“Why?”
“It’s the way it is,” she said, and would say no more.
When I looked up at Mark and recalled Ava’s comments about high school boys and our restrictions, I thought her answer hadn’t been good enough then, and it certainly wasn’t good enough now. It wasn’t easy just to ignore the attention of someone as good-looking as Mark.
“I’m not a new student,” I said.
He pretended great surprise. “Are you kidding?” He sat across from me and then, in an overly dramatic display of amazement, glanced back at the other students and said, “Those bastards. They just told me you had to be a new student. No one recognized you. Are you saying you’ve been here all this time and I didn’t notice? What, have I become blind or just plain stupid? I thought I knew all the girls in this school backward and forward. Some look better backward.”
I couldn’t help myself. I laughed, and that encouraged him.
“I know I should know your name,” he said, and then pretended to be running through some possibilities. “Lois? Laura? Lauren?” He snapped his fingers. “L… Lorelei, Lorelei Patio, right?”
I looked past him at the other students in the cafeteria. Many had stopped talking and had turned our way. They looked frozen, anticipating. What did they expect I would do? Get up and charge out?
“Okay,” I said. “You’ve got my attention. What’s your point?”
“My point? My point?” He thought. “Oh, yeah, my point. My point is that you are without doubt the most beautiful girl in this school and maybe in the entire city. And,” he continued with an amusing air of seriousness, “I find it downright rude of me not to have acknowledged that fact long before this. Can you see it in your heart to forgive me?”
I was laughing inside, but I kept myself from even smiling. It was as if Ava were right there, looking over his shoulder at me and grimacing, just waiting for me to do something wrong or say something wrong.
“I’ll try,” I said. “You’re forgiven.”
It took a lot of self-control, but I turned to look at my opened English literature textbook as a way of dismissing him.
“Oh, great. Thank you, thank you. Now that we’re past that, can I ask you if you are free this Friday night?”
“What?”
“Friday night. A few of us are going over to party at Gavin Murphy’s house in Malibu. You know the Murphy family, right? Very respectable. His father’s an important movie producer, did that film Deadly Verdict.”
“I don’t know him,” I said. “And I never saw the movie.”
“No problem. Their house is right on the beach. We’ll have a campfire, good stuff, and lots of music, plenty to eat. The weather promises to be terrific, and there’s no better view of the stars.”
“I…”
“Don’t say yes or no right now,” he said, holding up his right hand. “I don’t want you to regret you said yes too quickly. And I certainly don’t want you to regret you said no, because I’ll have to regret it, too. Let the idea just settle in your mind. Examine it from every angle. Turn it about like a precious diamond. Think of questions to ask me during the week. You know, like time, what to wear, who all’s coming, and all that. Oh, here is a list of references for me,” he added, and handed me a slip of paper that said, “Moses, President Lincoln, Buddha, Jesus, and Allah.”
“You left out George Washington,” I said.
“Didn’t know him.”
He got up, which surprised me.
“I’m not going to pressure you. Don’t worry about me haunting you the rest of the week. Just turn around whenever you come up with a question. I’ll be right behind you, at a discreet distance, of course. Enjoy the remainder of your lunch,” he added, and walked away.
I knew I was smiling now, and I also knew Ava would be furious. I stuffed his list of references into my book bag and left the cafeteria a little before the bell rang. I didn’t look back at him, either, nor did I glance at any other students. I felt their eyes on me, however. Curiosity only grew stronger and more intense about me the remainder of the day. Everywhere I looked, every time I turned, some girls and some boys were talking and looking my way. Mark Daniels was true to his word, too. He was always nearby, smiling, shrugging. I tried to concentrate on the schoolwork and get him out of my mind, but it seemed impossible. His smile and his sexy eyes were frozen across my vision.
He tapped me on the shoulder at the end of science class and handed me another slip of paper. “I forgot these two.”
I looked at what he had written: “Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi.”
“But no pressure, no pressure,” he added, holding up his hands and backing away.
I laughed. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. He was funny, handsome, charming, and certainly what Ava would have described as original. Even she would have had trouble rejecting him out of hand, I thought.
By the time I reached Mr. Burns’s class, I sensed that everyone was talking about me and Mark. I thought even Mr. Burns was looking at me with greater interest. Whether it was my imagination or not, the effect was the same. I felt myself blushing and tried to keep my eyes down. We were studying Shakespeare’s sonnets, and suddenly, after a discussion of one, he had us turn to Sonnet 18 and then moved down the aisle as he read, stopping right before my desk. He liked to be the one to read them completely before we talked about them. I felt his gaze on me and looked up.