Geek Abroad (23 page)

Part of me wanted to apologize to Charlie, just so we could make up. But then again, I didn’t think our fight was my fault. Charlie had been putting her relationship with Mitch in front of her friendships. But being right didn’t keep me from feeling lonely.

“I just don’t know what Charlie expects. Does she really think that she can treat us like we don’t exist and we’ll still be her friends?”I grumbled.

I was sitting on the floor of Finn’s bedroom. He’d painted the walls dark blue, and in the afternoon light, they looked almost black. There were a few video game promotional posters tacked to his wall, all of them from games Finn had designed. There was a built-in desk and hutch running along one wall, and it was filled with monitors, CPU units, and gaming systems. The room was incredibly messy, and there was the faint whiff of something rotting wafting up from the waste paper basket. I’d had to shove aside a pile of laundry and a stack of spare computer parts in order to clear enough floor space to sit.

While I talked, Finn was tip-tapping away on his computer keyboard. Ever since Charlie and I had our falling-out, I’d been hanging out at Finn’s house a lot more. But as much as I liked Finn, this wasn’t a great substitute for afternoons at Grounded with Charlie. For one thing, Finn was incapable of carrying on a serious conversation. This wasn’t a problem when you were debating the gastronomical merits of Cheez Whiz, or whether ’80s hair bands would ever make a comeback, but it wasn’t so helpful when you wanted to discuss your best friend’s defection to the land of the lovestruck. For another, as soon as Finn started messing around with his computer, he completely ignored me.

Finn grunted in response. I knew he wasn’t really listening to me. He was too busy with whatever computer game he was in the middle of designing.

“Finn,”I said, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice. When he didn’t respond, I tried again. Louder.
“Finn!”

Finn started and looked up. “What?”he asked.

“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said!”

“Yes, I have.”

“What did I say then?”

“Something about Charlie, and her annoying boyfriend, and then there was a lot of general girly angst,”Finn said, waving an airy hand. “To be honest, I zoned out at the part where you started talking about your feelings.”

I sighed. “I’m just going to head home,”I said.

Finn rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Look, M, I totally agree with you. Like I told you in the beginning, the Charlie we once knew and loved has been abducted by aliens and replaced with Pod Charlie. There’s not much we can do but wait it out until the real Charlie returns.”

“Do you think that will happen?”I asked hopefully.

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a fifty-fifty chance?”

“That’s it?”

“I was going to say sixty-forty against it, but I thought that would bum you out even more,”Finn said.

“Gee, thanks,”I said dryly.

“I do what I can to please,”Finn said. He shrugged then, and his expression suddenly turned serious—a rarity for Finn. “I know, it sucks that Charlie’s acting like this . . . but like I said, what can we do?”

“We could kidnap her and commence a deprogramming protocol,”I said darkly.

“You know, that’s not a bad idea,”Finn said, pointing a finger at me. “We could videotape her with Mitch and then tie her to a chair and force her to watch it, so she can see how annoying she is. Brilliant! I truly am a genius!”

“Yeah, well, I see a few problems with your plan, genius.”

“What?”

“First of all, I think Charlie would notice if we started following her around with a camcorder,”I said.

“Please,”Finn scoffed. “Like she’d catch me. I’m so sneaky, I could be a ninja. That’s what I am—I’m ninja-sneaky.”

“Second, I think tying her to a chair might actually qualify as a felony,”I continued.

“Perhaps. But it would be a lesser felony. I mean, we wouldn’t be facing serious jail for that,”Finn said.

“And third, presumably, Charlie knows how she’s acting with Mitch, and it doesn’t bother her. In fact, to the contrary, she seems to really like acting like that,”I said.

Finn looked horrified. “She couldn’t possibly.”

I shrugged. “I think she does. That’s the whole problem.”

“Okay. So maybe the kidnapping plan has a few flaws. I’ll work on it, and get back to you,”Finn said. He laced his fingers together and popped his knuckles. “With all of this brain power,”he said, tapping a finger against the side of his head, “it’s only a matter of time until I solve the whole problem. Have no fear.”

“I’m just so not relieved by that,”I said. I stood, stretching. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Ciao,”Finn said, turning back to his computer. I could hear his fingers tapping against the keyboard again at lightning speed before I was even out the door.

When I got back to the beach house, I was greeted by an ecstatic Willow. My beautiful brindle greyhound wriggled all over with pleasure at seeing me, and she shoved her nose in my hand by way of greeting. I petted her sleek head.

“Hi, girl,”I said. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

Willow began to leap about in ecstasy, as though she were a ten-pound lapdog rather than a sixty-five-pound waist-high hound.

“I take that as a yes,”I said, laughing at her.

I headed to my room to drop off my school bag and grab Willow’slead. A few minutes later, she and I were walking down the beach, as we had every day since we moved into the beach house at the end of August.

I didn’t enjoy the walks as much as I once did, though. One time, when we’d been out walking, I saw Dex. He’d been out on the water para-surfing, but even at a distance I’d recognized his coppery red hair shining in the sun. Even though I had only seen him that one time—and we hadn’t even talked—now I couldn’t help looking for him every time I was out on the beach. There were almost always surfers out riding the waves in the afternoon, and occasionally even a para-surfer. But I hadn’t seen Dex since. I suspected that this was just one more sign he was avoiding me, that rather than risk bumping into me on a beach near my dad’s house, he’d instead been para-surfing at one of the other dozens of beaches Orange Cove is famous for.

Today, though, as Willow and I passed onto the public beach, I didn’t see any surfers. The tide was low, and the wind blowing off the water was weak. It was also chilly enough out that I was wearing a light cotton sweater over my T-shirt. There were a few brave souls in the water—older women in bathing caps and skirted suits; one or two young families with chubby toddlers playing at the shoreline—but I suspected most of them were Northerners down for a winter holiday. It probably felt warm out to them in comparison to the frozen tundra they’d fled.

“Miranda, wait up.”

Surprised to hear my name, I whirled around. . . . And suddenly found myself face-to-face with . . .

Dex!

I couldn’t believe he was actually here! My heart gave a great lurch and then began to beat so quickly, I actually felt a little faint.

“Hi,”I said quickly.

“Hey,”Dex said.

And then we just stood there and stared at each other. It was awful. I mean, it was amazing to see him, of course. He was wearing a teal polo shirt that gave his pale eyes an almost greenish tint, and long chino shorts. His hair was a little longer than it had been the last time I saw him, and curled back from his pale, freckled face in short waves. But I had no idea what to say to him, what I could possibly tell him to fix everything that had gone wrong between us.

So instead, I took the inane small-talk route.

“So . . . what’s up?”I said. “What are you doing here? You’re not surfing today?”

“Oh, no, I’m . . . um . . . just going for a walk. Trying to clear my head,”Dex said, stumbling a bit over his words. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt.

“Right. Me, too,”I said, gesturing at Willow. She was listening to our conversation, her large ears pricked up and her tongue lolling out of one side of her mouth.

Dex nodded. “Look, I . . . well. I think I owe you an apology,”he said awkwardly. “You know. For the way I acted at your MATh competition.”

I just managed to keep my mouth from dropping open in shock.
He
was apologizing to
me
?

“I shouldn’t have stormed off like that. It really isn’t any of my business who you go out with. I mean, it’s not like we were . . .”He stopped suddenly without finishing the thought. But I knew what he had been about to say.
It’s not like we were a couple
.

I looked down, staring fixedly at my bare feet. I didn’t want to see how his hair glowed in the sun, or the humorous glint in his pale blue eyes, or the way his lips twitched up in an easy smile as if the whole world was one big joke that he was in on. No, I didn’t want to see any of that . . . not if he was going to stand there and confirm what I already knew: He wasn’t romantically interested in me.

“No, don’t apologize,”I said. I was glad to hear my voice sounded cool and steady, even if that’s not how I felt. “It really wasn’t a big deal. And . . .”I paused.
It’s now or never,
I told myself. I drew in a deep breath. “I . . . I’m not, um, dating anyone. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh,”Dex said.

Oh
. It was about the worst response possible. I’d told Dex I was available. . . . And he’d just said “Oh.”

Why? Why did I have to say anything?
I wondered miserably. I should have just kept my big mouth shut. It would have been so much better if Dex believed I was seeing someone else than to know I was unattached, handing him yet another opportunity to reject me.

There was an awkward silence, during which I wished I could just evaporate into a cloud of misery and humiliation.

“So . . . did you win?”Dex asked.

“No,”I said. “We didn’t. But we’ve won all of our competitions since then.”

“That’s good,”Dex said.

“Yeah. We may still be able to make the state finals. We’ll have to wait and see,”I said.

There was another silence. If possible, it was even more awkward than the last one.

“Um. How about you?”I asked.

“Well. Sadly enough, I’m not on my school’s MATh team,”Dex said. I looked up quickly, and I could see a familiar spark of humor in his eyes. “I’m not even all that sure that O.C. High has a MATh team.”

“They do,”I said. “But they never have enough members to qualify for competitions.”

“You learn something new every day,”Dex said.

“I’m sure they’d love to have you on the team. You’d up their cool quotient by about two hundred percent,”I said.

“Two hundred percent? I thought there wasn’t any such thing.”

“Of course there is.”

“Well, you are the math genius,”Dex said. There was a smile in his voice.

“Maybe I’m overrated,”I said.

“I don’t think so,”Dex said.

My heart skittered, and I glanced at him quickly. Were we still talking about my math skills or had Dex meant something else? But he’d turned his gaze downward and with one long, bare toe was nudging a seashell buried in the sand.

Unfortunately, a woman walking a golden retriever off her leash came up on us then. The retriever dashed up to Willow and rudely sniffed her bottom. Willow was not at all pleased with this attention, and she sidled up next to me, her long body pushing against my legs, trying to avoid the retriever. The other dog just took this as an invitation to play, and he put down his head, stuck his wagging rear end up in the air, and began to bark. Willow looked horrified.

“Sorry!”The retriever’s owner—a short, chubby woman with steel gray hair—hurried after him and pulled at his collar to get him moving. It took several vigorous tugs, and by the time the golden retriever had finally trotted off with his owner, Willow was twitching nervously.

“Willow doesn’t like other dogs,”I explained to Dex, while I stroked her long head to soothe her. She looked up at me and whimpered unhappily. “She really only likes people. And bacon.”

“I think she wants to go home,”Dex said, nodding at Willow. She was pulling in the direction of the beach house, whining softly.

“Yeah, she probably does. It’s her dinner time.”

“Well . . . I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah. See you around,”I said. I smiled at him, waiting to see if he’d say anything else. When he didn’t, I turned abruptly and started walking quickly back toward the beach house. I wanted to look back and see if Dex was watching me go, but I forced myself not to.

“Hey, wait . . . Miranda?”

I turned, my heart hammering in my chest again, and watched as Dex jogged to catch up with me, spraying sand as he ran. “I forgot to tell you. You know I’m on the lacrosse team, right?”

I nodded. “You’re captain, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Anyway . . . the season has started, and we have games almost every weekend. You should come to one sometime.”

“Okay,”I said, not at all sure what was happening here. Was he asking me to the game because he
wanted
me there . . . or was this more of a general
FYI-if-you-happen-to-like-lacrosse-and-want-to-catch-a-game
situation? I was starting to seriously think that boys should come equipped with instruction manuals.

“Good.”Dex smiled uncertainly at me. “Well. Bye again.”

“Right. Bye,”I said. This time, it was Dex who turned and walked away from me, his back straight and shoulders squared, leaving behind a trail of footprints in the sand.

Chapter 19

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: revenge!!!

I know you’re not a believer in practical jokes, but maybe it’s time you start thinking outside the box and declare a prank war on your evil stepmother. Why settle for getting even, when you can aspire so much higher?

The Top Three Best Pranks to Annoy Evil Stepmothers

1. Replace her perfume with something really foul-smelling.
2. Hide things that she’s looking for in weird places—her keys in the fish tank, glasses in the freezer.
3. Sign her up for a lonely hearts ad, and make sure to include her home and mobile numbers.
Cheers,
Henry

“This is it,”I said. “If we win this meet, we make states.”

The Geek High Mu Alpha Theta team was gathered in an empty classroom for our pre-game pep rally. It was an away meet, at Dolphin Prep in Ft. Lauderdale, so we had to endure a slow, two-and-a-half-hour bumpy bus ride. Sanjiv had thrown up three times en route, and was still looking so green I suspected that he might puke again soon. Hopefully before the competition began, and not during it.

Since Sanjiv was always incapacitated this way right before a match, I’d taken over delivering the pep talks. The irony of this wasn’t lost on me. I was the only member of the Geek High Mu Alpha Theta team there against her will, and yet somehow the burden of getting everyone pumped up for the meet had fallen on me. But if I was being totally honest, I’d have to admit that I was proud of my team. After all, they’d overcome the tough loss against St. Pius and Sanjiv’s habitual stage fright to stage a comeback, winning all of our subsequent competitions.

“I thought we had to win by at least twenty points to make states,”Kyle said.

“Yes, Kyle, thank you for pointing that out,”I said, not able to bite back my sarcasm.

The top eight teams in the state went to the Mu Alpha Theta final tournament. The ranking wasn’t based on wins and losses, but on a team’s cumulative score. Theoretically, a team could win every competition, but if their scoring was low, not make finals. So even though our current record was a not-too-shabby five wins and one loss, the truth was, a few of those wins had been close scrapes.

So we definitely had a stab at making finals. . . . But Kyle was right: We’d have to win today’s meet by twenty points to do it. Which was going to be tough against Dolphin Prep, one of the more formidable schools we competed with.

“Sanjiv, are you okay?”Leila asked.

I turned to look at Sanjiv. He was bent over with his head between his knees, and his breath was coming in shallow gasps.

“Dude. Are you going to puke again?”Kyle asked, sounding disgusted.

Sanjiv groaned.

“Kyle. Seriously, you’re not helping,”I said.

“I just don’t know how he could have anything left in his stomach to puke up,”Kyle said, far too loudly. “He even threw up the orange juice Mr. Gordon gave him on the bus to settle his stomach.”

“I think it was apple juice,”Nicholas said.

“I thought apple juice was supposed to make you feel more nauseated,”Kyle said.

“My mom gives me ginger ale to settle my stomach when I’m sick,”Nicholas said.

“Apple juice tastes rank anyway,”Kyle said. “Especially when it comes back up.”

At this Sanjiv blanched, muttered something that sounded like “apple juice,”and ran for the boy’s bathroom. Leila, Kyle, Nicholas, and I exchanged nervous looks.

“Is he going to be okay?”Nicholas asked. “I’ve never seen him this bad.”

“He’ll be fine,”I said. “We’ll all be fine. Really. It’ll be a piece of cake.”

“What was that you said about this meet being a piece of cake?”Kyle asked an hour later.

“Okay, so maybe I spoke too soon,”I said.

Kyle shook his head, discouraged. “Maybe we should just concede and spare the continued humiliation.”

After two disastrous rounds, things were not looking good for the Geek High MATh team. The score was forty-five to thirty, with Dolphin High in a masterful lead. It wasn’t that their team was stronger than ours—I really didn’t think they were—but our team was having a terrible day. I was the only member to have won both my questions. Leila got hers right in the first round, and Nicholas got his in the second round, but other than that, we’d lost every single question. Kyle had hit the buzzer first with both of his questions,but had gotten them both wrong, giving his Dolphin High opponent a full leisurely minute to work out the correct answer. And Sanjiv was just floundering, unable to do anything but open and close his mouth like a fish when it was his turn. I thought he might be having a full-fledged panic attack.

“Look, we can still win this,”I said.

“Yeah. Dream on,”Kyle muttered.

“No, really,”I said, squelching the impulse to kick him in the shin. Kyle’s constant pessimism was enough to get the Dalai Lama down. “We can do this. We just have to win by twenty points. That’s it. Twenty little points.”

“But we’re already down fifteen,”Leila pointed out.

“So all we need to do is win four out of five questions in round three,”I said.

A group groan went up at this.

“That’s nothing,”I continued. “Four measly questions. We can do it. We’ve done it before. I know we have it in us to win this competition and get into the finals. Isn’t that what we want? What we’ve been working for?”

I looked around at them. Nicholas was the first one to meet my eyes, something he had been mostly avoiding up until now. But his gaze was level, and a smile stretched across his thin, homely face. He nodded resolutely, and I smiled back at him.

“Leila?”I said, turning to look at her.

Leila looked less confident, but she nodded, and her chin rose a few millimeters. I knew she wouldn’t give up; Leila was a scrapper.

“Kyle, Sanjiv?”I said.

Kyle hesitated, and finally gave a slight nod paired with a shrug. It wasn’t a vote of confidence, I knew, but he was in. I turned to face Sanjiv, who still hadn’t spoken. In fact, he hadn’t said a single word since the competition had begun.

“I don’t think I can go back out there,”he said in a strangled whisper.

“Yes, you can,”I said firmly. “You’re just letting your nerves get the best of you.”

He laughed bitterly at this.

“No, really. It’s mind over matter. Just keep thinking that: mind over matter,”I said.

He nodded and stared down at the ground.

The moderator cleared his throat, and then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. “It’s time for round three to commence. Teams, please take your seats.”

“Come on,”I said, and pumped one arm into the air. “Let’s go get ’em!”

Leila was up first. She answered her question correctly while her Dolphin Prep opponent was still scribbling on his scratch paper. The score was tied. Then Kyle got his first correct answer of the day, putting us in the lead. Next up was Nicholas. He hit his buzzer a fraction of a second before a pretty girl with dark caramel skin and long, thick, blue-black hair, and correctly answered the quadratic equation.