The Gorgeous One.

BLACK COMEDY (noun);

A comedy with a distinctly disturbing quality.

Saturday night. I’m sitting across from my mother at one of my favorite restaurants that just happens to be a couple blocks from our house, the Blue Agave. Although Nick claims the only people who come here are tourists, I think the food is superb and my dad, who is practically an expert on these matters, agrees.

“What are you going to get? My Mom asks, peering at me over her menu.

“I’m going to get the pecan-encrusted chicken with the fried plantains. And maybe the fried calamari for an appetizer.” I snap my menu shut with authority.

“Mmm,” My mom says, raising her eyebrows as if intrigued. “That sounds good.”

I have a standing date with my mom every Saturday night. Dad is usually at work and my sister has an incredibly busy social life, so Mom and I usually go out to eat or see a movie. I always look forward to it because my mom is totally cool. Even though she works a lot she still finds time to pick up cookies at the bakery and she’ll arrange her schedule rather than miss a school performance. That’s not to say we don’t have our occasional issues (e.g. I got grounded once for forgetting to lock the front door), but they’re few and far between.

As I place my order I’m reminded of yet another good thing about my Mom. Even though she is totally skinny and can fit into my sister’s jeans, she (unlike my father) never ever comments on my food choice or intake. At all.

“So I love the dress you picked out for the dance,” she says after the waitress leaves.

“Thanks Mom,” I say, grinning. I tried my dress on for her when I got home and her ecstatic reaction couldn’t have been more perfect. It was almost enough to make up for my dad’s lack-luster response.

“Dad said you guys had a lot of fun,” she says.

“Oh,” I reply, the mere attention of my father reminds me of my diet. Why did I just order fried calamari?

“You’re chewing your nail,” my mom says quietly. She is convinced I bite my nail when I’m upset about something. And she’s right. Unfortunately, I also bite it when I’m bored, happy, or distracted. Or when we ran out of Oreos.

“You didn’t have fun?” she asks suspiciously, still looking at the thumb that is now on the table where it is going to stay, just so I can keep an eye on it.

“It was okay,”

“Just okay?”

I hadn’t really planned on getting into all the Dad stuff with my mom, mainly because I knew it would upset her. I also knew she would probably take his side since she likes to do the whole your-father-and-I-are-a-united-front thing.

“It was just…you know,” I say casually. Be cool, I remind myself. “The usual.”

“What do you mean the usual?”

“Um…” The words I know she wants to hear pop into my head, one right after the other: Nice. Enjoyable. Entertaining. Amusing.

“Lousy.”

“What?” my mom asks.

Oops.

Now I have no choice but to lay my cards on the table.

“I so obviously annoy him.”

“Your father?” she asks, like I just told her I had proof I was born with three heads.

“What would make you think something like that?”

“It’s the way he looks at me. Like I’m repulsive or something.” I know I should’ve stopped at lousy, but I’m overwhelmed by my own laundry lists of complaints as a veritable avalanche of self-pity.

“That’s ridiculous. He adores you.”

“So why is he always making a big deal about what I’m eating and stuff?”

“Does he?” she asks in a kind of you-must-be-mistaken sort of way.

“Come on, Mom,” I say, zipping my hoodie even though it’s about ninety degrees in the restaurant.

“Every time he can’t find the cookies or something he always asks me when where there are-Not Georgina, not you. He’s always comparing me to Georgina and I’m always coming up short.”

“He doesn’t compare you to Georgina!”

I can see that my normally calm, cool, collected mom is getting more horrified by the second, and I’m really wishing I hadn’t brought all this up. In an effort to make things better, I keep my mouth shut. I just heave a dramatic sigh and roll my eyes.

“Look,” my Mom says finally. “He just…he sees Georgina going out to all those parties and, well, having fun, and he just wants the same thing for you. He worries about you, that’s all. He wants you to be happy.”

“Happy?” I snort, in a not so attractive way. (Not that snorting is ever attractive. Or sexy, for that matter.)

“You can tell him it doesn’t matter how many cookies I eat or don’t eat. It’s not going to impact my social life one way or another.”

“I know how you feel. When I was in High School I was kind of quiet, too, and my brother was tremendously social. He was always going out and doing things…”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I’m social. I could be the friendliest most social girl in the world, and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“What are you talking about?” my mom asks quietly.

The waiter arrives with my plate of fried calamari and a salad for my mother. I suddenly realize my thumb is on my mouth. Damn again! I take one look at my appetizer and push it away.

“Look, Mom. I’m not blind and I’m not dumb. I know, you know, and quite frankly everyone who has ever laid eyes on me knows why I spend my Saturday nights with you while hoochie-mama sister is out partying her butt off. We all know why, even though I’m a sophomore, I’ve never been invited to a single party, why I’ve never once had a boy like me…never had a boy try to kiss me…never had a boy notice me…nothing!”

My mom is staring at me. She opens her mouth as if to say something and then shuts it again. Not that I blame her. What can she say? What can anyone say?

“You’re beautiful,” my mom says adamantly.

I sigh.

“You are,” she says, taking my hands. “A young beautiful woman with big brown eyes and long curly hair with natural streaks that I would just kill for.”

I can tell she’s serious, that she really does like the way I look. And for that I love her even more. But even a Mother’s love isn’t enough to change the fact that I’m ugly. And to be honest, I could probably afford to lose a few pounds, too.

Monday afternoon. Fortunately for me there is one cure-all for depression: Joe Jonas. And he just happens to be sitting next to me in English Class. His hair is kind of tousled curly, like he just got out from bed which made him look sexier and he’s wearing jeans that suits his knees and calves perfectly. I think about my beautiful fall festival dress and wonder if he will notice, and if he does, what he will think when he sees me. I know it’s a long shot, but I can’t help but fantasize that it will somehow make a difference.

As I walk into the gym, the crowd parts. No one can believe the transformation. Joe steps out from the crowd. “Holy crap! Abby?!” he mouths. I smile (regally) and nod as I walk toward him. He shakes KC off his arm. As she sprawls ungracefully across the floor, he walks toward me (accidentally stepping on her face), his eyes reflecting pure and total adoration…

Suddenly, Joe turns around his chair and looks directly at me.

“Yoo-hoo! Miss Fletcher?” Mrs. Bordeaux is saying.

“Huh?”

She sticks her nose in my face.

“Welcome back.”

“I was just…I thought I saw someone outside.” I motion to the window, which is miraculously on the other side of Joe.

“I was just paying you a compliment,” she says. “It’s a shame you were so distracted you didn’t hear it.”

Smirks and quiet giggles.

“In any case, I’m willing to repeat it. I’ve finished grading the pop quiz and you, Miss Fletcher, are the only one to get an A. I have come to the conclusion that either you’re simply smarter than the rest of the class or you’re the only one who actually bothered to keep up with the reading.”

I stare at my desk and chew on my thumb cuticle as the smirks and giggles are replaced by annoyed, irritated stares, as if I had done well on the test just to teach them all a lesson.

“Perhaps Miss Fletcher is the only one who has time to keep up with the reading,” Megan Dimaris says snidely. “Most of us are so busy with senior productions and…”

“No excuses,” Mrs. Bordeaux replies, raising her hands to silence her. “Everyone in this school is busy with extracurricular activities.”

I sink further into my chair as I roll my eyes toward the dirty white plaster ceiling. Megan Dimaris has a lot of nerve. For one, she’s a sound person, so all she needs to do is flip a switch and hand out microphones. But still, I can tell from the approving nods that most people agree with her. If I weren’t such a loser and had more of a social life, maybe I wouldn’t be such a star student. It’s enough to make me wish that I hadn’t gotten an A. I wonder if this is how Carrie felt before she got the bucket of blood dumped on her.

After class, I’m standing beside my desk pulling a tiny piece of nail out of my mouth when I see Joe walking toward me, his eyes cast over my shoulder in such a fashion that I can almost see why someone might think he was stuck up. But for some reason, I can sense that this is a defense mechanism, like he averts his gaze so he can seem aloof instead of…afraid.

When this thought sinks in, I whip my thumb out of my mouth. Then my heart speeds up and my hands start to shake, because Joe is standing right in front of me, but not quite looking me in the eyes.

“Thanks for making us all look like idiots,” he says, smirking.

My witty retort is “Ha!”

Thankfully, Joe ignores me and pulls a manuscript out of his binder. “You should read this.”

“What is it?” I’m acting as though he just gave me a ring shaped box tied up with a bow.

“Chris Vicker’s play. He’s going to start casting next month. I thought you might be interested in reading for it.”

“Auditioning?”

“Yeah. Maybe if I get you busy enough, you’ll bring down the curve.” He gives me a nod and grins before turning on his heel and walking down the hall.

“By the way,” I call put after him. “I’ve decided to go to the fall festival.”

“Oh,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder at me as he continues to walk in the opposite direction, heading toward the steps.

I look down at the script in my hands. If I weren’t intending to frame it, I’d smack it right on my forehead. Why would I think Joe might care that I’m going to the fall festival?

After lunch, I’m on the first floor heading toward production class when I see a small crowd gathering across the hall from the production studio, outside the auditorium. I’ve always found it a little cruel that the production studio is tucked away in a dank corner of the school, right underneath the cafeteria kitchen and directly across the light-filled we’re building the sets, and the farther we are from the theater the farther we have to drag what in some cases are pretty heavy set designs. But it’s torture.

I make my way through the crowd of drama majors and have my hand on the door to the production studio when, out of the corner of my eye, I see Julian Longwell drop to his knees in front of pretty senior drama major, Monica Lewis. Julian is one of Georgina’s friends. He’s a natural comedian who loves the limelight, breaking into a song at the strangest times, like in the middle of a fire drill or after an exam. Julian takes Monica’s hand and begins to sing a cappella:

Oh, Monica, you are divine,

Please, please, say that you’ll be mine.

Your beauty continually haunts my mind,

You are, hands down, one of a kind.

Say you’ll go the festival with me

And so, so happy, I will be.

“What the hell is going on?” Nick loudly whispers, nodding toward Julian as he sticks his head out of the production studio.

“Julian is asking Monica Lewis to the fall festival,” I whisper back. I swipe some sawdust off the top of Nick’s head and move closer to the hubbub to get a better look.

I get there in time to see Monica nod yes and the small crowd, all ten or so of us who have gathered to watch, erupt into applause. All except Nick, that is.

“How pathetic,” Nick says, doing a little jig in an attempt to dislodge some of the sawdust coating his T-shirt.

“I think it’s sweet,” I say. “He wrote a song just for her.”

Nick rolls his eyes at me as Julian gets off his knees. Julian blows Monica a kiss and pats his heart twice. Monica says something that I can’t quite make out and the two of them begin walking toward us. I move out of their way as I say,

“Hi, Julian.”

But even though Julian has been at my house with Georgina and has met me a million times, he doesn’t acknowledge me. He just walks right past me, like I’m invisible or something.

“Jerk,” Nick says when Julian is out of earshot and past the dance studio down the hall.

“Maybe he didn’t hear me,” I say. A definite possibility. After all, it was kind of a quiet hello. Still, it doesn’t feel good to be ignored. I glance down at the script Joe gave me earlier that day, the script that I’ve carried with me everywhere since, and remind myself that my days of being invisible are almost over. Everything will change once I become a drama major.

“Right,” Nick says sarcastically, seeing through my tiny white lie. “I don’t understand this. Monica’s a nice girl. Why would she go out with a jerk?”

“He’s cute.”

“You think he’s cute? He’s got girl hair.”

Although I have never thought about it before, Nick has a point. Julian’s hair is thick and silky straight, and its cut in an unusual style, like someone put a big bowl over his head and trimmed around it.

“Georgina says he’s really funny. And that song thing was sweet.”

“I’ll never understand women,” Nick says, throwing his hands up in the air for emphasis.

“You understand me.”

“Most of the time.”

Most of the time? What does that mean?

But before I have a chance to say anything, the auditorium door opens and Nick’s eyes light up like Christmas tree. It’s Czarina Wilkins, Georgina’s best friend. If I had to describe Nick’s ideal woman, Czarina would be it. She’s tall and lanky, pretty but not intimidatingly so. She’s a little quieter and more reserved than the rest of Georgina’s friends, and according to Georgina, she’s a Trekkie, just like Nick.

I wonder if Nick would have asked Czarina if I hadn’t made him ask me. As much as I want to go to the dance, I know I can’t let him make that sacrifice.

“You know, Nick,” I say quietly. “You don’t have to go to the fall festival with me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, as he turns back toward the production studio.

“I just mean if there’s someone else you’d want to take…Like Czarina…”

“Look, Abby,” he says, as I follow him inside, “the only way I’m going to that dance is if you and I go together.” And then just to make his point, he picks up a hammer up off the work bench and using it as a microphone, begins to sing loudly and totally off-key

“Abby, Abby, you are so diiiiiiiiviiiiiiiiine. I am so glad you will be miiiiiiine.”

As usual, Nick knows just the right thing to say. Or sing, as the case may be.