Revenge of the Geek (11 page)

Nora nodded. “Yeah. I’m surprised he hasn’t noticed.”

“I’m not. For such a smart guy, Finn can be completely clueless,”I said. I leaned back on my elbows again. Now that the initial shock of the cold water had passed, it actually felt pretty good to cool off. I eyed the water, wondering if it was time for a dip.

“What’s Charlie like?”Nora asked.

“Charlie? She’s amazing. She’s smart and funny and a really talented painter. You should see her work,”I said. “Lately, she’s been painting on these huge canvases. They’re pretty cool.”

“I like her hair,”Nora said.

“Yeah, she always has it dyed some wacky color,”I said. “She changes it so often, I can never even remember what the color of the day is.”

“Have you been friends for a long time?”

“Four years. Ever since seventh grade, when I transferred to Geek Middle. I met Charlie on my first day of school, and we’ve been best friends pretty much ever since,”I said.

“That’s cool,”Nora said, and I thought she sounded a little wistful.

“Do you have close friends back home in Boston?”I asked.

“Yeah, I had a pretty tight group of friends. And we still text and stuff. But I feel so far away from everyone now,”Nora said. She sat up, hunching her shoulders, and dug her toes into the sand.

“This whole move has been really hard on you, huh?”I said sympathetically.

Nora smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. You’re probably tired of hearing me complain about it. I’m tired of hearing me complain about it.”

I shook my head. “Not at all. But I’ll tell you what—let’s just have a really fun day today. Maybe Orange Cove will start to grow on you.”

“It’s already growing on me. I just have to get used to how hot it is down here,”Nora said.

“Do you want to go for a swim?”I asked, standing and dusting the sand off my bottom.

“Sure,”Nora said, standing, too. She hesitated. “Um . . . there aren’t any sharks in the water, are there?”

“I’m sure there are somewhere. It is the ocean, after all. But maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll leave us alone,”I said cheerfully. Then, seeing how round Nora’s eyes had gone, I laughed. “I’m kidding. Come on—it’ll be fine. I promise.”

Chapter Eleven

N
ora accompanied me to the next
Ampersand
meeting. She’d already spoken to Candace about joining the layout staff, and reported back that Candace had welcomed her on board.

Nora and I shared a table in the
Ampersand
office, while Candace—today wearing a crisp navy blue shirt dress cinched at the waist with a leather belt, her straight, blue-black hair gleaming under the fluorescent overhead lights—stood and called the meeting to order.

“Okay, everyone settle down,”Candace called out. The chatter and laughter immediately died down. Candace had that effect on people. “First, I want to get a status update from everyone.”She consulted her notepad. “Peter, Coleen, how’s the SAT prep course article coming?”

I felt a thrill of horror. I hadn’t started working on my article yet. It wasn’t due for another week, so I’d thought I had plenty of time. Apparently not. And now I was going to have to think of something to say in front of everyone. My stomach gave a nervous lurch. It didn’t help when Coleen and Peter gave long, detailed reports of the many interviews they’d already conducted for their pieces.

Nora scribbled something on a piece of paper and pushed it across the table to me. I looked down at it.

The note read:
Have you written your article?

I wrote,
No
underneath, underlined it three times, and pushed it back toward her.

Nora looked at the note and let out a faint snort of laughter. She wrote back,
Eek!
I giggled.

“Miranda, do you have something you’d like to share with the rest of us?”

I started and looked up. The entire
Ampersand
staff had turned to stare at me. Heat flooded my cheeks. I had a sudden horrific image of Candace seizing the note Nora and I were passing, and reading out loud my admission that I hadn’t made any progress on my student-athlete piece. But when I glanced down, I saw Nora surreptitiously sliding the paper into her backpack.

“Um, no, thanks. I’m good,”I said.

Candace continued to stare at me. Her eyes were a clear, piercing blue.

“What about your student-athlete article?”Candace said.

“Oh, right. Sorry. I’ve, um, decided to interview a local lacrosse player who received a sports scholarship to attend a prep school in the Northeast this year. I’m going to write about his experience going away to school,”I said.

Candace nodded. “That sounds like an interesting angle. Have you done the interview?”

“It’s scheduled for this evening,”I said. Which was sort of true. Dex and I had a date to talk on Skype that night, so I could totally do the interview then.

“Good. I look forward to reading it,”Candace said. “Tabitha, how is your short story coming?”

Nora gave me a thumbs-up under the table. I exhaled deeply, relieved that the group’s attention was no longer on me.

After the meeting, Nora and I walked out together. I was giving her a ride home.

“Howdy,”a familiar voice called out.

I turned to see Finn walking down the hall toward us. He was looking jaunty in blue plaid shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan HIPPIES SMELL.

“How did you get that past the headmaster?”I asked, pointing at his T-shirt.

“Headmaster Hughes? He laughed when he saw it,”Finn said, joining us. “I think he agrees with the sentiment.”

“Typical. You get away with everything,”I said.

“Where’s Charlie been hiding? I’ve barely seen her in days,”Finn said.

“She’s been busy painting,”I said vaguely.

“Busy painting, huh? So you’ve decided to replace her with Nora here?”Finn asked.

“Excuse me?”I said.

“Is Nora your replacement Charlie? I’ve noticed the two of you have been spending a lot of time together. Are you new BFFs?”Finn asked.

I rolled my eyes at Nora, and she grinned back at me.

“Come on, Nora. It’s time to put the Let’s Ignore Finn plan into action,”I said.

Nora and I continued to walk down the hallway. Undaunted, Finn joined us.

“If you keep spending so much time together, we’re going to have to merge your names, like Bennifer or Brangelina. Mirora? No, that doesn’t sound right. Noranda? That’s not good, either. It would be a lot easier if you could change your name to Brad or Ben, Nora. Then you could be Biranda,”Finn said.

“I sort of like Mirora. It sounds like the name of a high priestess,”Nora mused.

“But Noranda sounds like a prescription skin cream,”Finn remarked. “The kind that zaps zits or hemorrhoids.”

“Or, we could just keep our regular names,”I suggested.

“You’re no fun. So, where are we heading?”Finn asked.

“Out to Miranda’s car,”Nora said. “Or, as I’ve decided to rename it, the Stinkmobile.”

Finn laughed appreciatively. I was momentarily taken aback. I think it was the first time I’d ever heard Nora make a joke.

“Classic,”Finn said. “That car needs to be fumigated.”

“I took it to the car wash this weekend and had them pipe in a deodorizing fragrance,”I said.

“I love that stuff. What did you get? New-car smell? That’s my favorite,”Finn said. “If I could, I’d go around smelling like a new car. I wish they’d make it into a cologne. Do you think someone sells that?”

“No,”I said.

“Note to self: invent a cologne with new-car smell,”Finn said.

“What fragrance did you really get?”Nora asked.

“Strawberry-banana,”I said. “I thought it sounded nice and fruity.”

“Did it work on the stink?”

“Not really,”I said sadly. “The stink is still there, only now with an undertone of artificial strawberry-banana smell. Which, I have to say, is really not much of an improvement.”

“Awesome,”Finn said with relish.

“I told Miranda she could market the smell as a weapon. Find a way to get it into an atomizer, and then spray it at a mugger or something. It would work better than pepper spray,”Nora said, to Finn’s growing hilarity.

What? She’s never said that to me
, I thought.

“That’s brilliant,”Finn said. “And then the cops would have an easy time tracking down the bad guy. All they’d have to do is follow the odor.”

Nora giggled appreciatively.

“Thanks, guys. That’s just so helpful,”I said dryly. “No, never mind me. I’ll just suffer with my stinky car while you two laugh at me.”

“Oh, come on, M,”Finn said. He threw one arm around my neck and another around Nora’s. “We kid because we love.”

“And because we really want you to do something about the stink. Seriously, it’s so bad that whenever I’m in your car, I want to stick my head out the window like a dog,”Nora said.

“Ha, ha,”I said as Nora and Finn cracked up. “Don’t forget, without me, you’d be walking home, Nora.”

“No, she wouldn’t. I’d drive you home, Nora,”Finn said.

“Aw, thanks, Finn,”Nora said.

“Wait, no, I take it back. I wouldn’t drive you home. I’m meeting Phoebe at Grounded,”Finn said. “By the way, M, tell Hannah I got her Web site up and running today during calculus class.”

“During class? Didn’t Mr. Gordon notice?”

“Dunno,”Finn said. “I had on my headphones, so I couldn’t really hear what he was saying.”

I rolled my eyes, while Nora snickered. She seemed to think he was kidding. I was pretty sure he wasn’t.

“Let me know what Hannah says when she sees it,”Finn said.

There was something in his tone—and, when I turned sharply to look up at him, a mischievous glint in his dark eyes—that told me he was up to something.

“What did you do?”I asked.

“Whatever do you mean?”Finn asked, feigning innocence. Another bad sign.

“Seriously. What did you do to Hannah’s Web site?”I asked.

Finn looked wounded. “I help out your stepsister, generously giving up an entire calculus period, during which I could have been mastering the tenth level of
Staroids
, and this is the sort of thanks I get? Accusations of skullduggery? I’m wounded, Miranda. Truly, I’m deeply hurt.”

“No, you’re not,”I said.

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m not,”Finn agreed.

“What’s
Staroids
?”Nora asked.

“It’s a totally rad game. It combines the best elements of an RPG and a first-person shooter. It’s brilliantly violent. I can’t believe I didn’t come up with it,”Finn enthused.

“I love video games,”Nora said.

“You do?”Finn asked. He looked at me, his brow furrowed. “Why have you been hiding this from me, Miranda? You know the rules. All gaming enthusiasts are to be brought to my attention immediately.”

“I didn’t know,”I said. In fact, in all of the conversations I’d had with Nora, she’d never once mentioned video games.

I suddenly had a worrying thought. Was Nora joking around with Finn and pretending to be interested in video games because she was romantically interested in him? I sincerely hoped not. It was bad enough that Charlie was suffering from her unrequited love for Finn. I didn’t want to lose another friend to his inexplicable charms.

Chapter Twelve

T
hat night, after dinner, I sat down at my desk and came up with a list of questions to ask Dex. It was the first time I’d ever interviewed anyone, and I was feeling a little nervous about it.

At seven o’clock, I was in front of my laptop, ready for Dex’s call. He was always very prompt. But as I sat there, staring at the Skype site, waiting for it to ring . . . it didn’t: 7:03 . . . 7:07 . . . 7:09. By 7:12, I was starting to get annoyed. Had Dex forgotten? Or was he too busy to call? No, it couldn’t be that he was too busy—he would at least have texted me to let me know he couldn’t talk.

I considered turning Skype and my cell phone off, so that if Dex called, he wouldn’t be able to get a hold of me. But, no, that would be petty and immature, and, besides, I really did need to interview him. Also, I wanted to hear about his first official day of school. I wondered whether I should text him to remind him of our phone date, but just as I was reaching for my phone, Skype started to ring.

“Sorry I’m late,”Dex said as soon as we were connected. “Practice ran over, and then I had to get dinner before the dining hall closed. I swear, I have never eaten faster in my life, and when I was done, I ran all the way back to my dorm.”

He looked flushed and out of breath. All of my irritation vanished, replaced by a soft glow of delight. He hadn’t forgotten about me. He’d run home to talk to me.

“Don’t worry; it’s fine,”I told him.

“How are you doing?”Dex asked, smiling warmly in the way that always caused a zing to shoot through me.

“I’m great. How was your first day of classes?”

Dex’s smile slipped away. “So unbelievably hard. You wouldn’t believe how tough the classes are here. Actually, maybe you would—that’s probably what you’re used to at Geek High. But I had no idea it was going to be so intense. I’m going to be up half the night trying to get all of my homework done.”Dex ran one hand through his red hair. “I’m probably going to be the dumbest kid in class.”