The Nerdy and the Dirty

by B. T. Gottfred

  As I’m feeling all this and thinking all this, I see Paul. My Paul. As soon as I see him, with his black leather jacket, with his dimples and his sexy stubble—no other boy gets stubble like Paul—I start to remember that I love him. It was a lot easier telling Paul about my freakiness when I forgot I cared what he thought.

  * * *

  Paul’s family moved to Riverbend in eighth grade.

  Up until the end of seventh grade, I was a dork. All my friends were dorks too.… Listen, I never called them dorks then and I have never called them dorks outside my own head since. I was so awkward when I was a kid I’m shocked I could walk in a straight line. See, I’ve had this big jagged scar down my left cheek since basically forever. It’s fucking ugly. Really. I might have been beautiful if it wasn’t for this goddamn scar. But whatever. I’m trying to say I don’t judge dorks because I get what it means to be a dork. I just felt uncomfortable in my own skin, blah, blah, blah …

  Forget it. The point was that I wasn’t part of the popular crowd. I got good grades, cared what teachers thought, that sort of stuff. I knew it was all stupid, even then, but I didn’t know what else to do with my time.

  My social life, my life really, was forever changed when for Christmas in seventh grade I asked for a bunch of new clothes. I changed my whole wardrobe. I stopped wearing baggy things or dumpy blue jeans or all that bright crap from Old Navy I’d wear all the time. I wanted to wear black. Tight and black. I’d seen this singer girl from Germany with this look on YouTube and I just knew that was what I wanted to be. To look like. My mom hated buying it for me, but she still bought it for me because my mom likes to bitch about doing something and then do it for you and then tell you how great she is for doing it for you. I don’t want to get into Mom’s problems now. It stresses me out. Let me concentrate on explaining the Paul situation because that might be seconds away from blowing up in my face.

  So in seventh grade, when I showed up to school in January dressed with my high-heeled black boots and my black jeans and my black sweater and black bra, everybody was like, “Whoa.” Nobody said that, but I could tell they were thinking that. All my friends, my dork friends, thought I was playing dress-up, but I knew this was the real me. The permanent me. Because suddenly I wasn’t uncomfortable in my own skin like them. And then after a few weeks, the popular kids started to talk to me. Not often, but I could tell there was a difference.

  It wasn’t until the summer that Iris, one of the cool girls, started texting me. Then calling me. Then shopping with me. Turns out Iris was super nice. Really. Funny how you always think people that aren’t your friends are jerks but then they become your friends and then they are awesome. Iris and I became best friends that summer. She’s still my best friend. Iris is blond, with long legs, and very pretty. But she totally wastes being pretty because she never once has liked a boy. She’s not a snob about it. I think she may be afraid of sex. Her mom died when she was a kid and that probably screwed her up. My mom screwed me up by staying alive. Shit. No more talking about my mom. Really this time.

  So Iris got me invited to Stacy Ashton’s birthday party right before eighth grade started. Stacy was the queen in junior high. She got huge boobs before anyone and her parents lived in the rich Covered Bridges section of Riverbend. She was also a super-big bitch. Always knew how to insult somebody faster than anyone else. It’s scary how good she is at insulting people. She’s still the queen in eleventh grade, sort of, but she got fat last year and there’s a big difference between a hot chick with big boobs being a bitch and a fat girl being a bitch.

  So that’s where I met Paul for the first time. At Stacy Ashton’s birthday party right before eighth grade. As soon as I saw him, I fell in love with him. My whole body vibrated. Those dimples and flawless olive skin. Thick black hair, bright white teeth. Loud with his guy friends, but soft around the girls at the party. I never wanted something more in my life. Nothing. The weirdest thing? I got him. Like right away. That night. People made fun of us because we dressed the same. Twins almost. Except I didn’t have a black leather jacket yet. But twins besides that. We started talking and he was so nice. He can yell and get bossy sometimes, but he’s almost always nice to me. Like I said before, he has never once talked about my scar. Not once. Three years. Sometimes I think it’s weird he hasn’t talked about it, actually. But I never bring it up to him because, if somehow his brain can’t see it on my face, I don’t want my talking about it to change anything.

  Eventually, on the night we met, we went upstairs to Mr. Ashton’s home office and closed the door and he kissed me. That was my first kiss. Shit. Greatest moment of my life. So, yeah, I fell in love with Paul that night. At first sight. It happens.

  * * *

  So three years later, a lot of other stuff went down in school and life, but Paul and I are still together. Nobody in school can imagine us not being together. I can’t imagine breathing without him. So as I see him standing there with Joey and Miller, near Iris and Stacy, I start to have a panic attack. I can’t—I CAN’T!—tell him that I masturbate every day and that I think Catholicism is bullshit and all the other real stuff I think and feel. I just can’t … because seeing him makes me feel so connected to him, which makes me feel less connected to me. And feeling less connected to me makes me feel less super powerful. Instead I feel vulnerable. Like I could break into pieces if I say even a single word. Suddenly my whole revelation starts to scramble in my head. It’s not profound or life changing at all anymore. Instead it’s like this disease I need to get out of my head as fast as I can before it destroys me.

  So that’s that. I’m not going to tell Paul what I really think. It will just hurt him or confuse him. I don’t want to hurt someone I love. Above all, I don’t want to lose him. But if I can’t tell Paul, I can’t tell anyone. And not telling anyone just makes me more fake than ever.

  * * *

  “Hey, babe,” Paul says to me as I hug him. He kisses me on the temple. It’s all the same. Nothing’s changed. It feels comfortable. Okay. Cool. I guess. And I am standing there with my friends, with Paul’s arm around my shoulder, and we are talking about nothing, which is what we always talk about.

  And that’s when I see Robert and Benedict walking down the hall. Robert and Benedict are my old dork friends from junior high. Well, Robert was. Nobody has ever been friends with Benedict except Robert. They’re walking and I know Robert has this crush on me and I want to be nice, so I wave hi as Robert waves hi to me.

  Except then Stacy, shooing them with her left hand, and in her bitchiest way possible, says, “Move on, Scarecrow and Tin Man, nothing to see here,” and Robert is just crushed. He drops his chin to his chest, closes his eyes, and probably fights back tears as he races off down the hall. I want to tell off Stacy. I can be real with her. I can start there. Maybe I never tell Paul what I really think, but I can tell Stacy. It’s not like I’d care if Stacy stops being my friend. She’s told me fifty times how I should get plastic surgery to fix my face.

  But before I can say anything or decide not to say anything, we all notice that even though Robert has run off, Benedict has stopped. And now he’s staring down Stacy. Fucking Benedict. The kid is so weird. Calling Robert “Scarecrow” was mean and didn’t make sense. But even though I never would have said it, calling Benedict “Tin Man” is not entirely inaccurate. The boy talks and acts like a robot. A super-smart and super-super-weird robot.

  “What are you LOOKING AT?” Stacy says, saliva specks landing on Benedict’s face as she steps right up into him. But he doesn’t say anything or move. And she looks pretty stupid. She’s short, and chubby now, breathing hard, her hands shaking at her side. All the while Benedict—despite being a robot or maybe because he’s a robot—stands there, still, so still, and tall and confident. He might be delusional, but he is sure as shit confident in whatever delusions he’s telling himself. Stacy yells again, “Leave, you loser!” Paul tries to reach out and pull Stacy back, but she shakes him off and waves her f
inger in Benedict’s face. Stacy then yells, “You’re such a freak!” And she laughs. Yeah. Really. Joey and Miller laugh too. Paul tries not to. I don’t. Iris doesn’t. But still, I feel bad for Benedict. He doesn’t show any emotion because he’s a robot, but somewhere inside he has to feel something, right? Worried Stacy is going to keep pummeling him into oblivion with her acid mouth, I take one step forward. Maybe to say something. I never say anything, so maybe just to stand between them. I don’t know.

  But then, before I can do anything, Benedict says, “Stacy, I am sorry you are now fat and will probably be fat the rest of your life, but after high school, you will have to learn to be nice because nobody will be friends with a mean fat person.” Then he leaves.

  Holy—

  Stacy explodes into tears. No way can she breathe with how much snot is flying out of her face. She runs off to the girls’ bathroom. Iris runs after her because she and Stacy have been friends since they were born. (Iris still calls Stacy her best friend, which makes me jealous if I’m being real.) Once Stacy and Benedict are both gone, Joey and Miller laugh again, though this time they are laughing at Stacy, not with her. Assholes always, I guess. Paul hits them both, not hard, but enough to stop them from laughing. I don’t know what to do. Should I go to the bathroom and console Stacy? The fact is, she was a bitch and deserved, sort of, what Benedict said. Part of me wants to go make sure Robert is okay. But mostly I just want to do nothing because that’s the easiest thing to do.

  Then Paul, raising up his chest, says, “We have to beat the crap out of that Benedict kid now.”

  7

  BENEDICT MAXIMUS PENDLETON

  Robert was crying like a little boy as I drove him home from school. Normally I would have told him to stop acting like a child, but I’ve been working on being more sympathetic to people who have emotions. I have emotions too. To clarify: I am working on being more sympathetic to people who can’t control their emotions. Obviously, I can control them.

  Thus I stated, “Robert, it’s okay that you are sad that Stacy Ashton insulted us. But can you please not wipe your boogers on my seats?” I shouldn’t have said that about the car seats. It’s just that I like to keep my car clean. It’s a white Lexus GS 350. It’s a very nice car. It costs fifty-five thousand dollars. I didn’t pay for it. Obviously. I’m only sixteen. My dad bought it. He’s rich. But I’ll be much richer than him someday.

  * * *

  Evil Benny doesn’t think I will be. Evil Benny says I will never be as good as my dad at anything. He says that anything I do accomplish will only be because of my dad and everything I fail at will be my fault.

  * * *

  “Robert,” I said because I needed to talk, “I don’t care if you wipe your snot and saliva on my car.” I did care, but it was good to lie now. “I only care that you know that you are better than Stacy and Pen and the rest of them.” I thought this was a very nice thing to say. Being a good friend is easy.

  “I don’t want to be better than them,” he said. Hearing him say words was better than him crying, but I wish he had agreed with me. He continued, “I want to be their friend. I want to go to parties. I want to talk to Pen.”

  “What happened to promising to never talk about Pen again?”

  “You brought her up,” Robert said.

  “This is true.” I had made a mistake. I hate making mistakes. I didn’t know how to speak for a moment.

  “Benedict, you’ve been my best friend since fifth grade.” Robert had turned to me. I could tell he wanted me to look at him, but I had to watch the road.

  “Sixth grade. We weren’t best friends until sixth grade.”

  “Okay. Since sixth grade. But I want to have more than just one friend.”

  “Once we have girlfriends, we will.”

  “We will never have girlfriends. We are losers. We are the biggest nerds in school!”

  I did NOT like hearing him talk like this. My face became really hot. It felt like it would melt off my head. I said, and said it with each word very loud and very distinct, “Maybe YOU are a loser, Robert. Maybe YOU will never have a girlfriend. But I am NOT a loser. I will have a girlfriend and you will be so jealous you will want to kill yourself.”

  “No, you won’t. NO, YOU WON’T, BENEDICT! BECAUSE NO ONE LIKES YOU BUT ME! NO ONE! I DON’T EVEN LIKE YOU ANYMORE! I DON’T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND!”

  I stopped the car and screamed. I don’t know how long I screamed. When I stopped, Robert was out of the car. I turned around and found him walking down the sidewalk. It was cold outside. I should drive him home. No, I shouldn’t. I can’t. Obviously. Robert and I are no longer friends. It’s for the best. He was becoming less and less smart by the minute.

  * * *

  Evil Benny said I would never have a friend again. He said that no one else would ever like me. I knew this wasn’t true, but Robert wasn’t there to talk to, so Evil Benny had no one to interrupt him.

  8

  pen

  “Yeah,” Joey and Miller both say, nodding, agreeing with Paul.

  “Huh?” I say, because my brain needs to hear him say it again.

  “We got to beat him up, babe. He insulted Stacy,” Paul says.

  “She insulted him first.” My voice is like a whisper. My whole life is like a whisper.

  “She’s our friend and what she said was just normal Stacy stuff. That Benedict kid said stuff you just can’t say.”

  “You’re not beating him up, Paul,” I say. Shit. I never tell him what to do or not to do. You know. I always do my passive thing. He doesn’t know how to react. It takes a moment, like he has to think twice to make sure he heard me right.

  “Babe, you can’t talk to me like that.”

  I, uh … I don’t know how to get out of this. It’s not like Paul is threatening me. He just isn’t used to me saying anything. I had been the nicest girl he ever met. Or at least pretended to be. And now I’m telling him off. Just a little.

  “Babe?”

  “Benedict is … he’s…” I start, and then I just have to say it. “He’s not like us.”

  “Of course he’s not, Pen!” Joey says. “He’s one of the smartest kids in school!”

  “I meant he’s different, like, he doesn’t know how to talk to people. He’s school smart but he’s not, like, interpersonal smart,” I say. I shouldn’t have used the word “interpersonal.” They won’t know what it means. I barely know what it means.

  “Interpersonal? What the fuck does that mean?” Paul says.

  “You know Steve Jobs? The guy who started Apple?” I say.

  “Yeah?” they all say, with no clue where I’m going with this. I don’t really have one either.

  “Well, he was super smart, right?”

  “Yeah,” they all say again.

  “Nobody talks about it, but he also didn’t really know how to deal with people. If you read that book about Steve Jobs and you see what a jerk he was, you’d know he couldn’t really help it because his brain was just different from the rest of ours.”

  “You don’t read books,” Paul says, so sure of himself.

  “I don’t read schoolbooks,” I say. Shit. All three of them are looking at me like I’m a freak, which I guess I wanted. No, I didn’t. I wanted to tell them I was a freak, but then I wanted for them to tell me their freak things and then for us all to be freaks together. But that was never going to happen. I’m the only freak. I should just be quiet like I always am.

  “The book said he wasn’t interpersonal smart? The guy who like created the computer and the smartphone?” Miller asks. Paul is too mad at me to speak.

  “No, the book didn’t say it, but I think I’m right. And maybe he created those things because he didn’t know how to communicate normally like us. I don’t know. Look, I just think Benedict has a hard time understanding how to talk to people. So I don’t think you should beat somebody up for saying something he doesn’t even know he’s saying.”

  None of them say anything for a momen
t. I was this small, quiet girl who never said anything but “hi” and “cool” and “yeah” and now I had said more in the last twenty seconds than maybe ever. Not really. But it must have felt like it the way all three of them are looking at me. Especially Paul, who is breathing fast. Hyperventilating maybe. Except he’s pretending he’s calm, which makes his eyes bulge.

  So Paul finally says, “Why are you talking like this?”

  “Yeah, you are freaky,” Joey says. He said freaky. It’s out there now.

  Paul gets very stiff except for his breathing. His neck muscles shake. He stares at me without blinking those huge eyes. He says, “Do you have secret opinions about everything, babe? Do you have secret opinions about me?” I say this one thing about Benedict and Steve Jobs and it’s like I chopped his legs off. I should never say anything real ever again. And definitely not anything real to Paul or anyone I care about.

  “No, baby,” I say, “I just don’t want you to get into trouble for beating up a kid that doesn’t know better.” Then I wrap my arms around him and squeeze. This soothes him, I think, because he stops looking at me like I’m this alien. Which I am, aren’t I? I’m an alien because I’m not like anyone else I know. And when you’re an alien, you have to pretend you’re not or else all the normal people will kick you off their planet.

  9

  BENEDICT MAXIMUS PENDLETON

  When I got home, I wanted to talk to my dad. He would have great advice. He’s brilliant. I’m not saying that just because he’s my dad. He’s a psychiatrist and an author. He doesn’t have any patients anymore unless you consider the millions of people that have read his books all his patients. That’s how many people think my dad is brilliant. So it’s not just me. His most famous book is called Being a Perfect Person and it describes in detail how one can achieve perfection through thought and action. I have read it fourteen times even though it is a book written for adults. But I’m very mature. Obviously. I’m also very smart. Obviously.