A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions (4 page)

“I
say we kill them. I say we rip off their perfect little noses, pluck out their pretty little eyelashes, and feed their earlobes to the birds,” I snarled as we sat in the waiting area out in front of Principal Mazer's office. “And that's just to start!”

“Maybe we should consider turning the other cheek?” Beanpole offered.

I stared in disbelief. “Did you just say, ‘Turn the other cheek'?”

“Yeah, you know, like end this now, before it escalates even further.”

Beanpole shuffled in her seat and did her best not to get any paint smudges on the brown chair. Even after having been demolished by the ThreePees, she remained thoughtful and considerate. Really, I didn't understand the girl at all.

“The only cheek I'm turning is my butt cheek, so they can pucker up and kiss it! I mean, it is ON now. To-ta-lee ON!” I said.

“Yeah,” added Q, with a sinister glint in her eye. “Those witches need to pay.”

“Think about your phone, Beanpole,” I reasoned. “Think about what they did to your brand-new, innocent, never-harmed-a-hair-on-anybody's-head, defenseless little phone.”

Conveniently, she changed the subject. “How're your arms, Alice?”

“Still tingly,” Q replied, gazing down at her left elbow. Though we'd taken showers in the girls' locker room—pretty much a nightmarish experience even when you don't have blue paint speckling your armpits—our bodies still had traces of the art blizzard all over them. “Lucky for me they only used acrylic-based materials. If they'd used oil-based paint, it could have been real trouble.”

I caught a reflection of myself in the glass of the window behind me.

“Jeez Louise, we look like human Picasso puppets. And…
achoo!
I have sparkles in my nostrils.”

“Bless you,” Beanpole said.

“Ooh, we're gonna get those witches,” Q said, flashing her best Wild West gunfighter look. “And I mean good.”

Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp. Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp.

“That thing still works?” I asked, nodding at her inhaler.

“Far as I can tell,” she replied.

I stared for a second. “Open,” I said.

Q opened her mouth.

“Yep, just fine. Aside from the fact that your tongue is neon green, I'd say your scuba tank is just hunky-freakin'-dory.”

Q stuck out her tongue and struggled to see her reflection in the window behind us.

“Ooh, I'm gonna get those witches,” she said. “We are gonna…” Suddenly, she clammed up in midsentence.

I looked up. The ThreePees approached.

Kiki, always in the middle, always up front, stepped forward. “Nice school spirit, ladies,” she said to us in a taunting voice. “Love the clothes. But what made you all decide to wear Aardvark PE outfits today?”

Brattany struggled to contain her giggles.

“For your information, we're nerdvarks,” Beanpole snapped, as if that were really telling her something.

Kiki paused. “Nerdvarks?” She processed the information.

Oh no, I thought. Where in the world had that come from?

“Ha! That's the most pathetic thing I've ever heard,” Kiki said with a laugh.

“We've got to put that in the YouTube title somewhere,” Brattany noted. “Nerdvarks…that's brilliant.”

“Okay, okay, enough of the chitter-chatter.” Mrs. Rumpkin, the roundish, crotchety, looks-kinda-like-a-bulldog school secretary, came over to separate us into two groups before there could be any more hostile interaction. “You girls, over there; you stay here. The principal will be right out.”

The ThreePees didn't exactly hustle over to the spot across the way where the secretary had pointed.

“NOW!” Mrs. Rumpkin snapped. “And I don't want any shenanigans, either, you got me?!”

The ThreePees, not daring to push it with Mrs. Rumpkin—few kids ever did—waggled off to a spot about thirty feet away, on the other side of the office. Mrs. Rumpkin returned to a desk covered with papers and yellow sticky notes and all sorts of school memo things, and scowled, defying either group to interact so she could go all bulldog crazy on us.

None of us risked it. Besides, we'd all be in the principal's office soon enough. Forgetting the ThreePees for a moment, I turned to Beanpole.

“Nerdvarks?” I said. “Why would you give them that kind of ammunition?”

“Because,” Beanpole said as she sat up tall and with pride, “I'm not ashamed to be a nerdvark.” Just then, she realized she was sitting beside a water fountain. Deciding to take a drink, she bowed her head, leaned over, and pressed the button with grace and dignity.

A huge stream of water blasted her in the face. Slowly, she turned back to me, her nose, chin, and cheeks dripping wet.

“We've already talked about this,” she continued, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, even though water droplets were hanging from her nose. “We've just got to come to terms with the fact that we are who we are.” And then, to drive her point home, Beanpole once again straightened her spine and attempted to take the drink she had been unable to take a moment prior.

She leaned forward, pressed the button, and
splash!
got blasted by a huge stream of water for a second time.

She turned to us with a face so wet it looked as if she'd been bobbing for apples.

“I think it's broken.”

“Nawww,” I said. “Ya think?”

Q pulled a few tissues out of her belt holster—why she was wearing that thing on her PE shorts, I had no idea—and handed them to Beanpole.

“Thank you,” Beanpole said as she blotted her face dry. However, when Kleenex gets wet, it sort of sticks to your skin, and a moment later, Beanpole looked up at me with all sorts of white tissue dots stuck to her face.

“What?” she said. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“You realize that you will never have a boyfriend if you keep this up, right? I mean, unless you have a growth spurt and sprout breasts the size of beach balls, you might as well start shopping for cats.”

Beanpole turned to Q. “Is it that bad?”

“Cat pee is my kryptonite,” Q replied.

Just as Q began picking white fuzz off Beanpole's mug, Principal Mazer threw his door open and took a long, hard look at us.

What a sight we must have been. Loaner PE clothes that didn't fit well. Spots of half-washed-off paint and sparkles all over our bodies. One of us with a face that was peppered with dots and dashes of white tissue. And, of course, on the other side of the room sat the ThreePees, perfectly coifed and attired.

Principal Mazer pointed. His message was loud and clear. “Inside. Now!”

Heads down, we marched in, the ThreePees following behind us. Mr. Stone, the vice principal, was already inside, sitting in a worn chair in the corner, clearly annoyed that he had gotten caught up in all this nonsense.

“Ladies,” Principal Mazer said, taking a seat behind his big wooden meant-to-scare-the-crud-out-of-kids CEO-style desk, “it's time we had a little chat.”

“But I'm not even sure why we're here,” Kiki replied in her best
I'm an innocent little angel
voice.

“Let's not play games, Miss Masters,” the principal said.

“But really,” Brattany commented, “we have no idea why we're even in this office right now.”

“Yeah,” Sofes added. “Like, when they were locked in the art room for the accidental art tornado, we, like, totally have an abibli.”

Kiki hung her head in an
I can't believe she just said that
way.

“You mean, an alibi?” Principal Mazer responded.

“Uh-huh,” Sofes said, her ponytail bouncing up and down. “One that's rock solid.”

“I'm sure it is, Miss O'Reilly. I am sure it is.”

Kiki shot Sofes a look filled with laser beams. Sofes shrugged as if to say,
What'd I do?

“Now, this little competition/rivalry thing has gotten out of hand.” Principal Mazer set his hands on his desk, interlacing his fingers. “And I want it to stop.”

“But…” Kiki said.

“Removing eyebrows, painting bodies,” Principal Mazer continued, without allowing Kiki to finish her thought. “I want this to cease, you understand? NOW!” Principal Mazer is a firm, short man. Not Oompa Loompa short, but short enough so that he is pretty much always the shortest adult in the room. “The pranks. The games. The competition. No more! This ends now, or else.”

“Or else what?” Brattany asked.

“Or else,” Principal Mazer replied in a menacing tone. “PPWB.”

Each of us looked around at the others.

“What's that?”

“Trust me, ladies, you do not want to know.” He rose from his chair, a stern frown covering his face. “I am going to have to pay two custodians overtime to deal with that mess, not to mention the cost of the supplies. And with our school budget the way it is, I mean, I ought to just…” He paused and took a moment to compose himself. “Look, kids make mistakes. I get that,” he said. “They deserve second chances, too, and I like to consider myself a fair man. But this ends now; am I clear, ladies? No more.”

None of us responded. Mr. Stone glared at us from the corner of the room, silent but highly agitated. I could tell that if he had been in charge, we would have been paying a much heavier price.

“I said, AM I CLEAR?!”

“Yes,” “Uh-huh,” “Clear,” we replied.

“Then out!” he ordered. “Before I lose my temper and change my mind.”

“But we have an abibli,” Sofes interjected, trying to stick to the original game plan she had clearly cooked up with the Three-Pees prior to being summoned to the office. Principal Mazer glared. “I mean, alibi,” she said, softly correcting herself.

“I'm warning you, I come from the school of positive discipline, but if I have to take this to the next level, I will. And trust me, nobody will be happy if I do.” Principal Mazer pointed toward the door, our time with him done.

The six of us walked out of the office, past the secretary, and left the building. The final period would be ending soon—there were only, like, two minutes left in the day, so there was no need for us to return to class.

However, there was a need to huddle up and scheme. We knew it. The ThreePees gathered on the left side of the infamous Grover Park fountain, and me and my wolf pack huddled up on the right.

“Our next grenade has to be big,” I said.

“Nuclear,” Q insisted.

“I like how you're thinking,” I said.

When the final bell rang, we exited the campus and walked to my house, mapping out our plan for revenge.

“It's gonna have to be one for the history books,” I said.

“Hey, since he helped us before, maybe we could ask your brother, Marty, to make their telephones explode?” Q suggested. “Like when they answer a call,
BOOM!
Exploding brains.”

“You might have something there,” I told her. “Not sure about the death thing, but permanent maiming sounds entirely reasonable.”

Beanpole shot me a look, yet remained silent, her lack of words expressing all we needed to know about her feelings on the matter. She's one of those hippie-dippy types, a kid who believes in things like peace over conflict. But look where that had gotten us. If today had taught us one thing, it was that you just can't make nice-nice with dragons.

“Maybe we could go with toenail removal or facial scars?” Q said. “Or tooth chipping, like down to the nerve? I mean, orthodontic pain is always a good one.”

“You kind of have a cruel streak, don't you?” I said.

“What can I say?” Q replied. “Those witches”—
Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp. Wheee-bubble-bubble-grrp
—“bring out the best in me.”

“Okay, officially, I have to say that I'm not comfortable with all this revenge talk. I mean, where does it end?” asked Beanpole.

“When they're pulverized,” I replied. “See, what we need,” I said as I unlocked my front door, “is some good old-fashioned—”

I froze. Stopped. Went ice cold.

There was a voice.

“Hi, dimps, long time no see.”

My stomach flipped, and I went white as a swirl of vanilla frozen yogurt. Beanpole turned to Q and mouthed the words “Who's that?”

Q shrugged. “Dunno.”

My mom approached.

“Hey, Boo,” she said in a warm, comforting tone. “You remember your father, don't you?”

Beanpole's and Q's jaws dropped. They began whispering.

“Her father?”

“But didn't he run out on them years ago?”

I stared blankly.

“Girls,” my mom said to Beanpole and Q, opening the door, “can you maybe give us a few minutes, please?”

“Um, sure, Mrs. Saunders,” Beanpole said, taking Q by the arm and leading her away. “Come on, Alice. Uh, let's go.”

A moment later, the door closed softly behind them. Beanpole and Q decided to head home, leaving me with my parents.