Barnowl's Help

Ep. 7 of The Belles of St. Anthony's

"You know what I've been thinking?" Melissa said as I took my History textbook out of my locker. "All of us have dates to Homecoming, but nobody's asked Mayla." She nodded toward the small girl across the hall with feathery hair.

"Barnowl?"

"I wish people would stop calling her that."

"Right." Not that it wasn't hard. We'd been calling her that as long as we've known her. Mayla Barnard had such big dark circles for eyes and such a tiny beak of a nose, you could hardly see anything but an owl. "So what are you suggesting?"

"I think we should help her out. See if there are any boys that might be interested."

We started toward our next class. "You think there are?"

"Statistically speaking, sure. I just feel bad because at lunch today we were all talking about our own dates, and she had nothing."

"Yeah, I see what you mean." Personally, I'd been worried all week that I wouldn't have anybody to dance with, so I knew how Barnowl must feel. When Ricard asked me, I felt like I'd won the lottery.

But Melissa was kinda dodging the fact that, frankly, as much as I love her, Barnowl is kind of off-putting. She doesn't just look like an owl, she stares at you like one. Between her and Swift and Helena, St. Anthony's is kind of overstocked with creepy girls.

On the other hand, heck, Augusta got a date. So anything's possible at this point.

Whenever we had any downtime in History, Melissa and I surveyed any boys we could find on what they really thought of Mayla, to kind of test the waters. Fran and Danielle were there, too, and we roped them into our project.

When I reminded the boys that I was talking about Barnowl, some of them failed to surprise me, giving me some look or grown or grunt of disappointment. On the other hand, occasionally someone surprised me.

"I've had her as a lab partner, and she's always super helpful."

"I still owe her five bucks from last Friday. I forgot to bring my wallet, and she paid for my lunch."

"I've run into her outside of school, and she seems nice enough."

Plenty of them, of course, either already had dates for Homecoming or weren't planning on going. But as we were packing up for next period, Lucius told me:

"You know who you should talk to? Landon Werther. He's always trying to get a good look at her when he thinks nobody's looking."

And it just happened that Landon Werther was in my next class. I asked him straight up what he thinks of Mayla, and he stumbled over his words so cutely I knew I'd hit the jackpot.

"She seems okay," he finally said. "Why?"

"Do you have a date for the dance?"

"No."

"What if I could get you set up with Mayla? Would you go with her?"

His face was redder than a pile of apples. "Maybe."

"Cool, I'll let her know."

I let Melissa and the others know after school, and we gave each other high fives and hugs to celebrate. We all had dates now! All that was left was to tell Barnowl!

We met up with her at the front entrance. "Good news, Mayla! We got you a date for the dance."

"A date?" Barnowl crooked her brow. It only made her eye a little less round.

"Yeah. Landon Werther. He likes you, you know."

"He does?"

"He sure does. You'd make such a cute couple, too!"

"We just didn't want you to be the only one going by herself, is all," Melissa said.

"Oh. Well, that's great." Barnowl started wringing her fingers. Her mouth stretched into a straight line across her face. "But I already have a date."

All of us stared back at her with owl's eyes of our own.

"You do?" I said.

"Uh huh." She showed us a picture on her phone arm-in-arm with a very cute young man wearing glasses. "He's my next-door neighbor, Davis."

"Oh." Fran said. "Yeah. I recognize him. He was at your birthday party."

She nodded. "We've been going out since summer. I wanted to surprise you. So... surprise, I guess!"

We all looked at each other like mice desperate to get away from Barnowl's gaze. If they were anything like me, they all had the same question on their minds: what do we tell Landon?