The woman said icily, “That will be eighteen dollars and sixty-five cents. And let me tell you, we maintain the highest standard of cleanliness here, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell our customers otherwise.”

For the first time I looked at the people in the line behind us. They were all staring at us.

Bob took his wallet out of his pants pocket. “Sorry. I was only explaining the life cycle of the fly. When I said that one fly can lay a thousand eggs, I wasn’t suggesting any were in your restaurant.” He glanced around. “Although, of course, it’s always a possibility.”

I tried to shrink until I became invisible.

He paid and we went and sat down at one of the few empty tables. All around us people in jeans and sweats were eating. I tried to look inconspicuous.

Bob continued to entertain me with bug trivia, and I ate as quickly as possible in hopes it would speed up the evening. Occasionally I smiled and told him how good my meal was, just so I could tell my parents I had.

Right in the middle of a treatise on the scorpion, which can survive temperatures from below freezing to well above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, I asked Bob to pass me the soy sauce. I had put off finishing my fried rice because he’d given me a complex about my weight. All through the meal I’d wondered if someone could really mistake me for weighing 150 pounds. At the same time, I remembered my father telling me to eat everything when a date took me out to dinner. I pondered whether it would be better to appear as a glutton or an ingrate on my first date. I finally decided that Bob wasn’t paying attention to me anyway and opted to eat it. I liked fried rice.

Bob reached across the table with the soy sauce. It slipped from his hand as it passed over my plate. The bottle hit the dish with a crash, and both objects flipped into my lap. The lid hadn’t been screwed on tightly, and soy sauce spurted out, mingling with the rice now in my lap.

“I’m so sorry!” Bob stood up, then sat down. “Here, let me help you.” He dipped his napkin into his water glass. Unfortunately, he did this a little too forcefully, and half of the water splashed out onto the table.

I stood up to avoid it trickling off onto me.

“That’s all right. I’ve got it.” I wiped off what I could with my napkin, but it was a hopeless cause.

“I’m so sorry,” Bob said again.

“It’s okay. I’ll just go home and change into something else.” As we left, I thought: At least it can’t get worse. As it turned out, I was overly optimistic.

Chapter 9

My parents were understandably surprised to see us again so soon. Dad took one look at me and asked, “Food fight at the restaurant?”

“A minor accident. I need to change.”

“That’s fine. Bob and I will sit down in the living room and talk about the future.”

I ran up the stairs, calling over my shoulder, “I’ll be right back!”

Mom followed me into my room. While I flipped through my closet, she asked, “Well, besides that, how’s it going?”

“Are you aware there are thousands of fascinating bug facts you don’t know about? I, of course, know them all now.” I glanced at the clock on my night stand. “And the evening is still young.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” She searched for something positive to say. “You still look lovely.”

“But now I smell like soy sauce.” I flipped through church dresses until I found one that was nice enough to wear and slipped it off the hanger.

“The dance will be better,” Mom said as she left the room. “You’ll see your friends there.”

I would have liked to see Elise. Somehow I knew she would have found a way to save the evening. She would have joked about it and made everything seem funny. She might even have found a way to get Bob to talk about something besides bugs. But Elise wasn’t going to be at the dance. She hadn’t been asked.

Elise had been sullen about this fact for days. At school she kept pointing out guys to me and saying, “See that guy? He’s a jerk. He didn’t ask me to the dance, and I’ve been nice to him since I moved in. That guy over there—major jerk. He’s taking the girl who sits behind me in algebra, and she’s a total ditz.”

“There’s always the Tolo,” I told her. “You can ask whoever you want to that.” It was the girl ask guy dance in March.

Elise hadn’t been at all cheered by thoughts of the Tolo. March isn’t much of a consolation in October.

When Bob and I got to the dance, I looked for Faith and Caitlin but didn’t see them. Chad was standing on the edge of the dance floor with Lisa Litton, a junior girl who always looked like she was part of a fashion show. He was telling her something, leaning close with his head bent towards her ear. She smiled. Somehow I didn’t think he was rhyming words for her.

Josh was out on the dance floor with a senior named Courtney. She was one of those bouncy, friendly girls who were always involved in the cute little skits during pep rallies. I wondered if Josh thought she was mature. I wondered if she’d ever hit a bike rack.

“Do you want to dance?” Bob asked.

“All right.”

We danced for a while. Although, to be accurate, the term dancing only generally described what we were doing. Bob’s dancing looked like he was lurching back and forth—sort of the step you do as you’re coming out of an elevator that’s about to shut on you.

I never looked around to see if anyone was staring at us. I didn’t want to know.

After a while we went and stood in the picture line. Josh and Courtney were in front of us.

When Josh saw us, he smiled. “Hey, how’s it going?” He turned to Courtney. “You know Bob, don’t you? And this is Cassidy Woodruff. She’s one of my sister’s little friends.” Then he laughed. “I mean my little sister’s friends. Sorry, Cassidy. I wasn’t saying that you were short.”

Short, no. But what about immature? “Right,” I said. “What would Freud say?”

Josh shrugged. “I don’t think Freud would say you’re short either. What are you, five-eight?”

“Five-seven.”

Bob lowered his voice. “Don’t ask her about her weight. She’s touchy about it.”

Now Courtney peered at me with wide eyes. “You’re not trying to lose weight, are you? Because you don’t need to.”

“I told her the same thing,” Bob said. “And she got all defensive.”

“I’m not trying to lose weight,” I said.

“You can ruin your body by dieting too much,” Courtney went on. “We learned about anorexia in health.”

“I’m not anorexic,” I insisted.

“Well, no one ever admits it.” Courtney turned to Josh. “It’s all men’s fault, you know. You expect us to be shaped like Barbie dolls.”

Josh held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’ve never said any such thing.” He turned to me. “You’re great the way you are, Cassidy. I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

I blushed. And glowed. And didn’t know what to say.

Josh didn’t wait for me to comment. He turned to Bob. “Hey, how’s your computer program going?” Then to Courtney and I, Josh explained, “Bob’s a programming wizard. He made his computer sound like Spock from Star Trek. When it shuts down it says, ‘Live long and prosper.’”

“It also does McCoy,” Bob said. “When you search for a file it says, ‘Darn it, Jim. I’m a computer, not a magician.’”

I laughed. Momentarily I forgot I was talking to Bob and asked, “How did you do that?”

He spent the rest of the time in line explaining sound cards, hertz, and RAM to me.

After the picture, Bob asked if I wanted to go to the refreshment table. “No thanks,” I said. “I’m planning on binging and purging later.”

He looked at me oddly. I’m not sure he got the humor.

I found Caitlin and Faith, and we spent a few minutes talking to them, then went to the dance floor again. After a few songs I grew hot. I hoped the soy sauce smell wasn’t permeating through my clothes. When the next slow song started, I asked, “Do you want to go outside to cool off?”