Dating on the Dork Side

by Charity Tahmaseb

  I laughed. Sort of. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Where didn’t I?” She smacked my arm just hard enough that I felt it. “It’s all over,” she continued. “Come on, a lot of these boys were dateless wonders before you came along. Now they’re the hottest guys in school? Who else even knew they existed besides you?”

  “I didn’t really do anything,” I said. But I didn’t believe my own words. From the look on her face, neither did Sophie.

  “I mean, I didn’t plan any of this,” I amended.

  “Who needs a plan? Especially when I need a homecoming date. So. Got a guy for me?”

  I flipped through my mental roster of boys at school. I was too consumed with the weight of what I was doing to consider the words I said next. “I’m not sure. It’s … I’m just not that experienced.”

  I didn’t notice her silence until I shut my locker door. Then I caught her expression. She looked cold, hard, and maybe a little hurt. I didn’t know how, but I’d managed to screw things up.

  “Whatever I said, I didn’t mean anything bad by it.”

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  “No, really,” I said.

  “It’s not like I’m the last to know or anything,” Sophie said as she leaned forward, focusing her whole attention on me. It was like she wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a single word. “Sophie Vega isn’t good enough. She’s a skank. A slut. Nothing but stupid trailer trash. I get it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  When she spun around on one of those serious boot heels, I grabbed for her arm. She pulled it back with such force that I was sure she was prepping for a punch. I cringed and closed my eyes, bracing for a hit that didn’t come. When I opened them again Sophie was still standing there, lip quivering, eyes filling with tears. Frantically, I hit the rewind button on our conversation until I got to a certain word. Experienced? Was that it?

  “Listen. When I said … what I meant was … I didn’t think you were … I was talking about me.”

  “What? You mean you don’t have any experienced guys on your list?” she said.

  “Sophie, I have Rhino on my list. I’m just making the rest of it up as I go along.” A thought struck me then. “And you know what? I think I do have a guy for you, and I’m pretty sure he already likes you.”

  “Never mind. I don’t need your pity.” She dug through the pocket of her oh-so-tight jeans and pushed a crumpled twenty-dollar bill at me, so hard I didn’t have a choice but to take it.

  “My first payment on the loan,” she said. “I might be trailer trash, but I keep my promises.” Sophie stormed off, her heels hitting the floor with such force, I expected to see holes in the tile.

  God, every conversation with her was like walking through a minefield. I sagged against my locker and contemplated the money in my hand. For a few moments, I willed myself not to think of anything. For a few moments, I simply stood in the hallway and smoothed every last crinkle from that twenty-dollar bill.

  Even though it was a Friday, and one of those perfect autumn days, I trudged up to the tutoring room anyway. Not that I could see anything inside the room when I got there, since Gavin Madison was standing in front of the door, blocking my way. Again.

  I might have been clueless about what I’d said to piss Sophie off, but that didn’t mean I was stupid enough to think Gavin was there by accident. A lot had happened since that first time he stood between me and that room. And the way he was staring at me made me feel like he was sizing up an opponent.

  I decided to play offense. “Coach give you another pass from practice?”

  “Nope.”

  “Oh.” So much for offense.

  “We need to talk, but not here,” he said. He brushed past me on his way to the stairs. “Come on.”

  I followed him to the second floor hallway, where he disappeared into the boys’ bathroom. I froze at the entrance.

  He reappeared with an OUT OF ORDER sign in his hand and stuck it to the door. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s all clear.” The door swung shut behind him.

  Did he expect me to go inside? Really? I waited a beat, then another. The door opened a crack. I didn’t see Gavin, but I heard his voice.

  “Come on, Camy. It’s fine.” A pause. “Trust me?”

  I’m not sure what I expected, but the boys’ bathroom was a lot like the girls’. We didn’t have urinals, and our walls looked cleaner and less, er, sticky. But everything else about the place was so ... normal.

  It was kind of disappointing.

  “What do you think of the office?” Gavin asked. “We should really redecorate, but Jason wants stripes and Aiden has his heart set on floral.”

  Part of me wanted to laugh at the idea of Jason and Aiden going all death match over wallpaper. But there was another part of me that was way too nervous to make a sound. It won out.

  “Note to self,” Gavin said. “Redecorating jokes? Not so funny.”

  “It was funny,” I managed.

  “Thanks. My ego needed that.” He grinned at me. Then he unslung his backpack and pulled out a paperback book. I recognized the cover immediately. Two women in togas, a Greek temple behind them. Lysistrata. My throat got so tight I couldn’t swallow.

  “A lot of the guys are wondering why a bunch of girls in this school are suddenly interested in ancient Greece.” He studied the book, then looked at me. “It wouldn’t seem weird to see you reading a book like this,” he said. “But Lexy had it in Goals Lab. Then Aiden heard Sophie asking for a copy of it in the library. Come on, Sophie? She’s not exactly genius material, if you know what I mean.”

  I had decided to keep my mouth shut. Okay, “decided” might not be true. It was more like I had been stunned into silence so far. After all, this was Gavin. And he was talking to me. How long had I wished this would happen?

  Only, the words he was saying were all wrong.

  “You do know that some people used to say the same thing about you, right?” I said. “Once upon a time there was this boy who couldn’t pass a test. Do you even remember him?”

  Gavin winced, but it only took a second for him to recover.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “None of the guys in school can get dates to homecoming.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” I said. “The chess club is very popular these days.”

  “Yeah, well, the football team isn’t doing so great.”

  “On or off the field?” I asked. He cringed again.

  Oh. My. God. What am I doing? At this point, Gavin wouldn’t speak to me again for another three years, if ever. Still, I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Maybe if the football team would stop underestimating the girls in this school, they’d do a little better in the dating department. I mean, just because a girl can shake a pom-pom, that doesn’t mean she can’t do anything else. And just because someone doesn’t have very much money, or is a little, uh …” I stopped to grope for the right word. It didn’t come. “Anyway, that doesn’t mean she can’t be smart.”

  “Nobody’s saying that.”

  “Yes, they are, Gavin. And they’re saying a whole lot of other things, too. Butterface? Sasquatch? Furnipple? Any of those sound familiar?” I was about to mention something about girls who dress like someone’s little brother when I glanced down at my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt and scuffed-up Chuck Taylors and changed my mind. It was just too embarrassing. Instead, I clamped my mouth shut and stared at him.

  And there it was. That look. The one that said: Gotcha!

  Gavin Madison was quarterback of our football team for a lot of reasons. He had a good arm, sure. But he also had the ability to sniff out the other team’s weakness and use it against them. Until that moment, I’d guessed the weak link in Elle’s plan would be Lexy, or Mercedes. Maybe one of the girls from the dance squad. I was horrified to discover … it was me.

  At least he wasn’t cruel about it. He didn’t shout, “I knew
it!” or perform some sort of touchdown victory dance. He just quietly said, “Okay.”

  I knew I should spin around then. I knew I should push through the door and sprint for the safety of the tutoring room before I did any more damage. But I couldn’t. It was like the sticky stuff on the walls had transferred to the floor. My feet felt glued in place.

  “So, here’s my idea.” Gavin rummaged in his backpack again. This time he pulled out a handful of spreadsheet printouts. He held up the first one. “These are the guys who need dates,” he said.

  The list read like a who’s who of the wiki commenters: Jason, Aiden, Randall Benson—all of them, minus Gavin. Obviously, Elle’s strategy was working.

  Gavin flipped the page to a second sheet. “And here’s all the ...” He paused, the start of a small smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “All the smart girls in school.”

  Every girl on his list had been on the honor roll since elementary school. Tara Tanaka, Prudence Laramie, Babette Riley. The only girl missing?

  Me.

  “And here.” Gavin flipped the page again. “I’ve made kind of a matrix. Some guys have certain preferences and some would date the flagpole if you could get it to wear a dress and teach it how to slow dance.”

  I couldn’t help it. I snorted. Gavin’s grin grew wider.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “You really want to know? I think you’re going to have a hard time getting any of these girls to go to a dance with the Neanderthals who’ve been ignoring them since fourth grade.”

  “That’s where you come in.”

  I shook my head. “Oh, no.”

  “This isn’t any different than the chess club and the pom squad. You didn’t have a problem with that, did you? It’s just one date. One night. Nothing goes too far. No one gets hurt.”

  “You can’t guarantee that,” I said.

  “And neither can you. What happens when this is all over and the guys on the chess team go back to being untouchable?”

  I hadn’t thought of that, and the realization now made my lunch rise in my throat. “I can’t do this,” I said.

  “You can do this,” Gavin said, “and I think you will.”

  “Or else?”

  “Or else I let everyone know who’s behind this whole … what are you calling it?”

  “Boy boycott,” I whispered.

  “Cute.”

  His fake approval didn’t make me feel any better. I felt even worse when he said, “I’ll tell Elle how I found out and …”

  Did he need to say anything more?

  “I’ll cut off your access,” he added.

  My access? Did he mean to the wiki? “You can do that?”

  “I can do that.” He glanced at the papers in his hand and held them out to me. “But I won’t.”

  My head spun, a thousand thoughts crashing together. This wasn’t something that had popped up on the spur of the moment; it was a trap. Somehow, Gavin had known I was involved in the boycott. He knew Elle was involved too. Had he tracked us by our IP addresses when we logged on as Jason? Some other way?

  And then it struck me. If Gavin could cut off my access, did that mean … “Were you the one who started the site?”

  “I can’t say who started it. But it wasn’t supposed to be—”

  “Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You can’t say who started it, or you won’t?”

  “What does it matter?” Gavin said.

  “It matters to me.”

  He took a few seconds to weigh the options, then he closed his lips tight, like there was a string of words he was trying to hold inside. “I … I can’t.”

  The realization that Gavin was involved with the wiki intimately enough that he could affect my access sent a jolt through my body. But when I looked up into those amber eyes I was willing to bet that someone else had started it, that someone else was the mastermind.

  Not that Gavin wasn’t smart enough. I glanced at the dating spreadsheets. Clearly he’d developed some mad geek skills in the past three years. But the Gavin I knew just wasn’t the kind of guy who would do something so … cruel. Well, unless you wanted to count holding a girl’s hand one day, then denying her existence the next. But I didn’t have time to think all of that through.

  Gavin held the papers out until they fluttered just inches from my fingertips. He was waiting for an answer.

  What if I took those papers? What if I worked with Gavin?

  If I refused, he would cut off access to the wiki and tell Elle it was all my fault. But if I did it, if I betrayed Elle and went double agent, maybe I could figure out who was really behind the thing. I looked up at Gavin again. Maybe I could figure him out too.

  I reached out and slipped the papers from his hand. Taking them didn’t mean I was agreeing to anything, I told myself.

  I scanned the list of preferences some of the guys had. Hair color and length, height, weight, and more. I peered at him over the top of the spreadsheets. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘beggars can’t be choosers’?”

  He laughed. “Some of these guys have never had to beg before.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I do this, you can’t tell anyone I was involved,” I said.

  “Same here.”

  I smiled at Gavin and he smiled back. In that moment, we were in this together. I thought he might even reach out to take my hand, but he only pointed toward the door.

  Three steps into the hallway, I halted. Gavin unstuck the OUT OF ORDER sign and returned it to the bathroom. The door whooshed closed, and he stopped behind me. He stood so close that the warmth of our bodies seemed to combine. And then all that warmth drained from both of us.

  Because standing in front of us, flanked by two of her dance team minions, was Clarissa Delacroix.

  I ran for the stairs. With each step up, I couldn’t help but think: Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was stupid to make a deal with Gavin. Stupid to let Clarissa catch me.

  The tutoring room was empty, but instead of relief, a wave of loneliness washed over me. I’d been looking forward to losing myself in explaining the same equation over and over again or detailing the symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath. Instead, I had what I’d always thought I wanted: an empty tutoring room, on a beautiful fall day, with the sounds of football floating in through the open windows. The team was running through an informal practice on the field below.

  Ten minutes had passed when Gavin Madison walked across the track toward the field, his helmet tucked under one arm. Before I had time to duck, he looked over his shoulder, straight at the tutoring room window.

  I sank to the floor, my back against the wall beneath the sill. I took one deep breath and then another. What I needed was something safe, something predictable, a slice of the ordinary.

  I needed Rhino.

  Chapter 13

  RHINO’S GARAGE DOOR was shut tight. I probably should have taken that as a warning. Instead, I went in through the mud room. It always felt rude and a little weird to walk through the house without saying anything, so I poked my head into the kitchen. “Hey, Mrs. R,” I called.

  She turned toward me and smiled. “Oh, Camy, there you are! We haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “School,” I said. “Busy.”

  “I know. Ben told us about the homecoming court. How exciting for you! Wait. Hang on. Here,” she said, handing me a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies. “Can you take that out to Ben and his ...” She paused and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “His friend.”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, and be sure to tell your dad to come over this weekend. Darren will be home, and we’re having a cookout. Besides, we don’t see enough of him since he and your mom—” She re-tucked the strand of hair. “We just don’t see enough of him.”

  I stood there for a second, not sure what to say. Dad wasn’t much on socializing. And the Rineholds were … okay. I guess they meant well.

  The oven timer went off and I was saved by the bell. Or the beep
. Whatever.

  The smell of warm chocolate mixed with a hint of cement as I stepped down the few stairs to the garage. Maybe I should’ve thought more about who Rhino’s “friend” might be. His list of them wasn’t huge, but it did exist. He had a way of drawing people to him. They were geeks, mostly, but he attracted his share of nerds and hopeless dorks too. Padawan learners to his Jedi Master.

  I shoved open the door to the garage with my hip and stopped. Because sitting on Rhino’s couch was no dork. Not unless the new nerd uniform included short shorts with the word CHEER! printed across the butt. I was willing to bet that most geeks were never student council president, head cheerleader, or co-captain of the debate team either. (All right, so maybe that last one.) I pulled the door closed quietly behind me.

  Rhino flipped his hair in my direction and his eyes crinkled. “Let me rewind and I’ll show you,” he was saying.

  “I see enough of Todd the Toad already.” Elle glanced over her shoulder at me. “He’s my cousin, you know.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “And he’s going to beat you tomorrow if you don’t pay attention,” Rhino added.

  It was like they noticed me without actually noticing me. I don’t know why that surprised me. It wasn’t like either of them ever missed a thing. Together they could probably take over the world. Or at least beat Prairie Stone High at debate, which looked to be their current objective.

  Rhino pressed a button on the remote. On the screen, a boy with dark hair, smart-looking glasses and a Star Wars tie moved backwards, as if retracting the point he’d just made. Debate in reverse, a politician’s dream.

  “Right … there,” Rhino said. “When he’s not sure what he’s talking about, he touches his index cards, see? When he’s confident, it’s like the cards don’t exist.”

  Elle let out a breath. “You are a freaking genius.”

  Rhino patted her knee, then raised his hands in mock modesty. “That goes without saying.” Which meant, of course, that Rhino had to say it. “Want to take a break?”