The Girlfriend Project

  The Girlfriend Project

  The Girlfriend Project

  Robin Friedman

  Copyright © 2007 by Robin Friedman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in 2007 by

  Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

  Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from

  this book, write to Permissions, Walker & Company,

  104 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Friedman, Robin.

  The Girlfriend Project / Robin Friedman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: New Jersey high school senior Reed Walton has never had a girlfriend, but once he gets his braces off, gets contact lenses, and turns into a "hottie," his two best friends set up a Web site to remedy the situation.

  eISBN: 978-0-802-72149-5

  [1. Identity—Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Websites—Fiction. 6. New Jersey—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F89785 Gi 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006016088

  Book design by Donna Mark

  Visit Walker & Company's Web site at www.walkeryoungreaders.com

  Typeset by Westchester Book Composition

  Printed in the U.S.A. by Quebecor World Fairfield

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  All papers used by Walker & Company are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  For my adorable brother,

  Jonathan Ben-Joseph,

  an Ultimate Nice Guy.

  The Girlfriend Project

  Contents

  Who You Lookin' At ?

  Exit 1

  I Got Your $%#& State Motto Right Here!

  Exit 2

  Bada Bing, Bada Boom !

  Exit 3

  How You Doin'?

  Exit 4

  You Talkin' to Me?

  Exit 5

  New Jersy: Big Hair, Big Heart

  Exit 6

  New Jersey: You've Seen It Now Go Home

  Exit 7

  New Jersy: You're the One with the Accent

  Exit 8

  Fuggedaboutit!

  Exit 9

  New Jersey: It Could Be a Lot Worse

  Exit 10

  New Jersey: Where Anything Is Possible

  Exit 11

  Who You Lookin' At ?

  Exit 1

  My name is Reed Walton, I'm seventeen years old, I live in New Jersey, and I've never had a girlfriend.

  Yeah. That's pretty much it.

  Well, actually, no.

  Ive never kissed a girl either.

  Pathetic? Sure. Don t you think I know that? I mean, at this rate, I'm headed for the priesthood.

  But my best friends, Ronnie and Lonnie White, have decided Things Will Drastically Change when senior year officially starts tomorrow.

  See, they've signed me up for something they're calling . . .

  The Girlfriend Project.

  I'm in big, big trouble.

  I know it's my last hope. But I don't have to like it.

  It happens like this . . .

  We're in my car—a Range Rover the color of swamp water—and we're parked in front of the Woodrow Wilson Basketball Courts at the George Washington Municipal Park. I don't know what these two presidents have to do with sports or trees, but this is New Jersey, like I said. George Washington slept here, and Woodrow Wilson was our governor, and I guess when you're New Jersey, you have to take what you can get.

  A girl—a really cute girl—is shooting baskets by herself. I've been watching her since we got here. I'm doing a better job at this than listening to my friends' plans for getting me a girlfriend.

  "So, Reed, whaddaya think?" Lonnie asks me, leaning forward from the backseat. I can smell his cologne when he's this close, and I wonder, Should I wear cologne? Is that the secret?

  "I think not," I reply automatically.

  "You're making a mistake," Ronnie says from the front seat. I trust her opinion more. After all, she's a girl, Lonnie's fraternal-twin sister. But she's siding with him on this one.

  "I don't want a girlfriend," I lie through my teeth, knowing it'll never fly.

  "You want a girlfriend so bad I can smell it," Ronnie replies, and sniffs the air loudly to make her point.

  Maybe I should wear cologne. I feel self-conscious all of a sudden.

  "I don't want to make a big deal out of it," I say. "Besides, I can take care of it."

  "Yeah?" Lonnie says, and I hear a big-scary challenge coming. "See that girl?" He points, but he doesn't have to. I haven't taken my eyes off her. "Ask her out, buddy."

  My stomach plunges eighteen stories, and I do the only thing I can think of—stall. "What—um—right now—right this very minute—just like that?"

  Lonnie folds his arms across his chest. "Right now. Right this very minute. Just like that."

  I gulp loudly. "But. . . It's just. . . You can't. . . What about. . . ?"

  Ronnie pokes me playfully in the ribs. "You, cowboy, need The Girlfriend Project."

  They're right. I need The Girlfriend Project so bad I can smell it.

  We're in my room making plans later that afternoon—the day before senior year starts at Marlborough Regional High School. Ronnie, who has a neon pink clipboard propped on her knees, is definitely working hard on it. Lonnie, on the other hand, just wants to pig out. She watches him in disgust as he stuffs three brownies into his mouth in rapid-fire succession.

  "What?" he asks with his mouth full of chewed-up brownie. "You got a problem?"

  "Boys," she mutters. "They never have to count calories, carbs, or fat grams."

  Lonnie nods. "We're genetically superior."

  "You're genetically mutated," Ronnie counters, then turns to me. "Anyway, Reed, back to you. How tall are you now?"

  "Six foot one," I answer. I know this exactly, because I've been diligently measuring my height all summer.

  Ronnie smiles at me. "Girls dig tall guys."

  Lonnie nods again. "The girl's right."

  Well, Lonnie ought to know. He's six foot three and has always had plenty of girls around.

  Ronnie studies me. I think she's looking at my hair.

  "Sandy," she murmurs.

  Lonnie stops chewing and looks at her. "Who's Sandy?"

  "His hair," Ronnie replies.

  This response doesn't help very much.

  Ronnie sighs. "His hair is sandy, you know, the color of sand."

  Now Lonnie looks indignant. "The color of sandV."

  "It's dirty-blond, okay?" she sputters.

  I nervously run my fingers through my sandy, dirty-blond hair, wishing Ronnie would stop staring at me. But what she does next makes me blush.

  "Eye color," she says, and propels herself into my face.

  I try not to blink or move as she gazes deeply into my eyes, but I can feel my cheeks flame.

  How will I go on dates with girls when just having my best friend's face near mine makes my whole neck go on fire?

  I'm more hopeless than I thought.

  "Brown," Lonnie says definitively from across the room. He leans toward me, and for one panic-stricken second, I think he's going to get in my face too, which would be a real low point. But he just hands me the
empty plate of brownies. "The color of brownies. Refill, Reed."

  I take the plate and start to get up.

  "No," Ronnie says, and I'm not sure if she's talking about my eyes or the brownies. "More like hazel." She scribbles. "I'm so glad you finally got rid of the glasses, Reed, you have nice eyes. Girls dig nice eyes."

  "The girl's right."

  Ronnie ignores him. "Honey," she says.

  "Who's Honey?"

  Ronnie throws her brother another murderous look, then peers at me in a dreamy sort of way. "Like ajar of honey on a kitchen shelf when the sun shines through it. That's the color of your eyes."

  We look at her blankly.

  "Boys," she mutters. "Neanderthals with no imagination."

  Actually, I was trying to picture that sun-drenched jar of honey. Maybe I'll examine my eyes more closely later to see if it's true. I can't believe having eyes the color of honey is going to matter with girls one way or the other, but I'm not going to argue with the experts.

  "Be right back," I say, indicating the empty plate.

  I hope they don't strangle each other while I'm gone, but you never know. I head down the stairs to the kitchen. My house is one of those just-out-of-the-oven-homemade-cookies-cakes-and-brownies kind of house. That's because my grandmother lives with my parents and me. She loves baking.

  Ronnie and Lonnie—yup, those are their real names—have always lived next door to us, and the three of us have been best friends since kindergarten. And get this, their parents are Bonnie and Donnie White. And their cats are Connie and Johnnie. How can you not love a family like that?

  When I walk into the kitchen, I hear my grandmother making huffing-and-puffing noises as she reaches into a high cabinet for something.

  "I'll get that for you, Grandma," I say.

  She pinches my cheek as I retrieve a bag of flour for her.

  "You're a good boy, Reed," she says.

  Yup, good boy, that's me.

  All-Around Nice Guy. Average Joe. Ail-American Boy Next Door.

  Most Likely Not to Offend Anyone. Most Likely to Blend into the Wallpaper.

  Dorkus Extremus.

  The kind of guy who babysits his nieces and nephews, sets the table for dinner every night, and blushes in an aw-shucks way when Grandma tells her blue-haired old-lady friends I'm a straight-A student shooting for Princeton.

  I'm even an Eagle Scout. Scout's honor! Ha ha ha.

  But things may finally change for me. See, over the summer, I got my braces taken off, grew another inch or two, started wearing contact lenses, and got a car.

  Ronnie says girls dig tall guys with nice eyes, a nice smile, and a car.

  The Girlfriend Project—here we go.

  Ready or not.

  I Got Your $%#& State

  Motto Right Here!

  Exit 2

  I get the first hint that Things are Completely Different Now when I stop at my locker the next morning. Rhonda Wharton is there, at the locker next to mine, in a short black dress that hits me like an eighteen wheeler. I try not to be obvious about it, but it's hard. Rhonda is so hot that part of my brain is melting.

  The first day of school is always a blur to me, what with everyone catching up, showing off their not-from-the-tanning-salon tans, running all over trying to find new classes, getting used to a brand-new schedule. I've got a full load of AP classes again this year, and the folks at the Ivy League will probably want to see my final transcript. Not that I'm worried about it. I'm worried about other things.

  I open my locker and start the day's Shifting Around of Heavy Textbooks. But what I'm really thinking about is how I can compliment Rhonda on her dress without coming off like a perv. It would be a nice way to open The Girlfriend Project. Ronnie would be proud.

  Rhonda and I have been next-door locker neighbors since middle school. We're seated next to each other in every class the teacher arranges students by alphabetical order. We're not friends, exactly, more like alphabet acquaintances. If not for the location of our lockers, a girl like Rhonda wouldn't know I breathed the same air she did. As I'm pondering this, Rhonda turns to me, I smile, and she does a double take.

  "Reed?" she whispers, her big brown eyes as wide as a doe's. "What. . . You're . . . Is that really you?"

  I'm not sure whether to be flattered or insulted by her reaction. Those were very thick Coke-bottle glasses I used to wear, and I had those braces for so long it shocked me, too, that actual teeth were under them. I'm kind of surprised by their whiteness and straightness. I guess braces really work.

  "Hi, Rhonda," I say, as if nothing's different. "How was your summer?"

  She wants to answer—her mouth moves—but no words come out. I realize it's the effect I've always had on girls. Even now, being new and improved, they're not talking to me.

  I take a deep breath. "That's a . . . totally cool dress."

  Totally cool? Argh. That's the best I can do?

  But Rhonda smiles at me. "You like it?"

  This throws me off. Didn't I just tell her I did?

  "Um, yeah," I reply. "Totally cool."

  Argh!—not again. I don't seem to have trouble with vocabulary when I'm writing essays for AP English. Why does that part of my brain cortex die when I'm around girls?

  Rhonda continues to smile, and I can't help thinking I should do something. But what? The way she's looking at me . . .

  "You're, like, a completely different person, Reed," she says. Her cheeks are pink. Is she blushing? Because of mel "I didn't know you could be so . . . cute."

  Cute?

  Me?

  Me?

  I swallow hard. I'm definitely supposed to do something. I can feel it. It's in the air around us. But I don't know what it is. I can't decode it. My brain is all fogged up, frozen, useless. Rhonda Wharton, with her big brown eyes and short black dress, is smiling at me, waiting for me to do the thing I'm supposed to do, and all I can come up with is this: "Better hurry—homeroom bell's gonna ring soon."

  The smile melts off her face. Melts. Just like that. Like an ice-cream cone, a beautiful, perfectly formed chocolate icecream cone, flattening into an ugly brown puddle. She turns away from me.

  I've screwed up big-time. I wasn't supposed to say that. That much I know. But it's too late to fix it. Even if I knew how to fix it.

  Rhonda slams her locker shut, mumbles something to me, and takes off.

  I curse my new and improved self.

  . . .

  "You were supposed to ask her out," Lonnie informs me at lunch. We're in the school cafeteria a few hours later.

  "What—just like that?" I can't get the hang of this spontaneous-asking-out thing. Maybe I'm missing the right gene. It would explain a lot.

  I haven't touched my orange-colored sloppy Joe or soggy French fries. All morning, my stomach has been twisted up in a tangled knot. All I see is Rhonda Wharton stomping away from me, and all I hear is the angry slam of her locker.

  "Yeah, just like that, Romeo," Lonnie replies nonchalantly, tipping back his head and pouring a can of Mountain Dew into his mouth.

  I stab my food with a plastic fork that's missing one of its tines. I wonder if it broke off inside the mysterious contents of the sloppy Joe I'm not eating.

  "He's right, Reed," Ronnie says softly. I can tell from her tone she's feeling sorry for me. They're both sitting across from me, looking at me like I'm some kind of charity case, which I guess I am.

  The noise level in the cafeteria is super-high. We're over by the floor-to-ceiling windows at a brand-new table this year. The tables by the windows are the best ones, reserved for the senior class, not officially, but in an unspoken-code kind of way. I can't believe I've finally managed to make it here. So, why do I feel like I'm back in ninth grade?

  "But. . . ," I begin, gazing at my best friends, but I honestly don't know where to begin. Where is this stuff written down?

  Where do I buy the textbook? How was I supposed to know I should've asked Rhonda out? Besides, what if she sai
d no? I say this part out loud.

  "She wanted you to ask her out," Ronnie says. "She wouldn't have said no."

  "How do you know that?" I ask cluelessly.

  "Because it's obvious, Reed."

  "How?"

  She sighs, reaches over, and musses up my hair. "You have a brain that can solve calculus problems, write essays about lost civilizations, and memorize poetry, but when it comes to girls, it turns into mush."

  Yeah—that pretty much sums it up.

  "I'm a lost cause," I mumble, and I mean it.

  "You just need some help. That's what The Girlfriend Project is all about."

  "I need a class—with a syllabus and homework assignments."

  Ronnie leans forward. "Life's not a class, Reed. You can't learn everything from textbooks. You have to experience it. You have to get back on the horse."

  "Horse?" I ask in confusion. "Does this mean I have to ask Rhonda out?"

  Lonnie shakes his head and looks at me with pity. "It's too late for that, buddy."

  "Too late?"

  "You pissed her off," he says matter-of-factly.

  "I did?" This is astonishing to me. "But I didn't do anything!"

  "Exactly."

  "So . . . ," I say, and immediately hate the whine in my voice. "That's it?"

  "That's it," he informs me. "For now."

  "But this is crazy!" I exclaim, throwing up my hands. "It makes no sense. You're making it sound like she hates me."

  "She does hate you. In a way." This astounding, news-tome statement comes from Ronnie.

  "But I didn't do anything!" I say again, feeling very much like the four walls of the noisy school cafeteria are closing in on me. If this is the way girls and dating are supposed to work, I don't see how I'll ever get it. It doesn't matter how tall I am, or how much my teeth sparkle, or how nice my eyes are.