How To Train Your Boyfriend

Chapter 6: Detention

Detention

The first time I had ever played doctor was for a girl named Jane.

It was a simple job: I had to get a boy to like her.  She didn't pay me, or even ask me to do it, I offered.

It was the beginning of sophomore year and the boy's name was Leon. I had multiple classes with him and even sat next to him in Algebra, so when Jane stated that she needed help getting him to notice her I figured it would be an easy way to assist a friend. And it was.

It took a grand total of two weeks to get Leon to ask Jane out. Two weeks. Before I stepped in Leon hadn't even known Jane's name. I had a skill. An ability to talk to boys in a way they understood, an ability to convince them that they wanted things, an ability to make them think thoughts they had never considered before. And this skill caught on.

By the time Jane and Leon celebrated their one month anniversary, I was getting request after request. In the early days almost all of these requests were more or less identical to Jane's. Girls wanted to be noticed by boys. By cute boys. And I took on the ones I believed would work, the jobs that seemed doable. And, somewhere along the way, I got compensated for my efforts.

It wasn't until the end of sophomore year that I got a breakup job. Paula Mickenly hired me to convince her boyfriend to dump her. After that success, other jobs - ones that were slightly more manipulative than simply playing cupid - began to roll in. As bad as these jobs could be - and some of them were bad - the worst one wasn't expected. The worst job I ever took didn't involve me helping people cheat. It didn't involve much lying or manipulation. It was the safest job in the book.

I had to find out if he loved her.

That's it. Befriend boy. Gain the trust of boy. Ask if boy loves girl. It was such a simple progress, and should have given equally simple results. However, somewhere along the way, things got messy. Messier than they ever had.

So I quit.

Now, as I sat in Saturday detention, glaring at the back of some junior boy's head, I considered quitting again. Detention on a Saturday was almost as bad as heartbreak. Especially with . . .

"Pst! Butt!"

"Leave me alone," I whispered, glaring in the direction of the voice.

"Oh, come on. The gargoyle isn't even in here."

A few students laughed, but I felt a prick of annoyance. I turned in my seat, facing James who sat in the row behind mine. He was leaning back in his chair, only two legs on the floor, with a pencil stuck behind his ear. When he noticed me looking, he smiled.

"Why are you sitting way up there?" He said. "We're friends now. Come be friendly."

I hated how weirdly sexual that sounded coming out of his mouth.

"I really don't want to," I replied. Detention lasted two hours. We had been there for twenty minutes, and already I was considering taking a pencil and jabbing it in my eyeball. I was not going to let James Hadley, of all people, make me spend another Saturday staring at a whiteboard, surrounded by a bunch of rich kids who got caught smoking pot in the parking lot.

"You do want to."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I -"

"This back and forth is kinda hot, Button."