Geek Girl (28 page)

Hmm.

A couple of weeks pass in this strange manner until a Friday when my mom nervously approaches and tells me the Hoffmans have called and invited our family to go bowling with theirs. Our families doing things together is another casualty of Trevor and me—another thing for me to feel guilty about.

I think she’s shocked when I smile calmly and tell her it sounds like a good idea, though she hides it well. I’m mostly calm about it if you don’t take into account the butterflies that have decided to go into a frenzy in my belly.

It’s only later as we’re walking out the door that I realize I forgot to stress about my appearance. I’m wearing a plain white, long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. I didn’t even fix my hair or makeup. I don’t really mind, though, because I know that these are only superficial things that mean nothing to Trevor. Guess it’s about time they stop meaning so much to me as well.

Tamara has come home for the weekend—after a frantic call from me begging her to be here. Jeff and Kari meet us at the bowling alley. So when Trevor and his family walk in as we’re all getting our shoes on, the sense of déjà-vu is strong.

Yet the differences are profound.

I’m no longer an unwilling outsider. I belong to this family fully, and I’m grateful for it. I have loved and lost someone who was nothing more than an experiment to me the first time around and who now means the world to me. I make sure my shoes are tied this time because somehow I don’t think Trevor will catch me again if I fall.

“I miss you, Jen-Jen,” Todd cries loudly, pulling me into his sweetly awkward bear hug. “Why don’t you come see Todd no more?”

My throat tightens because I truly do miss Todd. Another casualty.

“I’m sorry, Todder,” I tell him when he finally releases me and I can catch a breath. “I’ve been really busy.”

“You come see me,” he demands. “Jump with me.”

I glance past him toward Trevor to see his response to this. He’s tying his own shoes and is stalwartly ignoring the exchange, which I might buy except that I can see his jaw clenching.

“I don’t know if I can, Todd,” I tell him honestly. Todd doesn’t forget promises, and I don’t want to make one I can’t keep.

“Why not?” He looks at Carol, who’s treating me politely distant. “Mommy, why can’t Jen-Jen come see Todd?” he whines.

Carol glares at me for a fraction of a second, as if I’m the one who brought the subject up. She walks over, rubbing her hand soothingly up and down Todd’s arm.

“Well, Todd, I don’t see why she couldn’t,” she grits out.

I glance past her, looking at Trevor meaningfully. She follows my look, reluctantly returning her gaze to me.

“Jen, we’d love to have you come by—sometime—to see Todd.” I know Todd can’t hear the reluctance in her voice, but I can.

“I don’t think—”

“Tomorrow!” Todd exults, cutting me off.

“Oh, well,” Carol’s hands flutter at her throat. “Um, maybe it would be better to come another day.”

I’m beginning to feel a little angry at her because she attempts to make me the bad guy by telling Todd I can come, and then when I don’t show up . . . 

“How about Monday, right after school?” I ask. I happen to know that Trevor won’t be there. He has SBO meetings then. Carol also knows this, so she nods reluctantly.

“Okay, that sounds good. How’s that, Todd? She can come see you on Monday.”

“Yay!” Todd calls, pumping his hands above his head. “Did you hear, Trevor? Jen-Jen is going to come and see me. Then she can see you too.”

Trevor’s eyes jump to mine and then away again. I’m relieved that there is no malice reflected in his expression or posture.

“I’m glad she’s coming to see you, Todd,” he tells his brother, no sarcasm or anger in his voice. “But I won’t be there. I have to stay after school, remember?”

Todd’s eyebrows knit together, then clear almost as quickly.

“That’s okay, Trevor. I will give her a kiss for you.”

Trevor and I both freeze at Todd’s innocent words, while Jeff, Tamara, and Rob all guffaw out laughs that they quickly cover with coughs as they receive glares of warning from Carol and my mom.

“Uh, it’s your turn to bowl, bud,” Rob tells Todd, patting him on the shoulder.

“Okay.” Todd happily skips forward, unaware of the silence he leaves in his wake. He picks up his ball, walks up to the line, and swings his arm back and forth until he releases the ball. Once the ball hits the pins—knocking four of them down—he turns back to get his usual positive feedback from Trevor. Trevor sits silently, unaware of Todd for the first time since I’ve known him.

“Good job, Todd,” I call, standing and high-fiving him on my way up to bowl, myself.

Todd grins at me, then high-fives everyone else—except Trevor, who’s still silent. I throw my first ball—a strike, the result of my many nights of bowling with Trevor and Todd.

“Did you see that, Trevor? Jen-Jen hit them all!” Todd cries excitedly. “Give her a high five!”

Trevor, who is now standing, pulling on his bowling glove, looks at me, and in that glance, I see the torture. My heart contracts. If there is one thing I don’t want, it’s for Trevor to be in pain. So I smile, the same as I would if he were Jane or Brian, and hold my hand up. He leaves me hanging for a long second while he stares at me, trying to read me.

“Good job, me,” I say wryly with a shrug.

He nods once, tightly, and finally lifts his own hand, slapping it lightly against mine. I pretend there isn’t an electric tingle that flows down my arm from the point of contact.

One thing I learned from Trevor and Todd, if I learned nothing else, is that bowling is a game of cheering on your teammates—as well as the opposing team—and lots of hand slapping. Even though I can feel the tension coming from Trevor and to a lesser degree from his mother, I stick to the unwritten nerd rules and play the part. I’m having fun. I’m behaving—no tricks or games to try to pull Trevor in.

I’m sure it’s my imagination that each time I high-five Trevor—and it’s often because our turns come one right after the other—he holds my hand just a second longer than necessary, his fingers curving around the edges of my fingers, eyes intense for one private moment. This is only between us—no one else seems to notice—and is probably mostly my hopeful imagination. Because we’re acting semi-normal, the others are able to relax and enjoy themselves.

Trevor walks to the snack bar and buys a couple of pitchers of soda. He returns with those and a stack of cups, asking each person what they want and playing host as he fills the cups and hands them out. The only person he doesn’t ask is me. He simply fills a cup with diet and hands it to me. Only instead of it feeling like the first time when he simply
knew
what I wanted, it feels more like he just doesn’t want to have to talk to me more than necessary.

“You’re doing really well, Trevor,” Tamara purrs, sitting next to him and patting his thigh with a big grin. He tenses and leans minutely away from her. Tamara has been flirting shamelessly with Trevor, to my delight and to his utter annoyance. I’m not worried about it because I know she isn’t serious with it, but of course he has no idea. It sets him on edge, I can tell, and I almost call her off. Almost—until he glances at me to gauge my reaction. So I let her go.

“Hey, sis,” Jeff says to me. He’s taken to calling me that since the adoption became legal, and though I roll my eyes at him every time he does it, I am secretly pleased at his easy and full acceptance of me as his little sister. He treats me as if I have always been.

“I rented that movie you told me about. I have to tell you, I don’t get it.”

“Which one?” I ask. I actually gave him a list of movies that I told him to see.

“
Blade Runner
.”

“Ah,” I answer. “That’s one of my favorites. What did you think?”

“I liked it,” he sounds surprised. “But it sure doesn’t seem like the kind of movie you would like.”

“Really?” I ask, tipping my head as I ask him. “What kind of movies do you think I would like?”

He shrugs. “You know, scary movies, vampire movies. Goth-type things.”

I laugh. Jeff never misses a chance to goad me about how I looked when I first came to live with the Grants, no matter how many times my mom tells him to knock it off. I think she’s still a little afraid he’ll offend me. I’m not that soft though. I’m made of a lot tougher stuff than even I had thought.

“Well, I did like
A Nightmare Before Christmas
.
”

“That sounds about right,” he says as Kari elbows him in the ribs.

“If you liked
Blade Runner
,
then next you need to rent
Minority Report
.”

“Another sci-fi movie?”

“I’m partial to the sci-fi stuff,” I tell him.

“Oh yeah? Why is that?” he wonders. Suddenly I realize how this must sound to Trevor. I glance at him and see that he watches the whole exchange with a look in his eyes that I can’t place. Would he think I set this up, having Jeff question me to show him that I’m still wrapped up in the activities that we did together? Honestly, though, while he did introduce me to them, I really have come to love all things sci-fi. A geek girl myself.

Jeff waits for an answer, so I give him a partial truth.

“I have friends who are into that, and they hooked me.” I dare a glance back at Trevor and see that he no longer watches me, but his jaw ticks, lips clamped tightly together.

Because of my new calm, my center of peace that at least keeps my heart from completely deflating, I decide that I have put off long enough something I should have done from the first day that Trevor found out about the bet. I kept telling myself that Trevor’s anger would keep him from listening, that I needed to give him some time to calm down. And maybe that’s true, but the bigger truth is that I’m a coward and haven’t wanted to do it.

But here I go.

I watch him more closely now, waiting for the opportunity. I’m determined to see this through and not talk myself out of it.

I take a deep breath when I see Trevor standing alone for once, near a locker that’s not ours but the one that he now shares with someone else. I shove away the thought of just who that someone might be, along with the feelings that accompany it, and walk toward him.

Another deep breath for courage.

“Hey, Trev . . . I mean, Trevor,” I say nervously and pretend not to notice how he stiffens at the sound of my voice. He turns his shuttered gaze on me, and I nearly lose my courage. No time like the present, though, right?

“I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I have something I want to say to you, if that’s okay.” I hate the wheedling tone coming out of me, but I’m helpless to stop it. He turns back to the locker, where he continues placing his books, neatly stacking them according to size. He might be dressing much cooler, but he’s still Trevor to the core.

“All right,” he murmurs so softly I almost don’t hear him. He sounds resigned.

“I want to tell you I’m sorry for what I did.” I take another breath and plunge on. “I
want
to say that, but it would be a lie. Because I’m not sorry.”

He looks at me again at that, one brow raised curiously, lips tight with anger.

“I
am
sorry that I hurt you. I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am about that.” He turns away again, but his hands are still now, clenched at his sides, no longer stacking books. “I would do anything to take that part away. I would do anything to change the hurt I know I caused you. But I can’t be sorry about making the bet with Ella and Beth because if I hadn’t done that, I would never have gotten to know you.”

Trevor lifts one hand into his locker, but instead of continuing with his book arranging, he leans it against the shelf, and I get the impression he’s using it as support. His clenched jaw ticks, but I don’t let his anger deter me. This might be my only chance to tell him what I need him to know.

“I know you have no reason to believe anything I say now, but I’m telling you the truth when I tell you that I wouldn’t change one minute of the time I had with you. Well, maybe a few things, like taking you to those parties.”

“Why
did
you do that?” His voice startles me, though his question is spoken quietly.

“Because I was trying to turn you bad, to make you be like me.” He looks at me, surprised, then away again. “Stupid, I know. At the time it made sense to me. I had this fantasy that you would come with me, see how exciting and fun partying was, and turn into someone like me. But I’m glad it didn’t work, that you stayed who you are.”

He pushes off the shelf, closing his locker, and turns fully toward me for the first time. His gaze sweeps my mouth, and like a clichéd heroine from a romance novel, my pulse races and my breath stutters to a stop.

“You didn’t get your lip pierced. Wasn’t that the prize?” His voice is harsh and sarcastic.
Not
Trevor-like at all. I finger my lip self-consciously.

“I don’t want that anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve changed. You had something to do with that. You had
a lot
to do with that. You made me want to be better, to be more like you. To be the kind of person you might
choose
to be with. But I guess I’ll never be Mary Ellen.”

“Mary Ellen?” He jerks in surprise at the mention of her name.

“It kills me to—” I stop short, clamping my lips together. I can’t tell him what it does to me to see them together. It doesn’t matter anymore. “What I mean is, I really do want you to be happy. With . . .” I swallow my jealousy. “. . . whoever.”

Trevor crosses his arms, fists clenched, mouth pressed tight again. I think I’ve underestimated just how angry he still is with me.

“I just wanted to tell you that, you know, I’m sorry for hurting you but not for the rest. I know there’s no hope for us to . . . well, you know. I just really hope that someday you might want to be my friend again. And I know it doesn’t matter, and it will probably only make you more angry to hear this, but I still love you, and I guess I always will. For whatever that’s worth.”

Trevor nods tightly at my words, not relaxing his stance at all, and my heart crumbles beneath his uncompromising stare.

“Na-nu, na-nu,” I say with a wry grimace, holding my hand up in a Mork salute. I turn away, determined to keep my head held high until I am out of his sight. Then I fall apart.