Geek High

by Piper Banks

  “Oh. Well, that’s good. For Dex, I mean,” I said, turning so that Hannah wouldn’t be able to read the disappointment on my face.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said, more kindly than I’d have thought her capable of.

  “It’s no big deal,” I lied. “I’m really tired. I’m going to go to bed. I’ll help you clean up in the morning, okay?”

  I got back to my room and text-messaged Charlie to tell her I wouldn’t be coming over after all. And then I curled up in bed, my arms wrapped around my pillow, trying not to think about Dex, or our zing, or the kiss that wasn’t, or—worst of all—about Dex holding his girlfriend in his arms, and lowering his lips to hers…. No. That I didn’t want to think about, I decided, taking in a deep breath and then puffing out my cheeks as I blew it back out.

  It took me a really, really long time to fall asleep.

  Chapter 23

  If it weren’t bad enough that I was yet again in the position of having fallen for a guy whom I didn’t have even the slightest chance with, I still didn’t have a date for the Snowflake. I knew Felicity had a date; her boyfriend was coming down from Yale for the weekend, and she wouldn’t shut up about it. And even Morgan had Snake.

  At least Charlie and I were in the same boat. The fact that she didn’t have a date, either, made it bearable that I was still going stag.

  “Why don’t we go to the Snowflake together?” I suggested to Charlie over lunch. “It’ll be cool. Who needs guys anyway?”

  “Don’t mind me,” Finn remarked.

  “Come on; it’ll be great. We’re liberated, self-assured women, completely comfortable being on our own. We don’t need boys to have a good time,” I enthused. Finn started to open his mouth, but I cut him off. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  “Sorry, Miranda, but I have a date,” Charlie said apologetically.

  Finn and I both stared at her.

  “You do?” I asked.

  “Who?” Finn asked.

  “Mitch,” Charlie said.

  “Mitch? Mitch from Grounded? When did that happen?” I asked, feeling a bit put out that she hadn’t bothered to mention this momentous news to me.

  “This morning,” Charlie said. “I stopped at the coffee shop on the way to school to grab a muffin, and Mitch was there, and we got to talking, and somehow the conversation turned to the Snowflake, and—long story short—he asked me to go with him.” She finished with a shrug, and took a bite of her ham-and-cheese sandwich.

  “But he doesn’t even go to our school,” Finn said hotly.

  “So?” Charlie asked.

  “So you have to actually be a student here before you can ask someone to the Snowflake. And no offense to Mitch, but I don’t see him getting into Geek High anytime soon,” Finn said. He was glowering at Charlie, and dropped his sandwich on his plate for emphasis.

  “I suppose, technically, I should have been the one to issue the invite, but it doesn’t really matter who asked whom,” Charlie said, reasonably enough.

  “Of course it matters,” Finn said irritably. “In fact, his asking you doesn’t count. It’s not an official date.”

  Now it was our turn to stare at Finn.

  “Who appointed you arbiter of whether a date is ‘official’?” Charlie asked, making bunny fingers around the word official.

  “Me, that’s who,” Finn said. He scowled at her and folded his arms over his chest.

  “Why are you getting so worked up about this?” Charlie asked, her forehead puckering in confusion.

  “I’m not worked up. Look, I have to go,” Finn said. He stood up, tucked his laptop under one arm, and stalked out of the cafeteria.

  “What,” Charlie asked, watching him leave, “was that all about?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I said. Although I thought maybe I did have an idea…just not one Charlie was ready to hear.

  And besides, I had other things to worry about. Like, how I was now probably, in all likelihood, the only person in the entire freaking school who didn’t have a date to the Snowflake. Immediately I had a vision of Dex at the beach, his face flooded with moonlight, standing so close to me that I could see that his eyes were so pale as to almost be gray….

  No, I thought, firmly pushing the image from my mind. I’m through getting crushes on guys I don’t have a shot with. If I’m going to find a date for this stupid dance, I have to start being realistic.

  I glanced around the cafeteria, checking out the male population of Geek High. It was slim pickings. There was Sanjiv (no) sitting with Kyle Carpenter (absolutely not). At the next table, Emmett was sitting with Isaac Hanson (cute enough, but the last I heard he was dating Jena Worth) and Peter Rossi (Felicity’s ex, and annoyingly cocky). Two tables over Marcus Jackson (spits when he talks) was eating lunch with Jonathan Barker (reasonably attractive, if you overlooked the unibrow) and Christopher Frost (incapable of normal conversation). I sighed. I was just going to have to suck it up, pick a guy, and ask him…and then pray that he wouldn’t say no.

  Sanjiv had scheduled the next Mu Alpha Theta practice on the same afternoon that the Ampersand was holding its informational meeting for interested sophomores. Attendance at the meeting was mandatory if you wanted to work on the magazine. And competition for the two spots they held open for sophomores was fierce. The two who made it in would have the best shot of running for editor in chief when the journal held its elections at the end of junior year. Everyone wanted to be EIC of the Ampersand. It won a ton of national awards every year, and was a plum extracurricular to list on your college applications.

  “I can’t stay long,” I told Sanjiv when I got to Mr. Gordon’s room for practice. I figured I’d stick around for thirty minutes, and then head over to the Ampersand meeting. The first Mu Alpha Theta competition was still months away, not until January. It wasn’t like we were down to the wire.

  But Sanjiv looked aggrieved. He pursed his lips and fixed me with a cold stare. His Adam’s apple moved up and down in his thin throat. “The practice is scheduled to run for two hours,” he said. “And as team captain, I have to insist that everyone stays for the entire practice.”

  I folded my arms. “And just exactly when were you named team captain?” I asked.

  “It was decided at the first meeting. The one you missed,” Sanjiv said.

  “He was the only one who wanted the job,” Leila Chang told me.

  “Why? You want to be captain?” Kyle Carpenter asked with a sneer.

  You know, I don’t like Kyle. He’s one of those people who’s incapable of speaking without sounding confrontational. Also, he sneers. It’s his all-purpose expression.

  “No. I don’t want to be captain,” I said irritably.

  “It sounds like you do,” Kyle said. “In fact, it sounds like you want to be in charge of everything. The Snowflake, the Mu Alpha Theta team. What’s next? Headmaster of Geek High?”

  “Oh, no, you’ve uncovered my master plan,” I said. “Today, it’s the Mu Alpha Theta team. Tomorrow, the school. And then, with a little luck and my army of evil robot warriors, I plan to take over the world.”

  Leila Chang and Nicholas Pruitt both sniggered at this. Kyle sneered. Sanjiv pressed his lips together until they were rimmed with white.

  “I just think that everyone on the team should make practice a priority,” Sanjiv said.

  Sanjiv was so tightly wound, it was only a matter of time until he snapped. I truly feared for his future coworkers in the actuarial department at an insurance company. Sanjiv’s goal was actually to be a code breaker at the NSA, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t make it past the psychiatric exam. They’d ask one of those morality questions that don’t have a good answer, like, Your friend tells you he’s planning to kill someone. Do you (a) agree to help him, (b) do it yourself to make sure it gets done correctly, or (c) refuse to kill anyone, but help him bury the body?, and Sanjiv would panic and overthink it, and finally choose (b) do it yourself to make sure it gets done correctly, and
that would be the end of his NSA aspirations.

  “Maybe we should get started with the practice,” Mr. Gordon suggested mildly.

  And so we did. Today we were—at my suggestion—finally doing oral drills. We focused on logic problems, which, to be honest, weren’t that challenging for me, but it was fun to watch Sanjiv twitch and Kyle turn red with fury whenever they came up with the wrong answer, and Mr. Gordon had to gently correct them.

  In the end, we practiced for only an hour, which I had to admit was a reasonable compromise, although I spent the whole time fidgeting and glancing at my watch, desperate for the practice to come to an end. Of course, Sanjiv didn’t want to compromise at all, but Mr. Gordon couldn’t stay any later. The Gordons belonged to a dinner club that met once a month. Tonight was Italian night, and Mr. Gordon had to get home in time to make meatballs.

  When the hour was finally, mercifully up, I threw my books in my knapsack, jumped to my feet, and hurried out the door. Maybe, just maybe, I could catch the tail end of the Ampersand meeting.

  “Bye, everyone. Great practice,” I called out over my shoulder.

  “I’m the team captain. I should be the one who says that,” Sanjiv protested. He paused to clear his throat. “Great practice, everyone!”

  I rolled my eyes and pushed out the door. I was halfway down the hallway when I heard someone calling my name.

  “Miranda! Hey! Miranda, wait up!”

  I spun around. Nicholas Pruitt was hurrying after me, his knapsack cradled it in his arms like a baby. I waited for him to catch up. When he did, his breath was coming in quick gasps. Nicholas hadn’t yet hit his growth spurt, so he barely came up to my shoulder. He was also painfully thin, with narrow shoulders and eyes that were small and bright, like a bird’s.

  I waited for a moment for him to speak, but he just stood there, staring mutely at me.

  “What’s up, Nicholas?” I asked him, trying not to sound impatient. The Ampersand meeting, I thought helplessly.

  But Nicholas just continued to stand there, not saying a word, while his face slowly turned the color of a ripe tomato. I peeked at my watch.

  “I really have to get going,” I said apologetically.

  “Oh…okay. Well. I was just wondering…” He paused and sucked in a deep breath. I stifled the urge to scream with frustration. Why couldn’t he just say what he had to say and let me go to my meeting? “Will you…will you go to the Snowflake with me?” Nicholas finally blurted out.

  It was awful. I just stood there, rooted in place, as the invitation hung there between us. Go to the Snowflake with Nicholas? But…but…he looked like he was about twelve years old. Wait. Was he twelve? I’d assumed he was fourteen, like most freshmen, but it was entirely possible that he’d skipped a few grades somewhere along the way.

  “Um,” I said.

  “It’s just…if you don’t have a date yet…I’d really like it if you could…you know. Go with me,” Nicholas continued. He shifted nervously, and I was distantly aware of how much more painful this was for him. He was experiencing my discomfort times ten. Times a hundred.

  And the thing was…what could I say? If I said no, I already had a date, and then showed up on my own…well, that would hurt his feelings.

  But if I said yes…then I would have to go to the dance, the first real dance of my high school career, with a freshman midget. Okay, so Nicholas wasn’t really a midget, but still, I had a good eight inches on him. If we danced, his head would be level with my chest. Especially if I wore heels.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Your first dance is supposed to be romantic. You’re supposed to go with the sort of guy who makes you feel all tingly and shivery inside. The kind of guy who you’re hoping will kiss you at the end of the night. A guy you have zing with.

  But, then again, I’d been in Nicholas’s shoes every time I stared at Emmett, or fantasized about kissing Dex. I’d been the one who wasn’t noticed. The one who didn’t rate attention. And as much as I didn’t want to go to this dance with Nicholas, I also didn’t want to make him feel like I had when I watched Emmett pick Hannah up for their first date. Or fruitlessly waited for Dex to kiss me on the beach…only to find out later that he had a stunning girlfriend. I didn’t want to be that person, the one who makes someone else feel like they’re less-than just because they don’t look like they walked out of a J. Crew catalog. Because you know what? There are lots of really great people out there in the world who don’t look like models. Funny people, smart people, nice people. And why should they be discriminated against just because they don’t possess the freakish genes that we’ve randomly decided as a society are preferable? What’s so inherently great about a girl who’s six feet tall and has starved herself down to a size two?

  No. I needed to make a stand for Nicholas, a stand for all of the less-than-perfect people out there. A stand for all of the geeks.

  I drew in a deep breath, and then forced myself to smile down at him. “Sure. That would be fun.”

  It clearly wasn’t the response Nicholas had expected. He gaped up at me, while his expression shifted from scared, to hopeful, to, finally, delighted surprise. His face flushed an even darker shade of red, and his brown eyes opened wide.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really,” I said.

  “Wow. That’s just…wow. That is so great,” Nicholas said, breaking out in a wide smile. “So great. I guess it’s a date.”

  It’s a date. Oh, no. What had I just agreed to? I was going on a date with a freshman midget. It was true…I was really never going to be that girl. The movie girl. The one who shakes out her hair, and loses the clunky glasses, and gets the cute guy. Instead, I was going to be the girl who went to the geek prom with a guy who looked like he was still a good three to four years away from hitting puberty. This was actually my life.

  “It’s a date,” I repeated faintly. Then I shook my head and remembered: the Ampersand meeting. “I’m sorry, but I really have to run.”

  “Okay, sure. Talk to you later,” Nicholas said, still grinning broadly.

  I turned and ran down the hall…but it was too late. By the time I got to the Ampersand office it was empty and dark, and the door was locked. I’d missed the meeting. There went any hope I’d had of being on the magazine staff this year. I leaned forward, pressing my head against the glass panel insert on the door. It felt cool against my hot forehead.

  Great, I thought. That’s just great.

  Chapter 24

  It was the annual fund-raising picnic for Great Greys, and—true to his word—Dad drove Willow and me down to West Palm Beach to attend the festivities. The event was over an hour away, so we left early and got to the park just as it was starting. Several tents were set up in and among the flower beds, shade trees, and fountains shooting jets of water into the air. There were greyhounds everywhere—walking on leads, lying down in the sun, dressed up in costumes. I had Willow’s and my Calvin and Hobbes costumes for the competition stashed in a bag, and planned to change just before the judging started. As pleased as I was with how our costumes had turned out, I didn’t want to have to spend the entire day dressed like Calvin.

  “So what should we do first?” my dad asked. “Head over to the silent auction, or check out the food?”

  “The silent auction,” I decided. “They always have a ton of greyhound gear there, and Willow really needs a new leash.”

  I lifted her old nylon leash to show him. It had once been pink, but was now a decidedly gray shade with fraying ends.

  “The auction it is,” Dad said.

  We headed over to the silent-auction tent. Items up for auction were arranged on long, rectangular folding tables. A clipboard had been placed in front of each lot, where interested browsers could write down their bids. The auction closed at noon, and whoever had the highest offer on the list at that time won. I’d learned from past experience that there were some ruthless snipers out there, people who ran around at the very last minute and ou
tbid everyone else. So for now, I was content to browse the merchandise, looking at the various leashes up for auction. I quickly settled on the one I wanted—a gorgeous martingale leash made of soft red leather. I held it up to Willow’s neck, and it looked stunning against her brindle coat. Willow didn’t seem overly impressed. She just yawned and then began to pant, her wide pink tongue lolling out of her open mouth.

  “This is the one I want,” I said, showing it to my dad.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “Shall we write down a bid?”

  I shook my head. “Not this early. Someone will just one-up us.”

  “That’s the whole point of an auction,” Dad said. He picked the pen up, and with a flourish wrote down a number that was twenty dollars higher than the one above it.

  “Dad, that’s too much!” I said.

  “It’s a fund-raiser. The money’s going for a good cause,” Dad said.

  “Oh…well, thanks,” I said. “It’s nice of you to support the group.”

  “It’s important to you,” Dad said, capping the pen and putting it back down on the table. “That makes it important to me, too.”

  Was that really true? I wondered. Or was he still just feeling guilty over how distant he’d been in recent years?

  Then again, he had come to the fund-raiser with me.

  He’s trying, I thought. Maybe people really can change. Or, at least, change back into who they used to be.

  “You know, the last few years there’s been a woman here who sells doughnuts. She fries them right there in front of you, and they’re amazing. Do you want to try one?” I asked.

  My dad smiled at me. “I would love a freshly fried doughnut. Lead the way.”

  We found the doughnut seller in the food tent. I ordered a powdered sugar, while my dad got a plain one, sprinkled with cinnamon.