Free My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters by Sydney Salter Page A

stand. Apparently she wins all of her cases.
    When the waitress came with the fondue and cake, I scraped every bit of frosting off the top just to spite Megan, but she was too busy eating a chocolate-dipped strawberry off Tyler's fork to notice. That sure answered some of my questions. After all, Tyler did meet 99 percent of Megan's superior standards for boyfriend material.
    I walked ahead of them as we crossed the bridge over the river to the theater; they had ordered another round and were both slightly tipsy. Anything wrong with
two
drinks, Megan? I had drunk so much water that I'd probably have to pee a thousand times during the movie. I tried to shake my hair around my shoulders, forgetting that I'd tied it up in a stupid intellectual-looking French braid; my beret fell into the gutter behind me.
    "My little sister would forget her head if it weren't attached." Tyler picked up my beret and plunked it back on my head, hard. "It's a good thing you don't live in France."
    What the hell did that mean? Did I look so terrible in a beret that they'd stop me at the border? Would shops have my picture up like a Wanted poster, saying, "Do Not Sell a Beret to This Woman!" Or was I simply too klutzy to live in
très
elegant France?
    The theater was surprisingly crowded, considering they were showing some old British movie that was made before I was born. Another bonus: almost every member of the community cinema club was over the age of thirty. I sat between Megan and some possibly pervy forty-year-old geezer chowing down on popcorn.
    Right before the movie started, a woman stood up and announced the premiere of some wonderful French movie next Saturday. "For those of you who haven't already bought tickets, reserve them this week. This one will be very popular."
    They probably wouldn't let me in because I'm beret challenged.
    During the opening credits, I had to get up to pee, but Tyler didn't move his legs and I nearly fell into his lap. "Watch the Italian loafers, Stompy."
    Jerk!
    The movie was about a timid old maid who barely survives by giving piano lessons and spends a scary amount of time talking to a photograph of some old biddy. When she finally thinks she's found love, it turns out the guy is totally using her, so she starts drinking as if booze is her only friend. In one scene she totally freaks out when she spills some whiskey. That's what I had to look forward to: a life like
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne—depression, sadness, gloom, dejection, discouragement, downheartedness, melancholia, despondency, desolation.
So I've looked up
depression
in the thesaurus. Hasn't everyone? Anyway, I didn't feel like a freak for thinking about all those words after that god-awful movie. The couple in front of us got into a big argument on the way out of the theater; I heard only one disturbingly cheerful person say, "Wasn't Maggie Smith fabulous?"
    I didn't say a word on the way home.
    Tyler dropped me off first.
    I didn't even care.

Chapter Nine
    POPCORN AND POSSIBILITIES
    The phone rang again. Mom glanced at the caller ID and shook her head. "She's called four times in the last half-hour." She handed me the phone. "What's going on between you two?"
    "Nothing." I flopped down on the sofa and crushed one of Mom's fancy pillows to my chest, then picked at an M&M matted in the fringe.
    "Does this involve a boy?" Mom got on her I-really-care-about-you-so-you-can-humiliate-yourself-with-juicy-details face and sat next to me on the sofa.
    "No!"
    "You can talk to me, honey. It wasn't so long since I was there myself." She ran her hand through her newly dyed blond hair, but it got stuck because of all the junk she smeared on her head every morning. Was she aware of that gesture? Like, subconsciously, she knows she's not young anymore, even though she's still trying, as day 17 of the Peanut Butter Diet attests. I'm never eating peanut butter pancakes, peanut soup, nutty noodles, or Chinese chicken salad again. Don't even mention