Geek Charming (20 page)

“What?”

“There’s only a
touch
of geekiness left.” She took my glasses off. “Which will be almost entirely gone once you get rid of these.” She ruffled my hair. “And when we get your hair cut and lose the soft-rock eighties feathered thing you’ve got going on? You might even be moving into hottie territory.”

I squinted at myself in the mirror. “Really?” I asked. I knew Amy Loubalu wasn’t shallow enough to care about whether she was dating a hottie or not, but moving up the scale certainly wouldn’t hurt my chances.

I could barely make out my reflection and grabbed for my glasses. “Sorry, but I’ll have to be a little more geekish,” I said.

“Contacts?” Dylan asked as she placed them back on my face.

I shook my head. “I’m allergic to the plastic. It makes my eyes swell up and I look like a giant bug.”

She sighed. “I’m surprised you don’t live in a bubble,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s probably because I was—”

“—born three weeks early and have an underdeveloped immune system. I know. Okay, Rule number 796? When talking to your crush, skip that stuff. Way too much TMI.”

I nodded. “Got it.” I had heard that Amy Loubalu used to volunteer at a nursing home, so I bet she would be very understanding of medical issues.

Dylan moved my face to the right, and then to the left. “At least let me take you to l.a.Eyeworks so we can get you a pair of Pradas. I’m thinking
very
chunky black frames. They’re the best when it comes to the whole nerd-chic thing.”

“You know, Dylan, I really appreciate all this, but I don’t have that kind of money—”

“You don’t need it.” She held up her platinum American Express card. “It’s my treat.”

I shook my head. “That’s really nice of you, but I can’t. Absolutely not.”

She pushed me back toward the dressing room. “Yes. You can. And you will. I’m a little lazy when it comes to recycling and stuff like that, so think of it as my way of helping the environment.”

Her logic didn’t quite flow, but by now I knew better than to try to argue with her. “Well, thanks . . . I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. And while you have the salesgirl cut off the price tags, I’m going to go get you those pants in a few more colors.” A few steps later, she turned back. “I saw Julia Miller in front of Whole Foods with a Greenpeace T-shirt last week trying to get signatures. Does that count as an after-school job?” she asked.

A shoo-in for valedictorian, Julia Miller had already gotten early acceptance to Brown and Wellesley. She also had more facial hair than I did. “It’s not Julia Miller,” I replied.

Forget MIT—the CIA or FBI should hire Dylan to interrogate people. She’d definitely get them to fold.

 

After stops for jeans and button-down shirts we decided to refuel at Du-par’s. No wonder Dylan was so skinny—shopping was exhausting.

“Your new look’s working for you—did you see those girls in front of the Hot Dog on a Stick cart checking you out?” she asked as we shared a double order of fries.

“Dylan, they were about
thirteen
,” I replied.

She shrugged. “So. Attention is attention. You’re
really
not going to tell me who it is, are you?”

“Who what is?”

She rolled her eyes. “Your crush!”

“Oh. Nope,” I replied, rearranging the napkin I had tucked into my T-shirt to protect it from any ketchup incidents.

“Guys are so much better at keeping secrets than girls.” She sighed. “So are you going to ask her to Fall Fling?”

“The answer to that would be no. I haven’t talked to her for more than two minutes at a time, so I think that might be pushing it,” I replied.

She reached for another fry. “But you look so good now!” she exclaimed. “Thanks to me, that is. Does she work at a place where you can hang out and not seem like a total stalker?”

“Yeah.” I started to reach for a fry, but then thought better of it. If I
did
decide to try to talk to Amy, it wouldn’t hurt to lay off the junk food. Not that Amy cared about looks or anything like that.

“So do it.” She shrugged. “Have a few conversations with her, then ask for her e-mail address, then her phone number, then start texting, and then ask. But don’t ask her through a text. That would be rude. Plus you run the risk that she’ll forward it to everyone in her address book, which could be unfortunate, especially if you’re a bad speller. Not that you have that problem. Like, you know,
Asher
does. But, Josh, you need to get going on this—you’re already running the risk of offending her by asking her so late in the game. I mean, it
is
only three weeks away.”

“I am?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, how much in advance did you ask your date for the prom last year?”

“I didn’t go to the prom last year,” I replied.

“Oh. Okay, well, then what about Spring Fling sophomore year?”

“I didn’t go to Spring Fling, either,” I said, my cheeks turning red.

“Wait a sec—are you telling me you’ve never been to any sort of school dance or a prom?” Dylan demanded loudly.

I slumped down in the booth and shook my head. It was a good thing most of the people in Du-par’s wore hearing aids or else my cheeks would’ve shot up in flames.

For the first time I saw what looked like real compassion on Dylan’s face. Even more than when we had passed the cart at the mall that sold fake purses and a little girl was in tears because her mother wouldn’t buy her one. “Wow. That’s so sad,” she said quietly. “That’s beyond sad . . . that’s like tragedy-size sad. I mean, I’ve been going to the prom since I was a
freshman
.”

“Yeah, well, you know us geeks . . . we’re allergic to bad cover bands and punch bowls,” I joked.

“No, seriously, Josh—proms and dances and stuff are like . . . I don’t know . . . on the must-haves list for the high-school experience. You have to go to at least
one
in your life. Otherwise the post-traumatic stress might end up making you go postal in a McDonald’s or something when you’re forty.”

I shrugged. “They just seem dumb to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why do you have to be so bahhumbug? Where’s your school spirit?”

“I have school spirit,” I shot back. “I’m in the Film Society.
And
the Russian Club.”

“Okay, Rule number 549: leave the Russian Club part out when talking to the Crush, okay?”

I nodded.

“What about if you ever make a movie about a prom or a school dance?” she asked. “I mean, it’ll be a lot more—what’s the word?—
authentic
if you’ve actually gone to one.”

She did have a point. I slumped in my seat and sighed. “Even if I
did
ask her, she’ll never go with me.”

“Why not?”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Dylan might have a point. If I had learned anything by hanging out with her and her friends, it was that once you got up close to people, you realized that everyone—no matter how popular he or she might be—was just a living, breathing human being complete with zits and bad breath and ketchup stains on their shirts and all that other stuff that makes them human. While Amy was gorgeous, from the limited interaction we
had
had, she was also nice, so even if she ended up saying no, at least I’d be able to cross off “Never got up the nerve to ask Amy Loubalu out” off my regrets list.

“‘Why not’ is right!” I said, getting more and more excited about the prospect as I squeezed my fry so hard that potato leaked out onto my fingers. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to ask her!”

“You are?” asked Dylan, just as excited.

I slumped down in my seat again. “I don’t know. Can we just go with maybe at this point?”

“Okay, what about just starting with stalking her where she works,” Dylan suggested. “Then, if it goes well, you can ask her if she’s planning on going to Lisa Eaton’s party this weekend. And if
that
goes well, you can think about asking her out.”

“You mean on a date?”

She nodded.

I grabbed a fry. “Just me and her? Alone?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Josh. That’s usually what happens when you go on a date with someone.”

“Oh.”

She scowled. “Unless, of course, you’re Asher. Then you just ask your girlfriend to stupid Ultimate Fighting events with your stupid friends,” she said bitterly. “Not that I’m bitter or anything.”

“Right. Of course not.” As Dylan herself would say
. . . Not
.

“And if the date goes well, maybe you’ll think about Fall Fling,” she continued. “Does that sound like a plan?”

I nodded as I took out my inhaler. Just
thinking
about asking Amy Loubalu made my lungs constrict.

She held out her hand. “Rule number 857? No inhalers when talking to the Crush.”

I handed it over with a sigh. This was going to be harder than I thought.

 

If I’ve learned anything in my seventeen years, it’s that life isn’t easy all the time. Parents get divorced, guinea pigs explode under your watch, and you can’t get up the guts to talk to a girl you have a crush on. That being said, what I’ve also learned is that huge dramatic changes can happen overnight. Like, say, the fact that when you catch a glance of yourself in the bathroom mirror the morning after you’ve been made over, you don’t recognize yourself because your new haircut makes you look like a human being rather than a Chia Pet. Or that a new style of glasses can change the shape of your face. I had always considered myself a major player in the film-geek world, but as I put on one of the new outfits that Dylan had picked out for me, I understood what it felt like to feel cool in the real world.

“Just one more picture!” Mom pleaded as I tried to get out the door after gulping down some oatmeal and orange juice because I had been so busy staring at myself in the mirror.

“Mom, I don’t know what you’re making such a big deal about—I’m still me,” I said, grabbing my knapsack. I was, right? I checked to make sure my inhaler was in there. I had a feeling that, with this dramatic change of events, I might need to use it once or twice today.

“I know, honey, but you look so
handsome,
” she replied, snapping away. “I can’t wait to e-mail this to Grandma. And maybe I’ll send it to my friend Sharon, the one from Introduction to Belly Dancing—I can’t remember if I told you, but her daughter is a junior at Harvard Westlake . . .”

“Nuh-uh—no pimping me out,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. If everything went according to plan, I’d soon be dating Amy Loubalu. Or at least talking to her.

 

That day, I discovered firsthand the power of the second glance. After third period, as I walked from Russian to English, senior girls who hadn’t ever looked at me let alone talked to me over the last four years did a double take. Then, after fourth period, as I walked to lunch, Ashley Turner actually said
hello
to me. And I knew it was me because she said “Hey, Josh” rather than just “Hey,” which could’ve meant that she was talking to Dinshaw Muzbar, who was right beside me. With her clonelike looks, Ashley wasn’t my type, but still. Premakeover, the only interaction I had had with her was when she snapped, “Hey, watch it!” when I almost smacked her in the nose with the door as I was coming out of the nurse’s office one afternoon because I had forgotten my inhaler and thought the dizzy spells I was having might have been early-warning signs of a brain tumor.

“Wow, Dylan, you weren’t kidding,” said Lola as I walked up onto The Ramp with the guys and our gear.

“Weren’t kidding about what?” I asked as we started unpacking our equipment.

“About the fact that you’re actually
cute
,” said Hannah with amazement. Realizing what had just come out of her mouth, she reached out and patted my shoulder. “Not that you looked, you know, bad before,” she said quickly. During the time I had been filming the girls, I had come to realize that while Hannah was first-tier popular, she—unlike Dylan or Lola—wanted to be liked by everyone, even us nonpopular folk.

Lola snorted as she took out her mirror to do a hair-and-makeup check. She, on the other hand, didn’t care if
anyone
liked her. “Yeah, anyway, you look good.” She pointed at my stomach. “And if you started going to the gym, you’d look even better.”

Steven patted his own extra poundage. “You know, Lola, some chicks dig a guy with a little extra junk in the trunk. More of us to love.”

Lola stopped applying lip gloss and cringed, but I could see the slightest smile on her lips. Strangely enough, she seemed to have a soft spot for Steven, of all people. She acted like she couldn’t stand him, but ever since the frat party she’d been laughing at his jokes more and more. “Okay, that joke wasn’t funny the first time around, so I don’t know why you’d think it was funny now.”

He shrugged and started unwrapping a Milky Way.

Dylan finished brushing her hair and flipped her head back up, looking like a poster girl for a shampoo commercial. “Didn’t I do a great job?” she asked the girls.

Hannah nodded and pointed at Ari, who was in the corner trying to untangle himself from the power cords he had managed to wrap around his legs. “Maybe you could do a makeover on Ari, too,” she whispered. “He’s got no muscles, and he’ll probably be bald by the time he’s twenty-five, and he slouches, but other than that, I’ve been thinking he’s got some potential. Plus, he’s got a really nice singing voice. We sang some show tunes together at the frat party.”

Steven and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. Maybe this documentary wouldn’t just get me into film school—maybe it could also get Ari a girlfriend as well.

Dylan cringed as Ari tripped on the cable and fell flat on his face. “I’ll think about it.” She looked over at me. “Are we ready?”

I looked over at Ari, who was feeling around on the ground for his glasses. “Yeah, let’s just start,” I said, picking up the camera. “So, I was thinking . . . maybe today you could tell us a bit about the perils of popularity. The dark side.”