Geek High (6 page)

Wait…unless that was just it. Had Hannah applied to Geek High and not gotten in? It would certainly explain a lot of Peyton's hostility. She was the most competitive woman alive. It wasn't enough that Hannah was prettier than me, and had a killer body, and was insanely popular…of course Peyton would want her to be smarter than me, too.

But as I looked up at Emmett, who was beaming down at Hannah while she giggled up at him and flirtatiously tossed her hair over one shoulder, I started to feel a little sick.

People say that it's who you are on the inside that counts, and that being smart and thoughtful is far more important than being pretty. But that just isn't true. The pretty girls always beat out the smart girls. Always.

I
told Charlie about the horrible Emmett/Hannah flirtation the next day before mod lit began, keeping my voice low so that nobody—particularly the Felimonster—would overhear us.

“Wait…go back to the part where your stepmonster said you needed plastic surgery,” Charlie said, outraged on my behalf.

“That's not the important part of the story,” I said. Which was saying something, since normally I'm more than happy to run Peyton down. “The important part is where you-know-who was totally into the Demon Spawn.”

Charlie just shook her head sadly and gazed at me with the sort of pity she normally reserves for contestants on
The Bachelor
.

“Miranda, I think you really need to take some time to work on your self-esteem,” she said.

“Are you even listening to me?” I asked. “This is a nightmare. A total nightmare.”

“Perspective time. A guy whom you hardly know, and yet have somehow persuaded yourself that you're in love with, spoke to Hannah. I don't think that quite reaches nightmare proportions,” Charlie said.

And even though deep down I knew she was right, her condescending tone still irritated me. Just because Charlie has never truly fallen for anyone, and so has never experienced how it throws your entire life into chaos, she thought she was above the whole thing.

“Hey, Miranda,” a voice said.

I'd been so distracted by Charlie's annoying armchair psychoanalysis, I hadn't noticed that someone was hovering just in front of my desk…and, more important, that the somebody was Emmett. For the second straight day in a row, he'd crossed a room to talk to me! Had I been wrong to assume he was interested in Hannah? Was it possible…could it be…that maybe, just maybe, he'd been nice to Hannah only for my sake? After all, Emmett didn't know that Hannah and I despised each other.

“Oh. Um. H-hi, Emmett,” I stuttered, wondering if he could actually hear my heart galloping away at full speed.

“How was your dinner last night?”

“My steak was too rare. I had to send it back.”

My steak was too rare? I had to send it back?
What was I saying? I sounded like an idiot. Why was it that my supposed genius-level IQ seemed to drop to that of a not-very-bright shoe whenever I was around Emmett?

“I was wondering…that girl you were with,” Emmett began. “Hannah, right? So…is she seeing anyone?”

And just like that, the galloping skittered to a stop. I don't know what a broken heart is supposed to feel like, but for me it felt as though I'd been frozen clear through. I went numb and cold at the same time.

“Miranda,” Charlie murmured. She surreptitiously poked me in the side, causing me to jump in my seat. I realized only then that I hadn't answered Emmett.

“She probably has a boyfriend, huh,” Emmett said.

“Um…” I said. I could have said,
Yes, she does have a boyfriend
. I could have said,
She's dating the hottest guy at Orange Cove High, and oh, by the way, he also happens to be a black belt in jujitsu
. But I have my pride, even if it was now currently hanging about me in tatters. “No, I don't think she does,” I finally said.

Emmett grinned at me. His smile was just the tiniest bit crooked, and there was a small dimple in his right cheek. I'd spent hours fantasizing about him smiling down at me like that. Never once did I ever imagine that it would hurt this much.

“Cool. So, um, would you mind giving me her number?”

Numbly, I wrote the beach house phone number down on a slip of notebook paper, tore it off, and handed it to him.

“Thanks, Bloom,” Emmett said. He winked and sauntered off, flushed with happiness.

“He's calling me Bloom,” I said miserably. “When they start calling you by your last name, all hope is lost.”

“Actually, I think when they ask you for your stepsister's phone number, all hope is lost,” Charlie said.

I looked at her reproachfully. This was heartless, even for someone as unromantic as Charlie.

“Sorry,” she said, immediately contrite. “But you know what I'm going to say.”

“I know, I know. You're going to say that anyone who would choose Hannah over me is an idiot, and not worth getting upset over,” I said. I was trying not to cry, which made my voice sound unnaturally creaky.

“No. I was going to say that anyone who would ever be interested in such a vain, shallow, self-centered little brat like Hannah isn't even worth knowing,” Charlie said.

“Maybe he doesn't know she's vain, shallow, and self-centered,” I said wistfully, watching Emmett as he pulled out his copy of
The Stranger
and opened up his laptop. “Maybe once he realizes it, he'll lose interest in her.”

“Oh, no,” Charlie said, shaking her head. “Don't even go there. Life is not one of those feel-good teen movies, where the nice girl triumphs over the horrible popular girl in the end. Just forget about him, Miranda. Seriously.”

I knew the sort of movie she was talking about. The protagonist is always beautiful, but everyone around her pretends that she's plain because she wears clunky glasses, dresses in overalls, and keeps her hair pulled back in a ponytail. And then at some key point in the movie—usually at the prom—she puts in contact lenses, wears a slinky dress, and shakes out her hair, and suddenly everyone realizes for the first time that she looks
exactly
like Lindsay Lohan. It's because of those propaganda films that every smart but plain girl secretly believes that one day she'll shake out her hair and the hot guy in school will suddenly see her for the beauty she really is.

But I don't wear my hair up, or have glasses. And my clothes are pretty much the same ones from the Gap that everyone else at school wears. And so far, no one's ever confused me with Lindsay Lohan. I slumped forward over my desk and stared at the glowing screen of my laptop.

“Why so sad, Miranda?” Felicity asked so loudly, she was practically yelling.

I ignored her, which was usually the best plan of action when it came to Felicity.

“I would have thought you'd be excited that a certain someone crossed a room to talk to you,” Felicity continued, in the same too-loud voice.

And suddenly, my eyes widening with horror, I realized what she was doing. Felicity was talking so loudly, everyone in the room could hear what she was saying. In fact, conversations about whether MIT or Stanford had the better engineering program, or the best extracurricular activities to have on your college applications, were coming to a rapid halt as our classmates looked up, their expressions curious.

“Unless, of course, he was telling you that he's taking out a restraining order to keep you from staring at him during class,” Felicity continued.

She'd timed it perfectly—everyone heard her. They looked from Felicity's smug face to my white-with-shock one, and then the whispering began.

“What is she talking about? Who is Miranda staring at?” Padma Paswan asked, gaping at me across the room. I like Padma, but she can be such a gossip.

“I'm not sure. But Felicity said something about a restraining order,” Tabitha said gravely, regarding me with her big, solemn eyes.

“Really? Someone got a restraining order? Against Miranda?” Padma asked eagerly. She was sitting on the edge of her chair.

It was like a car accident. No, worse than that. It was like a multiple pileup on the highway. It was a big rig jackknifing in the middle of rush-hour traffic and turning the roadway into real-life bumper cars.

Charlie made a noise that sounded like a snarl. “Felicity, were you raised by a wire-monkey mother?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?” Felicity asked, narrowing her eyes.

“You know, the wire-monkey baby experiment. It was a research project where they took away a baby monkey's mother and gave it a fake mother made out of wire instead. All of the monkey babies who were raised by wire-monkey mothers became vicious and eventually went crazy. Which sort of reminds me of you,” Charlie finished.

Padma tittered appreciatively at this. I stole a look at Emmett. He alone was ignoring the conversation.

“Oh, ha, ha. You're so funny,” Felicity snarled.

“I think so,” Charlie said serenely.

“They were rhesus monkeys,” Christopher chimed in unexpectedly in his robotic voice. “Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin–Madison conducted the experiments in 1930. He separated the infant monkeys from their mothers to study the effect of deprivation on emotional development—”

Charlie glanced at me. She must have read the misery in my expression.

“Thank you, Christopher, you're exactly right,” Charlie said, hastily cutting him off.

Finn slipped in just before Mrs. Gordon walked into class, brandishing her notes.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Eggers,” Mrs. Gordon said to him.

“My pleasure, Mrs. G,” Finn said, grinning at her. “You know there's nowhere I'd rather be than right here in mod lit.”

Mrs. Gordon loves Finn, so she just laughed.

“What did I miss?” Finn whispered to me as he slid into his seat.

I just shook my head numbly.

“Good morning. I'm assuming everyone had time to read the first three chapters of
The Stranger
, and came to class prepared to discuss them,” Mrs. Gordon said.

I considered making a run for it. I could plead cramps or a sinus infection, and spend the rest of the morning in the nurse's office curled up on a cot. And while there, I could figure out a way to escape from my life. Maybe I could run away to Alaska and get a job on a fishing boat. Because clearly things weren't going so well here…in fact, it was hard to imagine they could get much worse.

But Charlie—who I could sometimes swear has the ability to read my mind—whispered, “Stay where you are. If you run away, you're just letting her win.”

And so I stayed. Even though at that moment, I didn't really care if Felicity won or not.

A
fter the interminably long mod lit class, during which I sat marinating in my humiliation, Charlie insisted I go to Latin, too.

“Keep your head high and your shoulders back,” Charlie kept hissing in my ear, sounding like a beauty pageant coach. I kept waiting for her to whip out a tube of Preparation H to zap the puffiness under my eyes. “Don't let Felicity or anyone else know that she got to you.”

And I kept soldiering on, trying to look serene and unbothered, even though what I really wanted to do was to lock myself in a toilet stall and never come out again.

But Charlie's approach seemed to work. The story fizzled and died out before lunch, which was nothing short of a miracle, considering that people still occasionally talk about how Olivia Malkin fell asleep in Advanced Physics last year after pulling an all-nighter to finish up her science fair project, and drooled all over her desk. Gossip does not die an easy death at Geek High.

“I have something that will cheer you up,” Finn said at lunch. He, Charlie, and I had staked out our favorite table in the corner of the dining room. Lunch is included in the tuition, although we don't have the typical cafeteria lunch line. Instead, platters of sandwiches, crudités, fruit, and cookies are put out on each table, and we help ourselves, family style. We'd all been careful to grab turkey sandwiches before they ran out (trust me, you don't want to get stuck with the egg salad), although I wasn't eating today. Being humiliated in front of one's peers has a way of ruining the appetite.

“I seriously doubt that,” I said morosely.

Two tables over, the Felimonster and Toady had their heads bent close together as they whispered excitedly. It wasn't too hard to figure out whom they were talking about, as they kept darting sly looks at me and then tittering behind their hands.

“Keep smiling,” Charlie hissed, and I obediently curled up the corners of my mouth, even though it felt like I was baring my teeth rather than smiling.

“See for yourself,” Finn said, and he pushed his open laptop toward me. He had the Internet up, and set to the same weblog he'd shown me yesterday: geekhigh.com. At the top of the page, the newest entry read:

“Is this true?” I gasped.

“Absolutely,” Finn said with satisfaction.

“How do you know?” Charlie asked suspiciously.

Finn smiled enigmatically at her. “I just do.”

“Who's writing this?” I asked. “Oh! Do you think it's Megan Reilly? I overheard her saying she was trying to get an internship at
Entertainment Weekly
next summer, and this is just the sort of stunt she'd pull to get it.”

“I think Finn knows who's writing it,” Charlie said, fixing him with a beady stare. “Don't you, Finn?”

Finn shrugged, trying—and failing—to look modest. “I may.”

Charlie snorted.

“What?” I asked, looking from one to the other. I had the feeling I was missing something.

“It's
him
,” Charlie said. “
Finn
. He's the one writing it.”

I looked at Finn for confirmation, but it was immediately obvious from his expression, which was a cross between smug pride and sheepishness.

“How did you know?” he asked Charlie.

She shrugged. “I know everything,” she said.

Finn tossed a sweet-potato chip at her.

“Hey! Don't! Okay, fine, I saw you writing it in mod lit. You should be a little more discreet, you know. It was pretty obvious you weren't taking class notes—you were typing way too fast,” Charlie said.

“Thanks for the tip,” Finn said. He popped a chip in his mouth.

“But
why
are you writing it?” I asked.

“I'm an anarchist,” Finn said nonchalantly.

“Writing a snarky tell-all blog counts as anarchy these days?” I asked, arching my eyebrows.

“I'm starting small,” Finn said. “I'm slowly working up to overthrowing the school administration.”

“Did you make this up about the Felimonster?” I asked, looking back at the salacious blog entry. It was written in bold white type against a black background, for dramatic effect.

“Of course not,” Finn said indignantly. “That wouldn't be ethical.”

“So how'd you find out about it?” Charlie asked.

“A journalist never reveals his sources.”

“Please,” I said dismissively. “It's a blog, not the
New York Times
.”

“Let's just say I have an in within the administration,” Finn said mysteriously. He drew a circle in the air with his fingers as he said it.

“Mrs. Boxer,” I said, snapping my fingers and pointing at him. Finn looked crestfallen.

“How'd you figure that out so fast?” he asked.

Mrs. Boxer's official title was executive administrative assistant to the headmaster, but that was just a fancy way of saying she was the school secretary.

“Because (a) she's a gossip, and (b) she adores you,” I said. “What did you do, bring her a latte and then, once she was hopped up on caffeine, wheedle it out of her?”

“I did no such thing.” Finn actually looked affronted at this. “I just…overheard her talking. She didn't actually know I was there.”

“Did you hide in the coatroom by her office again?” Charlie asked.

“Again?” I asked.

“That's where he hid last year when he was trying to find out if they'd figured out who was behind the rash of toilet paper thefts,” Charlie said.

“That was you?” I asked, stung that I'd been left out of this scheme, too. “You guys don't tell me anything.”

“We wanted you to have plausible deniability,” Finn said.

“Gee, thanks,” I said crankily.

Although, still, I had to admit this was good gossip. I don't normally subscribe to the politics of personal destruction, but Felicity Glen really did have it coming to her. I glanced over at Felicity's table. She, clearly unaware of the piece Finn had posted about her, was still giggling with Morgan, and smirking in my direction. I knew I should tell Finn to take down the piece, and that no matter how much Felicity might torture me, we shouldn't sink to her level. But I didn't.

Which, as it turned out, was a big mistake.