Perfect Shot Read online

  This time His Royal Hotness acted fast and moved to my lane just as I handed my outgoing customer his receipt. Yes! If daydreams could come true, I would jump over the Sharpie-marked counter into his waiting arms.

  For all my effort to come face-to-face with him, I didn’t think of anything clever to say to Mr. Crushtastic. I barely managed to greet him. He had such a quiet intensity that it felt like anything I said would’ve sounded silly. For one, he was as focused as I get when I’m on the court. Dude carefully examined each photo matting tool as he placed them on the counter. I recognized that need to concentrate on the details to get the job done right. I’m the same way when it comes to volleyball. And from what I could tell, this guy was heavy into his photography game.

  The safest thing for me to do was ring him up in silence. Suddenly, I felt self-conscious and wished I hadn’t worn my faded powder-blue jersey. It made my deep brown skin look totally washed-out. Plus my Teyana Taylor thick, curly hair was wrestled into a messy ponytail as proof that I hadn’t consulted the mirror enough while I styled it.

  Fly Guy expected me to announce the grand total, but when I said nothing, he squinted at the glowing digital numbers on the register’s screen. Real smooth, London. I wanted to throw the lamp-shade lane sign over my head and pretend I was a fixture. But for some reason, he was the one who looked embarrassed enough for the both of us. Could I be making him nervous? I wondered.

  “Oh no,” he said to himself, barely loud enough for me to hear. His stone-serious face softened into a grimace. “I’m short two bucks,” he told me apologetically as he dug into his jeans pockets twice. “Uh … I could come back and pay you in two minutes, or I can just put something back and pick it up later …, ” he rambled.

  “No, it’s okay,” I heard myself say. “It’s no biggie. I’ll just use a promotional code and that should cover it.” I made up what I was saying as I went along. Meanwhile, my internal conversation went something like: Why did I just decline his offers to swing by later? I just closed off my chance to see him again!

  “Thank you.” He paused, looking at me as if for the first time. My stomach flip-flopped. The paper shopping bag I’d packed crinkled as he bashfully picked it up. Apparently our sudden stillness (and the sound of the bag) signaled to the waiting customer that it was time to ring up his manga artist brush-pen set and drawing pad. He slapped them onto the counter.

  Nudged out, my crush turned away and walked out of the store.

  Like a game-ending buzzer to a losing team, the door chime announcing his exit put me in a slight funk.

  Two

  “Earth to London.” Pam waved her hands in front of my face. “Gurl, if you don’t hurry up …”

  I guess I had zoned out after the unidentified-fly-object-of-my-affection sighting.

  When I finally snapped out of it, I moved from behind the counter to follow Pam. Her timing couldn’t have been more perfect—I needed to step out for a break.

  Pam and I were almost at the door when I backtracked. I’d forgotten to take off my Art Attack vest. “Wait here,” I said to an impatient Pam.

  A few seconds later, right after I’d hung my vest on the hook and was nearing Pam, it hit me that I’d forgotten something else. I did an about-face again.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Pam whined. “Whatever you forgot, do it when you get back. Our hour’s practically over as it is.”

  I looked at the time on my cell and saw that we’d only used up four minutes of the lunch break. “You’re so dramatic,” I told her before jogging back to my post.

  My intention was to open my register and place the two wrinkled dollar bills from my wallet on top of the pile of ones. But Goth Guy beat me there by a few paces. Where he came from, I had no idea.

  Definitely not a good time to make that move, I thought.

  Goth Guy looked like he expected me to ask him a new-girl question. I played it off by peering down an aisle as if searching for someone. After a convincing few seconds, I doubled back and headed for the exit.

  When I caught up to Pam, she was waiting outside the store, her custom pink Sidekick already to her ear.

  “But this is huuge—you have to come through.” Pam held her lips in the pouty form of the last word she spoke. Judging from the soft tone of her voice, I could tell she was talking to Jake Tulagan, her boyfriend of ten months. By now the poor guy is used to Pam’s overreacting. She treats everything like a five-alarm fire. I’ve tried to tell her about herself, but she insists it’s in her genes. Not on her dad’s Irish side, but her mom’s Caribbean side.

  “HDQ—Haitian Drama Queen—is embedded in my DNA,” she likes to say.

  Pam frowned as she eyed me and my jersey. Whatever. Volleyball jerseys are formfitting and cute—unlike the oversize basket ball or football ones. But Pam is such a stylista, she wouldn’t be caught sleeping in what I had on.

  An Etsy devotee, my gurl is slowly turning her hobby—creating mash-up T-shirts from salvageable thrift store finds—into a small side business. But she gives me her funky designs for free. Even though I can’t bring myself to wear them too often. They’re just too fabulous. It’s bad enough that I get the occasional once-over because of my long limbs, so I avoid wearing anything that might attract more head-to-toe eyeball scans.

  “Thanks,” she sighed into the phone. “See you there.”

  “What did you guilt him into this time?” I teased as Pam tucked her cell into her half-moon-shaped bag.

  “He promised to help me with my blog’s redesign today, but now he’s trying to push it to next week.” She unraveled the chunky crocheted scarf from around her neck and tied it back on in a different style. “I can’t be slackin’ when that flashy copycat blog is trying to steal my shine.”

  As long as she’s got creative blood pumping through her veins, Pam refuses to let her hip blog about local teen style get upstaged.

  “I haven’t seen you since your rubber ball assault.” She put aside her redesign preoccupation and strolled in step with me. “How’s work going?” Despite her HDQ leanings, Pam is a superthoughtful and caring person. Hers was the lone shoulder I leaned on in junior high when cold-blooded kids were calling me Elastigirl, thanks to my gangly arms and legs and bony body. It’s hard to believe that just a few years later, natural hormones and high school volleyball teamed up to whip my physique into Venus Williams–esque form.

  “I’ll tell you the highlight of my morning,” I continued, hoping my singsong voice piqued her curiosity. “This cu-TAY in chief got in my line when I was on register.”

  “Really, London?” Pam was touched, like I’d just handed her a bouquet of flowers. She couldn’t hide her excitement over my interest in someone other than Unslick Rick. There was something about Rick that she hadn’t liked from the get-go. Pam has a sixth sense for these things and she picked up on Rick’s superficial stench almost immediately. He cared too much about appearances for Pam’s taste. That’s an ironic opinion coming from a fashion gearu like herself, but it’s more about her disgust over his obsession with status.

  Pam’s theory is that Rick only hangs with people he’s expected to hang out with. (This is unacceptable to a girl who learned at a tender age to ignore the stares her mixed-race family sometimes got when out in public.) Case in point: Last year, when Rick was a newbie freshman volleyballer, he started dating me, a fellow newbie volleyballer. As soon as Rick was crowned Peak Performance’s Top Performer, he upgraded me for a star v-ball girlfriend. And ever since the incident, Pam really can’t stand even talking about him.

  I for one am grateful Pam doesn’t care about status. She befriended me in my unpopular middle school days. And now that I’ve been branded the “jilted girlfriend,” she’s just as supportive.

  “You should’ve seen your gurl acting all crazy, speeding through customers so Fly Guy could slide over to my faster line,” I confessed. “I still don’t know what got into me. It was like I had to meet him.”

  “What’s his name?” she aske
d the minute we claimed an unoccupied bistro table outside our favorite sandwich shop.

  I couldn’t conjure a juicy response if I’d wanted to. My involuntary facial expressions—primarily acted out by my dark, thick eyebrows—always snitch my true feelings. My eyebrows twitched and rose, then in the next millisecond, lowered. This reflex babbled to Pam that this was the end of my crush story. Nothing else to say.

  “Well, at least you now know there’s crush life after Rick,” she said before I could answer. “I’ll go in and grab our lunch.”

  “Let me know if you need help carrying it out,” I offered.

  It had been only two weeks, but this was getting to be our Saturday-afternoon ritual. And what made this ritual extra nice was finding a sweet lunch spot where we could people watch. For October it was a relatively warm day. Sitting in the sun would help us stay warm after we downed our cold soft drinks.

  It was a great day for people watching. Lots of modely types were walking the Ave for some reason. The skater dudes hanging out near Starbucks were happy about that. Their jumps got riskier and more helter-skelter every time a group of girls walked by.

  “It’s mad busy out here,” I commented as Pam and I ate. “I wonder what’s going on today.”

  Sometimes, if the new bookstore was hosting an author signing, or if a performance at the arts center around the corner was poppin’ off, there would be more foot traffic than usual. Pam shrugged and spotted someone interesting.

  “He stays forever framed out,” she said of the guy walking by in white-rimmed shades. For the many times we’d run into him, we’d never seen his eyes—rain or shine. “Lookin’ like Kanye West in that ole ‘Stronger’ video,” Pam continued.

  “I’m sayin’,” I agreed.

  “Ooooh, come with me to Cynthea Bey’s store,” Pam pleaded, as if in response to something she told herself in her mind. She checked the time on her cell phone. “I wanna see what she came up with for the winter season.”

  Cynthea Bey had opened Chic Boutique—a cool warehouse space showcasing local and popular designer labels—a little over two months ago. Pam, the Cynthea groupie, had visited almost every week. I think she was stalking so she could one day cross paths with the supermodel. Despite her unlucky timing, Pam continued to have hope.

  “We’ve got twenty-five minutes before we have to be back,” I warned Pam. She’s an overscheduling freak if you don’t rein her in.

  She hadn’t even swallowed all of her food, but she stood up and threw away the rest of her sandwich and baby carrots. If I wasn’t such a fast eater and hadn’t already been done with my turkey baguette, there’s no way I would have been leaving with her.

  By the time we turned the corner toward Chic Boutique, the sight of a long line snaking from the store to the sidewalk twisted our faces into WTF grimaces.

  “Are they giving away free clothes or something? What’s with that crazy long line?” I asked out loud, but more to myself than to Pam. The last thing I felt like doing was dealing with a bunch of maniacal girls all vying for the same size-four jeans.

  Pam and I stood staring in a paralyzed pause, reading the large pink storefront sign’s swirly letters: CASTING CALL TODAY: 15 JERSEY GIRLS WILL BE SELECTED TO COMPETE FOR THE CHANCE TO BECOME THE CHIC BOUTIQUE MODEL IN OUR IN-STORE PRINT ADS!

  It was clear that Cynthea Bey was out to prove that New Jersey could bleed style like New York. Good for her, I thought.

  “I’ve seen enough.” I tried to snap Pam out of her daze. I could tell she was excited. Nothing this huge had happened in Teawood since the year before when Jay-Z and Beyoncé were spotted buying iced coffees at the corner café. “Let’s get out of here. I’m starting to catch a Rachel Zoe–clone contact high.” Pam didn’t respond. “Quick, before I break out in an ‘ohmygod’ attack—or worse, break out in song.” Still no response. “My humps. My humps. My lovely lady lumps.”

  Pam finally blinked; then she laughed at my rendition. “I’m sorry, this must be torture for you. I’ll come back when this all blows over.”

  That’s when I saw him. The hottie customer from Art Attack was just a few yards from me. He was talking to girls in the outdoor casting line. Even though most guys would love to have been in his position, it didn’t seem like he was trying to hit on anyone. Instead, he looked professional— snapping digital shots of each contestant, then attaching printed photos onto forms he collected from every girl.

  “That’s him, that’s him!” I whisper-screamed. Pam knew right away what and whom I was talking about. She followed the direction of my gaze to the object of my obsess—er, affection.

  He was as tall and calm as an oak tree. I wondered if that made me a pesky squirrel foraging for an acorn of his attention. It was nice to see him looking more relaxed than he had looked in Art Attack, where he’d gotten all bashful about coming up short. His former pocket-digging hands were now carrying a clipboard and a tiny camera. He pulled one of those cool portable photo printers from his back pocket.

  The official-looking lanyard hanging around his neck confirmed that he wasn’t loitering here to check out the girls. It also nicely topped off his intrepid reporter look. The only thing missing was a newsboy cap.

  “What’s he doing?” Pam asked.

  Loverboy was holding his finger in the air, counting the heads of every girl in line outside. As he counted his way down and got closer to Pam and me, I was able to make out what was written in all caps on his lanyard: BRENT ST. JOHN, WWW.FACEMAG.COM, PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN.

  That was when he reached us. He was mumbling numbers under his breath as he pointed at me and then finally Pam. “Twenty, twenty-one” I heard him say before he turned around and headed back to the first girl he had counted at the entrance of Chic Boutique. It seemed that there were also people standing inside the store who were being grouped in a separate head count.

  “He thinks we’re in line for this casting,” I complained to Pam. How did this happen? I blamed it on the mesmerizing fuchsia storefront sign. We’d gotten caught up when we stood there frozen to read it. Now our absentmindedness had made Fly Guy confused.

  “This is a sign.” A sudden gust of autumn wind blew Pam’s flyaway strands into the sides of her mouth as she spoke excitedly. “You have to give him your number or something. Who knows if you’ll ever meet him again? Much less twice in one day!”

  He was about ten girls away from where we stood at the end of the line. I had to think fast. I had messed up the first time he and I were face-to-face. There had to be some way to strike up a conversation with him.

  My inner scheming led me to the stack of applications jammed into a plastic brochure holder standing outside the store.

  I grabbed one.

  Pam knew where I was headed with this so she dug deep into her purse and furnished a pen. In the next hot minute, I was filling out the application as fast as I could.

  Three

  Name, age, address, phone number, e-mail.

  Thank goodness there were no Miss America–esque questions about how to achieve world peace or anything. It was straightforward contact info and basic stats (height, eye and hair color, weight, etc.). I guessed Chic Boutique was making no bones about this search being based on looks.

  This was the second time today that I was scrambling and rearranging circumstances to force a totally choreographed chance meeting with this guy. I’d never in my fifteen years been so impulsive about a boy. Rick was my first major boyfriend (if you don’t count the hand-holding I used to do with my seventh-grade crush). There was no major excitement around Rick. We more or less started dating after hanging out at the same time (after school) and same place (Teawood High’s auditorium) every other day. Our volleyballer friends overlapped and so we ended up chatting with each other. From there, our relationship progressed to texting and then to meeting up outside the school gym with our mutual friends. When we finally decided to meet up alone, we eased into a more defined relationship.

  No major sparks or heart-stop
ping embraces. Rick and I had dug each other, but I’d felt nothing close to this unexplainable excitement that I seemed to feel around this stranger.

  By the time the cutie was two girls away, I was done. My handwriting even had the appearance that I’d taken my time with the application. Best believe my phone number was especially clearly written— there was no way he would confuse my 7 for a 2 like other people usually did. If only I had a highlighter … or a tiny little airport ground crewman standing rigid on the page and waving tiny glow sticks toward the digits.

  Beau Wow was within earshot now.

  “Ohmygod, do you go to Warwick High?” an overenthusiastic girl asked him when he collected her application. “I swear you look familiar.”

  “Uh … yeah.” House Special was caught off guard.

  “Wait—aren’t you in my Latin class?”

  He simply nodded yes, obviously hoping to signal that he wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. It was crystal clear that this was the first conversation this girl had ever had with him. Classic case of popular student finally talks to unnoticed classmate when it’s in her best interest to do so. As much as His Royal Hotness stood out to me, I could see how the popular set might pass Luscious over as a nobody. He was somewhat shy instead of showy; he gave off an intense vibe, instead of a self-absorbed one; and he had a certain sensitivity rather than a swagger.

  “So you’re like a fashion photographer or something?” She shot him a vote-for-me grin like she expected her photo printout to be pressed into a campaign button.

  Lawd, make her stop. I was getting annoyed by her fake conversation attempt, but Cutie handled the inquisition with understated tact. He just half smiled in response and then thanked her for her application and moved to the next person in line.

  The popular girl didn’t seem to know what to make of his reaction. I think it was confusing to her that she didn’t get a rise— pun intended—out of a boy. Especially a boy from the lower end of the social totem pole.