Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  “Okay, just calm down,” I murmured to myself as I reached into my pocket for my inhaler. “Calm down and focus.” After a quick prayer to my spiritual directors (Woody, Quentin, Martin), I began my slow ascent up The Ramp.

  You know those dreams where you look down and realize you’re buck naked? Yeah, well, that’s how I felt. Once everyone on The Ramp realized that someone Uncool had entered a Cool Zone, all conversations ground to a halt. And it didn’t help things when I tripped on my untied sneaker lace and my arm landed in Debra Resnicoff’s burger and fries.

  “Hey, isn’t that that geek guy from the fountain?” I heard Lola say.

  “Where?” Dylan asked.

  “Right there. Wiping ketchup off his arm.”

  “Omigod. It is,” Dylan replied.

  As I turned to look at them, I saw Dylan quickly bury her head in a magazine.

  I walked over and stood in front of her. “Hi, Dylan,” I said.

  She looked up from the magazine. “Oh, hey, James,” she said, trying to sound surprised but doing a horrible job. “How are you?!” It was a good thing this was a documentary and not a regular movie because the girl couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.

  “It’s Josh,” I corrected. “And I’m okay,” I replied, wiping the last bit of ketchup off my elbow with my finger. Not seeing a napkin anywhere, I stuck it in my mouth.

  “Eww,” Dylan said. “that’s disgusting.”

  From the looks on the other girls’ faces, it seemed they felt the same way. My face was so hot I felt like half of it had melted down my neck, which I’m sure was due to the high altitude of The Ramp rather than nerves or anything like that. “So, uh, it seems that when you wrote your number down the other day, you messed up on a few numbers or something.” I had decided that the best way to approach this was by not accusing her of being a jerk.

  “I did? Huh. How weird,” she said as Lola and Hannah started giggling.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I could feel myself starting to sweat. Definitely the altitude. “Honest mistake, I’m sure. Anyway, even though I then tried every configuration of the numbers that I could come up with, I couldn’t get you.”

  “Okay, listen,” Dylan said. “I talked it over with my friends and my boyfriend this weekend—you do know I’ve been going out with Asher Ellis since sophomore year, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And I don’t think the documentary thing is a good idea, so I’m not going to do it.”

  “What?! Why not?” I tried not to panic, but my voice came out sounding like I was on helium.

  “Well, frankly, I don’t have a problem with it because, you know, everyone’s always saying I’m super photogenic and even if the camera puts fifteen pounds on me I’ll still look okay, but other people”—she looked at Lola—“are worried that because you’re not in the same crowd as us—”

  “Try no crowd,” interjected Lola.

  “—you may be using this as an opportunity to get back at those of us who are cool,” Dylan continued. “Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, kind of like that stupid movie from the eighties that’s always on cable—” Lola said.

  “Revenge of the Nerds,” Hannah finished.

  I couldn’t believe this—I knew Dylan was stuck-up, but I hadn’t realized anyone could be so cruel. Did she not know what it felt like to have a dream? And did she not realize that at this very moment she was in the midst of squashing mine underneath her shoe?

  “Excuse me for one second, please,” I said as I marched to the corner of The Ramp and took out my inhaler. “Stay calm,” I said to myself as I breathed in. All great films hit road bumps on their way to getting made. There was no reason to get worried.

  I marched back. “It’s not my intention to make you look bad,” I assured her. “Like all the best documentaries, it’s going to be really fair and balanced—I swear,” I promised. Great. Now I would have to work extra hard to make sure it was fair and balanced.

  “Yeah, well, I still don’t think it’s a good idea. But thanks for asking,” she said as she picked up the magazine again and started flipping through it.

  Okay, so maybe there was a reason to worry. “But . . . you promised,” I said. I could feel the back of my neck start to itch, which often happened when things didn’t go the way I had written them in the imaginary movie that was continuously playing in my head. According to WebMD, that was one of the main symptoms of seborrheic keratosis, which was a thickening of the skin from age. I really hoped it wasn’t that.

  “Well, now I’m un-promising.” She shrugged without looking up.

  “But . . . you can’t,” I said.

  She looked up. “Oh, really? Why?” she asked, her eyes blazing. Dylan was not someone who was used to being told what she could and couldn’t do.

  I thought about it. “Well . . . because.” Apparently my A’s in English for having such a way with words didn’t translate into conversations with popular people.

  “I think we should ask Asher about this,” she said. “Asher!” she yelled to the table of surfer-looking dudes next to her.

  I reminded myself to keep breathing. While Asher and I were probably around the same weight, he’s about five inches taller than me. He’s got that typical L.A. surfer-dude look—blond hair that’s on the longish side and a year-round tan. Either he was hard of hearing, or he was ignoring her.

  “Asher!” she yelled again.

  “What?” he finally said.

  “Come here for a second,” she ordered.

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to ask you something, babe.”

  My neck was now itching bad. I couldn’t believe this was happening. “But what about my USC application?” I panicked. “I already sent it off with a proposal for the documentary.”

  “Maybe you could just do a documentary about the uncool kids,” suggested Hannah helpfully.

  “Or better yet,” said Dylan, “why don’t you do a documentary about my archenemy? You could call it Girls Who Try and Steal Other Girls’ Boyfriends?” She picked up her fork and jabbed it toward the middle of the cafeteria. “I’m sure some people would just love the attention.”

  I looked over to see what Dylan was scowling at, and it suddenly became even more difficult for me to breathe. Walking—no, swaying—across the cafeteria floor was Amy Loubalu. As she walked toward her table with her hamburger (I loved a girl who wasn’t afraid to eat meat), every guy on The Ramp stared. Including Asher. You’d think that the beautiful/nice combination would have earned Amy a prime seat on The Ramp, but the truth was she didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t meet her until high school, but I heard that she had been one of the most popular girls at Curtis, the junior high she went to. At the start of sophomore year a rumor started going around that Amy was dating a twenty-five-year-old talent agent, which I found hard to believe, and by that summer, her reputation had made it so that her only real friend was Whitney Lewin.

  By now Asher had finished watching the Amy Loubalu show and was standing over Dylan’s shoulder, picking the tomatoes out of her barely touched salad. “What is it?” he asked, annoyed.

  “This is the guy who wants to do a movie based on my life,” Dylan replied.

  Oh, please. That movie had already been done. It was called Clueless.

  “It’s a documentary. About popularity,” I explained.

  “Sounds cool.” He shrugged as he started to walk back to his table.

  “He’s got a lot on his mind,” said Dylan.

  If I were him, I’d be trying to figure out how to break up with her.

  “Listen,” she said. “I just don’t feel comfortable doing this.”

  “But—” I began.

  “But what?” she snapped.

  Here was my chance to stand up for myself. To give the speech the hero in a movie gives where at the end of it there’s applause because he’s touched everyone’s souls, changed their lives, and made them look at life in a different way.

/>   “Nothing,” I said, starting toward the stairs.

  “But I’ll be back,” I whispered. Somehow it didn’t have the same impact as when Arnold said it in The Terminator.

  As I walked back down The Ramp, I tried to hold my head high but it was difficult. It was one thing to wimp out around Amy Loubalu, but it was another to watch my dream of becoming the most acclaimed director of my generation go up in smoke because Dylan Schoenfield had no sense of right or wrong.

  chapter three: dylan

  Random Fact number 210 you should know about me: unless they come in shopping bags that say Fred Segal or Kitson, I’m not big on surprises. In fact, it’s more like the opposite: I prefer routine. For instance, if I open the fridge and see a bunch of Weight Watchers strawberry-banana and key-lime nonfat yogurts rolling around instead of a nice, even row of vanillas (my breakfast every morning for the last two years), I start to get a little anxious.

  So you can imagine how I felt when I got home on Friday at 5:30—after stopping at Fred Segal for a quick jog-through to start scoping out possible dresses for the Fall Fling formal in November (six weeks away, but it’s never too early to start preparing)—and Daddy’s car was in the circular driveway of our Spanish-style house. This was so not part of the routine I was used to. Daddy’s a workaholic and never leaves the office before 8:30, even on Christmas Eve. What was even more weird was that parked right behind his black Jaguar was a beat-up old blue Volvo that not only looked like it hadn’t been through a car wash in years, but had a Neil Diamond bumper sticker on it. In case you don’t know who Neil Diamond is—not that you could be blamed seeing that he’s super old and was popular way back in the seventies—he’s this dorky singer who, from the pictures of him on Daddy’s CDs, is obsessed with sequins and rhinestones.

  Parking my red BMW behind the Volvo, I made my way toward the house. “Hola, José!” I sang. He’s our gardener, who’s married to Marta, our housekeeper.

  He looked up from where he was pruning some roses. “Hola, Miss Dylan,” he yelled back. Our house is on an acre of land—huge for L.A. standards—so José’s a very busy guy.

  I felt very lucky that I was exposed to so many different cultures living in L.A. Between José and Marta, who were from El Salvador, Kathy, my Vietnamese manicurist, and Zora, the Bulgarian woman who waxed my eyebrows, I was one of the most well-rounded people I knew.

  “Daddy?” I yelled as I stashed my Fred Segal bags in the front hall closet. I must have this disease that makes it impossible for me to walk out of a store without buying at least a T-shirt.

  “We’re in the family room,” he yelled back.

  I figured the other half of “we” had to be whoever the Neil Diamond-loving person was. Maybe one of Daddy’s fraternity brothers from Northwestern back in the day who now worked for Greenpeace or one of those other annoying organizations that stalked poor innocent people like myself when all we wanted was to get some frozen yogurt at Pinkberry. Those people always drove beat-up Volvos.

  As I walked into the room, I stopped short. I wish it had been a friend of Daddy’s. It wasn’t—it was none other than that Geek Boy James or Joe or Josh or whatever his name was. The one who got my purse out of the fountain the week before and thought I owed him my firstborn child because of it. I couldn’t believe it—I had already told him I wasn’t interested in doing his dumb movie. What part of no did he not understand? Talk about not letting something go.

  I thought I was going to throw up. Not just because Geek Boy was in my house, but because he and Daddy were sitting on the black suede couch watching a baseball game surrounded by corned-beef and pastrami sandwiches, pickles, knishes, and black-and-white cookies from Nate ’n Al’s, my most favorite delicatessen back before I gave up carbs my freshman year.

  “Hi, honey!” Daddy said through a mouthful of knish. Other than the fact that Daddy was about twenty-five pounds overweight and a few inches taller, he was a dead ringer for the actor Dustin Hoffman.

  “Hi,” I said. I tried not to look at the black-and-white cookies, with their thick, creamy icing. Personally, I think that in addition to the PSA announcements on television about the dangers of drugs, they should also do some about black-and-whites because they’re way more addictive than any drug could ever be. “Um, would someone like to tell me what’s going on here?” I asked as I plopped down on a matching suede club chair and held my breath so I couldn’t smell the cookies and risk triggering a snackcident.

  “I was just telling Josh about Neil’s concert at the Greek back in ’78 while we had a little nosh,” Daddy replied.

  A little? There was enough food on the stone coffee table for a small bar mitzvah.

  As I exhaled, the sweet smell of sugar entered my nose. I quickly reached into my purse and shoved three pieces of gum in my mouth. “I can see that,” I said. “But what is he doing here?”

  “Well, from what I understand, apparently you two had come to an agreement about letting him film you for his documentary and now you’re trying to renege,” Daddy said in his scary I’m-the-Real-Estate-King-of-L.A. voice.

  I looked over at Geek Boy, who was innocently biting into a pickle, and gave him my dirtiest look, the one usually reserved for Amy Loubalu.

  “I wasn’t trying to renege,” I said. “I did renege. I mean, what if he tries to portray me as all spoiled and mean and stuff? We all know that’s so not who I am, but let’s face it—that’s what sells. Just look at reality television.”

  “I told you,” said Geek Boy as he took out that stupid inhaler he always carried around. “That’s not my intention at all. Excuse me just a second.” He squirted it in his mouth. “Asthma,” he explained.

  “My brother is asthmatic!” exclaimed Daddy, as if somehow this made them soul mates.

  “Really? That’s so cool. I mean, not that he suffers from asthma, of course, but just that . . . never mind. Anyway, as I was saying.” He reached into his pocket and took out a wrinkled piece of paper and began to read from it. “‘I just thought it would be interesting to view popularity from a sociological perspective. An anthropological look at the social hierarchy of modern-day high schools. If you go back through the history of film, you’ll see that over the decades—’”

  “Okay, seeing that I haven’t had my afternoon Red Bull, my head’s a little fuzzy, so I’m not even going to pretend to understand what you’re saying,” I replied, turning toward Daddy, who was now chomping away on his triple-decker-corned-beef /chopped-liver sandwich. “Daddy, you know what it’s like to have people write and say mean things about you. Don’t you think I’m doing the right thing?”

  He took a swig of Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda. “No. I don’t,” he said. “Especially since all this kid’s ever wanted was to go to USC film school. Do you know that he works twenty hours a week to help his mother pay the tuition at that school of yours?”

  “What, you want me to go get a job?” I shot back. What was next? Spending the summer volunteering in Africa?

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that Josh here knows the value of a dollar. You know, when I was you kids’ age—”

  “I know, I know,” I cut in. “You and Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Marvin lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Queens—”

  “Marvin’s the one with asthma,” Daddy explained to Geek Boy.

  “—and not only did you have a paper route in the morning, but you worked in a shoe store after school,” I continued. “And you also had to walk a mile in the snow to get there. And you paid your own way through City College.”

  “Exactly. That’s the kind of thing that would give you Beverly Hills kids an ulcer.”

  “Actually, Mr. Schoenfield, I live in Hollywood,” said Geek Boy, who had now moved on to one of the black-and-whites, eating it just the way I used to back in the day—first a bite of the chocolate side, then the vanilla, then the chocolate, and so on. As my stomach started to rumble, I took out another piece of gum and shoved it in my mouth.

&nb
sp; “You do?” I asked. The only time my friends and I went to Hollywood was for the Billion Dollar Babes sample sale. In my book, anything east of La Cienega Boulevard was considered sketchy. Except, of course, for the stretch of Third Street from Orlando to Fairfax with all the cute boutiques.

  “Yeah,” he said. “In Beachwood Canyon. Right down the street from the Hollywood sign.” He fiddled with the inhaler. “I find it very inspirational for my craft, especially since it’s the area where Doug Liman shot the Vince Vaughn and John Favreau movie Swingers in 1996, which is such a terrific example of independent filmmaking on so many levels—”

  Why he thought I would care less about something like that was beyond my comprehension, even if Vince Vaughn was a total hottie. “How nice for you,” I replied. I looked at my watch—it was already six and I was supposed to meet Hannah and Lola at Olympic Spa for body scrubs (run by Koreans—yet more well-roundedness!) at seven. “Listen, I hate to break up this party, but it’s Friday night and I have plans. It was nice seeing you again . . .”

  “Josh.”

  “Josh,” I said, giving him the biggest smile I could muster. “I’m sure I’ll see you around at school. I’ll even say hi to you from now on.” Maybe going the nice route would make him leave me alone. “Have a great weekend,” I said as I started to walk out of the room, stopping to smooth out the Navajo rug that Daddy had bought when we went skiing in New Mexico last year. Frankly, I wasn’t a fan of Southwestern decor, which was how Daddy had had the family room remodeled after a psychic he met on a ski lift that same trip told him he had been a Native American in a past life. But since, as previously mentioned, I didn’t work, I had no say in the matter, according to Daddy.

  “Dylan,” I heard Daddy growl. The growl was never a good sign.

  I turned around and gave him a smile as well. “Yeah?”

  He didn’t smile back. “Get back here, please.”

  I turned around and walked over to the couch, putting my arms around his neck. “Yes, Daddy?” I said as sweetly as I could, trying not to glare at Josh, who was examining a piece of parsley as if he had never seen one before.