by Piper Banks
“Yeah, dude. You need to chill,” Kyle said. “Because you’re seriously freaking out the rest of us.”
“Kyle . . .” I began irritably, but before I could point out all the ways in which he wasn’t being helpful, a voice interrupted me.
“Hey, Miranda.”
I spun around. Dex was standing there. He looked a little uneasy, and had his hands thrust into his jean pockets. He was wearing a gray tee with a picture of a Rubik’s Cube screen printed on the chest.
“Dex!” I said. “Hi . . . um, I mean . . . hi!”
He grinned impishly at my incoherence. I smiled back at him, and the awkwardness that had been there between us before, at Hannah’s party, seemed to fall away.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping away from my teammates. Our huddle was breaking up, anyway. Sanjiv’s father had come over to talk to his son, and the others wandered off to use the bathroom or get a drink.
“I came to watch you kick some serious math ass,” Dex said. “You’re really rocking it, huh?”
I shook my head. “Actually, no, we’re losing.”
I glanced back to where Sanjiv and his dad were standing at the edge of the stage. Mr. Gupta was talking animatedly, gesturing wildly. Sanjiv just stood there, listening silently and looking miserable.I felt a rush of sympathy for him, and was glad my dad hadn’t tried to come over and coach me during the intermission. How mortifying.
“Yeah, but you’re doing well. You haven’t missed a single question yet,” Dex said encouragingly.
I smiled, glad that he’d noticed. “Yeah, well. It’s a team event, though. What matters is the final score,” I explained.
“So there’s no MVP award?” Dex asked.
“Not that anyone’s told me about,” I said.
“That’s too bad. You’d have had a lock on it.”
“I don’t know. That Chinese guy is pretty good,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s not bad. But you’re better,” Dex said.
When he grinned down at me, my stomach did a flip-flop, and I could feel a hot flush spread over my cheeks and down my neck.
“Hey, Miranda, I think we’re supposed to sit down,” Leila called out.
I glanced back at her, and she smiled and looked knowingly at Dex, her eyebrows raised. Which just made me blush more. But this distraction meant that I hadn’t noticed Nicholas sidling up next to Dex and me.
“Hi, I’m Nicholas,” Nicholas said in a much deeper voice than normal. He was also standing oddly, with his shoulders set back and his thin chest pushed out. It made him look a little like a rooster. A very short, scrawny rooster. He thrust his hand out at Dex.
“Oh, hey. I’m Dex,” Dex said. He hesitated for a moment—I could see his point, since who under the age of thirty shakes hands?—and then took Nicholas’s hand. Dex winced, and a look of surprise crossed his face, and I realized that Nicholas had a death grip on him.
It started to dawn on me that Nicholas was putting on this macho act to impress me. Or maybe to scare off Dex. Either way, it wasn’t working. I was getting irritated, and I could see Dex looked bemused.
“Nice to meet you, Dex,” Nicholas said in the same oddly deep baritone he’d suddenly developed. “That’s funny. Your accent isn’t very strong.”
“What accent?” Dex asked.
“Aren’t you English?” Nicholas asked.
“No,” Dex said. He was still smiling, although his brow was now wrinkled in confusion. “Why did you think I’m English?”
“Because Miranda said that she was dating a guy she met in London,” Nicholas said.
I could have died right there on the spot. I stared, horrified, at Nicholas, as his words hung there between us. When I finally worked up the nerve to look up at Dex, I saw that he was no longer smiling. The worst part was, he didn’t even look angry. Just . . . hurt. Really, really hurt.
“Right, Miranda?” Nicholas asked, turning to me. I could tell he wasn’t really trying to screw things up between Dex and me. . . . More that he didn’t understand, and was trying to sort out the answer to the puzzle. “You said that you met a guy while you were in London, and you were dating long-distance.”
“Nicholas,” I hissed, turning on him. “Will you please go away?”
Now Nicholas looked hurt. In fact, he had the same hangdog expression that Willow gives me when I forget to give her her after-dinner treat. He turned and hurried away without saying another word. I felt like the world’s biggest heel. It wasn’t Nicholas’s fault. Well, other than his obvious lack of social graces. After all, he had been telling the truth; I had told him I had a boyfriend in London.
What was worse, Dex seemed to know that Nicholas hadn’t been making it up.
“I can explain,” I said automatically. “It’s not what it sounds like.”
Which is, of course, what everyone who cheats on their boyfriend says, and so made me look even guiltier. I decided to point out the obvious.
“I didn’t know what was going on with us when I was in London,” I said defensively. “I thought you were dating someone else here. It was just a mix-up.”
“And you have a boyfriend there now?” Dex asked quietly.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, he’s definitely not my boyfriend. He’s just a . . . friend. Who happens to be a . . . guy.”
Gah. This was going from bad to worse to the pit of hell.
Dex shook his head slowly. “Okay, whatever, Miranda. I think I’m just going to take off.” He turned to leave.
“No, wait!” I said. “Don’t go!”
Professor Bauder chose that moment to tap on his microphone, yet again causing an earsplitting feedback to fill the small auditorium. “Players must now return to their seats. Round three will be starting in one minute. Any player not in his or her seat at that time will forfeit their turn.”
“Miranda, come on,” Kyle called out, his voice filled with anxiety.
I glanced back at my team; they were all sitting in their seats. And with the noticeable exception of Nicholas—who was staring down at the table in front of him, looking like he was trying very hard not to cry—they were all staring at me imploringly.
I looked back at Dex, who hadn’t stopped when I called after him. Instead, he was making his way quickly and resolutely down the steps of the stage and up the aisle, heading toward the rear exit of the auditorium.
“Miranda,” Leila called again.
I sighed, returned to the table, and took my seat in between Sanjiv and Nicholas. My head was spinning with everything that had just happened, and my skin was so flushed, it felt like it was burning up. I pressed my hands to my cheeks, hoping to cool them, while thoughts clattered in my mind. What had just happened? Did Dex really think that Henry was my boyfriend?
“We are now ready to begin round number three,” Professor Bauder announced. “St. Pius is leading by a score of fifty to thirty. However, since the correct answers to questions in round three are worth fifteen points apiece, the Notting Hill school team still has a chance to catch up.” Professor Bauder smiled kindly at our table, but I was still so horrified by what had just happened, I could only stare blankly back at him.
“Are you ready for the first question?” Professor Bauder asked. Leila and her St. Pius counterpart both nodded.
The moderator read the question aloud, but I was barely paying attention. Should I go after Dex? No, I can’t, not right now, not in the middle of the competition. Should I call him after? But what if I called him and he didn’t want to talk to me? Or what if I left a message, and then he didn’t call back? Would it mean he didn’t get the message . . . or that he got it, and just didn’t want to talk to me?
Applause sounded, shocking me briefly out of my reverie. I glanced over and saw Leila beaming, and the girl in the number one seat for St. Pius glowering. Apparently, Leila had won the question, a conclusion that was confirmed when Professor Bauder announced that the score was now fifty to forty-five. We were only five points be
hind.
But I still couldn’t focus, not when Kyle answered his question correctly—putting us ten points in the lead—or when Nicholas, his voice an unhappy bleat, won his question.
“Notting Hill is now in the lead, seventy-five to fifty,” Professor Bauder said. “And now for question number four.”
Number four? Oh, no, that’s me, I realized with a start.
I tried to force all thoughts of Dex and Henry and Nicholas’s bad timing out of my head, clearing room to hear the question. But try as I might, my brain felt like it was on the fritz. The disastrous conversation I’d just had with Dex kept playing over and over, as though it was on a loop in my mind, and my ears were filled with a distracting buzzing sound. I glanced over at Austin Strong; he smirked back at me. I scowled at him.
Suddenly Professor Bauder was reading the question: “A player pays five dollars to bet on a game of dice. In the game, a single die is rolled. If the number on the die is odd, the player loses. If the number on the die is even, the die is rolled again. On this second roll, the number must be the same as the previous roll. If so, the player wins. If not, the player loses. How much should the player win if the probability of winning times the amount won is what the player should pay?”
I blinked. What? What was the question? I’d lost him after the die was rolled the second time. It was actually surreal in a way. For the first time in my entire life, the correct mathematical answer didn’t just float into my head all on its own. Instead, it stayed out of reach, slipping away as I grappled for it. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for the number to come popping out of my mouth. But . . . it didn’t. I just sat there, completely clueless.
And then, to my utter horror, Austin Strong hit his buzzer.
“Yes, Mr. Strong,” Professor Bauder said, nodding at Austin.
Austin leaned forward. “The answer is sixty dollars,” he said into his microphone.
“That is correct,” Professor Bauder replied.
My jaw dropped open as Austin Strong sat back in his chair, his face glowing with pleasure as the audience applauded politely for him. After all, he hadn’t just gotten the question correct. . . . He’d finally beaten me, his arch nemesis, the one competitor he’d never scored a point off of.
For the first time ever, I had lost a question in a Mu Alpha Theta competition.
“This is going to be a close one. Notting Hill is still in the lead with seventy-five, but St. Pius now has a score of sixty-five. The team that answers the next question correctly will win,” Professor Bauder announced.
I heard Sanjiv make a strangled noise in his throat, and when I turned to see if he was okay, his face was chalky with fear. His eyes were open wide and unblinking, and he kept shaking his head a little, as though to scare off a pesky fly.
“It’ll be okay, Sanjiv,” I whispered. “Take a deep breath.”
“So here’s the final question of the day: What is the square root of 5,184?”
The buzzing left my head suddenly, and the answer came to me so quickly, I was actually relieved. Seventy-two. It wasn’t all that hard of a calculation, not if you really understood how square roots worked, but Sanjiv had always struggled with them. I saw him scratching away at his scrap paper, trying to work out the equation.
He hadn’t gotten very far when his competitor, Qin Gang, pressed his buzzer.
“Yes,” Professor Bauder said, nodding at him.
“Seventy-two,” Qin Gang said.
It seemed as though everyone in the room was holding his or her breath.
“That is correct! Which means that St. Pius wins!” Professor Bauder announced.
The small section of the audience that was there rooting for St. Pius cheered energetically. A jubilant Austin Strong slapped hands with Qin Gang, whose round moonlike face remained impassive. I glanced up and down our table; the Geek High team wore matching looks of defeat, except for Sanjiv, who—clearly in a state of denial—was still working out the square root equation. I gently took the pencil out of his hand.
“It’s over,” I said, putting the pencil back down on the table. “They won.”
Sanjiv’s shoulders sagged and his head drooped like a wilting flower. I could tell he was fighting back tears. I knew the feeling; I was fighting back tears myself.
Not only had we lost the competition . . . but it looked like I’d ruined things with Dex.
“Come on,” I said dully, giving Sanjiv a nudge. “We have to shake hands with St. Pius. Let’s just get it over with.”
Chapter 16
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: [RE] Soul Crushing Defeat
Miranda,
You lost a maths competition?!? How is that possible? Did the question you missed involve tracking map coordinates?
Kidding...just kidding. Seriously, I’m sure you’ll smash them next time. And the victory will be all the sweeter.
Maybe this will make you feel better:
My Top Three All-Time Most Humiliating Defeats in History
1. Napoleon’s loss to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo
2. The Dardanelles Campaign (what you Yanks called the Battle of Gallipoli) during the First World War
3. The 1950 World Cup, in which the English National Men’s Football Team was defeated by the United States.
Yours,
Henry
P.S. I’m too much of a gentleman to tell you what goolies are. I
suggest you consult a British slang Web site.
“I thought you didn’t care about Mu Alpha Theta,” Charlie said as we waited for geology class to start on Monday morning.
“I don’t. I mean, I don’t really. But still. Of course I’d rather win than lose,” I said, feeling a bit stung by her obvious lack of interest. Charlie had barely looked up from her laptop, from which she was busily IM’ing Mitch while I told her about the MATh meet. I noticed that she’d colored her hair a conventional shade of strawberry blond, and—remembering what Charlie had said about Mitch liking redheads—guessed that she’d done it for his benefit. This irritated me beyond all sense.
I hadn’t even bothered to call her on Sunday—there was no point, as Charlie now reserved her weekends to spend exclusively with Mitch—so this was the first chance I’d had to catch her up on our disastrous match against St. Pius. And, more importantly, my disastrous run-in with Dex. Charlie even managed to look up from her laptop as I told her about it.
“So call him and explain,” she said.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing to explain. He’s angry because I told him I went out with Henry when I was in London,” I said, feeling another twinge of unhappiness as I remembered Dex’s reaction. “I can’t step into a time machine, go back to Saturday, and deny everything.”
Although, if I had a time machine at my disposal, I’d go even further back, to the night of the Snowflake, and make sure this time that Dex had my correct e-mail address, and my cell phone number, and Sadie’s number in London. Then none of this would have happened, and Dex would probably, most likely, now be my actual, genuine boyfriend.
“Yeah, telling him about that guy wasn’t your best move,” Charlie said. She shook her head at my stupidity, which ruffled my already frayed nerves.
“I didn’t want to lie to him!” I said. I crossed my arms and slumped back in my chair. “I was seeing Henry while I was in London.”
“But it wasn’t serious,” Charlie said. “It’s not like you’re dating him now.”
“Well . . . we do e-mail. Does that count?”
“No. You live on different continents. It’s not like you’re going to prom with him,” Charlie said.
“Geek High doesn’t have a prom,” I reminded her.
Charlie exhaled the world-weary sigh of one who is in a serious relationship, and so no longer has any patience for the romantic blunderings of the unattached. “It was a figure of
speech, Miranda. You should just call Dex, and ask him out.”
The very idea of doing something so audacious made my stomach turn over. “I’m not going to do that!” I exclaimed.
“Why not?”
“Because it would be mortifying. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me anymore, if he ever did. If I asked him out, he’d just say no, and I would be humiliated,” I said.
“Well, I think you’re being ridiculous,” Charlie said, in a way that made me want to shake her until her teeth rattled. It was times like this that I missed the old Charlie. That Charlie might have been cynical and unromantic, but she would never have been so condescending.
Finn came in, his messenger bag slung over one shoulder. I saw him cast a nervous glance at the snakes in their glass cages that lined the back of the classroom.
“Hey, M,” he said, sliding into the chair next to me. He pointedly ignored Charlie. “Tough break on the St. Pius match. I thought you had it in the bag.”
“You went?” Charlie asked him.
Finn nodded curtly at her. “We always go to Miranda’s competitions,” he said pointedly.
The thing was, they always had, at least to the home MATh matches. This was the first time Charlie had skipped one. I could tell from the uneasy expression that flitted over her face that she was thinking the same thing.
“I didn’t think you’d care if I went,” Charlie said, half apologetically, half defensively. “It didn’t seem like the competition was all that important to you.”
Finn snorted and looked disgusted.
“It’s okay,” I said quickly.
Charlie shot Finn a dirty look, but then said, her voice small, “I’m sorry, Miranda.”
“Really, it’s fine,” I said. “Forget it. Just one less person to witness our humiliation.”
I nodded discreetly in Sanjiv’s direction. He was sitting in much the same position I’d last seen him in after our loss on Saturday. His shoulders were slumped forward, and his head drooped down, as though it were too heavy for his thin neck to hold up straight.
“Anyway,” I said, glad to change the subject, “are we still on for Saturday night? It’s my birthday, and you know what that means: bowling night!”