“Maybe, but why should it?” Lorraine asked. “I feel more chemistry with you. Anyway, George already asked me and I turned him down.”
“You did what?” Marty demanded. “Don’t you realize what courage it took for him to ask? It was like sky-diving or getting into the ring with Muhammad Ali—”
“With who?”
“Rocky Marciano,” Doc Brown interjected.
“Oh, well, I can’t worry about that,” Lorraine said. “George just isn’t my type. He’s sort of cute and all, but he’s…well…” She moved closer to Marty so that her head was nearly touching his chin. “I think a man should be strong…so he can stand up for himself and protect the woman he loves. Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?” Marty asked nervously.
Sensing he was procrastinating, Lorraine tossed her head angrily. “Just tell me yes or no,” she demanded. “And it better be yes, because if you don’t take me to the dance, nobody will.”
Marty sighed. Something in her eyes told him she wasn’t bluffing. He looked at Doc Brown miserably.
“It sounds like she really wants to go with you, boy,” he said. “You better say yes.”
“Yes,” Marty said.
“Oh, thank you,” Lorraine smiled, reaching out to kiss his cheek. “You won’t be sorry.”
Then she turned and rushed out of the house, gave him a little wave at the door, and was gone. “A fine mess,” Marty said.
“It does complicate the situation,” Doc Brown admitted. “But at least if she goes to the dance with you, she’ll be there. Now we gotta figure out a way to get George there so they can discover love and enchantment under the sea, whatever that means.”
“Oh, God,” Marty sighed. “That means I have to convince my father to go stag.”
“Either that or get him another date.”
“Doc, you may be a genius with flux capacitors and electricity and space-time continuums, but when you say I have to find another gal for that nerd at this late date, you’re really asking the impossible.”
* * *
He caught up with George the next day shortly after lunchtime.
“Hi,” George said, “and congratulations.”
“Congratulations about what?”
“Going to the dance with Lorraine. I checked with her this morning and she said you were the lucky guy.”
Marty exhaled wearily. “Let me explain something,” he said. “She only agreed to go to the dance with me because she knew you’d be there.”
“How can that be?” George asked. “She could have gone to the dance with me if she wanted.”
“She’s really screwed up,” Marty said. “And that gets her in hot water. You know how it is when a person wants to buy something but he wants to keep the price down? So he pretends to find a lot of things wrong with it and maybe even says he doesn’t want it—but all the while he wants it like crazy?”
George nodded.
“Well, that’s the way it is with Lorraine. Deep down she wants you, only she doesn’t want you to know. And maybe a part of her doesn’t know it yet. But take it from me, she wants you to be at the dance so that the two of you can get together…”
“Get together?” George mumbled. “I’m for that. Why didn’t she ask? Or say yes when I asked?”
“Some women will accept wonderful things only if they seem like accidents,” Marty replied sagely. “It ties in with what I just said. They don’t want to admit they want them. That’s why she asked me. She doesn’t really want me. She wants you, George. Now all we gotta do is make her realize you’re what she wants.”
“Well, how can we do that?”
“I think we begin by making her see that you’re not a chicken.”