Into the Wild Nerd Yonder (13 page)

I wish I could be like Bizza, ever the slutty, poseur skank that she is, because at least she can just decide to do something and go for it, screw what anyone else thinks. I mean, I could have been the one up in Van’s bedroom with a shaved head, doing the deed, if I weren’t such a nobody (and if I wasn’t squeeged by the idea of a BJ, or if I wasn’t afraid of what shape my head would turn out to be without hair. What if it was lumpy?). Well, I’m going to decide to do something. And that something is: nothing. I am not going to pursue the ho route that Bizza has taken, and I’m not going to play the drums and become a band geek, and I most certainly am not going to join Dottie and Henry (who
needs
to get out of my dreams) and a bunch of other dweebs to play Dungeons and Dragons, furthering my downward spiral into the position of First Official Dork. There. Decision made.

But what a lonely decision it is.

I MOPE MY WAY HOME, LISTENING to
Elsewhere.
Even in death, the character manages to find love, and it’s so beautiful and so sad that I end up crying most of my walk home.

Dad is in the kitchen making corn bread to go with our chili dinner, and when he sees my face all puffy and red, he stops what he’s doing and hugs me. “What’s the matter, pumpkin?”

I sob, partly because of the ending of
Elsewhere
, but mostly because, as I put it so eloquently to my dad, “I don’t want to be a nerd.”

Dad chuckles a little but catches himself when he figures out I’m serious. “What makes you think you’re a nerd? You don’t look like a nerd to me.”

I’m tempted to make some snotty comment about how he’s not the best judge of nerd character, but I really do need someone to talk to about this. “I’m not a nerd yet, but there is definite potential for a nerdo-morphosis.”

“Does this have something to do with your fight with
Bizza? You don’t need a friend like her to be cool, you know.”

“I don’t need a friend like her, period,” I say defensively. “But without Bizza, that means I have to find new friends, and the ones I’m finding aren’t exactly what you or anybody else would call cool.”

I expect my dad to be annoyed with my angsty bitching, but he surprises me with one word. “So?’

“So what?” I ask, confused.

“So, why do you need cool friends? It seems to me that your ‘cool’ friends”—he uses finger quotes, which I guess is where I learned it—“weren’t very cool to begin with. And from what I’ve witnessed in this house over the years, Bizza was neither cool nor nice. Always telling you what to do, making you feel like you weren’t good enough.” Dad angrily stirs the corn bread batter and mutters incoherently on about Bizza. I am taken back by how pissed he sounds. I have never heard Dad say anything bad about my friends, and with the way he’s talking, it sounds like he may have been holding back for a while.

“What’s the deal, Dad?” I try to stop his mumblings before he stirs the corn bread into soup.

He takes a deep breath, dips his finger in the batter, tastes it with a satisfied nod, and pours it into a pan. “Jessie, you know I love you. And you know I would never say anything to try and influence your actions, because you’re a smart kid,
and you deserve to grow and make mistakes in your own way.” He lifts his baseball hat off his head, smoothes his lack of hair, and puts the hat on again.

“You’re boring me, Dad. Is there a point to this?”

“Bizza is a bitch. That’s all I’m saying.” He puts up his hands in surrender mode, then heads to the stove to stir the chili in its giant pot.

“Daaaaad,” I elongate the word in a scolding way, but also with an underlying laugh. My dad is the Nicest Man on Earth. When my friends’ parents can’t be bothered to take us to the movies, he drives. When it’s time to pick a vacation, he lets us choose the place. Even when he’s talking about his worst, most turdly students, he does it in a fair and nice-ish way. Never has he sworn in front of me, and never has he given any reason for me to doubt the fact that he, too, was among Bizza’s many admirers. “You think Bizza’s a bitch?” He doesn’t speak, but nods his head vigorously at the stove. I hope the grungy cap stays on his head. “Then why did you always invite her on our family trips? And with us out for dinner?”

“Because, honey, I knew you wanted me to.”

I guess he was right, although there were more than a few times that life would have been better sans Bizza. “Then why didn’t you ever say anything before?”

“Jessie, honey.” Dad sits down at the kitchen table and pats the chair next to him. I sit. “As your father, as much as I
wish I could, I can’t pick your friends. Just like I can’t pick your clothes or your music or your nose—”

“My nose?”

“Pick your nose. That was supposed to be a joke.” I roll my eyes. “Do you see what I’m saying? You chose Bizza as your friend, and I had to accept it. Now, if you were planning on marrying her—”

“I’m not a lesbian, Dad.”

“That’s a whole other conversation. But I’m just warning you that I will tell you if I don’t like whoever you decide to marry. In a hundred years or so, when you’re ready to get married. We can discuss sex in another hundred and fifty years.”

“No, Dad, we can’t. But thanks for the weird talk.”

“Anytime.” I stand up to leave when Dad asks, “What makes you think your new friends are going to be nerds anyway?”

I sit back down to brace myself. Dad will be the first human being I tell, which makes everything one hundred percent official. “Ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?”

“D&D!” Dad yells, and tosses his head back with a nostalgic laugh. “I haven’t played since college. I used to love it. I didn’t know you kids still played.”

“
We
kids don’t. Or at least haven’t. I’m supposed to go over to this guy’s house tomorrow night for my first adventure.”

“Good times. Good times.” Dad doesn’t seem to notice
the confusion in my voice as his brain skips down memory lane. “Man, we used to play all night. That’s one of the best things about going to college, by the way: no one to tell you to go to bed. We’d start at dinnertime, order a pizza, drink, order another pizza. . . .”

“Dad, spare me the debauchery.” I already knew that my dad wasn’t squeaky clean in college thanks to his marathon Just Say No speeches.
I had a friend, number one in his class, on his way to working for NASA. Hit the bud, and soon he was bottom of his class in Poultry Science. Even the chickens didn’t want him. Stay away from drugs, or sleep with chickens!

“Good point. You don’t need drugs or alcohol to enjoy D&D. That’s the beauty of it. You can become a completely different person in a different time and different place. . . . It’s insanely fun. I’d still be playing if your mother hadn’t made me quit.”

I shudder at the thought of my dad and a bunch of other middle-aged men sitting around our kitchen table playing D&D on Friday nights. “Why’d Mom make you quit?”

I wait for the answer
Because only dorks play Dungeons and Dragons,
but instead he says, “Ah, took too much time away from our relationship. She never got it, and honestly, I think she was a little jealous.”

“Of what?”

He does that hat lift-off thing again. “Yeah, well, I was
still playing after college when we both began teaching. She hated that I was spending my Friday nights with a bunch of people who weren’t her. Plus, well, there was Simone.” He says this name dreamily, to the point where I’m totally creeped. He notices my revulsion and clarifies, “Simone was the only female who played Dungeons and Dragons with us. Mom seemed to think I had some sort of crush on her.”

“Did you?” I had to wonder with his far-out look.

“No, no, of course not. But I did always think it was cool: the lone girl at the D&D table, kicking troglodyte butt with the rest of us.”

“You’re scaring me a little, Dad,”
because you sound like such a freak,
I want to add.

“You’ll see. D&D is a blast. How long has it been since you lost yourself in play? Why should little kids get to have all the fun? Plus, you’ll be one of the only females there, I assume?” I nod. “Prepare to be ogled, my dear. But not too much. One hundred and fifty years, remember?” Dad stands up, ruffles my hair, and goes back to chili cooking.

Our conversation has left me utterly confused. I would feel way too guilty at this point to ditch my first D&D adventure tomorrow night, but I fear that if I go, I open the doorway to nerd-dom, and there’s no going back. I decide to make a pro and con list:

I go to bed without any satisfaction from my useless pro and con list. Why do people make those, anyway?

I fall asleep willing myself to dream of anything but Henry. I decide not to do the dream journaling anymore, since I can’t read it, anyway. I wake up at my alarm, realizing my will failed. In the dream, I’m wearing a fur outfit, but not like fur coats that rich old ladies wear. More like a caveman fur outfit. It’s nice and warm, and for some reason I know I look pretty good. I’m sitting at a table in the cafeteria, and across from me, Van and Bizza are making out while holding Bosco Sticks in their hands. Bob Dylan is playing over the PA system, “Lay, Lady, Lay,” which is a song I always liked as a kid because I thought he was saying “Lady Elaine,” like that scary puppet from
Mr. Rogers’.
Anger grows inside me, and from out of nowhere I grab a sword. It feels light and comfortable in my hands, like a badminton racket. I feel someone’s strong arms around my waist. I turn around into the naked chest of Henry, who’s wearing only flip-flops and yellow flowered board shorts. He whispers in my ear, “Kick troglodyte butt,” which in my dream I take to mean ram my sword through Bizza’s and Van’s cold hearts. I approach them silently and with a great roar, I swing my sword and—wake up panting and exhilarated. Not that I’d ever actually stab Bizza and Van with a sword (I mean, where do you even get a sword?), but the feeling of revenge in my dream was absolutely satisfying. I lie in bed for a couple of minutes to try and burn the memory of the dream into my brain. Revenge feels pretty sweet when you don’t actually have to confront anyone.

I HAVE TO PEE, BUT BARRETT’S IN the bathroom shaving his head again. I thought he might decide to grow his hair into a Joe Normal preppie cut to blend more with his babelicious girlfriend, but he said he liked the way the buzz made him look a little mean. And so did Chloe Romano.

I pound on the door, and I know Barrett can hear me over the clippers but is choosing to ignore me. The aggression from my dream has made me a little pumped, and I smack the door open with the palm of my hand.
Whump
. “Damn” emanates from behind the door, and I giggle mischievously.

With the door cracked, I peek my nose into the bathroom. “Are you almost done, Buzzer? I have to pee.” He clicks off the razor’s safety guard and taps it into the sink. Taking his sweet time, he wraps the cord neatly around the clippers, stows the case under the sink, and admires his newly shorn ’do in the mirror. “I can pee just fine with you still in here, you know,” I say, my legs crossed in desperation.

“No way.” Barrett opens the door completely now, while I
bust past him to the toilet. “I can’t stand the smell of pee first thing in the morning.”

“Well, mine smells like roses,” I call after him from my seat on the throne.

“Sure,” he calls back, “just like your farts don’t stink.”

“They don’t!” I protest.

We’re almost late getting to school, due to my extra-long shower where I spend way too long overanalyzing my dream. Thankfully, my tardiness allows me to blow past Char when I see her in the hall. “Jessie—I need to talk to you!” she yells, but I just turn around and give a fake friendly wave as I speed away to first period.

Ms. Norton tells the class that if we leave her alone and actually do silent reading like we’re supposed to, she should have our essay tests graded by the end of the period. I pull
Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
out of my bag, which I have read about a hundred times, but I keep in my bag just in case I need something to read (or make me laugh). In it is one of my favorite lines of all times: “What in the name of Sir Julie Andrews?”

I’m chuckling to myself when Polly slides into the seat next to me. She smiles as she puts her books on the floor, except for her favorite note-scribbling notebook and a purple sparkly gel pen.

She begins writing a note that I know is to me, so I put the gum wrapper I use as a bookmark in
Angus
and wait. I can’t help but notice more about her today, particularly her legs. Great legs is a concept that I’ve never really gotten on women (I mean, I can totally see why lean, muscley soccer-player legs on a guy can be way hot), since it seems to be a lack of muscle and fat (or any shape at all) that makes a woman’s legs great, at least according to
US Weekly
. But when I look at Polly’s legs, I guess I can sort of understand. And still, there she is: band geek.