Hope and Other Punch Lines(3)

“I mean, swoon, am I right?” she asks. I choose to treat this question as rhetorical, because I’m not swooning. Sweating, yes. Pondering how this guy’s outfit came about—the hours he chose to spend chopping his pants and tie-dyeing his shirt with the help of YouTube tutorials. But I’m not even feeling something second-cousins-twice-removed from the swoon. Instead, I’m thinking how sad it is that my plan for a summer of anonymity lasted only two hours. “Let’s go say hi.”

I have no choice but to follow Julia. The boy, despite his wearing normal, mass-produced and store-bought clothes, somehow looks even goofier than Zach. He has on big plastic black glasses and beat-up black Converse and his hair is ruffled and messy.

As we move closer, I realize he’s from the class below me at Oakdale. I tell myself not to panic. I tell myself it’s possible my Spidey sense was off this one time, that I recognized him and not the other way around. Maybe he doesn’t know my name. Maybe he has his own reasons for taking a job two counties away and is as psyched as I am about pajama day and will have absolutely no interest in bringing up the fact that an earlier iteration of my face can be found on walls the world over.

“I like your vibe. Total norm-core, hipster-geek,” Julia says to the boy once we’ve crossed the field. Then she looks at me, up and down and then back up again, a slow, steady, calculating evaluation. “Like her, I guess. But you pull it off.”

This comment is totally fair. Generally speaking, in both appearance and dress, I’m the human equivalent of a fern—not particularly offensive, but no one is going to be like, “Wow, that’s such a beautiful fern! What amazing combination of plant food and light produced such spectacular results?” This is somewhat intentional, at least on the fashion side. I’m usually better off when I blend.

“Thanks,” the boy says, a little thrown by Julia. I would bet good money that he’s never heard the term norm-core in his life. “I’m Noah. We go to school together, actually.”

He looks at me again, and the neck tingles are back. No doubt he’s about to blow everything for me in T-minus three…two…one…

“You’re Ba—”

I shake my head, once, hard, the only way I know how—other than tackling him—to signal that he shouldn’t say the words Baby Hope out loud.

“You’re Abbi, right?” he course-corrects, and my body floods with relief. If it weren’t weird, I’d hug him in gratitude. I decide I like his face. It’s friendly: big brown curious eyes, and ears as enthusiastic about being noticed as mine. Something about his hair and glasses adds a slight wackiness to his appearance, like he’s Clark Kent’s weirdo younger brother who’s super into anime.

“Hi,” I say, and hold up my hand and give him a dorky wave.

“I realize it’s summer, but it turns out I’m rising editor in chief of the Oakdale High Free Press. Number one way to pad your college application, if you want to join in the fall,” he says, with purposefully cheesy ironic jazz hands. He then smiles at me, a big splash of a smile, and I smile back.

“Cool, thanks,” I say. He seems nice. No way he’s going to out me as Baby Hope.

“?‘Cool, thanks’? I could pinch your little cheeks. Zach, aren’t you so glad to be done with high school?” Julia asks.

“Dude,” Zach says, like that’s an answer.

“Let’s have coffee,” Noah says, all casual, ignoring both Zach and Julia, and his eyes steadily wash over me, as if he is trying to do complex calculations in his head.

Wait, is he asking me on a date? No. Not possible. Things like that don’t happen to me. To Cat, my former best friend, yes—she once picked up a guy at a funeral—but never me.

“How’s tomorrow after camp?” he asks.

“Um.”

“Did he just ask her out?” Zach asks Julia. “In front of us?”

“I think he did,” she says, and my face blazes hot and red.

“Wait, no! I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not asking you out out. Just thought we should have coffee together,” Noah says, still looking only at me. “I’m not creepy or anything.”

“That was a little creepy,” Julia interjects.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Zach says, and hits Noah on the back with condescending pride. Noah’s smile gets wiped clean, and if it’s possible, his face turns even redder than mine.

“Not-asking-out-just-coffee sounds great,” I say, because I’m hardwired to try to make other people feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations—which is both my favorite and least favorite thing about myself—and I don’t think I can survive another second of this awkwardness. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Cool, you won’t regret this, Abbi,” Noah says, again using my name with entirely unnecessary emphasis, like he’s proud of not slipping and calling me Baby Hope.

“I have a feeling these two will be even cuter than our campers,” Julia says to Zach.

“Dude,” Zach says.





Operation Get Answers is on like Donkey Kong. Could I have been suaver—Let’s have coffee? Seriously?—sure. But cut me some slack. I was unprepared. If you had told me this morning that there would be another person from Oakdale working at Knight’s Day Camp and that person would be Baby freaking Hope, I wouldn’t have believed you. God, Yahweh, Allah, the incredible flying spaghetti monster, whatever the hell you want to call him/her/it works in mysterious ways.