The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

by Alexandra Robbins

  Chapter 5

  IT’S GOOD TO BE THE CAFETERIA FRINGE

  NOAH, PENNSYLVANIA | THE BAND GEEK

  The hotel wake-up call rang ten minutes before midnight, less than three hours after Noah had fallen asleep. The boy nearest the phone missed the receiver in the darkness, accidentally knocking someone’s glasses to the floor. Noah and his roommates groggily put on their uniforms and wished each other luck.

  At about 3 A.M., Noah steered the golf cart taxi into Herald Square for the single on-site rehearsal. Afterward he drove his friend Jiang through the New York City streets to the Hard Rock Cafe, where the band was to eat breakfast. For kicks, Noah stopped six inches away from a parked BMW, laughing about the juxtaposition of a luxury vehicle with a foam-covered golf cart.

  At dawn, the band unpacked the instruments. When Noah maneuvered the taxi around the floats toward the Mary’s Thanksgiving Day Parade loading zone, students in other bands cheered. I am not going to let Redsen down, Noah thought. I want this to be the best day of my life. Two police officers jokingly asked Noah for his license and registration.

  Finally, the parade began. As Noah drove through the streets in the middle of the band, he smiled and waved at people lining the sidewalks. Someone threw a ball of confetti at Noah, who swatted it to bystanders’ applause. A band parent walking behind the taxi warned him to keep his eyes on the road. For more than an hour, Noah drove on. He heard a parent ask another where Jiang was marching. Noah turned to answer, “With percussion.”

  “NOAH!” several parents shouted. His taxi bumped a flutist, who stumbled. Noah heard what to him sounded like a sickening crunch as the parade spectators gasped. The flutist righted herself and kept marching, but Noah felt nauseous. I just ruined the entire Macy’s Parade, he thought.

  “Can you look at the damage?” Noah croaked to the band manager who walked beside the taxi.

  “No, Noah. Just keep moving on.”

  Noah kept driving. Finally they reached the “Quiet Zone,” adjacent to the telecast area. Noah inspected the taxi, saw no obvious damage that would show on TV, and exhaled in relief. He heard the tapping of the drums, pulled into position, tipped his cap to 45 million television viewers, and sped off, grinning widely. Noah dropped off the performer at her designated spot. He drove to the front of the band alongside the Honor Guards and looped around them.

  As he proudly watched his band, he almost forgot to drive into his final position. He raced into the center of the formation to squeeze into the same rapidly narrowing space that had caused him to crash in practice. He could feel the foam of the taxi brush against a saxophonist’s uniformed leg. Noah ignored the friction and drove toward the gap, where trumpeters and saxophonists were marching toward each other. Hundreds of days of counting down, months of afterschool and weekend practices, rehearsals at band camp, run-throughs at football games, run-ins with athletes . . . all came down to this flash of time, in which Noah zipped into his spot just before the marchers met and colorful streamers exploded around him in a revelry that echoed the exhilaration in his heart.

  BLUE, HAWAII | THE GAMER

  At the top of the street not far behind his home, Blue longboarded in the moonlight, which was bright at two in the morning. Back and forth, he carved across the pavement. He preferred longboarding to skateboarding. While skateboarding was raw and harsh, longboarding had more of a graceful flow, an emphasis on balance and poise. Back and forth, back and forth. He was getting better at skating, and he was teaching himself a new artistic freestyle. It was like a dance, or an ice-skating routine, a sinuous glide that combined drifting, bombing, pumping, and technicals. It was beautiful. The steep hill was about a mile long, but Blue could make one run last an entire hour. Besides a touch of bravery, carving down this hill took little thought. He could empty his mind of matter, letting the repetitious sound of the board calm him. He had been longboarding regularly since he was nine.

  This semester, he visited the hill late at night when he felt depressed, which was about twice a month. Nothing seemed to be going right. Blue had few people he could talk to about his feelings. He was still friends with Ty, Stewart, and Jackson, but he questioned the strength of their friendship, especially because they still participated in Arwing.

  After school, Blue had gone to the teacher’s lounge to microwave a snack. Mr. Pakaki happened to be there.

  “Hey, are you coming camping with us?” he asked Blue. Blue hadn’t done anything with Arwing since the group had edged him out.

  “Yeahhh, no,” Blue said.

  “You drive me crazy sometimes,” Pakaki said. “I know me and you never agreed on anything and your views are different, but without you the club is different. Herman doesn’t really do anything. He’s not like you.”

  No kidding, Blue thought. “Really, now,” he said, leaning casually against the door frame.

  Pakaki looked sheepish. “You know, we’re planning this event against other schools. It’s a lot like what you wanted to do. We could really use your help.”

  Blue had heard about this event, an interschool Madden tournament that wasn’t remotely like the LAN party Blue had planned. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Wait—” Pakaki called out before Blue could leave. “Are you mad at me or something? You seem different.”

  “No, I’m fine. Seriously. See you,” said Blue, who walked out of the room feeling as if he’d had a conversation with a junior high ex. He wasn’t going camping.

  With one week left to go in the quarter, Blue still hadn’t begun his makeup work. He tried, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had learned that his mother couldn’t force him into the military without his consent. But he was now paralyzed by her constant reminders that he wouldn’t graduate if he didn’t pass every class.

  He had IMed Jackson to ask for motivation. Jackson hadn’t been nice to him lately, going so far as to tell Blue that he was naïve about Nate, that Nate was a jerk, even though Blue was still infatuated with him. Instead of motivating Blue, Jackson forgot to meet him when he said he would, laughed when Arwing members broke Blue’s drumset, and generally drifted into Blue’s life only when he needed something. Often this involved gaming. Blue’s gaming team expected him to play in Modern Warfare 2 tournaments every day over Christmas weekend. He barely ever saw his friends in person anymore and he learned that they criticized his gaming skills behind his back.

  Blue’s days grew monotonous. After school he went to the mall alone, where he played one game of DrumMania before going home. Gaming was one of the few things that made him feel better about his life. He relished having control over a world, even if it wasn’t his own. “I lack determination towards school because I’ve been feeling hopeless,” he explained. “So instead I turn to things like video games, like ‘Let’s see if we can do this right.’ And then I do and I feel better.”

  On days when he did manage to finish his homework, Blue felt he had accomplished a noteworthy feat. The next day, he would come home ready to complete his new assignments straightaway, but then his mother would yell at him for something or other, crushing his eagerness to be on task. So tonight, like many recent nights, with his homework unfinished and his motivation shot, instead of staying up late to work, he went skating. Back and forth, back and forth. His mind cleared, glazing over his troubles to languidly ponder more positive things. Gaming. Manga. Cars. By the time he reached the bottom of the hill, he would be able to go to sleep.

  After school the next day, Blue walked into his guidance counselor’s office, bracing himself for news that he might not graduate. The AP Language class structure confused him. The teacher assigned a few practice AP essays each week, and gave one test at the end of the quarter. She had told the students she expected them to take notes on her lectures, which Blue hadn’t done because he hadn’t seen his classmates taking notes. He got As on most of the essays, then learned they didn’t count toward his grade. He was shocked when one day the teacher asked to see the students’ no
tebooks, and everyone else produced pages apparently written at home.

  “What’s up?” the counselor said.

  “Uh, I think I failed AP Lang.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Well, I asked to be transferred into normal lang last quarter.” He told her why he didn’t like the AP class.

  “Okay . . .”

  “So what happens if I fail this quarter?” Blue asked.

  “Well, you’re just going to have to bust your ass next quarter then,” Ms. Pierce answered.

  Blue paused. Something wasn’t adding up. “Wait . . . what? Wouldn’t I be missing a half credit?”

  “No, you get the credits at the end of the year. We average your two semester grades.”

  Blue’s mind was blown. The panic that had swirled his thoughts, immobilizing him for weeks, was based on a fallacy. As he digested the counselor’s words, he breathed, “I thought my whole life would be determined by this one stupid quarter. My mom’s been telling me that this entire time.”

  “You thought that the whole time?!” Ms. Pierce asked, astounded.

  That night, Blue decided to buy himself a blank keyboard. He could use a clean slate, a fresh motivation for productivity. A blank keyboard would force him to improve his typing because even if he looked down, the keys would be empty. As Ms. Collins told him so often, he could be disciplined when he wanted to be.

  ONE AFTERNOON, BLUE DROVE Ty and Stewart to the beach. Midday it was too crowded, hot, and overrun with tourists, but by late afternoon, the beach emptied and the air cooled. Ty and Stewart grumbled as Blue led them on a half-mile walk to his favorite spot, a stretch of ocean that was mostly sandbar and shallow for dozens of yards in. The boys floated on their backs in the water, listening to a local band playing on shore.

  When the sun began to set, Blue tapped Ty on the shoulder. “Look out to the horizon.”

  “Wha? Why?”

  “Shut up and look.”

  Exasperated, Ty turned and looked. “Holyyy wowww.”

  “That’s why we walked out this far,” Blue said. The sky faded into blended bands of orange and purple. The water, stilled as if it were watching too, reflected a warm amaranth red. Swimmers in the distance turned to shadow.

  “Blue, I think I’m going to stop making fun of you,” Ty said.

  On the way back to town, as Stewart plodded behind them, complaining about the walk, out of nowhere Ty called out, “So what do we do now, best friend?”

  Did he really just say that? Blue thought, beaming. Nobody’s ever called me that before. He said later, “For so long nobody knew I existed. I felt relieved, like maybe I don’t need to keep thinking of excuses for being subpar anymore.”

  The following week, Ty broke up with a girlfriend who had caused too much drama. He told Blue he wanted to start his life over, beginning with the purchase of an Xbox.

  Blue scanned Ty’s room. It was disgusting. Whenever Blue made a major purchase, he liked to clean his already pristine room so that he could display his new gear in a suitably reverent setting. As Blue surveyed the piles of garbage on the floor and the moldy plates hanging out of desk drawers, he thought he could help his new best friend start with a clean slate, too.

  He turned to Ty. “Can I clean your room?”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I mean, when was the last time you slept in your bed?” Mounds of trash, including petrified food, hid whatever linens lay beneath.

  “Three years ago.”

  “WHAT?!”

  Ty explained that he slept on the living room floor.

  Blue began with cable management, using cable ties to neaten the wires around the computer that he had built for Ty last year. Ty watched Blue, reminiscing about the items that Blue pulled off the desk. After six hours and three giant trash bags, Blue wiped down the desk and shelves with tile cleaner, the only solvent he could find in the house. Now that I’ve finally found someone willing to listen, I can’t wait to teach him stuff, Blue thought. Really, he had already begun. Earlier that week, he had taught Ty how to speedboard—bombing hills and making turns as quickly as possible on a low longboard. Speedboarding was difficult; it involved careful footwork and weight shifting. Ty hoped that accomplishing something scary would boost his confidence with girls.

  Blue rearranged the remaining items on Ty’s desk and set up the Xbox. When he returned the next day to tackle the rest of the room, Ty was inspired to help. Blue swept the carpet, filled six more trash bags with piles from the bed and the floor, changed the linens, and took Ty to a store where he could sell his books and manga. When Blue was finally finished, he vacuumed the room, then flopped on Ty’s bed.

  “Oh my God, Mom, come look what Blue did!” Ty called out.

  When Ty’s mother came in, she gasped. The room looked like a new college dorm, clean and organized. She turned to Blue in amazement. “You did this? For Ty?”

  Blue gave a small smile. Ty left the room.

  “Oh my. I can’t believe this,” she continued. “He’s been stuck in a hard part of his life for a while. This all sort of built up. I’m really happy he has a friend like you.”

  “Don’t worry. I like cleaning,” Blue said. He went to his car to get a controller he had customized for Ty. When he returned, he overheard Ty’s mother say, “He’s an amazing influence on you, you know that?”

  “I know,” Ty said.

  Over the next couple of weeks, Blue taught Ty how to drive stick shift and surf. He showed him his favorite parts of the island, taking him to a new beach every day. Ty leaned on Blue, who was glad to be there for him. Yet something was still missing. It was nice to have a friend to share interests with, but Blue still didn’t feel the connection he craved.

  REGAN, GEORGIA | THE WEIRD GIRL

  Rumors started to swirl among students about Regan’s sexuality. Last year it had been easier to lie to her classes by omission because she didn’t have a steady girlfriend. She worried now that if she came out, students’ blatant homophobia would turn her from an outcast to a victim.

  Regan didn’t care what her colleagues thought of her, which was why she had brought Crystal to the first-day-of-school faculty assembly. But her students were another story. “My relationship with my kids is so wildly important to me; I’d be crushed if anything ruined that rapport,” she said. “A lot of them love and trust me on a level that is very special and beyond the average teacher-student bond. I’m afraid it will be shattered. Then I would be shattered.”

  Regan made a point of not lying, and yet she had been concealing the truth from some of the people she cared about most. “What kind of role model am I if I perpetuate a culture of shame?” she said. When she asked a former administrator if she could be open about her sexuality, the administrator told her not to “flaunt” her private life. “If you were married, it would be different,” the administrator said.

  In the Bible Belt? Not likely. As Regan told Crystal, “I could be fired, or not hired, for being gay. Do you know how hard that makes what I do for a living? I’m so close to so many of these kids, but I can’t tell them or anyone else at school that I’m gay because I could lose my job, the one thing that I’ve worked so hard to get and love above all else. That could be taken away from me in a second because I’m gay. And I feel like I’m the only one, and I have no one to talk to.” By late fall, Regan decided that if anyone at school—teacher or student—asked her about her sexuality, she would tell the truth.

  Her opportunity came quickly. In first period, when Regan was again explaining why the word “faggot” was offensive, a freshman said, “Damn, you always defending gay people. Are you gay?”

  Startled by the bluntness of the question, Regan nodded. The rest of the class followed intently.

  He looked incredulous. “Are you bisexual?” he asked, as if that would make more sense.

  Regan shook her head.

  “You’re really gay?”

  She nodded again. The stu
dents were silent for a moment before erupting. “Duh, why didn’t we figure it out before?!” Various students cited instances in which Regan’s gayness should have been obvious to them. The class was unfazed by her coming out. They were offended only because she had hidden such an important part of her life from them.

  Soon afterward, Regan helped freshmen organize a student performance of spoken word poetry to an audience of four English classes. Regan arranged with the school for Crystal’s band to play a set. The event went fairly well, Regan thought. In third period, however, a student said to Regan, “I just want to let you know that some of your friends are two-faced.”

  “What do you mean?” Regan asked.

  “I heard people talking bad about you at your event.” The girl said that most of the students had enjoyed it, but she overheard two teachers complaining that the event was out of control and that Regan was to blame. They were upset that one of the student poems discussed two boys falling in love and another used “the n-word.” They dragged their classes out of the event before it ended.

  At lunch, an administrator who had not attended the event sternly told Regan that it had been a disaster. She said Regan would not be permitted to organize another similar event at school. Regan was taken aback. She had never been in trouble at school before and didn’t think either poem was explicit or inappropriate. By the end of the day, a rumor ricocheted around the hallways that Regan might be fired.

  The next morning, Regan’s second period students—who had known for weeks that Regan was dating a musician—asked which member of the band was her “S.O.”

  One student whispered to another, “I think it’s the girl.”

  “Is it the girl?” the other asked Regan. “She thinks it’s the girl.”

  Regan paused. The room was quiet. All faces turned toward Regan expectantly. “Yes,” Regan said. “It’s Crystal.”