I went dashing through the snow all the way to Blarney’s house. Not that I thought Mom would drive after me, telling me I’d better be home by ten or I’d be grounded. I knew for sure she’d get back to me on that. No, I ran to Blarney’s because I was that excited. The plan was for me and Blarney to go get his date, and then we’d grab mine and head over to Violet’s party.

And yep, you read it right. Blarney got a date. He asked Teri Berry to Violet’s party. It wasn’t any Big Mystery, but like forever Blarney was gonna get around to asking her out. By the time he got the straight poop that she would most definitely and absolutely, certainly go out with him for the one-hundred-thousandth time, even the school cafeteria ladies hoped he’d finally pop the question.

Welp, weeks went by before he got the nerve to call her up, and when he finally did, he tells her he didn’t get something in our Math homework. But Blarney, he rarely did homework, Math or any kind. And as it turned out, there wasn’t any Math homework due, but Teri Berry didn’t tell him she knew that. So when Blarney said he didn’t call about anything else, Teri Berry told him she’d help him with his homework if he’d come over to her house.

Blarney goes over to the Berry’s and spends the whole time talking with her parents, cutting up and making them laugh. Before long it’s too late to do any Math homework (never mind there wasn’t any), and all the while Teri Berry got edgier and edgier waiting for Blarney to ask her to Violet’s party, which was coming up in a couple of days. Blarney told me afterward that because of how Teri Berry acted, edgy like I said, he began to think he wouldn’t ask her to the party, or anywhere else for that matter, and so doesn’t.

The next day at school, all of Teri Berry’s friends heard about what happened, and they jumped into action, firing off notes to Blarney like letters to the North Pole this time of year. I mean, they scolded him, shamed him, and made him feel miserable. Humiliated beyond belief, Blarney follows her home after school and, throwing snowballs around her to get her attention, he at last asked her out, yelling it from a block down Princeton.

“Avocado’s just a rocket,” Teri Berry’s Dad said, drinking a high-ball from a Holly leaf glass and talking about the different colors of laminates he sells. “It’s selling like crazy, and why not? Avocado green goes well with anything.”

Me and Blarney sat on the edge of the Berry’s family room couch, making the couch cushions slant up, nodding, waiting for Teri Berry to come downstairs. Their family room was all holidayed up in Christmas decorations for the party they were having. Besides a Christmas tree with gobs of presents underneath, a gold and sliver garland ran up the fake wood-paneled walls, a stereo hi-fi played A Partridge Family Christmas and a nativity scene sat atop the TV showing the latest news from Vietnam.