Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  “Whoops,” I said, tripping as I made my way up the walkway. I probably could have left the stilettos out of the equation and still made my point about not needing a date to dress up, but it was too late for that. Plus, I never understood why someone would wear something as boring as flats or flip-flops when they could make their legs look even longer with heels.

  “Dylan! Come in, come in,” said Josh’s mom after she answered the door. “You must be freezing to death!”

  “No,” I said through my chattering teeth. “I’m okay.” I stepped inside and tried not to drip too much on the rug. “Is Josh here?”

  “Sure. Josh!” she yelled. “Dylan’s here!” She turned back to me. “He didn’t tell me you were coming by. If I had known I would’ve saved you some of the stuffed eggplant I made from my Introduction to Turkish Cooking class.”

  “He’s not really expecting me—”

  From the surprised look on his face when he walked into the living room, that was definitely the case.

  “What are you doing here?” He took in my outfit. “And what are you wearing?”

  “Sorry to just show up like this, but you didn’t respond to any of my voice mails or texts, so I figured this was the only way to talk to you . . . ”

  “Mrs. Spivakovsky’s dog got ahold of my phone on Wednesday when I was over there and dropped it in his water bowl, so I’ve been phoneless,” he replied.

  “Oh.”

  He sniffed. “What’s that weird smell?” He turned toward his mother. “Mom, do you think once in a while you could make nonethnic food?”

  I held up my arm and sniffed. “I think it’s my wet fake fur. So do you think I can talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure. Come on back to my room.”

  As I started to follow him, Sandy did as well.

  “Um, Mom?” Josh asked when we got to his bedroom.

  She stopped and turned toward her own bedroom. “I’m just going to my room to finish putting away my laundry.”

  “The laundry’s still in the dryer,” Josh replied.

  “Oh. You’re right.” She took my hands in hers. “Okay, I’m not going to eavesdrop, but I just want to say that I’m really glad you’re here, Dylan, and I just know you kids can work out your problems. I’ve been setting that as my intention every time I’ve meditated this week.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I walked into Josh’s room while she continued to stand at the door.

  “Mom?” Josh said again.

  “Okay, okay,” she said as she finally walked away.

  The two of us stood in the middle of the room while I dripped on the rug some more.

  Sandy poked her head in. “Dylan, honey, I thought you might be more comfortable in these,” she said, holding out a pair of yoga pants and a UCLA sweatshirt.

  “Thanks. That would be great,” I said, taking them from her.

  I went into the bathroom and changed. Okay, so maybe I was spending Fall Fling in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, but seeing how the last few weeks had gone, I shouldn’t have been too surprised that things weren’t working out the way I had planned.

  When I came back out, Josh was fiddling with something on his computer, but as I got closer he minimized it before I could see what it was. It felt like more than a week since we’d seen each other. For a second we just stared at each other and said nothing. Actually, we stared at anything but each other. I pointed at his desk. “You got a new inhaler,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but I haven’t had to use it yet,” he replied.

  “That’s great,” I said, before we went back to saying nothing. “So I ran into Amy Loubalu the other day when I was hiding out in the bathroom during lunch.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asked, turning red as he got up from the computer and walked over to his Star Wars action figures.

  “Yeah.”

  More silence.

  “She told me about the other version of the documentary,” I added.

  “She did?” he asked, fiddling with Luke’s light-wand thingie.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Even more silence.

  “She also told me that she called and asked you to Fall Fling but you said that you had to check with me first because we had had plans.”

  He fiddled with Luke some more. “Well, we did,” he replied.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay, so here’s the deal: I owe you a huge apology, Josh. I said some really horrible things, and to be honest, I wouldn’t blame you if you never forgave me, but I hope you will because you’re not a geek—you’re . . . my best friend. And I’d be really, really bummed if you weren’t in my life anymore. I mean, who else am I going to find to sing Neil Diamond songs with other than my dad? And who’s going to give me a play-by-play analysis of every scene of a movie? And who else am I going to meet who knows the contents of WebMD by heart? And who else am I going to call to say ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘I’m cold’ and get a thoughtful response like you always give me? And who’s going to help me write that ‘Best Black-and-White Cookies in L.A.’ blog we talked about a few weeks ago? You might be a total geek sometimes, but like a total geek in the best sense of the word, you know? That supernice, supersweet, supersensitive part of geekdom. And, by the way? I’m a total geek, too, sometimes! Like remember when there was that Disney double feature at the New Beverly—the one with Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians—and I really wanted to go but you said that even you wouldn’t be caught dead watching that stuff on the big screen?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he replied.

  “Well, I didn’t tell you this because I was embarrassed, but I went.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. And I loved it.”

  “Wow. Alone at a Disney double feature. That really is geeky,” he said.

  “So what I’m saying is I’m beyond sorry,” I announced.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And if there’s—wait, that’s it? You’re accepting my apology?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. Why not?”

  I went over and picked up a Harry Potter action figure on a shelf. “Boy. You’re easy. See—that’s another thing I love about you, Josh: how uncomplicated you are.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t accept your apology?” he asked as he walked over and put the figure back in its right spot after I set it back down.

  “No. Not at all. I’m just saying that someone who wasn’t, you know, as mature as you are would make the person suck up to them for a while longer. And that’s another thing I love about you—the way that you don’t believe in wasting time—”

  “You can stop sucking up to me now.”

  “Okay. Great. Thanks. So we’re friends again?”

  He nodded. “You know, it was really hard when you just shut me out, and just wouldn’t respond to my e-mails and calls. But . . . yeah. We’re friends again.”

  I flopped down on his bed. “Thank God that crisis is over.” I sighed.

  “But, Dylan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you get off my bed? Or at least not put your head on my pillow? Your hair’s still wet and I don’t want to catch a cold when I go to sleep.”

  “I know—because your lungs never fully developed because you were born premature,” I said as I stood up. “And now moving on: so Amy’s your crush, huh?”

  He blushed as he started straightening the covers on his bed.

  “I think you two make a cute couple.”

  He stopped and looked at me. “You do? I thought you hated her.”

  I shrugged. “She’s not so bad.” I looked at my watch. It was only nine. “Obviously it’s too late to go to Fall Fling—and since those school-dance things are so lame, why would you even want to?—but maybe you should call her and see if she wants to grab a slice of banana-cream pie at The Apple Pan or something.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  From the way his hand hovered over his inhaler, the idea terrified him. “I
mean, you talked to her on the phone the other day.”

  “But I haven’t spent time with her in person! Doing that would be like . . . a date or something!”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Josh—it’s time. You can do it. I know you can.”

  “You think so?”

  I nodded. “I know so. Plus, she’s already into you!”

  “She is?”

  I rolled my eyes. “She called you and asked you to Fall Fling—how many more neon lights do you need?”

  “Oh. I guess you have a point.”

  I reached for his hand. “Seriously, Josh—you’re, like, a total . . . prince.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  “Thanks,” he said shyly as his face turned as red as the comforter on his bed. He started to reach for his inhaler again, but then thought better of it and stood up straight. It turned out he was pretty tall. “But what are you going to do tonight?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe watch Hannah and Her Sisters, if someone will loan it to me.”

  “I have something even better you might like,” Josh said as he walked over to his computer.

  “Better than Hannah and Her Sisters?” I teased. “I thought you said that was Woody’s last great midcareer masterpiece.”

  He popped a DVD out of his computer and, after carefully placing it in a case, handed it to me. “It is. But this is my first early-career masterpiece. It’s the documentary. The real version.”

  I took it from him and smiled. “Thanks.” I walked over to his closet and picked out a pair of khakis and a sweater from The Gap that not only complemented his eyes but made him look like he had some upper-body strength, and put it down on the bed. “Call me tomorrow and let me know how it goes. Or if you need advice or something in the middle of the date, just call me from the restaurant.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Hey, Dylan?”

  “Yeah?” I said before I left the room.

  He tossed me the inhaler. “You’re my best friend, too.”

  When I got home, I settled into bed with an Everything-but-the-Kitchen-Sink Special, and in between texting Josh through his first date/inhalerless panic whenever Amy got up to go to the ladies’s room, I watched what, in my humble opinion, was an Academy Award-winning documentary. Okay, yes, I had some areas to work on in terms of dealing with people, but hey, nobody’s perfect. And, frankly, who wants to be? If you ask me, perfection is boring. I’d much rather be one of those girls that guys call “complicated.”

  Later, as I turned out the light to go to sleep, I thought about how right that guy on Oprah had been that day when he said that sometimes a crisis really is an opportunity. In this case it had been an opportunity to see that sometimes things weren’t what they looked to be—like Asher, and Amy Loubalu, and, most importantly, Josh. I really had meant it when I told him he was a prince. A bit on the geekier side of princehood, maybe, but definitely a prince.

  By the next week everyone at Castle Heights knew about the geek prince and his new princess, and instead of comments along the lines of “She’s dating him?” everyone was genuinely happy for them. Josh and Amy were inseparable. Actually, the three of us were inseparable. At first I felt like a fifth wheel, but they seemed to really want me to sit with them outside at lunch (my Ramp days were long gone), and because I didn’t have any other friends, it was either that or continue eating in the bathroom. The goofy perma-smiles on their faces may have bordered on nauseating at times, but because they were so sweet (not just to me, but to everyone, because that’s the kind of people they were), I was happy for them rather than jealous. It was weird—even though it had been years since Amy and I had been friends, we picked up right where we had left off and it felt like no time at all had passed. I even started becoming friends with Whitney Lewin, who, it turned out, wasn’t stuck-up at all—just shy. Having her to hang out with came in handy when Josh and Amy wanted to hang out alone.

  Because of an incident at Fall Fling that may or may not have happened concerning Rachel Trebecnik, a bottle of peppermint schnapps she stole from her parents’ liquor cabinet, and Mr. Marino, the boys’ soccer coach, I soon became old news. At first it was weird to fly so low below the radar, but it was also liberating. I mean, I got to do things I never would have done back when I was the most popular girl in school—like wear sweats in public or show up to school with unwashed hair and limited makeup. I only did that twice, because, you know, I’m me, but still . . .

  One of the best things about just being one of the crowd was that I had the time to really get to know myself because I no longer had people trying to get my attention all the time. For instance, I never would’ve found out that I liked singing show tunes if I hadn’t lost everything and had no social life and therefore had nothing better to do than spend three hours on a Saturday in Ari’s car when we all road-tripped down to San Diego to go to the Seventh Annual Ukrainian Film Festival.

  Actually, the day of the Ukrainian Film Festival ended up being a really important one for both Josh and me. Not only was it the day that Josh found out he had gotten early acceptance at USC, but when I turned around at the refreshment stand that afternoon after paying for my popcorn, I bumped smack into Roger and spilled it all over him and now he’s my boyfriend! He’s currently studying molecular biology at UC San Diego, but that’s just to make his parents happy. What he really wants to be is a writer/director, which is why he just got a job at a video store. People might say I’m biased, but I happen to think he’s beyond talented. Like Woody Allen-level talented. The other day he let me read the first ten pages of his new screenplay about a character from a video game who turns into a human and starts killing people, and it’s brilliant. He says it’s because I’m such a powerful muse, which I think is just beyond romantic. And unlike some people, he doesn’t move his lips when he reads. The distance makes it hard, but we’ve been seeing each other every weekend. At the moment he’s still geek-hot rather than hot-hot, but when he comes up on Saturday I’m taking him shopping at The Grove.

  Not that I don’t already adore him just the way he is. But still, you know, I’m me.