Geek Abroad

by Piper Banks

  The top eight teams in the state went to the Mu Alpha Theta final tournament. The ranking wasn’t based on wins and losses, but on a team’s cumulative score. Theoretically, a team could win every competition, but if their scoring was low, not make finals. So even though our current record was a not-too-shabby five wins and one loss, the truth was, a few of those wins had been close scrapes.

  So we definitely had a stab at making finals. . . . But Kyle was right: We’d have to win today’s meet by twenty points to do it. Which was going to be tough against Dolphin Prep, one of the more formidable schools we competed with.

  “Sanjiv, are you okay?” Leila asked.

  I turned to look at Sanjiv. He was bent over with his head between his knees, and his breath was coming in shallow gasps.

  “Dude. Are you going to puke again?” Kyle asked, sounding disgusted.

  Sanjiv groaned.

  “Kyle. Seriously, you’re not helping,” I said.

  “I just don’t know how he could have anything left in his stomach to puke up,” Kyle said, far too loudly. “He even threw up the orange juice Mr. Gordon gave him on the bus to settle his stomach.”

  “I think it was apple juice,” Nicholas said.

  “I thought apple juice was supposed to make you feel more nauseated,” Kyle said.

  “My mom gives me ginger ale to settle my stomach when I’m sick,” Nicholas said.

  “Apple juice tastes rank anyway,” Kyle said. “Especially when it comes back up.”

  At this Sanjiv blanched, muttered something that sounded like “apple juice,” and ran for the boy’s bathroom. Leila, Kyle, Nicholas, and I exchanged nervous looks.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Nicholas asked. “I’ve never seen him this bad.”

  “He’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll all be fine. Really. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

  “What was that you said about this meet being a piece of cake?” Kyle asked an hour later.

  “Okay, so maybe I spoke too soon,” I said.

  Kyle shook his head, discouraged. “Maybe we should just concede and spare the continued humiliation.”

  After two disastrous rounds, things were not looking good for the Geek High MATh team. The score was forty-five to thirty, with Dolphin High in a masterful lead. It wasn’t that their team was stronger than ours—I really didn’t think they were—but our team was having a terrible day. I was the only member to have won both my questions. Leila got hers right in the first round, and Nicholas got his in the second round, but other than that, we’d lost every single question. Kyle had hit the buzzer first with both of his questions,but had gotten them both wrong, giving his Dolphin High opponent a full leisurely minute to work out the correct answer. And Sanjiv was just floundering, unable to do anything but open and close his mouth like a fish when it was his turn. I thought he might be having a full-fledged panic attack.

  “Look, we can still win this,” I said.

  “Yeah. Dream on,” Kyle muttered.

  “No, really,” I said, squelching the impulse to kick him in the shin. Kyle’s constant pessimism was enough to get the Dalai Lama down. “We can do this. We just have to win by twenty points. That’s it. Twenty little points.”

  “But we’re already down fifteen,” Leila pointed out.

  “So all we need to do is win four out of five questions in round three,” I said.

  A group groan went up at this.

  “That’s nothing,” I continued. “Four measly questions. We can do it. We’ve done it before. I know we have it in us to win this competition and get into the finals. Isn’t that what we want? What we’ve been working for?”

  I looked around at them. Nicholas was the first one to meet my eyes, something he had been mostly avoiding up until now. But his gaze was level, and a smile stretched across his thin, homely face. He nodded resolutely, and I smiled back at him.

  “Leila?” I said, turning to look at her.

  Leila looked less confident, but she nodded, and her chin rose a few millimeters. I knew she wouldn’t give up; Leila was a scrapper.

  “Kyle, Sanjiv?” I said.

  Kyle hesitated, and finally gave a slight nod paired with a shrug. It wasn’t a vote of confidence, I knew, but he was in. I turned to face Sanjiv, who still hadn’t spoken. In fact, he hadn’t said a single word since the competition had begun.

  “I don’t think I can go back out there,” he said in a strangled whisper.

  “Yes, you can,” I said firmly. “You’re just letting your nerves get the best of you.”

  He laughed bitterly at this.

  “No, really. It’s mind over matter. Just keep thinking that: mind over matter,” I said.

  He nodded and stared down at the ground.

  The moderator cleared his throat, and then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “It’s time for round three to commence. Teams, please take your seats.”

  “Come on,” I said, and pumped one arm into the air. “Let’s go get ’em!”

  Leila was up first. She answered her question correctly while her Dolphin Prep opponent was still scribbling on his scratch paper. The score was tied. Then Kyle got his first correct answer of the day, putting us in the lead. Next up was Nicholas. He hit his buzzer a fraction of a second before a pretty girl with dark caramel skin and long, thick, blue-black hair, and correctly answered the quadratic equation.

  “Yes,” I whispered excitedly to Sanjiv. “We’re up by thirty points!”

  Sanjiv was sitting in the number four position today. After our disastrous showing against St. Pius, I had thought it prudent to take the fifth chair, for strategic reasons, and Sanjiv hadn’t fought me on it. Right now I was regretting it, though. All we needed was one more correct answer, and not only would we win the competition, we’d win by at least thirty points. . . . Ten points more than we needed to make it to states. If I was number four, all pressure would be off Sanjiv. As it was, his skin had taken on a greenish tint and I could see the sweat beading up on his forehead.

  “Question number four,” the moderator said. “Jane buys thirteen lollipops and three packs of gum for one dollar. A lollipop costs more than a pack of gum, and both items cost a whole number of cents. What is the total cost of one lollipop and one pack of gum?”

  Ten cents, I thought immediately. It was a tricky question, which sounded deceptively easy. But I knew Sanjiv could do it. All he had to remember was that if x is the cost of one lollipop and y is the cost of one lollipop and one pack of gum, both in cents, then 3y + 13x = 100.

  Both Sanjiv and his competitor were working out the calculations on scrap paper. Sanjiv suddenly dropped his pencil and hit his buzzer. My heart gave a leap of excitement. Sanjiv was going to do it! He was going to answer the winning question and get Geek High into the state finals!

  “Yes, Notting Hill,” the moderator said, nodding to Sanjiv.

  “The answer,” Sanjiv said, his voice wavering, “is twelve cents.”

  My heart plummeted even before the moderator shook his head, and said, “No, I’m sorry, that is not the correct answer.”

  Sanjiv’s entire body seemed to sink in on itself in misery. I glanced sideways at him and realized with a sickening certainty that there were tears in his eyes. Sanjiv’s Dolphin Prep opponent brightened, and, hunching his shoulders, continued to work out the calculation.

  After a protracted silence, he finally straightened in his seat and said, “Ten cents.”

  “That is correct,” the moderator said. The audience, made up almost entirely of Dolphin Prep fans, cheered.

  “Notting Hill is in the lead, seventy-five points to sixty,” the moderator said.

  Which meant that if I answered my question correctly, we’d go to states. If not, we’d tie. We could still win the instant-death tiebreaker, but even if we did, we wouldn’t win by enough points. The team’s future success was now resting on my shoulders. And for the first time that day, I felt a twinge of nervousness. I didn’t want to let the others down
, not after the pep talk I’d given them. I knew if we lost, Sanjiv would feel even worse than he did now.

  “Question number five: What is the square root of 576?” the moderator asked.

  I hit my buzzer immediately, happiness already surging through me. If there was one thing my calculator of a brain knew cold, it was square roots. The moderator nodded at me.

  I leaned forward to speak into my microphone. “The answer is 24,” I said.

  “That is correct.”

  Our team exploded into cheers, joined by Mr. Gordon, who was sitting in the front row of the auditorium. The rest of the audience, made up of Dolphin Prep parents and supporters, joined in the applause, although theirs was somewhat muted. It was understandable, but we didn’t care. The Geek High team rose as one and slapped hands and exchanged hugs.

  “We’re going to states!” Leila said excitedly.

  “We’re going to states!” the rest of us echoed.

  Only Sanjiv, still stinging from his personal defeat, looked less than enthused at the prospect.

  We were still in high spirits as we began the long bus ride home. The Geek High bus was short and had been painted white at some point, but like all school buses, it was uncomfortable, hot, and more than a little smelly. The floor was grimy and sticky, and one of the back windows banged open every time the bus hit a pothole.

  Since there were only the seven of us on board—the team, Mr. Gordon, and the driver, Mr. Pott—there was room for us each to have our own seat. I was sitting in the front, chatting with Leila, but after a while she started to doze off. I glanced around. Sanjiv was also sitting with his eyes closed, although I had the definite feeling that he wasn’t sleeping and just wanted to avoid conversation. Kyle had his iPod on and was nodding his head along to the beat of Fall Out Boy. Nicholas was sitting alone at the back of the bus, awake and staring out the window at the passing scenery on the interstate.

  I stood, and moved to the back.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked, pointing to the empty seat next to Nicholas.

  He looked up in surprise but shook his head, so I sat down.

  “You did a really good job today,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I did okay. You were the real star of the team.”

  I shrugged, too. It always seemed odd to me to take credit for a skill that I really had no true ownership of. It wasn’t like I’d studied hard to be a math whiz; it came easily to me.

  “So . . . I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” I said hesitantly.

  Nicholas glanced at me, his eyes wary, and then he looked away. He didn’t say anything. I sighed. He really wasn’t going to make this easy for me.

  “Actually, what I really wanted to do is to apologize,” I continued.

  “For lying to me,” Nicholas said flatly.

  “Right,” I said. “For lying to you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know. You could have just told me you didn’t want to go out with me. I’m used to rejection,” Nicholas said, with an honesty that made my heart go out to him.

  “I could have. But I was trying not to hurt your feelings,” I said.

  Nicholas nodded. “I know.”

  “And I was taking the easy way out,” I continued.

  Nicholas’s lips twitched up. It wasn’t really a smile; more of a confirmation that he’d heard what I had to say. Still, I figured it wasn’t a bad sign.

  “So, I apologize,” I said.

  Nicholas nodded slowly. “Apology accepted.”

  It wasn’t until I felt the instant relief that I realized how much our rift had been bothering me. It was like removing an itchy tag from a shirt. “Thanks,” I said, and he nodded again.

  We were both silent for a moment, and I was just considering moving back to my old seat when Nicholas spoke again.

  “So that guy who came to our competition . . . is he your boyfriend?” he asked.

  “No,” I said ruefully. “He might have been . . .but, no. I screwed things up. I seem to do that a lot.”

  This got a real smile. “No, you don’t. You’re really nice, Miranda. You go out of your way to be nice to everyone.”

  “No more so than everyone else does.”

  Nicholas stared at me, frowning so that his sparse eyebrows furrowed. “What do you think Felicity Glen would have done if I’d asked her to go to the Snowflake Gala with me?”

  I considered this. The Felimonster would have likely laughed in Nicholas’s face, and then proceeded to tell everyone in the school how pathetic it was for someone like him to think someone like her would go out with him. I wasn’t about to say this to Nicholas, of course, but he read the truth in my face.

  “Yeah. She would have run over me, backed up over my dead body, and then run over me again,” Nicholas said.

  “Well, yeah, she probably would have,” I agreed.

  We both smiled, and this time I glanced down, looking at my hands. My fingers were long but ended in stubby, bitten nails. I’d never been able to wear nail polish without it chipping away immediately, so I didn’t bother. This horrified Hannah, who would no sooner go out unpolished than she would shave her head.

  “Do you really think we have a chance of winning states?” Nicholas asked.

  “Yeah, I really do,” I said, although I couldn’t help glancing at Sanjiv. The truth was, that to have any shot of winning the state finals, every last member of the Geek High MATh team would have to perform at top level. There wasn’t room for panic attacks or botched answers.

  Nicholas followed my gaze. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about, too,” he said softly.

  “It’ll be okay,” I said, determined to be positive. “We’ll do fine. Win or lose.”

  Nicholas snorted.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “Losing would suck.”

  “Yeah, it would,” Nicholas said. And we both laughed.

  Chapter 20

  “We have to make our travel plans for your writing contest,” Dad said over breakfast a few days later.

  I felt a prickle of nervous excitement. “That’s right.” I hesitated. “Are you going with me, then?”

  Dad looked up from his paper, surprised. “Of course! I’m not sending you off to DC by yourself. Unless . . . your mother’s not coming over from London to go to it, is she?”

  I snorted at this. You know how—in sappy movies or sitcoms— the divorced parents make a big show of getting along with each other for the sake of the children? Yeah, well, my parents don’t do that. Sadie and my dad can barely stand to be in a room together.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not that she’s mentioned,” I said.

  Dad didn’t bother to hide his relief. “Then yes, I’m definitely going. It’ll be fun. We haven’t taken a trip together in a long time.”

  “When is it?” Peyton asked. She was sitting at the table, drinking a mug of black coffee, glancing at the style section of the newspaper.

  “Next month,” I said.

  Peyton arched her thin eyebrows. “April? But, Richard, we’re booked every weekend in April. We have two dinner parties, a charity ball, and we’re supposed to go down to Lotta and Bill’s house in the Keys one weekend.”

  Dad shrugged, unconcerned. “So we’ll have to shift something. Miranda, what weekend is the contest?”

  I swallowed my bite of buttered toast. “I’m not sure. Mrs. Gordon gave me a packet of information on it, though. It’s in my room. I’ll go get it.”

  Dad nodded, and I stood and went back to my room, passing Hannah in the hall on my way. She was still in her nightshirt and her eyes were sleepy, but even though she’d clearly just rolled out of bed, her hair looked as perfect as if she’d just spent an hour blow drying it. Life was so unfair.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Morning,” she said, yawning.

  I grabbed my book bag and rummaged through it. The manila envelope containing the contest information that Mrs. Gordon had given me had gotten mushed up on the bottom of the bag. I pulled out
the information packet, smoothed the wrinkles, and began to read. And then my jaw dropped open.

  I lunged back toward my book bag, seized the calendar where I wrote down homework assignments, and flipped it open to April.

  “Oh, no,” I said aloud. “No no no no no!”

  The Winston Creative Writing Contest finals were being held in Washington, DC, on the twenty-first of April. . . . The very same day the Mu Alpha Theta state competition was set to take place in West Palm Beach.

  “I am so totally screwed,” I said.

  “There has to be a way to work it out,” Dad said. “What time is the MATh competition? If it’s in the morning, maybe we’ll have time to catch a flight up to DC afterward, and still make the awards ceremony.”

  I shook my head. “Not unless I suddenly develop the ability to teleport. The MATh competition is an all-day event. It starts with eight teams in the morning for the quarterfinal round. That takes hours. Then there are the semis, and then the finals, with the last two remaining teams going up against one another sometime in the late afternoon.”

  “Maybe your team will lose early,” Hannah said helpfully, as she nibbled on a Pop-Tart.

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But I can’t count on that happening.”

  “You could throw your first match,” Hannah suggested.

  “I can’t do that!” I said, at the same time my dad said, “She can’t do that!”

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Geesh. Overreact much? It’s not like I was suggesting you kill somebody. Besides, I thought you didn’t even want to be on your math academic team thingy,” Hannah said.

  “I didn’t. I mean, I don’t,” I said. Although really, I wasn’t sure that was true anymore. Sure, I hadn’t wanted to be on the MATh team at first . . . but the season had been sort of fun. I was proud of my team for how far they’d come. I looked longingly at the information packed on the Winston Creative Writing Contest. “This stinks. I can’t miss the writing contest. It’s a huge deal. I mean, I know there’s no chance I’ll actually win. . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to say out loud what I was thinking: If I did happen to win, it would be the sign I’d been waiting for, the one that would tell me I was meant to be a writer.