The (Almost) Perfect Guide To Imperfect Boys Read online

  For Alex, Josh, and Lizzy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  From-the-bottom-of-my-heart thanks to:

  My agent, Jill Grinberg, for her wisdom and unwavering support;

  My editor, Alyson Heller, for her expertise, enthusiasm, and openness;

  Cheryl Pientka and Katelyn Detweiler, for nurturing this book from the beginning;

  Bethany Buck, Fiona Simpson, Mara Anastas, Karina Granda, Katherine Devendorf, Vera Brosgol, Karen Sherman, Anna McKean, Carolyn Swerdloff, Emma Sector, and all the other lovely folks at Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, for making publishing such a fun team sport;

  Veronica Chang, Laura Burris Desmarais, Frances Kellner, Cheri Morreale, and Kym Vanderbilt, for being true friends to my whole family;

  My mom, for always cheering me on;

  Chris, for all of the above.

  CHAPTER 1

  Today Wyeth Brockman became a Croaker.

  Well, I mean, almost. Really close.

  The way it happened was, he asked my best friend, Maya, if she’d seen this movie called Battlescar III. And when Maya said no (because seriously, why would she), Wyeth replied, “Well, I’m going this weekend.”

  His voice croaked on the word “weekend.” Like it went “WEEK” (high pitch) “end” (lower pitch). And then he turned the color of a moldy strawberry.

  For Wyeth, this was progress.

  Okay, I’ll explain.

  A few months ago, Maya and I had divided all the boys we knew into three categories: Tadpole, Croaker, and Frog. We’d even made a chart about it in my science binder: The Amphibian Life Cycle (a.k.a. Finley & Maya’s Super-Perfect Guide to Imperfect Boys).

  First we named all the Tadpoles, the squeaky, silly little babies who belonged back in elementary school. Maya and I ignored the Tadpoles as much as possible. But it wasn’t easy, because they were incredibly loud and obnoxious, the kind of boys who made fart jokes on the school bus.

  Next were the Croakers, the boys who were starting to mature. Have you ever seen an actual tadpole turn into an actual frog? They go through this weird mutant in-between stage when they have fishy tails, but also reptile arms and legs. Croakers had croaky-sounding voices (hence the name), but that wasn’t the grossest thing about them: They smelled like wet socks, or else like too much deodorant; they chewed with their mouths open; they stepped on your feet. But at least they talked to girls. Or rather, tried to talk to girls. Most of the boys we knew were Croakers; even in the eighth grade, they were definitely the majority.

  Frogs were the highest form of middle school boy. What made a boy a Frog wasn’t just that his voice had mostly stopped croaking; it was other stuff, like making eye contact with you in the hallway. Frogs were the boys who shared their homework, who laughed at your jokes, who’d discovered napkins. They weren’t perfect, but they used shampoo. You could have a conversation with Frogs; they were the boys you could crush on. I’m not saying you did; I’m saying you could. But Frogs were rare in the eighth grade, and anyhow, the best ones were usually taken.

  Up until today, Wyeth Brockman had been stuck at the Tadpole stage. In fact, considering the squeaky way he giggled, his obsession with LEGOs, the way he blew bubbles with his straw—plus the way he never, ever spoke to girls, even when they asked him a simple question—I thought he’d probably stay a Tadpole forever.

  So when he asked Maya if she’d seen that stupid movie, this was definitely the first sign of Croaker behavior. It wasn’t just the voice croaking and the blushing; it was the super awkwardness of the whole conversation. I’m seeing a movie you would probably find excruciating. In case you wanted to know.

  Let me put it another way: If Wyeth had still been a Tadpole, he wouldn’t have mentioned this stupid movie to a girl. He probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything to any girl, period.

  If he’d become a Frog, he would have added something like, You’re welcome to come to the stupid movie. Or even, Would you like to go to the stupid movie with me?

  But a Croaker couldn’t make it to the invitation part. Maybe Wyeth didn’t even realize he wanted to invite Maya. Maybe he just thought he’d share his moviegoing habits out loud, and if a girl such as Maya happened to be listening, well, all righty then.

  A.k.a., totally Croaker.

  All of this happened in social studies, where our teacher, Mr. Schiavone, had arranged the desks in “work stations” to “facilitate discussion.” This month my “work station” consisted of me, Maya, Wyeth, and Jarret Lynch, who was the world’s reigning Croaker champion, and also, by the way, not a nice person. No one (besides Maya and me) knew about the Amphibian Life Cycle, so I could have just announced Wyeth’s upgrade to Croaker status. But if I had, Jarret would probably have gone, Huh? What are you talking about?

  And the thing was, I didn’t want to embarrass Wyeth. Or any boy, really; that wasn’t the point of the Life Cycle, which was just about dealing with boy immaturity. Which was a major issue, as any girl in middle school can tell you.

  So instead I passed Maya a note: CROAK???

  She smiled. Then she wrote back: Hmm, mayyyybe . . .

  You didn’t hear him croak just now? I wrote. On the word “WEEKEND.” Plus he kinda/sorta asked you out!!!

  Maya rolled her eyes. No, he didn’t, Finley. He just said he was seeing a dumb movie.

  Me: That’s a Croaker invite!

  Maya: Please.

  Me: I’m putting it on the chart!

  She shrugged. And as soon as Mr. Schiavone started assigning the homework, I opened my science binder to the back. I glanced around to make sure no one was looking, especially Jarret. Then I flipped to the Amphibian Life Cycle chart, and next to Wyeth’s name I wrote the word “Croaker.”

  Wyeth Brockman: Croaker.

  But yeah, I had to admit it looked funny.

  I thought about Maya’s objection. We’d been doing the Life Cycle for about five months now, and whenever we upgraded any boy, we usually agreed on the change of status. So maybe she was right, maybe it was too soon for Wyeth—a single croak, a one-time blush, and a super-awkward invitation didn’t qualify him for Croaker. And besides, I told myself, just look at him: He was chewing his thumbnail, which was a Tadpole thing to do, especially in public.

  Still, Wyeth had made some actual progress today, and it would be wrong to ignore it. When a Tadpole evolved—even a fraction of an iota—it belonged on the chart, even if you couldn’t figure exactly how.

  So I erased “Croaker.” I considered the options. Finally, this is what I wrote:

  Wyeth Brockman: Tadpole with Croaker tendencies.

  I liked this description; it seemed fair to me, and I felt sure Maya would agree with it eventually.

  But even so, I wrote it in pencil, in case I needed to change my mind.

  CHAPTER 2

  At lunch I zoomed in on Maya’s face. “Don’t smile,” I told her.

  “Why not?” she asked through her teeth.

  “Because it’s so fake. You look like you’re being photographed.”

  “I am being photographed.”

  “Well, okay, but you want to look normal, don’t you? I thought that was the whole point.”

  “It is,” she agreed, still doing this horrible say cheese sort of grin. “But don’t normal people smile?”

  “Sure. When there’s a reason.” I took a giant step backward, to get out of the streaky sunlight. Now a mysterious red icon was blinking at me, looking sort of like a spider waving a flag. I had no idea what my camera was telling me (yay for National Spider Day?), and I’d left the manual back in my bedroom. Dang.

  I pressed a button, and the spider disappeared.

 
“Anyway, why should you be so ecstatic?” I asked Maya. “I’m just taking your yearbook picture.”

  “I’m ecstatic because you’re taking my yearbook picture. So I don’t have to use the zitty one.”

  “The other one wasn’t zitty,” I protested.

  “Please, Finley.”

  “No, really, Maya. I thought it was nice.”

  But that was a lie, and we both knew it. Because for some nightmarish reason, on the morning of school photos, the Zit Gods had decided to zap Maya with a giant red dot on the tip of her nose. As soon as the photographer packed up his equipment and left, the Zit Gods took back their evil nose zit. But the picture was obviously forever, and even if the zit got photoshopped out, Maya’s expression was: Omigod, is that thing still there?

  Trust me, there was no way she could let that photo into the yearbook. Especially not in eighth grade, the year we were graduating from middle school, the first time yearbooks would even mean anything.

  After the nose-zit incident, I’d offered to take a new shot of Maya with the digital camera my parents had just given me for Christmas. Maya and I had both agreed the photo should be candid, not pose-y. Except now she kept doing this generic fake photo smile, which in my opinion was worse than the nose zit.

  “Fin? Can you please hurry?” Maya was begging. “It’s freezing out here, and I think I’m going to sneeze.”

  “So sneeze.”

  “Yeah, right. That would make a gorgeous yearbook photo, don’t you think? Snot spraying out of my nose . . .”

  I zoomed out. No, too far. I zoomed back in. Better. “Listen, Maya, just do whatever you feel like doing. Don’t worry about looking gorgeous.”

  “But I want to look gorgeous. If I wanted to look hideous, I’d just use the zit photo.”

  “It wasn’t a zit photo.” Mysterious Red Icon suddenly vanished. Good. I think. “Anyway, don’t you want your photo to look a little bit different?”

  “Different? You mean weird?”

  “I mean unboring. Uncloney. Capturing your essence.”

  She raised one eyebrow at me.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “No essence. What about an action shot?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, it could be cool. You could do a cartwheel.” Maya was an amazing gymnast. She was only four foot eleven, but incredibly strong and agile. Next to my best friend, I looked like one of those Styrofoam pool noodles.

  She ungritted her teeth. Suddenly she sprang into a cartwheel, ending in a bank of snow.

  Click.

  “How’s that?” she asked, her shiny ponytail swishing.

  “Great,” I promised. “Perfect.”

  “Let me see.” She grabbed the camera and squinted at the screen. “How do I find it? Oh. Well, it’s kind of all right, but people won’t see my face.”

  “Why do they need to? It’s you being gymnastic.” I took the camera. “And by ‘people’ we’re talking about Dylan, right?”

  “Puh-lease,” she said. “I’m so over Dylan.” She scooped up some snow and packed it into a ball. “Actually, didn’t I tell you my New Year’s resolution? I’m giving up on middle school boys.”

  “You are?” I said, laughing. “You mean including Wyeth Brockman?”

  She didn’t even bother to smile at that. “I mean all of them—Tadpoles, Croakers. Even the Frogs.”

  “Really? What’s wrong with the Frogs?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. “Except they go to middle school.”

  I watched her throw the snowball. It landed way off, in the field between Fulton Middle School and Fulton High School, where the older kids hung out during the school day, cutting class or listening to their iPods or whatever they did when their teachers weren’t looking. I knew Maya couldn’t wait until next fall, when we would both be on that field, but to me it seemed the same as here, only bigger. Scarier.

  The warning bell rang, meaning lunch was ending and Spanish was next on our schedule.

  I blew on my fingers. “We should go,” I said.

  “No, wait, Fin, we still have four minutes.” Maya was squinting down the field; she hated wearing her glasses, even though she was semiblind without them. “Hey, can you see who’s that kid in the hoodie?”

  I shaded my eyes from the low sun. I couldn’t make out very much either, just a tall kid with dark hair standing over by the soccer net. Maya and I could name just about all of the ninth graders, and a few of the tenth, but this one didn’t look familiar.

  “Maybe he’s a junior,” I guessed.

  “He couldn’t be. If he was in my brother’s class, I’d have seen him before this.” She grabbed the camera. “Okay if I use the thingy?”

  “You mean the zoom lens? Be careful.”

  “I won’t break it; I’ll just spy with it. What do I do?”

  I showed her how to zoom in. “Just don’t let him see you, all right?”

  “Don’t worry; I’m invisible. One of my many superpowers.” She looked into the viewfinder. “Whoa. He’s cute. I mean really cute. At least from here.”

  She took a few quick steps toward him, keeping the camera up to her face. “Although maybe we need a better angle.”

  “Are you serious?” I trotted behind her, my feet cracking the top layer of snow. “Stop doing that—he’ll see you!”

  “He’s not even looking this way. Huh. Yes, definitely cute. No, definitely don’t know him.” She handed me the camera. “Want a peek?”

  “This is so tacky.” But I looked through the zoom lens at the boy, who’d started wandering around the net. His head was down, so I couldn’t make out his face.

  Suddenly he stopped walking. And looked up. Right at me.

  “Oh, shoot, let’s go,” I muttered, yanking Maya’s arm.

  “Why?”

  “Because he just saw me!”

  “And?”

  “And I was basically stalking him. This is a teeny bit awkward, don’t you think?”

  “It doesn’t have to be. We could introduce ourselves.”

  “You could introduce yourself. Because he didn’t see you following him around with a camera.” I glanced over my shoulder. Now he was heading toward us, waving his arm, walking even faster than we were. Oh, great, great, great.

  “Why is he coming this way if he goes to the high school?” I whispered.

  “Maybe he dropped out.”

  “Don’t joke, Maya, okay?”

  “Maybe he’s chasing us. Maybe he thinks we’re paparazzi.”

  “Argh, this is excruciating.”

  Maya sighed. “All right, Finley, then just tell him the truth.”

  “The what?”

  “Tell him I made you spy on him. Tell him—”

  “Finley?” the tall boy called. He had a deep voice, not at all croaky.

  I glanced at Maya in panic. Then I turned around.

  The boy was a few yards away now, close enough for me to see that he had longish brown hair, high cheekbones, a narrow nose that pointed sideways at the tip, and blue eyes so dark they could qualify as purple. He was dressed in slouchy jeans, with a long black thermal and a light gray hoodie. Standard boy wear, nothing fascinating, so I took a second peek at his almost-purple eyes.

  “Finley?” he repeated. “Finley Davis?”

  “Yes?” I squeaked.

  He grinned. “It was you. You had that camera covering your face, so I wasn’t sure.”

  “No, yes, it’s really me.” I slipped the camera into my jeans pocket, so now it was bulging out of my thigh. Lovely. “Um, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but do I know you?”

  “Well, you did.” He was watching my face. “But maybe you’ve forgotten. Zachary Mattison?”

  I blinked.

  No, I told myself. It couldn’t be.

  Because the last time I’d seen Zachary Mattison, he’d been a Tadpole. Actually, no—even less mature than a Tadpole, more like a Tadpole egg. A skinny, doofy little egg with a chirpy voice, sticking-out ears, and an
incredibly obnoxious sense of humor.

  And that was when? Not even a year ago? It was like he’d fast-forwarded through the whole Amphibian Life Cycle.

  My mouth froze; I couldn’t speak.

  But Maya could. “Wait!” she shouted. “Freakazoid?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” the boy replied. “Freakazoid.”

  His smile changed, but he was still smiling.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Sorry,” Maya blurted. “It just came out. I didn’t mean—”

  Zachary shrugged. “Hey, no problem. I’ve been expecting all that Freakazoid stuff. And I’m fine with it, in fact.”

  Maya shot me a look. “You are?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s funny.” He blinked at me. “Don’t you think it’s funny, Finley?”

  “Not really,” I said, trying to spot his ears underneath the new hair.

  The second bell rang, but we didn’t move.

  “So anyway. What are you doing here?” Maya asked, probably a little too curiously.

  “Waiting for my mom,” he said. “She’s in with Fisher-Greenglass.”

  Maya and I exchanged glances. Ms. Sara Fisher-Greenglass was the principal of Fulton Middle. You were “in” with her only if you were “in” big trouble. Or possibly getting out of it.

  “Huh,” Maya said. “So that means you’re coming back?”

  “Maybe. Don’t know yet.”

  “Then you might? Didn’t you get expelled for fighting with Jarret?”

  He looked surprised. “They said that? Oh no. Not expelled.”

  “So what happened to you, exactly?” She folded her arms across her chest, the way she did when she thought someone was lying. “You basically disappeared in the middle of seventh grade.”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” he said flatly. “You know, family stuff.”

  “Really? Like what?”

  “Maya, we’re late,” I muttered. “Señor Hansen’s going to kill us.”

  Zachary looked at me. “Hansen?” he repeated. “You have Hairy Hands for eighth-grade Spanish?”

  “Yeah, we do,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Who knows. Maybe he liked torturing us so much in seventh grade he wanted a second crack.”