Dating on the Dork Side

by Charity Tahmaseb

  “It’s not your room, Camy,” Ms. P said, her words an arctic blast. “It’s the school’s tutoring program.”

  Principal Miller gathered the papers on her desk. “I want to believe you, Ms. Cavanaugh. But until the investigation is complete, I’m afraid I have to suspend you from tutoring.”

  “What? You can’t. I—”

  “Sorry I’m late.” The door opened and Coach Cutter stepped inside the already crowded room.

  “That’s all right, Fred. We’re just getting ready to move on to the next issue. Would you like to begin?” Principal Miller asked.

  Coach settled himself into a chair and looked right at me. “Camy, you know I used to watch you play youth football? You’ve always been a team player, so I’m sure you’ll be happy to help us out of a certain, uh, situation we find ourselves in.”

  Don’t bet on that, I thought.

  “Apparently there’s been some unauthorized computer activity going on here at the school and we think you might know who’s involved. We’d like you to confirm that information.” He waited a heartbeat. “Now, please.”

  My voice trembled with anger but I fought to get myself back in control. “What information do you want me to confirm, Coach?” There. That was better.

  “Well, Camy, did Kevin Orrs use the school’s server in any way to create an illegal website? All you need to do is nod your head.”

  I shook my head instead.

  “I don’t think you heard me. I said—” Coach leaned forward. It was a move I’d seen him do a thousand times on the sidelines when he wanted to get a particular point across. “Did Kevin Orrs access the school’s server to create or maintain an unauthorized website?”

  I shook my head again.

  “She’s lying,” Ms. Pendergast said.

  Ms. Wilson let out a gasp. Principal Miller said, “I’m not sure that was called for, Julie. Please refrain from—”

  “Oh, come on,” Ms. Pendergast said. “We all know that Sophie Vega and that slacker, Kevin Orrs, got to Camy. I don’t know what they did, but—”

  “They didn’t do anything!” I said. “They’re good kids. Kevin’s on the honor roll!”

  “Yes, well, leopards and spots,” Ms. P said, as though those words were the last on the subject.

  I stood up. I was probably already going to get suspended. I might as well make it worth it. I spun toward Ms. Pendergast.

  “You and your witness just can’t get over the fact that someone like Sophie was elected homecoming queen. And you.” I turned to Coach. “You’re just mad because your football team can’t win a game.”

  “That is quite enough,” Principal Miller said. “From all of you.”

  “May I say one more thing?” Coach Cutter asked.

  “Is it respectful of everyone in this room?”

  Coach nodded. “Camy. You may be right. I may be frustrated because our football team can’t win a game. But if the team can’t win because of some big, secret thing that has gotten out of control, something that is hurting people, then it’s not just about football anymore, is it?”

  I sank back into my chair, tears pricking my eyes. The adults talked back and forth. I nodded when they seemed to expect me to, but I didn’t really hear what they said. When the bell rang for second block, everyone stood.

  I made it through to last block by telling myself I would not cry. I would not talk to anyone. I would not worry that the school might call Dad. I’d go to class, I’d take as many notes as possible, and I would wait for the end of the day.

  When it finally arrived, it took longer than usual to sort through the books and assignments in my locker. I tried to make myself believe that I was waiting for the hallway to clear out. But when it did, and I shut my locker door, I knew the truth.

  I was lost.

  Without thinking, I turned toward the staircase that would take me to the third floor, the tutoring room, and my skybox view of the football field.

  What happened when someone got knocked off the path destiny had planned for them?

  I was afraid to find out.

  So I stood there, like a total dork, holding back tears, and stared at the flight of steps until I heard the stomp of serious boots against the linoleum floor.

  “Hey,” Sophie said.

  “Hey,” I said without turning around.

  “Do you really have a plan?”

  The idea that had popped into my head the day before had come with so much potential and so much terror, it had made me dizzy. I’d spent hours poking holes in it the night before. It was hardly a sure thing.

  For one, the plan meant getting up in front of the whole school. Not exactly my forte. But just a week ago, I’d stood there as a homecoming candidate and survived. It meant being sneaky too. But considering the last month, sneaky should be an elective at Olympia High. At least this way, we’d all get credit for it. If the idea worked, it just might fix everything. And if it failed? My heart lurched at the prospect. I took a breath.

  “I guess so.” I shrugged. “Will you help me?”

  Sophie gave me a grin. “Do you even have to ask?”

  My throat tightened a little every time I thought about it. I came close to hanging off the chain link fence until practice was over, then begging Coach Cutter for his help. Here’s the thing: I was pretty sure Coach would do the right thing if I told him Kevin Orrs was behind the wiki. But if I told him it was actually his star quarterback?

  I was nearly certain Coach was one of those rare members of the male species that maybe, just maybe, you could trust. But I didn’t know that for sure, and somebody needed to do something, and that something needed to be real.

  A week ago, I would’ve said that somebody was Elle. But with everyone knocked off of destiny’s path, maybe it didn’t matter so much who did something, as long as someone did.

  I only had one problem. Or maybe it was two.

  Thanks to my years of watching football practice I knew, with stalker-like precision, exactly which door Gavin used. Twenty minutes after the guys left the field, they started pouring out the side door. I waited until Gavin broke away from the group and hurried after him.

  “I need your help,” I blurted.

  He stopped, then turned around slowly. “Oh, yeah?”

  “I want to do something about the wiki,” I said. “I want to set things right without getting anyone into trouble.”

  Gavin took a few steps forward. “And you need me?”

  I nodded. “I can’t do it alone. You’re doing the football highlights thing at the pep rally on Friday, aren’t you? That’s what it said on the school website.”

  He studied me for a second. “In case you haven’t noticed, highlights have been a little hard to come by this year. The thing I’m doing Friday should probably be called ‘Two or Three Plays That Didn’t Totally Suck’.”

  I knew he was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t force myself to laugh.

  “So, what do you need?” he asked.

  I told him the plan. When I finished, he rubbed his face and scratched his head. “I don’t see how you’re going to get Rhino to help.”

  “If you come with me now, he will.” I nodded toward the street that led to Rhino’s house.

  “I’m in,” Gavin said. His voice was loud enough to make me jump. He took a few steps across the grass, then turned to look at me. He held out his hand.

  I glanced around, worried someone might see us. But really? There was no more boy boycott. Tomorrow, there might not even be a wiki. There were no rules anymore. There was no one to tell me no. My fingers stretched toward Gavin’s, and he held my hand.

  We walked all the way to Rhino’s like that, my fingers laced with his.

  We dropped hands at the foot of Rhino’s driveway, though. Before we did, I felt the muscles in Gavin’s arm stiffen. He looked like he was about to try for a forward pass.

  I probably looked like I was about to hurl.

  “Pre-game jitters?” he said.

>   I sucked in a breath. “I’m okay.”

  Even with the afternoon sun, it was cool enough that Rhino’s garage door was shut. I tried not to think of it as an omen.

  “Come on,” I said to Gavin.

  I inched open the door, grabbed Gavin’s hand, and yanked him through the back hall. The second we entered Rhino’s space, he greeted us with a scowl.

  “I don’t even want to ask,” he said.

  I stepped forward until I was standing with the couch between us. “We need to do something about the wiki,” I said.

  Rhino walked around the couch and touched a finger to the tip of my nose like I was a little kid. “No, Ladybug, we don’t.”

  I was seriously reconsidering my whole “no violence” stance. “It’s time, Rhino. The school already knows, and—”

  “You told them?”

  It was like he spit the question at me. I had to back up. “No. But they know there’s ‘unauthorized computer activity’. I don’t think they know what it is, exactly, and they don’t know who’s behind it, but they think it might be Kevin Orrs.”

  Of all the words that had passed between us, I think those last hurt him more than anything else.

  “Kevin Orrs?” he said. “He couldn’t code his way out of a bag.”

  “I thought you’d be glad for the warning,” I said, “so you can shut it down before anyone gets into trouble.”

  “What if I don’t?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell them everything I know.”

  Behind me, Gavin cleared his throat. Yeah. I hadn’t exactly told him that part of the plan.

  Rhino snorted. “Please. Now that I know they’re looking, I can make the wiki vanish whenever I want. No, I wouldn’t even have to do that. I could move the whole thing to another server. So, thanks for the heads up.”

  “The Internet is forever,” I reminded him.

  He shrugged. “True. But it’d take an expert to track down any evidence. An expensive one, too.” He turned from me and went back to working on his laptop. “I’ve seen the school budget. Trust me, they don’t have that kind of money. It would be your word against mine, Ladybug.”

  “No.” Gavin took a step closer to me. “It would be your word against ours.”

  Rhino clutched his chest. “Bro, you’re killing me.”

  “You know,” Gavin said, and he nodded toward me. “We could always—”

  Rhino pointed a finger at him, stopping his words. “No, we couldn’t.”

  They stayed like that, locked in a silent battle of wills, until I opened my book bag and pulled out a pile of paper. With Sophie’s help, I had gotten back into the wiki. I hadn’t had enough time to get it all before football practice ended, but I had enough. I’d printed screen shots, the source code behind them, and anything else I could think of. I handed a few of them to Rhino and waited. “Does that change your mind?”

  “You’ve been busy.” He flipped through the sheets, then touched a few keys on his laptop. “Let’s see ... logged in as Aiden?”

  There went any chance of ever getting in again. I hoped I wouldn’t need to, but it was hard to tell.

  “You’re not going to give this up, are you?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  Rhino gave the papers a shake, then, to my surprise, handed them back to me. They crinkled in my grip, and I shoved them back into my bag, not caring that they crumpled.

  “You’re serious,” he said.

  I nodded.

  Rhino glanced at Gavin. “And you?”

  “Unless …” Gavin began.

  Rhino shook his head, and to my relief, Gavin nodded.

  “You know what this means?” Rhino began. The words hung in the air.

  It means what? I wondered. That we couldn’t be friends anymore? But were we now? I’d already lost the Rhino I’d thought I knew. I could sacrifice this one. Take one for the team. Elle would be proud.

  I nodded one last time.

  “All right. You win.” He sat in his chair and leaned back. “What do you need me to do?”

  Chapter 23

  FRIDAY MORNING, I left homeroom with only minutes to spare, a hall pass from Mr. Moore clutched in my hand. I went straight to the gym and staked out a spot on the first row of bleachers near the podium.

  Rhino had rigged the laptop so a single click would take us from football highlights to the wiki. Gavin and I had practiced handing off the microphone.

  The bell rang and students wandered in for the last pep rally of the football season. I stared straight ahead, not daring to catch anyone’s eye. Soon the gym was packed. The band played. Principal Miller talked about something—school spirit, I think. At last, she cleared her throat and said, “And speaking of spirit, please give a big Trojan welcome to your quarterback and football team captain, Gavin Madison.”

  Everyone clapped and a few people called out, “Mad Dog!” When Gavin stood up, I panicked. I was no longer sure I could do it.

  He must have been reading my mind. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to lull them with boredom.” Then he walked to the podium, hit a key on the laptop, and his slide presentation appeared on the screen behind him.

  My mouth dropped open. The first slide was titled “Beginnings” and beneath that was a photo from the third grade youth football league. That photo included me, number twenty-three. I was also in the next two pictures. I shot a look at Gavin, but he was staring into the crowd. He seemed to pick out one person, then another, daring them to hold his gaze.

  He gave the clicker a little shake. “Excuse me. It looks like we have a slight technical difficulty,” he said. “Hang on. It’ll only take a second.”

  That was my cue. Gavin aimed the remote at the screen again. It switched from his presentation to a sample of the wiki. I’d compiled a “worst of the worst” from the comments I’d read over the past month and sent them to Rhino. He’d promised he could make all the names anonymous. My heart was beating so hard that it hurt, but I stood, took the microphone from Gavin, and turned toward the screen.

  There it was, The Hotties of Troy, in all its Neanderthal glory.

  Murmurs rippled through the audience as they realized we had left football territory behind. Someone said, “What the hell?” A wave of whispers flooded the gym. It didn’t start receding until understanding had settled over most everyone in the bleachers.

  “Some of you know what this is,” I said above the dying noise. And, yeah, my voice shook, but only at first. “Some of you have probably heard about it, or at least heard rumors of it. Maybe you wondered if it was true, if it really existed. It does. Let me introduce you to The Hotties of Troy. It’s like Wikipedia, only all the pages are about girls right here at Olympia High." I scrolled so the screen contained only posts and comments, then picked up the laser pointer Gavin had positioned next to the laptop.

  "There are a lot of words up there,” I said. I turned the pointer on, and highlighted a few:

  Muffin Top.

  Dog Face.

  Bitch.

  Dyke.

  Whore.

  There were others, but I couldn’t bring myself to highlight them. Just knowing they were on the screen made my face burn as red as the laser’s tip.

  “Like I said, so many words. And each one was written by a boy in this gym. By those same boys that we used to play with at recess.” Or on the football field, I thought. “They were written by boys we sit next to in classes and work beside at jobs, by the same guys we thought we knew our whole lives.”

  At the moment, those guys were looking toward the ceiling, or at the doors and windows, as if desperately seeking some method of escape. Good. They deserved to squirm.

  “Just because someone wears a sports bra instead of a jockstrap, it doesn’t make her any less of a person.” I paused, just for a second. They were still squirming. I still had everyone’s attention. I tried not to rush, but fear that someone—a teacher, Principal Miller, even one of the boys—might try to stop me had the wor
ds pouring from my mouth.

  “It doesn’t give anyone the right to talk about her like she’s some kind of product you can buy or reject in a store. And it certainly doesn’t give anyone the right to pass on things she might have shared or done with you privately, in a moment of trust.”

  I looked up into the stands again, this time to find Rhino. In a show of male solidarity he’d chosen to sit with the baseball team today. Unlike the rest of the players, though, he refused to look away. Instead, he was staring straight through me. Okay, if that was how he wanted it …

  “Someone once told me that right and wrong only have meaning because we say they do,” I said. “I think he was both right and wrong about that. Like him, you might think the wiki was okay because, for a while, the girls didn’t even know these words existed. But you knew. And maybe you thought about us differently because of it. Those words took away all chance of a real relationship between us. Because there’s nothing honest about saying things behind someone’s back.”

  I drew in a breath and shook my head. “Some crazy things happened because of the words on the wiki. First, all the girls got mad about it, but then we got together. We made new friends; we joined clubs.” I glanced at Jason, in his seat beside Rhino. “We danced with guys we’d normally never even speak to. Those words caused all of that.”

  The gym was so quiet, I was afraid to shift my feet or readjust the microphone. If I did, whatever spell everyone was under might shatter. “For a while I thought the good they caused might be worth all of the rest, but words can hurt too. I think we’ve all seen that this week.”

  Jason’s face, and Rhino’s, and all those around them, blurred when tears came to my eyes. I blinked them away and sniffed. “I wish we could have the good without the bad, but I don’t think that’s possible any more. It’s not up to me, though.” I paused again. “I can make sure these words go away. Or I can give the information I have to Principal Miller, and I’m certain she’ll make sure no one sees them again except for maybe our parents.”

  Principal Miller nodded from her seat at the side of the bleachers and a groan spread through the crowd.

  I thought for sure the pulse in my throat would choke me, but my voice had a will of its own. “But even if she does that, the wiki, and all the harm it does, will still live on if we refuse to believe that words have power. They have the power to hurt. They have the power to heal. It’s your choice.”