Perfectly Dateless Read online

  For future reference, there are a few roadblocks to this plan.

  1. Guys don’t seem to know I exist (with the exception of the boys I tutor on the baseball team—and call me picky, but I was hoping for someone who could spell “prom”).

  2. My parents believe only in the concept of courting (naturally, because they’re married), so dating is out of the question until I’m of marrying age. Prom hardly counts, though, right? God says the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains, and I have to believe it’s true. Maybe my dad will stand next to the mountain and budge just a tiny bit.

  3. I do not plan on “putting out” until my wedding night. Nor do I see someone buying me a meal and renting a tux/limo as cause for losing my purity. You want it? It will cost two karats and a platinum wedding. I do have God’s standards. Duh. As Beyonce' says, if you like it, put a ring on it. And it BETTER have a diamond, know what I’m sayin’? And you’d better not be dressed like a duck!

  Mom’s calling. More later!

  2

  “Daisy?” my mom calls. I shove my prom journal under my pillow, grab a nearby book, and grin. Mom appears and leans against the doorway. I think she feels my guilt on her mom-frequency because she never comes in here unless I’m writing in that journal.

  “Hi, Mom!” I say with too much enthusiasm.

  “What are you up to?” she asks me. “You sound guilty.” She thins her eyes.

  “Me?” I laugh uneasily. “I’m not guilty. Did you lose more weight, Mom? You’re looking really good.”

  “You think so? I haven’t weighed in this week.” She turns and shows me her new, skinnier self. She’s fresh-faced and pretty, but she wants to dwell on none of that since it’s vanity, and a sin. I beg her to read the book of Esther and see how beautiful they made the queen look before she went to her king. It’s biblical, I tell her. Get thee to Talbots.

  She just tells me I’m irreverent. That’s her favorite word: irreverent. As in everything and anything that isn’t her point of view of Scripture is irreverent.

  A laundry basket on her hip, Mom is standing alongside David Beckham, a poster I placed strategically so that when Mom comes in and nags me, I have my equivalent of the stress ball Claire’s dad has on his desk. Mom thinks the poster is because I love soccer, which works for me.

  “Where did you get this?” She sets the basket down and holds up a T-shirt.

  Ack! Abercrombie and Fitch contraband! I must have left it in the laundry by accident. Be cool. Be cool. I casually look down at my book. “I got it at Goodwill when I went with Claire. Fifty cents, can you believe it?” My mom cannot pass up a bargain, so she has to appreciate my good shopping sense.

  “You went to Goodwill? With Claire?” Her eyebrow bends in her are-you-lying way. “To shop?” Unsaid: Are you expecting me to believe this? Claire’s clothes are all from the mall. She’s had to work hard to get the emo look, until discovering vintage.

  I shrug without meeting Mom’s eyes. Eye contact would be very dangerous at this point. “Lots of kids do the vintage thing, but I can’t get past the grossness of it. I mean, who knows where that thing has been? Right? But that T-shirt was barely worn. How could I resist?”

  “You’re avoiding the question. Why is Claire shopping at Goodwill?” Mom asks. This is our version of the standoff. What Mom wants is a thorough explanation, and heck if I know why my best friend thinks black is the new black. Naturally, I haven’t mentioned the dark poetry or the part about the plastic spider rings plunged through her nose. Claire is kind enough to remove it all before crossing the Crispin threshold. She probably fears my mother would bring Pastor Gorman over, and quick.

  “Why does Claire do anything, Mom?” When in doubt, change the subject.

  “Are her parents all right financially? Maybe if—”

  “Mom, her parents are fine financially.” In case my mom hasn’t noticed, Claire’s parents drive a Beamer and a Lexus fake SUV. Their bedroom suite is the size of our entire house, and you can tell all of this from pulling into the expansive driveway on the hill. If my mom thinks the Webbers need help from the likes of us, in our decades-old Pontiac and fabric-strewn house, her compassion has softened her head.

  “You know how she likes to change things up,” I add.

  Mom’s eyes are slivers now. Nothing tests my mother’s Pollyanna view of life like us talking about Claire. “You almost got me off track. Claire’s latest phase doesn’t explain this!” She holds up the shirt like it’s dirty underpants—outstretched between her forefingers and thumbs.

  I admit, I think about lying, telling her the shirt is Claire’s, but my conscience gets the better of me. “Mom.” I try to grab the shirt, but she clamps those innocent-looking fingers around the wad, and she’s like a lobster on lockdown. She is not letting go. I try one more tug. “Seriously, Mom, you told me I couldn’t buy at Abercrombie, and I haven’t, but I paid for this with my own money. I hardly see why I can’t wear it. It’s a perfectly good shirt. If some rich kid is done with it, why shouldn’t I have it?” I cross my arms, staring up at Saint Beckham for strength. “Abercrombie got absolutely no money from me.”

  “Daisy May Crispin, I’ve told you, God looks at the heart.”

  “So now he sees my heart through my cool new T-shirt that I purchased for a song. Maybe he gets to see an ‘m’ or a ‘b’ stretched over it, that’s all. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s not funny. It’s irreverent.”

  I flatten my lips. “I saw the shirt at Goodwill, and I bought it because it’s still cute. I thought I could wash it in hot water and it would be as good as new.”

  Okay, really? Really I squealed in delight that some rich girl outgrew my very cool T-shirt and her own mother tossed it into the Goodwill bin—traitor! I ran through the store to show Claire, like when Veruca Salt finds the golden ticket. That’s what I really did, but that’s the kind of full disclosure that leads to nights alone in my room.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your clothes. I had the popular styles during high school, Daisy, and it only got me into trouble. I want things to be different for you. You’re focused on your grades, and that’s what’s important.”

  “Is it too much to ask that I don’t stick out like the poverty-stricken dweeb I am? I just wanted to have one shirt you didn’t stitch together.” Catching her horror, I add, “No offense.”

  “Poverty-stricken! Of all the—Daisy, your father works so hard to make this education possible for you. I would think that would be enough to make you grateful.” Now, even when my mother nags, she does it so sweetly, in this encouraging Barney-the-dinosaur kind of voice, that it radiates guilt like a sunlamp. “If you want to call us poverty-stricken, I suggest you take a trip with the missions group from church. People have it so badly, sweetheart. Don’t mock what we’ve been given.”

  “Um, just for the record? I tried to go to Guatemala with church. You wouldn’t let me go, remember?”

  “I don’t think it’s appropriate for boys and girls—”

  “To build a church together and run Bible camps? Mom, guys are half the human race. I have to get along with them at some point.”

  “You’re a teenager now. Hormones are raging and it’s not the best time.”

  “For building churches?” I have overstepped my boundaries because Mom’s lip is twitching. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t appreciate all your hard work, I totally do, but I’m tired of standing out in homemade clothes and I wouldn’t have stood out in Guatemala, so you should have sent me. That’s where they send the T-shirts for losing teams. So if my shirt said, ‘McCain wins!’ I would be totally fine there.” It’s not a bad idea. Maybe I belong in a third-world country.

  “I didn’t have Christian parents, Daisy.”

  Cue the violins. She gives me her passive smile, the kind with no teeth involved. She might as well pat me on the head.

  “You answer to a higher standard, and that’s a good thing. While those kids use their clothe
s and their appearance to get by in life, you’re learning to stand on your own two feet and make your inside matter. You’ll thank me for these rules someday.”

  Do not roll eyes. Do not roll eyes. That will only make it worse. I look down and realize I’m the social equivalent of those prairie dresses on the FLDS ranch—an Easter-egg-colored frock—who looks like I worship the god of bad fashion choices. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if I lived on the cultish ranch and all the other girls dressed exactly like me. I mean, maybe it is fashionable there, you know?

  “I want to take one walk down St. James’s hallway without being laughed at.”

  “If they laugh, that’s their problem, Daisy. It’s building character in you because you know that clothes don’t define you.”

  “It may be their problem, Mom, but I’m the one they laugh at, and that never feels good. Your prom dress may be laughable now, but I’m sure it was cool back then, right?”

  “You can buy your own clothes. No one’s stopping you from that. I just want approval first, and I’ve given you a list of stores I don’t want to support.”

  “Those are all the stores that are for my age group. Would you like me to head to Coldwater Creek and get me a sweater with autumn leaves on it?”

  “The more you spend on fashion, the less time you have for what really matters. These girls are only transferring their own insecurities, and look at you, you’re buying into it.” She picks up the laundry basket. “They’re not your friends.”

  As evidenced by their rampant use of epithets in my direction. Thank you, Mom. I have no idea why my mother sees this particular store as the devil incarnate (her words, not mine), but there it is. “I don’t want to be their friends. I just want to fly under the radar and escape their wrath.”

  “So why don’t you try talking to them?” She pulls her hair out of its cotton headband.

  “About what, Mom?”

  “All those facts you come up with. You remember everything like you’re reading an encyclopedia. It’s just amazing to me. Don’t you think the other girls would find that fascinating?”

  “Could be, but I think it would be fascinating like how people are fascinated by the freak at the circus you pay a dollar to see, not like, ‘Wow, how did we miss Daisy? She should be popular!’”

  “Now come on, that’s an incredible skill what you do with numbers.”

  I have a skill with random number facts. I can remember everyone’s phone number since kindergarten. If I call for a pizza? That number is with me for life.

  “I don’t have room for the stuff these girls care about. So can’t we compromise, Mom, and say the T-shirt can stay?”

  “Wearing a tight T-shirt with the name of a store famous for erotic advertising is not the message I want my daughter sending to boys.”

  “Boys don’t even know I exist. The chance of one of them being overcome with passion from my T-shirt? Very slim.” I hold my thumb and forefinger together.

  “This discussion is over.” She puts her hand on the doorknob.

  “Seriously, Mom, I could walk down the hall naked and I’d be lucky if I garnered a stare, so what’s the big deal about a T-shirt?”

  Mom’s cheek twitches, and she looks like she’s about to have kittens over my visual. Seriously, Claire wears a nose spider, and do you think anyone will look at her? We’re totally invisible. They might as well park our desks under the bleachers, but in my mom’s world, we’re having to beat the boys away with a baseball bat. Don’t get me wrong, I love that she thinks I’m so valuable, but I wish her view lined up a little better with reality.

  I exhale as I watch my new favorite shirt muzzled into the laundry basket. All my hopes of looking semi-normal this year are wadded up with it. “But can we at least talk about my clothes?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your clothes.”

  “I mean, can we talk about my clothes in the realm of the world’s reality and not yours?”

  “The economy is finally catching up to the way your frugal father and I have lived our lives. You’re ahead of the curve, Daisy. I’ll bet some of the kids you went to school with last year won’t be there this year because of all those Mercedes and Land Rovers. If they had lived like your father and me . . .”

  I’ve tuned out. I love my parents, but as much as the other parents bury themselves in the pride of their fancy cars and giant houses, mine bury themselves in the pride that they’re above all that. They’d live “poor” no matter what they had—like there’s never enough to go around. Nothing is given freely. Even the worst-worn blanket from the closet is given to the Salvation Army as if it’s a prized treasure. Is there anything worse than the guy at the Salvation Army giving you a dirty look for your donation? If there is, I do not want to know about it.

  “Are you giving boys some sort of idea?” Her eyes get round. “Because any girl can get attention if she’s willing to give a boy ideas.”

  I hate to admit if I knew how to give a boy an idea, I might have tried it. Once anyway. “Mom, I just want to wear a pair of jeans to school.”

  “Christians aren’t of this world, Daisy. We’re not supposed to fit in easily. If other Christian parents choose to put their children’s clothes in front of their morals, that’s their business, but as for me and my house—”

  “We will serve the Lord,” I finish for her, throwing myself backward on the bed. “I don’t see why we can’t serve him in jeans. All I’m saying.”

  This is sort of my pet peeve. My mother makes us total freaks of nature, with her homemade clothes and hand-woven purses (and not the cool kind!), then says we’re being punished for our faith. No, um, people in China are being punished for their faith. People in the Middle East are being punished for their faith. We’re just reaping the rewards of being defiantly bad about fashion. Hello? The last time I checked, being called “nerd girl” wasn’t spiritual warfare, just your standard high school misery.

  “You’re the one who chooses to spend your money saving for a car. No one is stopping you from shopping.”

  Okay, I beg to differ.

  “Besides,” my mom continues, “you look so cute in the clothes I make you.”

  “And Daddy looks cute as a goose, but that’s hardly the point.”

  My mom sits beside me and pats my knee. Sometimes I think she grew up with too many of those old shows where the parents doled out wisdom like floss at the dentist. “Now is the time to focus on your future, not what other kids think.”

  Ugh. I am getting nowhere. Why do I waste my breath? “You want me to go to school looking like a total dork, don’t you? It would make you happy if I never had a date!”

  “Daisy.” Her voice softens, and she puts her arm around me.

  Here we go. The I-was-your-age-once spiel.

  “Dating is for couples who are ready to marry. What would be the point of dating while you’re trying to get into college?”

  “Um, a social life? Because the male gender is half the school’s population? Mom, I’ve never given you reason to distrust me. Can’t you step out on a limb and let go of the leash a little bit?”

  She holds up the shirt again.

  “Besides that, I’ve never given you a reason not to trust me.”

  “It’s not you I don’t trust. It’s the boys, and your father will confirm that if you have any questions there. You and Claire don’t seem to be suffering any. Did I ever get to play tennis and swim at a country club all summer?”

  “No, but I bet your dad never showed up to your ‘Back to School Night’ dressed as Batman either.”

  “Your friends loved that! They all wished their father could be so creative. You’re not exactly suffering, Daisy. I think it’s not too much to ask that you focus on what school is for and leave courtship for later.”

  “Mom, I am suffering. Okay, maybe suffering is too strong of a word, but I’ve been going to school with most of these kids my entire life, and they don’t even know my name! I’ve become completely invisible
and irrelevant.” Not irreverent, irrelevant.

  “So say hello and introduce yourself. That’s not too hard, is it?” She balls up her fist and plops it on her hip in that “you are so ignorant” way. “Would you feel better if they thought your name was Abercrombie?”

  “Abercrombie is a better name than Daisy Crispin. I sound like a breakfast cereal.”

  “You’re far too worried about what people think, Daisy. You have a beautiful name.” She squeezes my chin. “And a beautiful face, and one day when you don’t have anything to look back on to regret, you’ll thank me. On your wedding night—”

  “No!” I clamp my eyes shut. “No, we’re not going there!”

  She laughs at me. “All right.”

  “Mom, look, I understand how you and Dad feel about dating, but it’s my senior prom this year. I’m planning to go with my friends, and you can’t expect me to go without a date. I don’t even think they let you do that. Promise me that you and Dad will at least have this conversation, all right?” I flutter my eyelashes in my most innocent expression.

  “Your father said this day was coming.” She drops her head as if I’ve just told her I’m with child. “A boy called here yesterday, and I tried to tell your father it meant nothing, but he’s proved me wrong yet again.”

  “A boy?” I try not to sound too interested. “I’m sure someone is only selling senior candy or the like.”

  “It was Chase. I realize you’ve been friends for years, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for Chase to call you now as you get older. I tried to explain courting to him, but he acted flustered, said goodbye, and hung up. Maybe a teacher should explain it to him. I may have overstepped my bounds. It’s not my place to lecture him if his parents aren’t up on the concept of courtship.”