Geek Charming (14 page)

“We could see the new Robert Rodriguez movie,” Steven said. “It’s supposed to be awesome—total blood and gore.”

“Um,
eww
,” said Lola.

“That new dance movie looks cute,” suggested Hannah.

The guys and I looked at one another—and
we
were supposed to be the geeks in this group?

“We could get something to eat,” I suggested.

Dylan looked up from her Sidekick. “Nope. We’re going to a party.”

“But I thought you said Ashley and Britney’s was going to be lame?” Hannah said.

“It is—which is why we’re going to a
UCLA frat party
!” she squealed. “Shannon Hall’s there now and says it’s totally happening. Omigod—this will be
so
cool for the documentary!”

“All right!” said Steven, holding out his hand to Lola for a high five, which, not surprisingly, wasn’t returned.

The contents of my stomach shifted and I made a mental note to look up the symptom on WebMD when I got home. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” I said.

“Dude, what are you talking about? It’s a
great
idea,” said Steven. “College girls, dude. They’re mature. They’ll appreciate us,” he said pointedly with a glance toward Lola. She didn’t notice him because along with the other two, she was entrenched in fixing her makeup. They didn’t even need mirrors to do it.

I turned to Ari. “You don’t want to go, do you?”

He shrugged. “It could be fun. Especially if some of the theater group is there. They just did a mime version of
Rent
and I have some questions about the technical aspect that—”

“Josh, it’s going to be awesome,” promised Steven.

Dylan flipped her head up and shook out her hair. “For once he’s right,” she said. “Why don’t you want to go?” she asked, reaching into her bag for a different pair of shoes.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go. Of course I
want
to go,” I replied. “It’s just that I don’t think we should.”

“Why?” asked Steven. So much for my best friend supporting me unconditionally, no questions asked.

“Because tonight’s supposed to be about the documentary . . . capturing the girls in their regular Saturday-night stuff. And so to go to a college frat party, where there are big frat guys who probably don’t want us breathing their air, it’s just not the authentic inside look at Castle Heights popularity I envision. It’s a different movie. It’s
Old School
.”

“But it’s a college frat party—nothing’s cooler than that,” said Lola.

I made sure to keep my arms glued to my sides because I knew without looking that I was sweating. Big-time.

“It just doesn’t jibe with my artistic vision,” I said.

“It’ll be
fine
,” said Dylan. “Trust me.”

There was that “fine” word again. And for the second time that night, I didn’t believe her.

You know that old movie
National Lampoon’s Animal House
? The one where John Belushi crushes beer cans on his head without flinching? Well, before we even got inside, I could tell from the amount of noise coming from the house that the ZBTs of UCLA made
Animal House
seem like an ABC Family Channel movie. Not to mention all the beer cans and tequila bottles littering the front lawn. And the rope hanging down from one of the third-floor windows that was made of girls’ bras.

“Maybe we should just wait out here,” I said, sidestepping a banged-up stuffed UCLA Bruin bear, the school’s mascot, as we made our way up the driveway. “We could take exit polls or something. Like they do during the election.” A tingling started above my right eye, which I knew from WebMD to be a sign of nystagmus, a syndrome where your eye moved from side to side.

Dylan put her hands on her hips. “I don’t understand why you’re so scared.”

I took out my inhaler. “I’m not scared,” I scoffed. “Why would I be scared of a bunch of dumb frat guys? It’s just not my scene.”

“Okay, Josh? Don’t take this the wrong way, but from everything you’ve told me, it sounds like other than dark movie theaters, you don’t exactly
have
a scene,” she replied.

“That’s not true,” I corrected. “There’s the going to Du-par’s and discussing-the-movie-afterward part.”

“Right. With other guys who don’t have a scene other than hanging out in dark movie theaters.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door. “You wanted popular, right? Well, only the most popular of the popular have the guts to crash a frat party. Now come on.”

I took a deep breath and let myself be led inside.

Total pandemonium. Kids being sprayed with beer, Hacky Sack games, a Bruin bear-costumed being cheered on while doing flaming shots of some sort of alcohol.

So
this
is what I had been missing all these years. Although I had seen countless movies about this kind of thing, from
National Lampoon’s Animal House
to
Old School
, I had never come anywhere near to witnessing it up close. Here I was, finally in the inner sanctum of guyhood, surrounded by testosterone and college girls in tank tops and miniskirts, and yet I could only think of one thing.

“Wow. It really smells like dirty feet in here,” I said to Steven.

“Dude, this is total awesomeness to the nth degree
,
” whispered Steven as we stood at the edge of the living room taking in the group of tank-topped, miniskirted girls dancing together to Jay-Z.

“Look at that sound system,” said Ari.

I started sneezing from the cloud of cigar smoke that was permanently lodged in the middle of the room. Great. Now I probably
would
have an asthma attack.

“You guys want a beer?” asked Dylan, pointing toward one of the twenty kegs that were scattered around the room.

“No thanks. I don’t like to drink when I’m working,” I replied. The truth was that I didn’t like to drink, period. After spending five hours last spring break with my head in the toilet puking up crème de menthe and peppermint schnapps when Steven and I raided his grandmother’s liquor shelf at her condo in Boca Raton, Florida, the thought of alcohol made me woozy.

“Okay, well, I’m going to have one,” Dylan said, heading over to a keg where three ZBT-T-shirt-wearing guys were standing.

Within two minutes Steven had inserted himself into a Ping-Pong game while Ari had found the
Rent
crew. At least that’s who I figured they were with their white-painted faces. When had my friends become so outgoing? Lola and Hannah had drifted off toward the sliding-glass door to the backyard, where two thick-necked football players were entertaining them with riddles. Not even jokes, but riddles, like the ones on the bottom of Bazooka bubble gum wrappers. And they were
laughing
. I could just imagine trying to win Amy Loubalu over with riddles. She was so nice she’d probably laugh anyway, but still.

So with everyone off doing their thing, that left me alone. In the middle of a fraternity keg party with huge sweat stains under my arms, holding a video camera. I wondered how long it would be before I was thrown in the pool or something equally humiliating. As I stood there praying that the cops didn’t show up and bust me for underage drinking even though I wasn’t even drinking, two guys wearing ZBT shirts started walking toward me.

“Great. I never even got a chance to finish my first film and now I’m going to die,” I murmured.

“Hey, pledge, go get me a beer,” said the taller, better-looking one.

“And when you’re done with that, get me that chick’s phone number,” said the shorter one, pointing to a cute redhead.

I gulped and willed myself not to reach for my inhaler. “Uh, I would, but I’m not one of the pledges,” I said.

“You’re not?” said the good-looking one.

I shook my head. “No. I don’t even go to school here. I’m a senior in high school, so I wouldn’t want to take any jobs away from any of the pledges, you know?”

“Dude, you’re in high school?” the short one asked.

I nodded, holding my breath. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say.

“And you had the guts to crash one of
our
parties?” said the other one.

“Well, see, I’m doing a documentary for my USC application—”

The good-looking one narrowed his eyes. “Dude, why would you want to go to USC?”

I had forgotten how much of a rivalry there was between the two colleges. Probably not the smartest thing to say.

“Yeah, but only because of their film school. Because UCLA has a great film school, too, but—”

“Ohhhh, a
film geek
,” said the short one. The way he said it made me think that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Watch it—my little sister’s a film geek,” said the good-looking one.

Maybe there was a god.

“Anyway, one of the girls I’m focusing on heard about this party and thought it would be good to include in the documentary,” I continued. “See, it’s all about popularity—”

“We’re the most popular frat on campus,” said the short one proudly.

“Exactly,” I said. “So that’s why I was hoping to get some footage. I’m thinking I’ll use a flash-forward-after-high-school dissolve effect.” It amazed me how easy it was to think on your feet when you were scared for your life.

They nodded, impressed. “So you wanna film us?” asked the good-looking one.

“That would be great,” I replied.

 

Who knew frat parties could be so fun?

I sat on the couch and zoomed in for a close-up on Lice, the short one (his real name was Arthur, but there had been an incident back in freshman year). “Dude, you have no idea how important ZBT is to me, man,” he said, almost in tears. “It saved my life.” He swiped at his face. “Before I got here, I was just a dweeb from Nebraska. And now, little dude? Look at me—I’m golden.”

“Yeah, but sometimes being a ZBT is tough,” admitted Whit, the tall one. “People think all you do is party and never read a book, but that’s just a misconception. I’m an eighteenth-century French-literature major—do you have any idea how hard it is to keep up with the reading load?”

I nodded sympathetically. “That sounds tough.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “There you are,” slurred Dylan, plopping down on the couch. She looked at the guys and thrust her hand out. “I’m Dylan. Howyadoing.”

They looked at each other nervously and stood up. “Nice talking with you, little dude,” said Lice. “But we’re gonna bolt now.”

“Yeah,” agreed Whit. “I try not to be within a fifty-foot radius of drunk high-school girls. Good luck.”

I turned to Dylan, who let out a huge burp.

That didn’t sound like a bad rule of thumb to live by.

 

“You wanna know the best thing about being popular?” she slurred a few minutes later as I tried to get her to drink from the bottle of water I had gotten her.

“Sure,” I answered, ducking to avoid the football game that was being played over my head and knocking over my can of Coke, which, from the amount of dust on it, was probably the only nonalcoholic beverage in the entire house.

“Once you’re in the club, it never ends. First it’s proms, then frat parties, then, after you get married, there’s the country club.” She leaned over to the camera. “Are you getting all this?”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. I didn’t mention that I had neglected to actually turn the camera
on.
I know that when I came up with the idea for the documentary I had said it was be a no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty look at popularity, but as I sat there with Dylan right then, the idea of shooting her when she was drunk felt uncool. Even though she thought I was a geek and probably wouldn’t have thought twice about filming me if the tables were turned, I found myself feeling oddly protective of her.

“You know, I just have to say that for a geek, you’re not all that geeky,” she slurred. As she leaned forward, she toppled over. “
Oooof
.”

“Uh, thanks. Maybe we should go,” I said as I tried to help her up.

Which was hard to do when she was in the process of throwing up on my sneakers.

“Okay—now I think we should
definitely
go,” I said. Lice and Whit were cool, but I didn’t think they’d appreciate vomit all over their ugly plaid couch.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dylan moaned.

I looked at my brand new Chuck Taylor Converses, which were slowly turning from red to pink. “I think you already were,” I replied, lifting her up and dragging her toward the bathroom, averting my eyes from the lacy bra strap that had popped out of her shirt. “Why don’t you get cleaned up while I round everyone up so we can get out of here?”

“I’m never drinking again,” she moaned.

I shoved her inside. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I promised as I shut the door.

I turned around to find that in the short time since we had left the couch the crowd seemed to have doubled in size. It was next to impossible to find Steven and everyone else, especially since the average height of the guys in the room was about six foot four. Apparently ZBT was made up of equal-opportunity partiers, because in addition to the frat boys and sorority girls who filled the house, I could see that there were also some Goth girls and Mohawked guys lounging around.

“Hey, Josh,” I heard a girl’s voice say above the thumping rap music that flooded the place, making it seem like an earthquake that had no intention of stopping.

I turned around to find Amy Loubalu, dressed in jeans and a light purple T-shirt that made her eyes even
more
beautiful, as if that were possible.

“Amy. Wow—how weird to find you at a college frat party. You know, since both of us are still in high school and underage,” I babbled.

Could I have said anything
more
stupid?

“Which means, you know, we’d probably be arrested or something if the police showed up,” I added.

Apparently I could.