Flirt Club - Hardcover

Cathleen Daly is a writer and perfomance artist who lives in the Bay Area outside San Francisco.

1

Wherein Cisco and the Bean Decide They Are Actually International Secret Agents and Start FLIRT CLUB
Dear Cisco,
Well, it turns out 8th-grade math is just as breathtaking and exciting as 7th-grade math. (NOT!) My math teacher, Mrs. Heinick, is a rover, so I have to write you in spurts and spasms ... She likes to stroll down the aisles real slow—she’s like a silent hovercraft or some scary sci-fi phenomenon ... like a big floating eyeball with teeth. She thinks I’m doing Algebra—HA-HA-HA-HA. I keep furrowing my eyebrows to look like I’m deep in thought. A mathematical genius at work. Yeah, right. Numbers are not my friends. Words ARE my friends. You are my friend. Food from the school snack bar is not my friend. Hello Kitty backpacks are not my friend. Jeannie Mateo in front of me has one on right now. It’s one of those plastic, tiny useless ones, and she doesn’t take it off during class so I have to stare at plastic kitty face. I have the urge to lean forward and pat Jeannie’s shiny, cute little backpack and go “Hello Kitty, Hello Kitty” over and over ... She’d probably slap my hand away like it was the plague. Oh my gosh, remember that song we wrote called “I Have the Plague” last year? How’d it go?
8th grade is kinda weird, huh? For one thing, the fact that we don’t have ANY classes together is tragic ... my heart will break and fall out of the bottom of my shoes in little shattered pieces of brown glass. Why brown glass you ask? I do not know. I’m gonna slip this note in your locker; write me back AS SOON AS YOU RECEIVE IT OR I WILL EXPLODE. Actually, I probably won’t explode, I’ll probably implode. A whole different matter entirely.
Hi, I’m back, I actually had to do some math ’cause the hovering eyeball, aka Mrs. Heinick, just floated by.
Flower Day is next Wednesday.
Who created such an implement of torture is what I want to know. They had it when my sister went here. Probably the grown-up who came up with the idea was cute and popular when they were young and never thought about the kids who DON’T get any flowers sent to them. They didn’t think about the kids who have to walk through the halls empty-handed. Grasping books instead of armfuls of flowers. Ugh. Are you sending anyone a flower? I may send Enrique Alvarez one; he’s as cute as a bug and he’s my lab partner in science ~ we share a microscope. I’m always compelled to look at his ear when he’s looking into the microscope ... occasionally I get bold and look at his mouth or cheek, but mostly I stick to the ear. And it’s a charmer, that ear of his. If I send him a flower, I may have to sign a fake name on the card, because I could NEVER face him again if he knows I sent it. Maybe I could just sign my initials ... or a completely made-up name, a man’s name even, like “Bob Williams” or something. I could say, “Enrique, keep up the excellent schoolwork, stay cute. Love, Bob Williams.” Or MAYBE I could sign it “Bean” since no one knows I’m the Bean but you. They think my name is Annie Myers and yours is Izzy Mercer-Crow, the fools!
WRITE ME BACK!!
Love,
The Bean
P.S. Nice overalls.
P.P.S. Did you get the picture I left in your locker? Thank Gump we are sharing lockers again—mine is ridiculously far from all of my classes.
Dear Bean,
I’m sitting in Center Quad. It’s my free period (I wish we had ours together!!), so I can totally devote myself to writing you. Chris Jordasch turned around in French and asked if we were twins or sisters ’cause we were wearing matching overalls and T-shirts. I said, “No, we just like to match.” He just stared at me, raised his eyebrows, and turned back around. With a silence that spoke a thousand deadly words! The cheerleaders wear matching outfits and no one blinks twice. Of course they shake their booties a lot and present their bosoms in those tight sweaters like their bosoms are a prize pot roast on a platter. Our matching outfits are kind of baggy. Perhaps our next matching outfits should be bosom-presenting outfits. But I’m much too modest for that. “These boobs were made for hiding, and that’s just what they’ll do, one of these days these boobs are gonna walk down to the zoo” (sung to “These Boots” by Nancy Sinatra). WHAT?
GOD SAVE US FROM FLOWER DAY!!!!!!!
I think you shouldsend Enrique Alvarez one ... just sign your initials, then he might just wonderif it was from you but never really know. You know what we coulddo? And this would have to be our deepest, darkest secret that we take to our DEATHBEDS!!!!!! But, we could both send each other a bunch of flowers and not sign the cards. I could probably afford to buy you 5 (they’re $1.00 each, for a carnation). I send you 5 and you send me 5 and no one will ever know. They deliver them in 4th period, right? Just my luck, Madison Geller and Alanna Markley are in my 4th-period class, and they’ll probably get at least 25 flowers each. I heard last year Margaret Ryan got so many she couldn’t carry them all. Oh my God, my stomach hurts just thinking about it. This barbarism has to stop!! (Is “barbarism” a word? You know, like “barbaric”?) Maybe we could have a protest and carry little signs that say “STOP THE MADNESS, DOWN WITH FLOWER DAY!!” Nahhhh ... we’d be exiled into eternal dorkdom, and I’m just not prepared for that fate. I wish I had the courage to do something like that, but insteadlet’s just buy each other flowers in a desperate attempt not to be thoroughly humiliated, OK?? I mean, I guess Flower Day is a tiny, tiny bit exciting because there is the tiniestpossibility that we will actually get some from someone we like, or a secret admirer or something. The teeniest, teeniest, tiniest(is that a word?) possibility. You SHOULD get a bunch ’cause you’re so smart and funny and adorable and the best girl in the world.
LOVE,
Cisco
(I think we should ENTIRELY desist in putting our real names on these notes from now on, the subject matter is too top secret, yes?)
P.S. I will deposit this note in your locker immediately, PLEASE DO NOT EXPLODE OR IMPLODE or expire in ANY WAY or I will shrivel up like those apple-head dolls we had to make in 3rd grade in Ms. Werner’s class. Please write me back promptly upon receival (now I KNOW that’s not a word ~ I just made it up), but don’t do it during Spanish or Señor Snyder will catch you and whip you with a tortilla.
P.P.S. Muchas amor, mi amiga la cantina y sopa de banyo! (I just made that up, what did I say?) Please translate señorita, gracias.
P.P.P.S. Please DESTROY this note when you are done.
P.P.P.P.S. I LOVE your Cisco and the Bean collage. I will make one for you.
P.P.P.P.P.S. Nice overalls.
Dear Cisco,
I’m sitting here bored out of my skull in Spanish class. I wish he WOULD whip me with a tortilla. I wish SOMETHING interesting would happen in this class. But alas, Mr. Snyder is much too mild mannered. Too bad Antonio Banderas is not my Spanish teacher, sí? He’s a tub of spicy salsa if I ever saw one. OK THEN, it’s settled ... I buy you 5 flowers and you buy me 5—I think we can fit that into our fiscal budget. My bowels are relaxing as we speak (well, as I write). Is there any way this fine plan we are crafting can backfire? I mean, what if people find out about our covert Flower Day operation? If they catch on to our high-security, undercover, super-secret-agent-girl plan to send each other flowers, our lives are over at Wilbur Middle School, over IN A FLASH. Maybe we should sign some of the cards ... just initials or a general friendly statement ... maybe like “glad you’re in my science class” or something? Or, I don’t know, maybe “You’re nice, you’re sweet, here’s to hoping that soon we’ll meet.” Forgive me. That’s SOOO corny. I am such a dork ... oh well. So what? So what, chicken butt?
Can you believe Cathy Greenwood at lunch? I LOVE our matching Shiva the Hindu God lunch boxes. Why does she talk to us now with that petulant, disturbed tone in her voice like she’s just discovered caca on her blindingly white cheerleading sneakers? And what about when she goes, “Who’s that on the front of them?” and we go “Shiva”... and she furrowed her pretty little brow and goes, “You guys are like super Jewish, aren’t you?”
WHAT?
OH, BROTHER.
And then she swishes her barely-covered-with-a-cheerleading-skirt bottom away from us. Was she confusing her world religions? Was she being anti-Semitic? Was her brain removed by aliens and replaced by luncheon meat? I KNOW Cathy Greenwood is smart, she’s been in honors classes with both of us for 2 years. So, what’s her story? God save us from Robot Cheerleaders. God save us from Flower Day. I bet Cathy Greenwood will get about 55 flowers, eh??
OK Secret Agent no. 88, I’ve got to sign off before Señor Snyder discovers I am not really an 8th-grade student but a spy for an underground organization of international oddballs. Destroy this message as soon as you read it, preferably by eating it.
Love,
Annie-Bean
Dearest Secret Agent Bean,
Don’t sign your real name! Remember when Grant Carson found that note I wrote you in 6th grade about my training bra and how I wondered what my breasts were being trained for? And he read it to his whole lunch table? I did not eat your last note, but I did destroy it with my special laser made especially for incinerating top-secret documents. Ye...