The Girl Who Invented Romance Read Free Page A

dating my brother for three months and she thinks I won’t recognize her name? “Hi, Wendy,” I said. “He isn’t home. He’s at play practice.”
    Parker was stage manager of the school production of
The Music Man
. Wendy didn’t like this. She wanted Park to take her to the basketball games. Parker didn’t like that because he would certainly be compared to Jeep, out there racking up baskets and generally being a top-notch jock.
    “Oh,” said Wendy sadly. “I thought he’d be home by now.”
    Wendy’s voice is very expressive. I had to bite my lips to keep from offering to run over and stay with her until Park got back. “Shall I give him a message?” I said. “Is something wrong?”
    “No,” said Wendy, all forlorn, like a little girl who’s losther mother in the crowd. “I just wanted to talk. No subject. Just … hear his voice.”
    Wendy Newcombe, Queen of Romance, so in love with my brother Parker she just had to hear his voice.
    What if I never got a phone call from a boy who just had to hear my voice? What if the only tears I ever shed were not from love, but from lack of it?
    “What’s the matter, Kell?” said Faith. “You stuck under there?” She and Megan yanked me up and I shrieked to cover the sounds of my backbone twisting and to change my face from the despair I felt.
    We arranged ourselves cross-legged around the Monopoly board, which we spread in the middle of the bed. We put props under the board so it would lie evenly and the pieces and cards wouldn’t slide down onto our toes. I decided to be the top hat and I picked it up, looking down at the familiar squares. Railroads, utilities …
    “Don’t you wish there were boys on these squares?” I said. “You wouldn’t buy properties, you’d get boys. You wouldn’t win dollars, you’d win dates.”
    “I don’t think there is a board game like that,” said Megan.
    “But if there were, I would buy it,” said Faith. She put the three players at GO.
    “I have poster board,” I said. “We could copy out the squares but put boys’ names where the streets are. Like here.” I pointed to the powder blue squares facing me. “We could substitute Angie and Jeep and Will for Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental.”
    Megan and Faith didn’t even bother to listen. Megan took the first turn. Megan always takes the first turn and I am always annoyed and I have never said anything.
    I didn’t say anything this time, either, except, “I’m sure I have poster board somewhere, but my room is too messy for me to find it. I’ll cut computer paper into squares instead.”
    I taped boy squares over the streets and penciled little cartoons of the basketball starters on them. I wrote their names in what was supposed to be romantic script but was actually just messy handwriting.
    “You’re going to ruin the board,” complained Megan. “When you peel that junk off, you’ll tear the whole surface.”
    “The boys have to have values,” I said. “Like property. But not dollars. Let’s give every boy a numerical rating. One to ten.” I stuck Mario and Scott onto Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens.
    “Jeep’s a ten,” said Megan.
    “No,” said Faith. “Angie’s the ten. There cannot be more than one ten in the game, and it goes to Angie.”
    “Jeep is more handsome,” said Megan.
    “Angie is more wonderful.” Faith wrote
10
under his sketch.
    Megan glared at us both. “You can’t have a board game with a boy named Angie anyhow. Not everybody in America lives in a town that’s half Italian. They don’t even know that boys can have names like Angelo. Like when I visited Miami, I met a boy named Jesus. He was cute too.But you can’t run around putting Jesus on your list of romantic boys.”
    I sighed. “Let’s not worry about everybody in America. Let’s make the game just for us.”
    “Think big,” said Megan. “Market it nationally.”
    Market it?
    “Let’s not use names from the basketball team after all,” said