Project Sleeper

Chapter Seven

Even though Juliet was unfamiliar with the ways of 4th graders, she soon caught on.

"You WHAT?" She demands after Paloma confesses that she has a crush on a boy in the class.

"He's really cute, isn't he?" Juliet, for the life of her, could not understand how people could LIKE each other like that.

"You want him to be your... boyfriend?" Paloma nods enthusiastically. "What do boyfriends do?"

"According to movies, they're supposed to hold your hand and hug you and kiss you. I don't want Joshua to kiss me, though, I just want him to buy me ice cream in the cafeteria."

"Kissing?" Juliet couldn't wrap her head around it. She shudders. "But they buy you stuff, too?" Paloma smiles encouragingly.

"Yeah! You should get a boyfriend."

Boyfriend. Huh, she thought. I can try this out.

She scans the classroom, trying to pick a boy that doesn't completely gross her out.

There's Chance, who's short, and he is really good at dodgeball. Brooke is batting her eyelashes madly at him, and his face is as red as a tomato. Rannen sits in the back, but he's out of the question. His curly black hair is greasy-looking, and his face is chubby. He likes to dip his brownies in his water, roll them into balls, and make people sick by eating them and pretending they're poop logs.

No, Rannen is not boyfriend material.

Cody's a butt, Juliet already knows that. She had been doing a math problem at the board next to him when he chucked the eraser at her head.

Charlie's a jerk, too. During computer class the other day, he announced to the entire room: "Ewww! Lydia picks her nose!" Juliet's face reddened, and she retreated into her shell. Thankfully, Paloma came to her rescue.

"Yeah? Well I've seen you pick YOUR nose, Charlie! And you eat yours!" His face turned even redder than Juliet's had, and it shut him up. At least for that day.

Finally, Juliet's gaze rests on Chandler Reese. He's tall for a 4th grader, and his face has yet to lose it's baby fat. His hair is curly, a cute reddish-brown color, and his giggle is infectious.

Juliet had seen Paloma "flirting" with Joshua. She liked to make his life miserable on the playground, and she sat behind him in class just so she could kick his chair and pull his hair.

Still, Josh didn't think to move. Maybe he enjoyed being tormented.

So Juliet thought that this was the proper way to get a boyfriend. She marches right up to Chandler, and he looks from Cody to her, his face expectant.

And she kicks him in the shin.

Juliet's not a very strong girl. Keep in mind that she's been sitting in a hospital bed for her entire life, so there wasn't exactly much force behind the kick.

But Chandler was so surprised, and between that and Paloma's, "Ooooh, no," from behind her, Juliet realized she did something wrong.

"I'm so sorry, are you okay?!" Chandler is laughing though.

"What the heck was that for?" he asks, his face incredulous.

"Umm, I don't know..." she lied, feeling completely awful. He chuckles.

"You are so weird," he says, looking up at her and shaking his head. Juliet isn't familiar with sarcasm or "teasing", so she squares her shoulders and spits back.

"O-Oh, oh yeah?" His eyebrows shoot up. "Well, you should go flush your head down a toilet!"

At this, the entire room explodes into laughter. Juliet doesn't understand what's so funny. She doesn't realize that she has just come back with the worst come-back in all of history. She holds her head high and marches back to her desk, where Paloma is sitting next to her, shaking her head.

"You shouldn't have kicked him," she says. Juliet sighs, exasperated.

"I know! I was just doing what you do to Josh!" Paloma just giggles.

-----------------------------

"Dad, I flirted with someone today." Zeke's head spins around so fast, he makes himself dizzy.

"You what?"

I am so not ready for this, he thinks to himself.

"Yeah, I kicked him in the shin and told him to go flush his head down a toilet. Do you think he likes me?" At this, Zeke bursts out laughing.

"Oh, honey, you know that's not how you're supposed to flirt!" Juliet cocks her head.

"It's not? That's what Paloma does." Zeke shakes his head.

"No, no. That's not what you're supposed to do." She sighs.

"Can you teach me how?"

No. Say it. No.

Zeke sighs, too.

"Tell you what, when you think you might actually like a boy, come back to me." Juliet climbs into his lap.

"But how do I know if I like a boy? What if I'm in loooove with Chandler?"

"I don't think you're in loooove with Chandler, sweetie. Umm, alright. How you know you like someone. Well, first, you think about him a lot." She nods. "And you, umm, you like being with them, and you enjoy talking to them."

"Got it." Zeke thinks for a moment.

"You know you like someone when you look at them, and you like everything you see, everything about them. Even the bad stuff starts to look good when you look at them."

"Chandler's face is fat." Zeke laughs again.

"Is it?" Juliet nods.

"Yeah, you're right, I don't like him. I don't like any of those boys. They're all dumb."

"All boys are dumb."

"Right. All boys are dumb." Zeke just chuckles.

"You go on and keep thinking that forever, okay?" And he kisses her forehead.