shave my armpits on a daily basis in case Coach Little got the bright idea to give the girls the same treatment.)
    But there’s one thing about James that I will not be able to change and that thing is going to make him off-limits to me forever. The thing is named Gina Johns. Tabbi and I call her “The