Free The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez Page B

Ahmed’s, I briefly explain the latest encounter with Charlotte and the Halloween hayride invite. I’m still trying to figure out whether I’m, in fact, being set up with someone, just being invited as a friend, or was quite possibly supposed to go out on some weird group date with Charlotte. Ahmed is jumping up and down on his bed like a crazed chimpanzee, telling me what an idiot I am and that the only possibility is that she digs me.
    â€œHot diggity, man!” he yells. “You know Janie Haas has been practically knocked off her throne because of Charlotte VanderKleaton, right? Not that Charlotte is prettier, no offense, but she does have that certain . . .
je ne sais quoi ,” he says, slipping back into smooth Rat Pack mode for a millisecond. “And now,” he says as he jumps one last time and lands his ass on the bed, “the chickie is into you!” He shakes his head, “It’s your year, my man. Definitely your year.”
    â€œWhat about Mark?”
    â€œScrew Mark! Seriously, cat, you have much to learn. If she wasn’t into you, she wouldn’t have brought it up. And if there was something really going on with her and Mark, that fink would be all over her like a mink on a rich dame. Trust me, the chick digs you. Hey! You ever think about how we’re, you know, cats, and girls are chicks and how cats get the little chickies and . . . uh, eat them. Wait, that sounds kind of sick. Hold on . . . do cats actually eat chicks? I’ve never seen one do that. Unless you count Sylvester and Tweety, and technically Tweety was a canary, right? And Sylvester never actually ate him . . . or her. Wait . . . oh shit . . . was Tweety even a girl?” Ahmed is short-circuiting. I swear, sometimes his constant cool cat and spazzo personas are in direct competition with each other.
    â€œFocus,” I tell him. “We’re talking about Charlotte and me, not Tweety and Sylvester.”
    â€œRight, right. Anyway my man, you’re a freakin’ Casanova. I mean, you got a girl who didn’t wait for you to ask her out. She asked you out!”
    â€œWhat if she’s just being nice?”
    â€œThen you take that nicey-nice and run with it. Make your move, my man!” I shrug, trying not to give the universe the slightest hint that I think this might be the tiniest bit true, because if I do, it’ll all blow up
in my face.
    â€œLook at you,” he says. “You cool, brother. You cooooooool . . .” He makes this slow and smooth gesture with his hand. He gives me a high five, and I suddenly feel like the baddest mothereffer on the planet. I can do this.

CHAPTER SIX
    H alloween night doesn’t come quick enough. But it does finally come, which also means Mom has been gone for almost two months. She’s never been gone for more than six weeks, and that time we knew she was at a cousin’s house in Maine for most of it. But this time, something is more off than usual. But then I think it’s probably not. This is normal. Any day now she’ll just pop right back into our lives, and I’ll be pissed that I spent all this time worrying for nothing. I can’t do anything about it; I can’t make her come back, I can’t talk to Dad, and I can’t change it, so I put Mom out of my mind and think about Charlotte instead.
    Even though I’ve seen Charlotte a few more times in class since she mentioned the whole hayride thing, I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask her, hey, so, that thing on Thursday, is it a date? What if it is, and then she realizes what a moron I am?
    As I get ready, I have no idea if I’m getting ready for my first date ever, and if so, whether it’s with the girl I go to bed dreaming about (and maybe do more than dream about) every night. Or am I just another person in a group simply hanging out together on Halloween? But Ahmed assures me I’m reading way too much into it.

    â€œThe