The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

Chapter Seven There’s a chance that reality begins in dreams

Sicilee and Maya are both convinced that once they catch Cody Lightfoot’s attention they are as good as on their first date with him, if not actually engaged. These assumptions, of course, are based on who they are (the most popular girl in the most popular group and the coolest girl in the coolest group) and what they look like (model pretty, and attractive in an alternative, arty way). In contrast, Waneeda – who doesn’t even register on the radar screens of popularity or cool – is a large, ungainly girl with runaway, tumbleweed hair and the instantly forgettable kind of face that would only be an advantage if she decided to commit a crime. She’s not a fool. Waneeda knows that the only way she could attract Cody Lightfoot’s attention would be to dump her lunch on his lap. But she still can dream.

Waneeda’s dreams used to centre around her favourite TV shows and arguments with her mother, but now she dreams about Cody every night. In dreams, she walks with him and talks with him and sometimes even holds his hand. In these dreams, Cody is the funny, kind, sensitive and intelligent boy she imagines him to be – and Waneeda is someone else. Instead of shambling the way she does in real life, she sashays; instead of dragging her heels and always complaining, she is energetic and always laughing. She looks different, too. Prettier and brighter – her hair like a dark cloud around her head; her smile like the sun.

In last night’s dream, Cody saved Waneeda’s life. She was drowning in an angry sea under a hard, ash-coloured sky. “Help! Help!” she was shouting. “Help! Help!” But, of course, there was no one to hear her desperate screams. There was no land in sight, no boat in the distance, not so much as a gull wheeling overhead. And then, as the icy fingers of the sea were pulling her under for the last time, Cody Lightfoot (in his pinstriped suit and black T-shirt) suddenly dove in beside her. His arms were strong and warm around her. “It’s all right,” he murmured. “Don’t worry, dear Waneeda. Everything’s going to be all right.” She woke up tangled in the blankets, a pillow clutched against her.

Even now, so many hours later, as she and Joy Marie walk home together on Friday afternoon, last night’s dream keeps replaying itself in her mind, making Joy Marie’s chatter no more than background noise. Until Joy Marie says something that makes Waneeda almost choke on the candy she just put in her mouth.

“What?” asks Waneeda. “What did you say?”

“God, Waneeda…” Joy Marie makes her why-don’t-you-ever-listen-to-me? face. “I said that Clemens says that Cody Lightfoot seems pretty solid. You know, interesting and intelligent and kind of a mensch.”

“Clemens,” repeats Waneeda. “Are you saying Cody Lightfoot talks to Clemens?”

Clemens Reis is the geek’s geek. Waneeda, who lives behind Clemens, has known him since they were in diapers, and so can attest that he was always a peculiar child (in the video of her earliest birthday parties, Clemens is the scowling one who refused to wear a party hat or sing), but puberty has made him even more peculiar. He has an eccentric nature and an independent, argumentative mind. Physically, he is thin and gawky, with hair that is long not as a statement of cool or rebellion but because he never remembers to get it cut. His glasses are held together by a paper clip. Clemens is the kind of boy who can tell you how many helium balloons you’d need to make a cat fly (depending on its weight, of course) and who will tell you (whether you ask or not) what percentage of global greenhouse-gas emissions is caused by cows. He wears a hat knitted by his grandmother and saddle shoes. It is miracle enough that two such different examples of a carbon-based life form as Cody and Clemens should inhabit the same planet, let alone speak to each other.

“He talks to Clemens all the time,” says Joy Marie. “At least he isn’t a snob like everybody else in this school.”

“I guess that’s true.” Waneeda has, in fact, seen him talk to people even she wouldn’t talk to.

Waneeda chews on a cherry-flavoured ball of corn syrup and sugar in the way of someone considering the possible origins of life. No one expects less of Waneeda than Waneeda herself. Indeed, you could say that one of her strengths is that her lack of ambition is comfortably matched by her lack of expectation. But now something shifts ever so slightly, and she starts to consider the possibility that, maybe, there might be a chance that – someday, somehow – Cody Lightfoot will talk to her somewhere that isn’t in her dreams.