by Laura Preble
“Oh, Shelby.” He pokes his head into the family room. “I didn’t know if you’d be up.”
“It’s only eight-thirty.” I stare at him, drilling into him with my x-ray vision. Unfortunately, it appears to be malfunctioning. “Where’ve you been?”
“Hmmm?” He sits down on the sofa next to me. “What are you watching?”
“Where’ve you been, Dad?”
Euphoria buzzes and rolls to the kitchen. “That’s my cue to exit stage left. Are you hungry, Mr. Chapelle?”
“No, thanks, Euphoria. I had dinner.”
“I bet you did,” I mumble as I start the movie again.
“Excuse me?” Dad arches his eyebrows at me in that Don’t sass me, I’m your father way.
“I just figured you already had dinner.” I turn the volume up on the television.
Dad gets up and turns off the set, leaving just the two of us and ringing silence. “Can we talk?”
“It’s a free country.” I cannot believe how snotty I sound. Wow. If I were my kid, I’d slap me.
“Obviously something is bothering you. Let’s get it out in the open.”
I click the TV back on. “I’d rather not.”
“Well, I would.” He clicks it off.
I turn and glare at him. “I suppose your personal life is your business, isn’t it? I mean, if you were, say, dating somebody, you’d probably not feel the need to discuss it with your only daughter, because after all, this is your life. It has nothing to do with me. So, since we have that out in the open, let me get back to my movie.”
Before I can grab the remote, he has his hand over it, and then snags my hand too. “Shelby.”
“What?” I stare straight ahead at the blank television screen.
He lets go of my hand and sighs. “Honey, I’m not dating anybody.”
“Then where were you?” I turn to glare at him again, but he has this really sad look on his face that makes me crank down the snottiness. “I was worried, that’s all.”
“I understand.” He is studying the carpet, which, by the way, is all silver-gray and not at all interesting. “Do you want the truth?”
No one ever really asks me that question. Being a teenager, I notice that most adults usually just tell you the truth whether you want it or not, or they make up some convenient lie along the lines of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. They don’t give you a choice. Somehow, in this moment, I find that much safer. Being given the choice implies that maybe I don’t want to hear the truth. But now it’s too late.
“Okay. Shoot.”
Dad leans into the couch and throws his hands up in a gesture of defeat. “You got me. I did go eat dinner. I ate dinner with another person. The other person was a woman. Kill me now and get it over with.”
“Dad!” Tears well up at the corners of my eyes. “How could you do that?”
“Eat dinner?”
“Dammit!” I throw a big purple pillow at his head. He catches it. “No! The eating with a woman part!”
“Women eat too. You should know that,” he points out.
“But how can you—I mean, what about—Oh, forget it!” I jump up and throw him a supremely vicious look. “I’m going to bed.”
“You mean how can I eat dinner with someone other than your mother?”
There. He said it. With the words unleashed, I cry, an angry, violent, wild sobbing that makes me feel out of control and very small. I pound my fist on the doorjamb, over and over again, and I don’t even feel it. Dad comes over, grabs me, holds me, hugs me, envelops me. He pets my hair, then turns me around so he’s covering me in a big bear hug, the way he used to do when I was little.
“Shelby, I’m not dating. I’m not getting serious. I’m simply having dinner with a woman.” He rocks me gently as we stand. “Oh, honey, I know it’s hard. Believe me, I’ve stayed up nights crying about it too.” Now my dad is crying too, which makes it even worse. Nobody is supposed to see their own dad cry. There must be some code somewhere that prohibits that, right? Dads are strong, unbreakable, superhuman. But mine is sniffling, holding me as tightly as I’m holding him.
After what seems like a day, a night, a year, he breaks the hug. His eyes are red, and mine are too, I suppose; he wipes the wetness from my cheeks and smiles at me. “Beebee, you were the most beautiful baby. We were so happy to have you. Your mom—” his voice catches there, “she couldn’t stop looking at you when you were born. She kept asking me if it was bad to kiss a baby so much.”
“I know. That’s why I can’t understand how you could just . . . just . . . go out with somebody. I mean, that’s what teenagers do, Dad. Not people with wives.”
I focus on the hazel-green eyes, those intense eyes that I guess my mom must have fallen in love with when she met him. For just a second, I can see something that scares me: My dad is a person. He’s not just a dad. Somebody else might look at him and think, “Hey, there’s a good-looking man.”
What I say is, “I’m not ready for you to be somebody else besides my dad. And her husband.”
He sighs again, and smiles at me. “Okay. But am I still allowed to eat dinner?”
I can only nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Beebee.” He kisses me on the forehead.
“Dad?”
“Hmm?”
“Do me a favor. Don’t call me that anymore.” I run to my room as fast as I can.
Another day goes by. Anders doesn’t call me.
Now, I’m not one of those girls who lives for a phone call from a guy. I don’t sit around watching the phone, willing it to ring, going to bed each night in despair because another twenty-four hours has passed without any communication from Him. No. I don’t do that. At least, I didn’t do that until Anders.
Every day at school seems gray and blurry, as if someone dumped dirty dishwater on it. Becca can tell something is wrong, but I won’t tell her what; she just keeps trailing along behind me in my gray, dishwatery wake, giving me Queen Geek updates, chattering about the video and the upcoming Wednesday meeting.
“So, I’ve had about ten different girls ask me about the club,” she says, all bubbly, as we come out of the cafeteria on Tuesday and head for our regular spot under the tree. “I mean, this thing is really taking off. And we haven’t even aired our video yet!”
“Hmmm.” I plop down in the grass, which seems unusually rough and unfriendly.
Becca eases to the ground and pulls a paper bag from her backpack. “Aren’t you eating?”
“No.” I lean against the scratchy bark of the tree, willing it to swallow me, to make me part of its sap, to consume me and melt me into the earth—
“Could you please snap out of it!” Becca is in my face, shaking me by the shoulders as if I am a rag doll. “What is with this tragic teenager crap? Have you lost it?”
“Maybe I have.” Oh, earth, please find me and make me part of your dirty . . . dirt. Envelop me, snuggle me, and help me disappear like the elements into—
“Helllooooo!” She’s practically screaming in my ear. “Earth to Shelby. Could you please return the human Shelby to us and take back the sickly, depressed, and boring Shelby that has been sitting here for two days?”
“What is your problem?” I sit up, square my shoulders, and glare at her. “Why can’t I be depressed once in a while? Is there some law, like Shelby Chapelle must always be cheerful, kind, and thrifty, and help old ladies across the street, and never be a bother to her friends, and—”
“Okay! Thanks! I get it!” Becca rolls her eyes at me and shakes her head. “God, Shelby, is this all about Anders? He hasn’t called you, and that’s the end of life as we know it?”
“Well—”
“Well nothing! Yes, he was cute. Yes, he smelled great. And? We have bigger and better things to do than worry about some Swedish—”
“Norwegian.”
“Norwegian Ken doll who gets your panties all in a knot!”
I laugh in spite of myself. “Keep
my panties out of this. He never got that far.”
Now we’re both giggling, then it breaks into full-on laughter, and suddenly, with the tension gone, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying, and I roll over face first into the grass, not caring who sees me.
“Umm. What’s in the frozen yogurt today?” Elisa Crunch is hovering above us like an oversized troll doll.
“Nothing.” Becca wipes her eyes on her sleeves. “Sit. We’re just talking about Shelby’s panties.” This makes us howl all over again. Elisa looks puzzled, and somewhat disturbed.
“Right. Okay, well, I wanted to talk to you about tomorrow’s meeting. We really need to have it in a classroom, so we can watch the video.”
“Hmm.” Becca has calmed enough to hungrily bite into her egg salad sandwich. “What about McLachlan? Would she let us use her room?”
“I have her this afternoon. I’ll ask.” Elisa takes out her Palm Pilot and efficiently jots down a note. “So, how does it look?”
“The video? We’re finishing it up this afternoon. But it looks great so far. I can’t wait to show everybody.” Becca glances at me. “And tomorrow, we have to plan for our Twinkie collecting, give somebody the task of researching modeling agencies for the one with the skinniest models, and then I want to talk about our next project.”
“Which is?” Elisa sits poised to jot.
“Yeah, which is?” I ask.
“National Invisible Boy Day.” Becca smiles, nods knowingly. “It’s a great idea.”
“What is it?” I ask. I have a feeling I know where this idea has come from.
“Well, it’s where all the girls who want to do it sign a pledge and wear, like, some sort of badge or bracelet or something—”
“Like those little plastic bracelets for cancer and other diseases!” Elisa’s leg vibrates excitedly.
“Boys aren’t a disease,” I remind them.
Becca snorts and gives one of her donkey-honk laughs. “Yeah, right. They’re the worst kind of disease. You can never be truly rid of them. Unless you move to Antarctica. And then you have boy penguins, so I suppose that could be just as bad—”
“Okay, so now we’ve moved from problems with panties to flightless-aquatic-bird obsessions.” Elisa purses her lips and shakes her head. “I’m not sure I like the direction things are taking.”
“Have a little faith. Remember, when Alice jumped down the rabbit hole, she had no idea where she was going to land.” Becca stands, then pulls me up and dusts the grass off my jeans.
“But once she got there, it turned out everybody was crazy.” Elisa tucks her PDA back into her backpack. “So, in a way, it’s really similar to you guys.”
“See ya,” Becca calls to me. “I’ll meet you after school. Library?”
“Okay.” I feel marginally better after all the laughing. After all, who cares if the only guy I’ve ever been truly interested in has totally blown me off after I dropped a bowling ball on his foot and totally embarrassed myself by thinking he liked me? In the grand scheme of things, is it really that important?
Um, yeah. Yeah, it is. But for now, I’ll just focus on something else.
We meet after school and walk to my house. “Okay, so I know you’re depressed about this Anders thing,” Becca begins. I put a hand up to stop her.
“Wait. I’ve decided to totally ignore my feelings on this and simply become a cog in the machine for your global domination.”
“Cool.” We walk in silence for a while. “Just so I know, are you mad that he hasn’t called you? Or did he call and—”
“Okay, this is not helping me ignore the whole thing.”
“Sorry.” Becca awkwardly matches my steps, even though she’s so much taller. It makes her look like a grey-hound racing a Chihuahua. “Okay, so let’s focus on our video. What do we still need to do?”
“We need to put in music, captions, fades, and stuff. All the clips are pretty much in the right order. We also need to record the voice-over part that goes with the whole thing.”
By the time we get to my house, I’ve curiously forgotten about Anders, at least consciously. I’m so wrapped up in the details of our video that, for the moment, I’m sort of happy. We sit down with my laptop and record the music from The Day the Earth Stood Still, that wobbly high-pitched music used in all the old horror flicks. Then we record Becca’s voice reading our script. After a lot of screwups, we finally get something useable. By the time we edit everything into a final product and dump it onto a videotape, it’s almost midnight.
“Guess I’m staying over tonight,” Becca says.
“Why hasn’t your mom called or something? Isn’t she worried about where you are?”
Becca is rummaging through the freezer. “Got any ice cream?”
“Yeah. In the back. Hey, won’t your mom be—”
“I’m going to have some. Got any chocolate syrup?” She’s grabbing a big dish from our cupboard.
“Hey. Could you get your face out of my freezer for a minute and answer my question?”
“My mom doesn’t care where I am.” She grabs a gallon of Cookies and Cream and thumps it onto the counter, rips the lid off, and then proceeds to dig into it with fury no frozen treat deserves.
“Uh . . . okay. Want to call her, at least?”
“Not really.” Becca licks the spoon, rolling her eyes in ecstasy. She continues to scoop more ice cream from the container. “Seriously. She won’t care where I am. She knows I’m here, and if she does get a sudden attack of motherly instinct, she can call. She’d only be mad if she had to come out and get me. If I stay here, she’ll be totally fine with it. So quit worrying.”
I let it go for the moment, but I know something is weird with Becca and her mom, mostly because I’ve still never met her. We’ve been friends for a while and I’ve never been invited to her house, never even seen her mom except when she picks her up or drops her off. Next time, I vow, I will run out to that purple Jeep and force a meeting.
“Okay. So are you ready to view the masterpiece?”
“It’s really late. Maybe we should just go to bed.”
She throws the dirty dish and spoon into the sink, stretches, and yawns. “Yeah. I’m suddenly really wiped. Must’ve been all that hard work.”
“Or all the ice cream.”
“Funny. C’mon.” She leads the way to my room, where Euphoria has already inflated an airbed and made it up with fuzzy flannel sheets and a quilt. “Aw, Euphoria. You do care!” Becca tries to hug my robot, but it’s a little hard to cuddle something made of a metal alloy, no matter how nice the thing might be.
We get ready, dive into our beds (which, by now, are looking really good), and Euphoria douses the lights. “Tomorrow!” Becca whispers as she studies my fluorescent ceiling stars. “Tomorrow, the Queen Geeks ascend to power!”
“Long live the Queens!” I whisper back.
“You two go to sleep, for Pete’s sake,” Euphoria whirs, disgusted. “I sleep more than you do, and I don’t even need it! Not another word!”
We get to school the next day on adrenaline. Exhausted, we both throw on whatever clothes are clean (Becca can wear some of my less height-specific clothes, but she doesn’t like them because she says they are from my “I Love the ’80s” period) and we eat breakfast because Euphoria won’t let us leave without it. No sign of Dad; again, I remember to forget all about that situation and to simply concentrate on other, less important things. To be honest, I am kind of excited about our video; I think it’s going to be quite a hit at school.
“See you at lunch?” I call as we leave first period English. “Did we get McLachlan’s room?”
“Don’t know. Let’s meet at the benches and then we can go there if Elisa did get the room.” Becca hoists her backpack onto her shoulder.
I count the minutes until lunch, totally ignoring my classes, my teachers, my fellow students (even Dustin, who has decided I’m no longer a lesbian and might still be worth dating.) The lunch bell rings, and I dart out o
f my class and practically run to the telecom benches, where Becca, Elisa, and two other girls are already sitting, engaged in full-tilt babbling.
“Shelby! Listen, this is Amitha Bargout and her friend Sherrie Johnson.” Amitha is dark-skinned with shiny black hair, and Sherrie has a caramel-colored complexion and long, wavy brown-blond hair. “Amitha is Pakistani, and she wants to be a doctor. And get this: Sherrie has actually memorized part of the dictionary!”
“A through K.” Sherrie looks modestly at the ground.
“The letter I took a long time. Lots of Latin roots.”
While we are talking, people from the first meeting drift in: the two black girls, Claudette and her sister Caroline; the tragic poetess, Amber Fellerman of the long black stringy hair; and Chess Club reject Cheryl Abbott, the short girl with thick glasses. All together, we have nine people.
Becca waves excitedly. “Okay. We’re moving to Ms. McLachlan’s room to watch our promotional video!”
Elisa falls into step with me as we walk. “So the video came out well?”
“I think so.” I walk faster to keep up with Becca, who is racewalking her way to the English building. “We actually haven’t watched it. We were up till midnight finishing it. I hope it makes sense.”
“Have you heard from Anders?” She snickers in a very nasty way that makes me think she got into his pockets and disposed of my phone number.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even checked my voice mail.” She looks disappointed, which is what I was going for.
Becca gets everyone situated in the classroom, and we all introduce ourselves again. She motions for me to stand up front with her. “Okay, so welcome to the second official meeting of the Queen Geek Social Club,” she says. “As you know, we’re here to make a significant impact on the way high schools view geeks, and we want to make a social change in the way geeks are viewed all over the world.”
“Wow, and I just came for the Twinkies,” mutters Amber. Everybody laughs. Imagine, a whole room full of people who get the jokes!