Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe by Jane Harrington Read Free Book Online Page A

“Anyone thirsty?” and everyone said YES at the exact same time. So she headed off to the poolside bar for drinks.
    Seeing a potential opportunity in this, I said, to no one in particular, “That’s a lot of drinks to carry.”
    And, as I expected (because he’s such a helpful guy—it’s really too bad I find him kind of repulsive), AJ said, “Ahl help,” and he trotted off after Noori.
    “So, do you have a boyfriend in DC?” Tatyana asked, as we watched AJ pulsing off into the now strobe-lit distance.
    “No,” I told her. Then thinking about the gift you gave me for my birthday, I added, “But I grew one once.”
    She gave me an odd look—as you might imagine—then seemed to catch on to what I was saying. “Oh, the ‘Grow-a-Boyfriend’ thing, right? I had one once. They’re fun!”
    “TRULY,” I said. And then I told her about how you and I stuck mine in water but didn’t realize the head wasn’t submerged, and the next day we pulled him out, and he’d grown, like, eight times his original size and was really, really buff, except his head was the size of a pea. And I told her how, after we discovered THAT, we started experimenting with him—only his legs in the water, then only his feet, then one arm.
    As you would guess, Tatyana and I were cracking up at these mental images of the various Grow-a-Boyfriend morphs, and when I got to the description of the HUGE-head version, and how YOU thought he looked like Marvin the Martian, but I thought he looked like Linus, she TOTALLY lost it and rolled right off her chair and into Lahn (who had been pretty much ignoring us during the whole episode).
    “Oops, sorry!” she said, climbing back up on the chair.
    We both looked over and smiled at him, and he smiled back, but quickly looked away. We couldn’t help but notice that he’d turned COMPLETELY red.
    “Do you think he was offended by the Grow-a-Boyfriend thing?” Tatyana whispered to me.
    “He doesn’t speak English,” I said. “I’m sure he just thinks we’re weird.”
    “Yeah,” Tatyana said, letting out a big sigh. After a couple of seconds she added, “So, what’s California like?”
    (Which was kind of RANDOM, wouldn’t you say?)
    “Well,” I said, “I know about as much about California as I do Texas. I’ve never been there, either.”
    “But I thought all Americans went to Hollywood to, you know, see the movie stars and to surf,” Tatyana said.
    “You don’t have to go to California to surf,” I said. “We have an ocean on the East Coast, too.”
    “Do you have any movie stars?” she asked.
    “Not really,” I said, thinking about it. “Denzel Washington came to town once, when the movie Remember the Titans came out. But I didn’t see him.”
    “You’ve never met Drew Barrymore, or Orlando Bloom, or ANYONE?” she asked.
    “The President came to my school once,” I said.
    “Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed.
    “Tatyana,” I said, “even though California is in the U.S., it’s like three thousand miles away from where I live. Asking me if I’ve been there is like asking you if you’ve been to South Africa.”
    “I’ve been to South Africa,” she said.
    “Or Korea,” I said.
    “I’ve been to Korea,” she said.
    I was going to ask her about Malaysia next, but instead—feeling very unworldly—I decided to shut up.
    Lahn, then, started saying something in French. I didn’t know why he thought either of us would know what he was saying, until Tatyana said something back to him, also in French.
    Feeling unworldly AND uncultured now, I listened to them talk for a while. I didn’t understand any of it except these three words: “Drew,” “Barrymore,” and “Hollywood.”
    “Lahn has seen Drew Barrymore in person!” Tatyana told me, excitedly. “In Hollywood!”
    “Huh,” I said.
    Lahn and Tatyana had another little conversation then. This time I could understand only THESE words: “geeky” and “jock.”
    (AGAIN, thank you SO much,