This dude has been hanging around. First he just goes hello in the hall. Couple days later, he stops me. “Girls like you are scarce as diamonds,” he says. Well, I see diamonds all over the place: in tacky store-fronts on Washington Street, on fat ring fingers everywhere I look, and especially in the windows of grungy pawn shops. I’m not impressed. 
        Then he swoops up to me between classes and goes, “Hast thou sworn that thou will live chaste?” 
        Okay, he steals lines from Shakespeare. Which shows he’s been asking around about me. Fine. He can locate Juliet. 
        High school football players think they’re God’s gift to women, especially sophomore girls, who are known to be totally without brain cells. Well, yes, I did go to the trouble of finding out who he is, but second-string placekickers are just boys, even if they quote Shakespeare. 
        Two days later this Goth type—black T-shirt, gold rings in ear, nose, and no telling where else, skin so pale it looks like butcher paper—lurches over just as we’re leaving English class and says, “That Ray guy. Stay away from him; he’s scuz.” He then scoots back to his cave or wherever. Since he almost never talks and appears to be a high-grade moron, I figure he’s just a loose cog. Still. 
        These happenings don’t actually upset me—I don’t upset easily—but I decide to discuss them with my friend Emily, the only other literate female in this glorified day-care center. 
        I go to her house that afternoon after soccer practice, largely because my house is not a place anyone in her right mind would like to spend a great deal of time. Her room is cozy, with stuffed animals and flouncy curtains and a big Justin Timberlake poster. We chat, and I tell her about these bizarre happenings. 
        “I need your advice,” I say. “Last year no boy had anything to say to me at all. Now this.” 
        “Have you examined your chest lately?” 
        “Not really. What does that have to do with anything?” 
        “Liar. You have, and the guys have, too. You are now prey, and they are all teeth. And you like it. Don’t tell me you don’t.” She’s little and skinny and blond, but she makes like a bear, with a fierce expression that would curl my hair if it weren’t already curly, and goes, “Grr-r-r-!”
        “So what do I do?” I give her an innocent look that sends her into gales of laughter. She falls over and puts her head in the pillow on her bed, and then sits up after she gets over her fit. 
        “From what I’ve heard, the Goth is right. But that’s not news—all guys are scuz.” She concentrates a minute. “So if Ray comes up to you again, you giggle and look scared. He’ll ask you to go somewhere with the football gang, and you go.” 
        “Nope. I watched my sister go through this, and look what happened to her.” 
        My sister is Exhibit A for the stupid abstinence class they make us take. She’s four years older than I am and has had two abortions that I know of. I’m not supposed to know that, but I know a lot of things I’m not supposed to know. What I don’t understand is why Mom didn’t lock her in her room until she was 30.
        Having learned better by listening to my parents, teachers, and other authority figures, I don’t believe anything until I get hard evidence. My sister is evidence enough for me to decide screwing around is a bad idea, even if all the wrong people are against it. It’s hard to play soccer when you’re pregnant, and I’m going to the Olympics after I become valedictorian. So I resolve to ignore both the Goth and the Visigoth. 
        “You’ll cave,” Emily says. “The more you resist, the harder they’ll push. Sooner or later, you’ll get tied up with somebody. But maybe it won’t be a total asshole.” 
        I finally go home, because I have to eat and my mom does serve better food than McDonald’s. 
        A few days later another guy starts sniffing around. This one will be doing time soon, so I snort and walk off. Back comes the Goth, who announces that his name is Joshua. 
        “Stay away from that guy,” he says. “He’s scuz, too. Probably criminal scuz.” 
        I stare at him and find myself wondering what he’d look like with a tan. 
        “What’s it to you?”
        He shuffles his feet—he’s wearing some kind of patent leather shoes—looks at the floor for a while, and finally speaks: “I think you’re okay.” Then he glances at me, and is off for the nether regions again. 
        Sure enough, Ray, the Shakespeare lad, turns up again after school. He may be scuz, but at least he’s normal scuz. Actually, he’s not bad looking. 
        “You are too fair, too wise, wisely too fair, to merit bliss by making me despair. You actually looked at that weirdo.” 
        “Yeah, I did,” I say. “At least he doesn’t give me the crap you do. Have you read past Scene One?” 
        I start to walk off, but he hangs in.
        “I know all about you. You’re smart and you’re tough. For a girl. And, yes, I read the whole play.” 
        This is not deep character analysis, but he has the big picture. I wonder if Rosaline changed her mind, and wished Romeo would come back. She was way too sharp for him, though. She’d want somebody with a brain. Ray, I’ve heard, makes pretty good grades. Yeah, I did a little more checking around. But I don’t like that “for a girl” business. 
        “Then you know what a sap Romeo was, right?”
        “What the hell, he loved the woman.” Ray tries to be like innocent, and I suddenly remember Emily with her teeth bared. 
        “See you around,” I say. “Got to get to practice.” Then I turn left and march off. I don’t hear footsteps, so I know he’s standing there looking at me. 
        All this is beginning to convince me I’m not chopped liver as far as males are concerned. Like my dad says, though, I think I want to see a couple more cards before I put any big money in the pot. 
        Joshua turns up again on Saturday—in the grocery store. I’m there to
pick up some stuff my mom forgot to get—she’d forget to buy toilet paper if it wasn’t on her list. I see him first, probably because he looks like a black hole in the afternoon. He sees me, and for the first time, smiles. It looks nice. Being confident that Goths are potential axe murderers, I’m surprised. When he catches up with me in the paper goods aisle, he asks how I’m doing. Like this:
        “Uh . . . how you doin’?”
        I can see this guy is a real charmer, with a beautiful line of chat, but somehow I feel like being kind to him. Half the time these days I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking. 
        “Very well, thank you.” That’s Lady Bountiful speaking to one of her serfs. 
        “I saw you go off and leave Ray standing there like an idiot the other day. Good.” Given his usual complexion, I tell from the blush that he’s trying hard. 
        “Ray’s all right,” I say. “For a jock, he’s even fairly smart.”
        “I know that, but I don’t want him to have you. You deserve somebody better.” The poor guy is literally beginning to sweat. I ought to lead him to the frozen food area, especially since I find I’m a little warmer than usual myself. But I like being a problem for him. 
        “Like a skinny Goth with a ring in his nose?” 
        He actually smiles again. “Maybe. Why not? I bathe regularly.” 
        “Well, I’ll give it some thought,” I say, “but right now I have to go home.” We’re blocking the aisle, and some poor woman is standing there thinking what idiots teenagers are. I back up, swing my cart around, and head for the produce. 
        Back in my room, I smile. I have two guys on my trail. Neither one strikes me as exactly hot, but neither one is a total loser, either. If I want, I can let either one get a little closer. Being a good deal smarter than my sister, I ought to be able to manage that without anything really bad happening, don’t you think? I can’t help but believe Rosaline actually liked having guys drool over her. My guess is she figured she could do a lot better than Romeo, and I bet she did. I have to talk this over with Emily, but you know, I think she’s going to laugh like hell. •