Geek Abroad (17 page)

“No,”I said. “Right after the cake came out, my dad insisted I join them for family photographs—which ticked Peyton off, since she likes to pretend that I’m not actually related to them in any way, shape, or form—and right after we were done, Dex’s ride was leaving, and he had to go. He said good-bye to me, but that was it. We left it at good-bye.”

“That sounds like it should be a line in a movie,”Charlie said with a dramatic sigh. “
We left it at good-bye
. It sounds so romantic.”

“Yeah, well,”I said, taking a bite of my turkey sandwich, “it was a little less romantic in practice. My dad was hovering nearby, worried that I was upset when Peyton tried to insist that Avery be in the family photo instead of me. Meanwhile, Dex’s friend was standing behind him, tossing his keys in the air and saying, ‘Dude, come on, we gotta go.’It wasn’t exactly Romeo and Juliet time.”

“That’s just as well. You know things did end badly for Romeo and Juliet,”Charlie said.

“I guess,”I said. I had been hoping that Dex would call me the next day, Sunday, but as far as I knew, he hadn’t. Of course, it was possible that he had called while I was out walking Willow—I’d quizzed Peyton mercilessly, and made her promise to write down all of my phone messages in the future, which she finally agreed to just to get rid of me—but I had no idea if she’d keep her word. I certainly didn’t trust her. I just couldn’t figure out if she was purposely screwing with my life for her own amusement by not giving me Dex’s previous messages.

“So, anyway, I didn’t tell you what Mitch and I did this weekend,”Charlie said.

I swallowed back a sigh. Considering her recent behavior, it was actually pretty amazing that Charlie had held off on yet another one of her long, gushing Mitch stories for this long. They were all pretty much interchangeable—
he’s such a great kisser, blah, blah, blah, do you think fifteen is too young to meet the greatest love of your life, blah, blah, blah
—so I was able to zone out and focus back on my problems at hand, which included:

1. Where I stood with Dex;2. Whether I could make it through the rest of the year cohabitating with Peyton (how could the Demon not have told me Dex called? How???) and finally, last and very much least,

3. The Mu Alpha Theta competition coming up on Saturday against Austin Strong and the rest of the St. Pius team. I wasn’t worried about winning the Mu Alpha Theta competition. What I was concerned about was how out-of-control Sanjiv was getting as the date of the first competition grew closer. Despiteour agreement to have only three practices a week, Sanjiv had scheduled us for five sessions this week, insisting that St. Pius was a special situation, and we needed the extra prep work.

“And look! He gave me these earrings for our six-week anniversary,”Charlie finished, turning her head from side to side to show off a truly hideous pair of dangling heart-shaped earrings. They were made out of fake gold, the kind that turns your ears green.

“Oh, they’re . . .”Ugly. Tacky. The last earrings I would ever have thought Charlie would be caught dead in. “Nice,”I finished.

Luckily, Charlie was too dreamy-eyed to notice my unenthusiastic response.

“I know,”she said with a sigh. “I’m so lucky.”

I stuffed my sandwich in my mouth to stop myself from making the snarky comment I so wanted to say. It wouldn’t help, for one thing. And for another, Charlie had just spent all that time listening to me talk about Dex. What kind of a friend would I be if I wasn’t equally supportive of her?

I swallowed the bite of turkey sandwich, gulped down a sip of water, and smiled gamely.

“Yes,”I said. “You’re very lucky.”

I distantly heard someone saying my name, and glanced around to see who was talking to me. Then, catching sight of Felicity’s and Morgan’s gleefully malevolent faces, I realized that no one was talking to me. They were talking
about
me.

Normally, I tried not to let Felicity get to me. She’s too petty and unpleasant to bother with. But between all of the stress I’d been under lately and the constant irritation of listening to Charlie nattering on about Mitch, I suddenly found it hard to rise above it all.

“What’s your problem, Felicity?”I snapped.

“Don’t even bother,”Charlie murmured. “She’s not worth your time.”

“Problem?”Felicity put on an expression of mock innocence. “I don’t have a problem.”

Despite the advice she had just given me, Charlie couldn’t help snorting loudly at this.

“Morgan and I were just wondering what it’s like to be someone’s pity date, that’s all,”Felicity said. “That must be really hard, huh, Miranda?”

I opened my mouth, about to furiously reply, but Charlie cut me off.

“Don’t,”she said sharply. “It just encourages her. The best thing you can do is pretend she doesn’t exist. Just picture a black hole where she’s sitting.”

I shot Felicity and Morgan one last venomous look, but decided Charlie was right. It was better to just not engage them.

“Have you finished
Tender Is the Night
?”I asked Charlie, pointedly ignoring the Felimonster and her toady.

It worked. When they saw I wasn’t rising to the bait, they turned away, clearly disappointed that their taunts hadn’t affected me.

The problem was . . . they had
affected
me. Maybe Dex and I had just had a misunderstanding, and that was what had kept us from getting together. But if that was true . . . why hadn’t Dex asked me out at Hannah’s party? I could only think of one reason why he wouldn’t: His feelings for me must have cooled.

And that didn’t make me feel much better than if I had just been a pity date. Because either way, I still hadn’t ended up with the cute guy in the end.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: lost in translation
Miranda,

Sorry to hear that your two friends are fighting. You’re right, I wouldn’t be too chuffed to hear one of my mates nattering on about a girl like that.

So, since you asked, “swot”means to study. And “gormless”means stupid. I’ll try to provide British-American translations for you in future e-mails! Just be glad I’m not a Cockney...you’d never understand a word I was saying, would you?

My Top Three Favorite British Slang Words

1. Brilliant
2. Wanker
3. Goolies
I saw your mum the other day. She said you might come visit over the summer?

Henry

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?”Dad asked, as he passed a container of mu shu chicken to me.

I shrugged and shook my head. “No, not really.”

“What’s tomorrow?”Hannah asked.

“I have a math competition,”I said shortly.

I saw Hannah’s nose wrinkle. I already knew what she thought of academic teams.

“You should come with us, Hannah. Your mom and I are going to go root Miranda on,”Dad said jovially.

Peyton looked up sharply from her uneaten dinner. (Peyton never eats. Never. She just pushes her food around on the plate with her fork. I think this freakish ability to survive without nourishment is just one more sign that Peyton is a minion of Satan. Or at least one of the lesser demons.)

“I’m not going,”Peyton said.

Dad frowned at her. “Why not?”

“Because I have a million things to do tomorrow.”She began to tick off her schedule on her fingers. “I’m having a facial and pedicure in the morning. Then I’m meeting Jill Stansky for lunch. And then I have an appointment with my personal shopper at Saks. Afterwards we’re having dinner with the Wassersteins. I can’t possibly fit in anything else.”She shook her head decisively and tapped her talonlike fingernails on the table.

Frankly, I was glad she wasn’t planning to attend the competition. Even though I didn’t really care about whether or not we won, I still didn’t want the Demon there. She was like a walking, breathing bad-luck talisman.

“That’s okay,”I said and I turned to Hannah. “You don’t have to come, either. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Yes, it is,”my dad said. His voice was calm, but there was a hint of steel in it that hadn’t been there before. I glanced over at him and saw that he was glaring at Peyton. “It’s important to Miranda, and therefore it’s important to me. I want you to come, Peyton.”

Peyton narrowed her eyes and stared right back at my father. “I already told you, I can’t.”

“Dad, really. It’s okay,”I said.

Dad ignored me. “This is what being a family is,”he said. “We support one another.”

“Miranda just said she doesn’t care if I’m there or not,”Peyton said.

“But I said I
do
care,”Dad retorted.

Hannah and I exchanged nervous looks. Dad and Peyton had been getting into these little tiffs more and more often. I knew I shouldn’t care—after all, wouldn’t my life be improved if Dad and Peyton split up?—but instead, it just reminded me of how awful it was back before Dad and Sadie had gotten a divorce. They’d fought constantly, filling the house with a bristling hostility that made my stomach hurt. I didn’t want to live through that again.

“Dad,”I tried again. “It’s not a big deal. Let it go.”

Peyton raised her thin eyebrows and favored me with a cold smile. “Thank you, Miranda. That’s very adult of you.”

“Thanks,”I muttered.

My dad stood abruptly and picked up his plate.

“Sit down and finish your dinner, Richard,”Peyton instructed him.

Dad just glared at her. “I’ve lost my appetite,”he said. He bussed his plate to the sink, and then turned and strode out of the kitchen.

Hannah turned to look at me again. Her lovely blue eyes were round with shock. Peyton didn’t say a word, and, except for a slight thinning of her lips, she looked otherwise unfazed, and she went back to pushing her food around on her plate with a fork.

No one said a word for the rest of the meal.

Chapter 15

I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that Geek High was hosting the first Mu Alpha Theta competition of the year. On the plus side, we didn’t have to travel for three bumpy hours on the school’s one bus, purchased secondhand and painted a blindingly bright white. On the other hand, it meant that our team knew most of the spectators sitting in the small auditorium. And while this might not sound like a negative, it was a problem when your team captain suffered from severe performance anxiety, which always became more acute in the presence of his father.

“I can’t go out there. I just can’t,”Sanjiv said. His skin had turned ashen, and his eyes looked large and rimmed with white behind his glasses. He swallowed convulsively, which caused his Adam’s apple to bob up and down in his long throat.

“You’ll do fine,”I said firmly.

“We’ve never been better prepared,”Leila chipped in.

The team was congregating in Mr. Gordon’s room for what was supposed to be Sanjiv’s pep talk. Instead, Sanjiv was slumped in a chair, his head between his knees, hyperventilating into a brown paper bag. The rest of us stood clustered around him, exchanging uneasy looks.

“Maybe we should ask his dad to leave,”I whispered to Leila.

“I tried that last year. Remember? He just shooed me away so he could set up his camera equipment,”Leila said.

“Camera equipment?”Kyle asked.

“My dad tapes all of the home meets. He wants me to send them to colleges with my applications,”Sanjiv said, sounding as though he might start throwing up at any moment.

“That sounds like a fool-proof plan for making sure you don’t get in anywhere,”Kyle muttered.

I elbowed him in the side. Hard.

“Ow!”Kyle exclaimed. He shot me a dirty look, but thankfully fell silent.

“Sanjiv, come on. It won’t be that bad. Think of it this way—win or lose, it’ll be over in an hour. One hour! You can stand anything for an hour,”I said.

“He couldn’t stand certain forms of torture for that long,”Nicholas said. “Like electrocution. Although I suppose that would depend on the amperage.”

“Have you ever heard of torture by goat’s tongue?”Kyle asked enthusiastically.

“No. What’s that?”Nicholas asked.

“It’s when they soak your feet in saltwater and then let a goat lick the salt off,”Kyle said.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,”Leila said.

“Yeah? Well what if I told you that the goat doesn’t stop licking . . . even after it’s licked all your skin off,”Kyle said, grinning malevolently. “It just keeps on licking and licking and licking until it reaches the bone.”

“Ewwww,”Leila and I said in unison.

“Is that for real?”Nicholas asked, looking appalled.

“Look, this isn’t helping,”I said, rolling my eyes in Sanjiv’s direction. He was rocking in his chair and making soft moaning sounds.

“I don’t think he’s going to be up to giving us the pep talk,”Leila said, pointing out the obvious.

“So who’s going to pep us up?”Kyle asked.

“You do it, Miranda,”Leila said.

“Why me?”I asked.

“Because you’re the only one who’s not nervous,”Leila said.

“I’m not nervous,”Kyle said.

“Really?”Leila didn’t look as if she believed him. She shrugged. “Even so, I just don’t see you as the pep-talk type. You’re too negative.”