“Hear me out – what if we make it interesting?”
At this, Jack finally looks up from his homework, shooting David a wary look. “Whatever you’re thinking, I’m already voting no.”
“Shut up Jack, this is a good one. Okay, what if we put money on it? Twenty bucks if you can get her to be friends with you before the end of the year. Forty if you manage it by spring break.”
He pauses for a second, clearly piecing something together in his brain. With a diabolical smile, he says, “A hundred bucks if she wants to go out with you. Like, on a date. Willingly. Without throwing something at your head.”
Jack shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Dude, no way,” I protest. “Absolutely nothing good can come of this.”
Undeterred, David argues, “C’mon Griffin, I know you want her to like you. Or to at least stop hating you.”
He’s right, but he doesn’t need to know that.
“Plus, it’ll give us something to do for the rest of the year. I’m already bored out of my mind, and it’s only January. Gimme something to enjoy in class,” he says in a whiny voice, batting his eyelashes at me dramatically.
“Get that stupid look off your face,” I say as I throw a chair cushion at him. “What would your plan be after? What happens if I get her to like me? We can’t just tell her it was for a bet and thank her for being our guinea pig in our weird social experiment.”
David lays back down and resumes throwing the basketball up in the air. “I don’t know, you know I don’t think that far ahead. I just think it would be a win-win – I get to have fun, you have incentive to get Ellie to stop being so mean to you, and Jack gets to focus on school like the dweeb he is because we’ll be too busy to bother him.”
“I resent that,” Jack exasperatedly sighs.
For the next few minutes, we sit in silence while we soak in David’s proposal. Every warning bell and siren in my brain is going off right now, but for some stupid reason I’m actually considering going along with it. The way I see it, there’s three outcomes here.
Outcome one, I convince Eleanor to be friends with me, but she finds out what we’re doing and drop kicks us out of the classroom window.
Outcome two, I might get what I’ve wanted since day one–to find out everything there is to know about her. As a friend, obviously.
Outcome three, which might be the worst one - it doesn’t work at all, and she keeps hating me.
I guess if continuing to hate me is the worst thing that could happen, I might as well try. All I’ve been thinking about for weeks is how to win her over–at least this gives me an excuse to try without Jack and David getting suspicious about why I want to win her over in the first place.
“Alright fine,” I say with a resigned sigh. “Twenty bucks for the end of the year, forty if it’s before spring break.
“Aaaaand?” David batting his eyelashes at me again, then quickly ducking and rolling away when I try to smack him.
“And a hundred if I can get her to go on a date with me. But only because I like it when you owe me money. Not because I want to go on a date with her.”
Jack and David both level me with a look–it’s the same look my mom gives me when I tell her I’ve cleaned my room and she knows for a fact that I’m lying. But I choose not to acknowledge that.
“And youcan’ttell Eleanor this is happening.”
“Excellent,” David says with a sinister look of satisfaction. “This year just got a lot more interesting.”
As if on cue, he immediately drops the basketball directly in his face, resulting in a gush of blood from his nose.
“I’m not driving,” Jack reiterates as David lets out a string of curses.
This yeardidjust get a lot more interesting, but I’m not going to tellhimthat. I’ll let David think it’s about the money all he wants. It won’t be about that for me at all. For me, it’s about the inherent need to win over the girl who probably wants to stab me with a pencil.
Right now, all I’m thinking about is blonde hair, blue eyes, and a sneaking suspicion that this is going to work out very badly for me.
***
This is not going well. Apparently thereisa “chick” –David’s words, not mine–who simply refuses to like me.
I’ve been trying everything I can think of. Going out of my way to find her in the hallway just so I can giveher a friendly smile, casually making it to class at the same time as her so I can hold the door open, diligently saying “howdy” and “have a nice day” every single day without fail.
